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How the hell does this story have so many upvotes?

HN really needs to do something about Microsoft's vote manipulation - it's becoming quite blatant at this point.


Please don't post baseless accusations of shillage. See more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13610097.


It probably is - much like their Pokemon Go + Google Cloud article.

When will HN readers that they are furthering corporate agendas when they upvote fluff like this?


If it's an interesting article with relevant content (I'd not heard of Brotli compression before), so what? Unless you're advocating active hostility to companies like Googe, to particularly discourage relevant content with such connections. In which case would you like to justify that?


It's because the 'problem' it solves is a corner case that's rarely encountered. I love their absurd examples of repos that take 12 hours to download. How many people have that problem, really?

All they did is create a caching layer.


   How many people have that problem, really?
An easy lower bound is 10s of thousands of engineers : developers at several large tech companies (e.g. MS, facebook, google, ?)


If you deal with code, the case is marginal for you.

If you deal with graphics, audio assets, etc, the binary-blob type of data, the case is central.


This is about code, and code history. Just insane volumes.


Well it's a problem for thousands of employees of Microsoft, isn't it? We've had much smaller repository (10GB IIRC) and it really was annoying how long everything took, even with various caches and what not enabled.


"I don't have this problem, so nobody does."

Lacking support for large binary blobs is, like, THE #1 reason that an engineer might have to use an alternative.


Ok, but you'll encounter similar git limitations with repos several orders of magnitude smaller than that too.

All you need is several hundred engineers and your monorepo becomes unwieldy for git to handle.


It's not a caching layer, it's lazy evaluation.


[flagged]


We've already asked you to please stop this, so we've banned the account.


The recent Windows 10 thread was full of criticism for MS


And full of down votes for the negative comments. This website is very pro successful business, not pro tech.


Exactly, the top comment in this thread claims MS is the only company doing cool things (which is 100% not true). The top comments in the Windows 10 thread yesterday were mostly people claiming "it's sad to see such negativity toward MS" and there was maybe one or two negative comments followed by a circle jerk about how good MS and their software is.

Microsoft has historically been one of the worst tech companies for tech enthusiasts. We can ignore all the awful things they did in the 90's that stifled open standards (because apparently that doesn't matter anymore?) and just look at 2013, when they were exposed to have been participating in the NSA PRISM project. That means there is a whole team at MS that worked on a secret government project to help violate our fourth amendment rights. Even much of congress didn't know about NSA mass data collection, but Microsoft did.

People who trust MS these days are either naive or employed by them.


Not interested in politics - even if it's from Sam.

Flagged.


The guidelines ask us to flag and move on without comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Yeah, Altman is a hypocrite. Zero respect for this guy. "Let's ban certain types of speech unless it's from me, of course."


The guidelines say don't comment on flagging. It's just not constructive. You're free to express other thoughts as long as they're civil and substantive. Why is this unreasonable?


Recruiters are salespeople. Treat them as such.


The other problem is that lots of people upvote without reading - or even skimming.

Great title? I'll upvote it now and read it later. Maybe.


Upvoting to save for reading the article later. I've done this a few times, though I try to be sure the article seems good enough.


More corporate propaganda where they leave out the key details and don't address easy questions.

Much like IBM's bullshit 25,000 jobs PR stunt this one has no substance besides the empty words of a suit who will do anything to increase revenue.


Hi Nate, tell us about your efforts to hire people over the age of 40.


Don't waste your time, it's PR bullshit:

"“It’s a very powerful headline, and the timing certainly makes Trump look good,”

The staffing up isn’t particularly surprising for a company moving into multiple categories from groceries, hardware and video to fashion and cloud services. But the move could appease Trump, who tangled with Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos during the election campaign.


Look, regardless of your political inclinations you can't blankly hate everything Trump does. I get it, it's cognitive dissonance, but give credit where it's do. One company committing to 100k U.S jobs is huge. Looking at the numbers, that alone will contribute to 2.5-5% of job growth in the US (assuming job growth is btween 100-200k/month.)

