With all the shutdowns, Google is also foolishly throwing away what will be an increasingly important asset - distinguishing between real human identities and bots. False bot negatives waste Google computing resources, while false bot positives waste users' time.
I would happily opt in to having Google use AI on each of their services to see if I behave like a real human and then combine that information across services to give my identity a low-bot-risk rating. As it is I am constantly asked to Captcha prove myself (probably because I perform a large number of unusual complex search queries).
Black hat AI will make bots harder and harder to detect and cybercrime (and disinformation dissemination) easier and easier. Detecting fake identities will soon become crucial and yet almost impossible - and Google could be best positioned to provide that information.
But instead they will let MBA twit bean counters ruin the company. My advice to all corporations - keep MBAs in dungeons, bring them out occasionally for advice and never allow them to make decisions.
Stories about Mims always attract comments that make it clear that his writing inspired many to learn electronics. But to give some balance to the starry eyed impression left by the article and many such comments I suggest looking into his Wikipedia page [1] or any other source that talks about his creationist and climate change denialist views and how they have lead to controversy in his life.
I would also strongly recommend against his books for beginners now because even simple projects should at least consider alternatives based on microcontrollers and there are now much better and more comprehensive books that cover the basics that Mims covered and more modern alternatives. I would recommend The Art of Electronics [2] (older editions can be bought affordably) which incorporates learn- from- real- world- bad- design wisdom, and which has a sense of humor utterly lacking in Mims' writing.
As someone who has spent a lot of time both on learning electronics and understanding how to teach it, I would argue against this as bad advice.
The Art of Electronics is like a recipe book — it's a (whimsical, yes) set of reference designs to be referred to like templates for a design engineer. The Art of Electronics is not a well-suited recommendation for a beginner or novice.
Furthermore: I have spoken to Forrest Mims (disclosure: the discussions I have had with him were in the process of creating circuitclassics.com. That said, I have not met him personally.) The conclusion I came to was that his personal beliefs do not affect and have no bearing on his technical work.
(Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.)
It is true that hundreds of thousands of engineers launched their careers after being exposed to his books, that they are quite good at this, still relevant — and probably the only book on electronics to sell over 1M genuine (and many more untrackably via unauthorized reproduction etc.) copies.
Different people learn in different ways. Unlike most people apparently I credit Mims with delaying my taking up electronics. I found his books a complete turn off when I was young - painfully unimaginative and boring. Mims books were the only books available at Radio Shack and in the US, Radio Shack for decades before hacker spaces was in most places the only place to begin to tinker with electronics. The high number of Mims books sold has a lot to do with those decades of "monopoly". The Art of Electronics is what worked for me and many others and I have three hard bound copies that are falling apart from overuse. There may be simpler, fewer- topics-covered alternatives that would be better for very young readers, but AoE is what most teachers in particular that I know swear by.
I have fond memories of his book and his writings. I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas. No interest attacking him for it, but just, "Wow. really?"
You're saying "willfully unintelligent" as if he's explicitly trying not to be intelligent. But that's the opposite of what's going on. He's examined the science and he sees problems with it. He's heard the counter-arguments, and he isn't convinced, because of what he sees as a lack of evidence.
This is the same kind of fundamental misunderstanding that separates (for example) a white supremacist from one who is not. The general idea is that the former is refusing to reason, examine, or use logic. But if you talk to a white supremacist or neo-Nazi at length, you find that they have nuanced, complex, logical explanations for their beliefs. They may be wildly inaccurate, but that isn't to say they didn't put thought into it. Not only that, but their positions are bolstered by the fact that there's basically no way to completely disprove them, because it would require observing nature over millennia, or having records we just don't have.
Calling them willfully unintelligent not only misunderstands their reasoning, but it questions their motives. It's not just a false observation, it's an accusation. This moves the conversation from "I don't think you're right" to "you're a bad person". And I think that's at the core of how political and ideological discourse is so rotten today.
Sigh. You went to effort to make your case but I don't buy it (and resent your conclusion of effectively blaming me for the failure of discourse today).
> You're saying "willfully unintelligent" as if he's explicitly trying not to be intelligent
No, I did not. He has access to the science and he also has a religious tract. He chooses to treat that religious tract as an inerrant literal depiction of the creation of the world.
Those are competing thoughts and "willfully" means that he made a choice.
And "willfully" is kind of tricky here, because it would not surprise me if he was raised in a Christian household that effectively brainwashed him into these beliefs.
>And I think that's at the core of how political and ideological discourse is so rotten today.
And I disagree. I think a huge part of the problem is religious fundamentalism and a rejection of science.