Is it a political move? How couldn't it be? Is it somthing to lambaste about? No, it's basic job creation in the US, something we really need to sustain the America us cosmopolitans have forgotten about.


You're half-right. Not everything Trump does will be horrible and bad. We should judge him by his actual actions.

I'm 95% confident he is going to be a disaster (and so will this Republican congress) but maybe this country needs to experience some pain to understand that both sides aren't equal. Nevertheless I can't lay blame until action is actually taken and the results are known.


"We can't press charges when someone's driving drunk until they crash into something or kill somebody. Our hands our tied!"


"We can't press charges when someone's driving [seemingly] drunk until, [we know for a fact they are drunk or,] they crash into something or kill somebody. Our hands our tied!"

Be careful, your hubris is making conclusions you don't have facts for. You're more than likely right, but its a bad habit to start.


Exhibit A: The "blind trust" that is anything but.

Exhibit B: Mass-terminating appointees before they're formally replaced leaving huge parts of the government rudderless for months.

Nearly everything about this presidency is off the charts batshit insane. There is no way this thing would pass a political breathalizer.

Have you listened to anything he's said? Did George W. Bush teach people nothing?


I'm just saying.. we don't know. Your heuristics may help inform you slightly, but it is the future and by definition we cannot know. Otherwise if you really do know - you shouldn't be wasting time here complaining, you could be making a lot of money.

Having a different management style is just that: different, not "batshit insane". You really can't judge until the results are in.

For example, people questioned the way Job's ran his teams at Apple. At some point in time that was "batshit insane". To be frank, even today Job's management style is "batshit insane", but no one can question it because it worked.

Building a rocket ship company that planned to steal away revenue from Lockheed-Martin was "batshit insane", but Musk was able to pull it off.

Another example, losing half your army trekking through the Alps with elephants was "batshit insane", but Hannibal was one of the only generals in existence that could have destroyed Rome. Hannibal may not be the best example though, he happened to be outsmarted at the last minute, and acted emotionally rather than continue his objective - losing everything in the process.

I'm just trying to explain to you (while Trump will likely cause WW3): In general by jumping to conclusions, prior to having the data, you do yourself and the world a disservice.


> off the charts batshit insane

I suggest you become more of a student of history. At very least it will leave you with bigger charts.


Name another president that's generated as many scandals prior to entering office. Name another president that's won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by over two million votes. Name another president who's actively hostile against several major branches of government. Name another president who's apparently been collaborating with a major foreign adversary.

There's been candidates for office with crazier ideas, with fewer qualifications, with more scandals, but none have ever been elected before. Ths path is well trod by tinpot dictators, not US presidents.

In terms of US history, the only thing missing is Trump killing someone in a duel on the White House lawn to really put this over the top.


>Name another president that's generated as many scandals prior to entering office

John Quincy Adams, he called the sitting presidents wife a whore during his campaign. I'd argue Hillary Clinton had more scandals prior to office, but she lost.

>Name another president that's won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by over two million votes

Name another president who ran when there was over 310 million Americans.

>Name another president who's actively hostile against several major branches of government

Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight "beware the military industrial complex" Eisenhower, and JFK.

>Name another president who's apparently been collaborating with a major foreign adversary.

Well if the standard of evidence on that is "unnamed sources" and top secret documents nobody is going to see for a few decades. All of them according to my unnamed source in my top secret document.

In the interest of fairness may I note that Hillary Clinton's state department approved a sale of 20% of this nations uranium to Russia and shortly thereafter she received a few million dollar donation to the Clinton foundation from a Russian weapons manufacturer who had directly benefited from that deal. Clearly she didn't think Russia was a threat when she was cashing their checks.


How are you evaluating your confidence in him being a disaster? What're your priors? What criteria do you have for evaluating presidents after their terms? What's your track record in predicting presidential success?