Edit: oh, and neo-nazis and white supremacist are bad people m'kay?
> Those are competing thoughts and "willfully" means that he made a choice.
According to the article, Mims came to his conclusions after scientific study, not from growing up with a bible and deciding to just go with what he learned first. He looked at fossil records (among other things) and decided they weren't good enough to explain things without some extra force, and "chose" an intelligent designer as that force.
> it would not surprise me if he was raised in a Christian household that effectively brainwashed him into these beliefs.
He's a Texan, so I'm sure he was raised around Christianity, but he was actually an evolutionist before he became a science writer.
> I think a huge part of the problem is religious fundamentalism and a rejection of science.
In this case, science brought him to God. It would be funny if the public response and effect on his career wasn't so sad.
Thank you for the civil dialog in what could be a very contention discussion.
If Mims was being truly scientific about the Bible then that would include looking for finding falsifiability in the literal truths of the Bible. (Clearly I'm not religious and my take on that book is that it is, at best, a collection of inspirational stories -- not documented fact).
I respect each individual's right to have their own relationship with "God", including believing in things that I think are, dare I say it, stupid.
Scientific American did the wrong thing to fire him, but instead should have had a very clear firewall to ensure that they respected his personal beliefs and would not be associated with them.
> I was rather stunned that somebody so intelligent would be so willingly not so in other areas.
Judging by the Wikipedia article, he's Christian. Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems. As for climate skepticism, hard to say, though I am curious about one thing. Wikipedia mentions him doing a lot of atmospheric research, hand has some pretty charts near the end - charts that, to my layman's opinion, should show a rising trend (due to correlation between water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), not a steady one. Could anyone comment on that and their relevance?
> Which means creationism is a part of his belief systems
This is only true for some doctrinal subsets of Christianity, and it's rare in European christian communities.
Far weirder to find someone who's innovated in atmospheric research - a great little paper on how to determine atmospheric water content with a $10 IR thermometer - who doesn't believe in climate change.
(Broadly, I do not understand why this man is so hounded for his particular personal beliefs.)
Mims's beliefs came to the forefront several years ago (probably more like 20 at this point) when he was under consideration to take over editorship of the 'Amateur Scientist' column in Scientific American. This column isn't too well-known today, but it was hugely influential from the WWII years through at least the 1970s. It regularly featured experiments in all sorts of areas, from physics and chemistry to meteorology to natural history and archaeology.
I don't remember how the editors at SciAm found out that Mims was a creationist, but when they did, they rescinded the offer. There was a great deal of controversy among the magazine's readership at the time. The decision seemed prejudicial at best. Even without being religious, it felt like Mims was getting a raw deal.
I originally fell into that camp myself, but the events and trends that have taken place since then make me inclined to support the magazine's decision. If it was true that Mims's faith required him to deny basic elements of geological history and biological evolution -- and apparently it was -- then it's hard to see how he could do that particular job effectively.
It's a real shame, because it was otherwise the perfect job for him. Mental illness sucks, especially when it's voluntary.
Does that have anything to do with his ability to inspire people to do something with their lives? We're headed down this dangerous path where it seems we need to be able to vouch for every aspect of a person's life before we're allowed to celebrate anything they've done. People can do amazing things. And they can be assholes. And most of the time they're both.
I say this every time this is mentioned but Mimms actually did some brain damage to the budding electronics engineers. The books were cute but left people with a head full of things to be unlearned. This screwed up a number of my fellow students when they hit university. In fact our lecturer of the day, while drinking in the student union with us, described the Mimms books using language I can’t repeat here.
I actually started with 1st edition Art of Electronics Laboratory Manual back in the 1980s before I even went to university. That was in all incarnations total gold. It’s a tutorial guide rather than the textbook format of the main book.
In this day and age, Make Electronics (this will teach you which end of the soldering iron is hot) followed by TAOE is the way to go. Harry Kybett / Earl Boysen also produce an excellent book.
Electronics is vastly more complicated (and interesting) than cutting and pasting knowledge which is what you end up with from Mimms.
Sadly, we were recently blocked by the Chinese government on the DNS level. Although we do have many Chinese users on VPN. We don't have so many Chinese stations, because they mostly broadcast using the Windows Media Audio format.
All over the world there are testosterone poisoned males engaging in as much obnoxious behavior as they can get away with (e.g. riding motorcycles with no mufflers). Particulary coming from the Southern US it is absolutely delightful to be in a place where "rednecks" are completley suppressed.
>plants/bacteria need additional energy in the form of sugars to pull carbon out of CO2 in the air.