How are you determining what parts of disasters are attributed to the presidency/government vs things only lightly influenced by that? We can agree that hurricanes in one year aren't caused by presidential actions that same year. What about epidemics? Large economic shifts?

I don't mean this as Trump support, just wondering how people get things like "95% confidence" and "disaster". How do they objectively define these things and avoid their biases?


Credit for what, to whom? First, it's a pledge not a commitment, and second it's a statement about Amazon's continuation of 20 years of steady growth. This isn't "insourcing" or "onshoring" ? Trump did this? How?

When you consider the wage of Amazon warehouse workers, it's a lot less than 2-5% of wage growth, which is what matters.


Would you be saying the same thing if Hillary had won and Bezos pledged these jobs? I'm guessing not.


It's too bad it's not a falsifiable claim. Unless you know how to get to the alternate timeline? (Asking for a friend)


Is it a political move? How couldn't it be?

They're hiring 100,000 people because they can put them to work and make a profit.

They NOT hiring 100,000 people to make Trump happy or make favors in the administration.


A) We're talking about Amazon here so don't be too quick to talk about profits.

B) They've only stated their intent to hire people. They haven't actually done it.

C) Is this net +100K or just 100K new hires? It's not clear if this is including churn or not.


Announcing it like this is the political move. Trump can keep campaigning on it (he seems bizarrely intent on continuing to act like he's still trying to get the job) and Jeff gets some points with the President.


job creation isnt basic, especially disruptive change and new economies of scale.

these jobs will displace slash replace other jobs. calling the jobs created growth without looking at what the new industry destroys is like going to the casino and bragging about how much you won, while withholding how much you "invested."


I agree to be logically consistent you'd also have to make the same argument about Obama's unemployment numbers. Most of the growth lately has been in relatively low paying jobs.


Since he's not president, the credit is definitely not due to Trump, though I'm sure he'll take credit for it regardless.


Last time I checked, Trump isn't the President.


> you can't blankly hate everything Trump does

Watch me. ;)

> In a call with reporters on Thursday Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said his boss was happy to play a part in Amazon’s decision

Did he actually though?

> You have a good company hiring people in an area where a lot of tech companies tend to be outsourcing people,” he said. “So it’s very positive, political or not. It’s still 100,000 more people in the U.

Amazon wasn't one of the companies outsourcing people. They have been hiring engineers by the boatload for years.

I'd guess the large majority of these jobs aren't going to be tech jobs anyway.

> Over the past five years, Amazon says it has created more than 150,000 jobs in the U.S.

So they are just over doubling the hiring rate? about 30k/year before to about 70k now?

> After Trump’s victory, Bezos tweeted: “I for one give him my most open mind.”

Good lesson from a smart guy.


What a shameful and frankly frightening state of affairs we're in when this is the case. Why does the party of small government get a pass on this? Any self-described republican with even the vaguest interest in free markets should see a myriad of problems with the incoming administration. I hope they can actually grow some balls, stick to their guns and shut this travesty down before it really gets going.


What does this have to do small government?


Its safe to assume that anything that happened since the election will be claimed by Trump. Regardless of whether he or his administration have the slightest thing to do with it.

All jobs created in the next 4 years will be because of Trump, and all jobs lost will be because of Clinton/Bush/Obama.


It's safe to assume because it's SOP for politicians. You aren't saying anything that hasn't been true of any incoming president in my lifetime. Hell, it's often true in the private sector during a management change.


10 million net jobs were created during the Obama administration. How many of those did he tweet about?


Tweet? No. Press Releases? Plenty of them. You could have just done a Google search.[1]

And when Obama started tweeting before the 2008 election, everyone thought he was so "with it" in terms of technology. Trump does it and it's a problem.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/...


> Trump does it and it's a problem

That's cause he goes on 3am rants that sound like they were written by a 10 year old.


His administration has certainly issued press releases about them.

This is getting silly. It is 100% in line for all politicians to claim credit for everything they can, and many things they can't.