Sorry perhaps this is not what you meant to write.
For anyone who wants an unmangled understanding of photosynthesis please consult Wikipedia or other text of your choice.
Yes! I am pretty sure that I got confused ... either getting the Krebs Cycle the wrong way around or confused about where the ATP came from... Possibly the latter, this will teach me to comment about half remembering biology from over 25 years ago whilst still half asleep ..
However my original poorly explained thought stands there needs to be an extra component that will be consumed like ATP or H2O...
As someone who has spent time at East Wind and Acorn and taken the three week visitor program at Twin Oaks, I hardly know where to begin in disabusing you of the idea that these communities are libertarian. Very few members would self identify as such, and most abhor Hayak style libertarian prescriptions for society as a whole. Members have many motivations for joining but among the most common is wanting to equally share the fruits of their labor - to partially escape the exploitation of their fellow humans that unfettered unregulated capitalism inevitably produces, and which the US social safety net and graduated income taxes in particular only ameliorates inadequately. Twin Oaks publishes an Intentional Communities Directory [1] which has many listings for Europe (which may have more of an available land disadvantage). Twin Oaks has thrived since 1967 [2] and has a very large body of rules and procedures which is one of the ways they free themselves of problem individuals (other communities rely more on shunning which can be quite effective). Generally members are happy, exmembers are glad they lived there, and children are extremely well cared for. As to why there are few (but >0) second generation and lifelong members and as to how the communities coexist with the outside world - as many of them say about their relationship status "it's complicated".
Your comment is exactly what I assumed and it doesn't contradict my comment in any way. Yes, these people possibly don't identify as libertarians, but their community is the exact reason why they actually should.
Libertarianism is about building a community that you like, in any possible way, without having to agree with anyone else about what is "exploitation" and all that ideological stuff. Libertarianism's goals is exactly aligned with what "hippie communists" (stereotype that I use here in good faith, to omit boring argument about strict ideological definitions) want, as long as they don't try to force their views on other people.
There is every likely and unlikely combination of political beliefs to be found in every population including commune members. But I will go out on a limb and try to speak for that population. Relatively few see the communal life as a viable prescription for society as a whole, and most believe that all political and economic systems involve painful tradeoffs. On the other hand most look with horror at purist libertarians rejecting as much enforced sharing in general society as possible. This philosophy is irreconcilable with the view of many, inside and outside of communes who strongly believe that having many kinds of sharing - enforced by a government - is necessary for any civilization worth living in, and eternal vigilance against all slippery slopes presented by governments and corporations is unavoidable (and is not simply avoided by letting free markets run amuck). Many of us are thoroughly familiar with your arguments and adamantly reject them as dangerous, simplistic and in effect evil thinking that we will resist with everything we have.
And yet, these arguments remain theoretical talk - while existence of these communities, where all sharing is implemented without government or threat of violence, only serves to confirm libertarianism.
Nothing at all about libertarianism prevents people from equally sharing the fruits of their labor. Libertarianism is about not forcing people to share.
Note that the commune leaves unresolved what to do about "problem individuals" in the larger sense. They just force them out. But if all of society was a commune, what then?
In the context of a larger liberal society, where they generally can't use coercion to enforce their rules, they have to make rules people will want to go along with. Change that, and you have every government in history we've seen try to run a collective economy. Not communes, but collective farms and dissenting kulaks getting shipped off to the hinterlands, or city residents being marched out to the farms.
(I'm aware than anarchists claim it's totally possible to democratically run a collective economy and have it work at least as well as a liberal capitalist society. The first has never happened, much less the second.)
The decoupling of the force of law from economic and social arrangements as much as possible is the libertarian argument, here. Having this sort of arrangement at the government level gives you oppression and starvation, while having it at the voluntary level gets you happy, self-selected communes where people brag about growing their own food.
(Having grown up in the country, the idea of growing and cooking one's own food and thus not having to pay retail is less mind-bogglingly amazing for me than it might be for other HN posters.)
Mexico has only recently become a major poppy growing heroin producer. Before that the cartels were largely making money by dominating the flow of cocaine produced in South America. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/mexico-primary-source-...
A saying in Mexico is that the nation's troubles are due to being so far from God and so close to the United States.
Mostly off topic. Why has China produced most of the serious competition to US software titans? In particular, given that South Korea was way ahead of the rest of the world in cell phone and broadband universality for it's population, why haven't they been the birthplace of any social media or other internet companies that expanded abroad (instead they adopted YouTube and Facebook)?