We are really going to pretend that he and his supporters didn't credit for it?


More than 80% of those were low skills service jobs. The jobs Trump is creating and the factories he saved are high skilled high paying jobs.


Presidents don't create jobs or lose them. The demands of the economy do that. Presidents can influence the economy, but they also have Congress and the Fed to deal with.


Are you referring to Carrier, where some of the 1,100 jobs supposedly saved were never moving to Mexico? They're going to invest some of the money they're getting from the government into automation to further replace human workers.

Or Ford, which was never moving the jobs in question out of the country.

Or something else?


It's a good day to be a billionaire. Trump is totally open to providing incentives and handouts to anyone who makes him look good. For better or worse, the doors to corporatism are open. How far we go down that path remains to be seen.


You missed one quote at the very end. Without it, the above reads like a quote with your reply to it. However, the last sentence was a quote from the article too.


I think all AIs in my lifetime will simply be Chinese Rooms

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


The question of whether or not AlphaGo is 'really' intelligent is irrelevant to whether it can beat me at chess. The question of whether or not the Pentagon's integrated AI system is really intelligent is similarly irrelevant to whether or not it might undertake a program of action it's creators would object to if they understood what it meant.


The Chinese room argument is irrelevant here.


is it? It seemed to me like author assumes AI decision making will be roughly equivalent to biological decision making, just faster. I thought one of the Chinese room arguments is that biological decisions will always be "different" than AI ones.

Also it seemed like the author assumes great technological advances in AIs, but not in biology. If we're gonna dream shit up why not dream that brains in the future will be 10,000 times as dense and computers won't be able to keep up except as tools.


The point of the Chinese room argument is that while the room receives and emits Chinese just like any Chinaman, it isn't conscious. As the WP article makes clear, the assumption is that the Chinese room is just as competent at emitting Chinese:

"Suppose, says Searle, that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a live Chinese speaker. To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that they are talking to another Chinese-speaking human being."

> If we're gonna dream shit up why not dream that brains in the future will be 10,000 times as dense

Because... that is not a thing which is happening. And deep learning and AI progress are things that are happening. (Quite aside from the many issues with your proposal, like a brain 10kx as powerful due to 10kx density would probably break thermodynamic limits on computation and of course cook itself to death within seconds.)


whats not a thing thats actually happening? Drugs and other procedures that increase synaptic/neural density are indeed happening.

Like i mentioned, i don't know all the AI terminology but isn't there an unresolved argument that ai architecture in the short run can't mimic biological decision making, and so the decisions will always be different/ tasks for which tool AI will be better to help the biological decision making processes?


No, the Chinese room takes as an assumption that the input and output of the room is the same as someone who "actually understands" Chinese. In other words, it assumes that biological decisions will always be the same as the AI's decision.


I think we will discover that our own consciousness works like the Chinese Room, and acknowledging and internalizing that will cause tremendous unrest between philosophers, computer scientists, neurologists, and other academic disciplines--potentially even including the law.


You are a Chinese room too.


Is this what they call anatta?


That would be my interpretation, yes. To be fair Searle would say that it proves the opposite, but his argument isn't much more than "isn't that crazy?!" (Ok that wasn't very fair.)


It depends who they are. (Ha ha.)

That's one perspective on anatta, but not a particularly useful one. You may find this interesting:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selves...

  If you've ever taken an introductory course on Buddhism, you've
  probably heard this question: "If there is no self, who does the
  kamma, who receives the results of kamma?" This understanding turns
  the teaching on not-self into a teaching on no self, and then takes
  no self as the framework and the teaching on kamma as something that
  doesn't fit in the framework. But in the way the Buddha taught these
  topics, the teaching on kamma is the framework and the teaching of
  not-self fits into that framework as a type of action. In other
  words, assuming that there really are skillful and unskillful
  actions, what kind of action is the perception of self? What kind of
  action is the perception of not-self?



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