1. Korea is much more homogeneous than China. China has a wide diversity of ethnicities. (Before you downvote, check Wikipedia first)
2. China doesn't "ban foreign internet/social media". LinkedIn is in China, so is Bing. It bans companies that do not follow Chinese law. If you want to argue that the Chinese law is bad, you should know that Korea bans Google map because of law.
I'm reading AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee (MS Research China, Google China, Sinovation) now - https://aisuperpowers.com/
His version of the story:
1) China's wild-west, copyright ignoring culture forced Chinese entrepreneurs to out work, out hustle, out spend their competitors because there was no IP moat. 3 decades of that environment allowed China to develop many levels of development, management, etc talent. Now they have a large, well educated, experienced, seasoned technical workforce.
2) China's culture, just 2 generations removed from mass starvation and poverty, is very hungry and chases business and money as opposed to Silicon Valley vision startups.
3) American tech companies want to make a product that can be used in all countries, but Chinese tech companies tailored to the distinct behavior of Chinese internet users, most of whom are a) smartphone only, and b) on the internet for the first time, and therefore have very different behaviors. Also, because of no IP protection, they built moats through deep, expensive, messy integration into cities, shops, physical assets, etc, whatever gives them some defensibility. American companies, less willing to adapt their products, were poorly received and outcompeted.
4) China's government (national, state, city) has a system of incentives that can align lots of money, compliance, resources, and attention very quickly. In 2013, the Chinese government announced "mass entrepreneurship" plans, and after AlphaGo's victory in 2016, they made a similar plan to make China an AI superpower. This led to a nationwide flood of venture capital, office space, social perks, etc. They're willing to tolerate inefficiency in order to capture a huge new industry. Contrast with the US, where Republican beat up on Obama and Dems for years because of Solyndra, even though the overall renewal energy stimulus made money.
5) China is huge - its urban population is larger than the entire USA, while South Korea's population is about the same as the US West Coast. So a portion of their labor force can tip the global scales of man-hours in a field.
Also, I believe WeChat is popular outside of China, but not so much in USA/Europe. Alibaba is globally influential in manufacturing and ecommerce.
I'm going deep into Chinese tech, particularly AI, and I'd love to talk more about it.
Anyone who wants an example of Chinese engineering at its best should try downloading the desktop Wechat client. Super smooth, fast and lightweight, currently just using 40mb in my task manager. Using it highlights how much software like Skype has lost its way. Or the Slack desktop client, which won't even start on my Linux laptop without 3gb of free ram, due to being packed so full with memory bloat and disregard for its users in the name of faster development time (or maybe management being too cheap to hire people capable of developing efficient GUIs in a lower-level language).
- South Korea has the fortune of understanding the importance of internet "infrastructure", and being a dense country, manages to roll out first-class internet before most other nations.
- Burgeoning domestic services start to take root.
- Government sets up various crazy laws that make doing internet business extremely painful, killing innovation. Large carriers (KT, SKT, LG) exert tight control of the market, killing innovation in the mobile space.
- Only a few giant corporations survive (e.g., Naver and Kakaotalk). When foreign products (Youtube, iPhone, etc.) eventually break into the market, there's no meaningful domestic competitor.
There was a time when everybody had a Cyworld account: you never heard about it, because it was acquired by SKT, and they didn't want it to cannibalize their mobile services. Nobody uses it any more. We all moved to Facebook.
Because Korea never protected its internet/software industries or never adopted an infant industry argument for their software, they chose instead to consolidate and protect the powers of chaebols who focused on hardware applications and those industries that it was already good at because they were already making money and likely to do so in the future.
Moreover, the chaebols probably out-competed and bought out any software competitors in their protected status.
> Why has China produced most of the serious competition to US software titans?
In a word, Chinese protectionism. However, given how our software titans are dominating our society, I'm not sure it's a bad thing that competitors have emerged, even if it was from the cradle of market manipulation.
Chinese protectionism wasn't bad in the first place, Americans adopted the infant industry argument articulated by Alexander Hamilton and American tariffs were highest in the world from 1816 through 1945, other countries are just now adopting whats working from the past.
I would happily opt in to having Google use AI on each of their services to see if I behave like a real human and then combine that information across services to give my identity a low-bot-risk rating. As it is I am constantly asked to Captcha prove myself (probably because I perform a large number of unusual complex search queries).
Black hat AI will make bots harder and harder to detect and cybercrime (and disinformation dissemination) easier and easier. Detecting fake identities will soon become crucial and yet almost impossible - and Google could be best positioned to provide that information.
But instead they will let MBA twit bean counters ruin the company. My advice to all corporations - keep MBAs in dungeons, bring them out occasionally for advice and never allow them to make decisions.