rbarooah

A system that 'knows you better than you know yourself', means a system that is able to predict your responses to different stimuli more accurately than you can.

By definition such a system can manipulate you.

Let's set aside the idea of an 'AI' - which conjures up all sorts of mythical images of talking computers.

Instead consider the implications of a single corporation with a machine learning system that has access to the private communications, personal documents, and physical location and web viewing history for a billion people and can use that information to predict the behavior of each one of them better than they can predict their own behavior.

That's what we'll get if Kurzweil and Google are only partially successful in this endeavor. It sounds to me like the greatest concentration of power in human history, and an extremely dangerous thing that we should be considering the implications of today.

Now many people seem to think that Moore's law means that machine learning systems of this power are inevitable and that it's better that it's Google than a worse entity like a government who controls it.

I think that's a dangerous dismissal for two reasons - firstly it presumes that this tool wouldn't be taken over by governments once it came into existence, or that it wouldn't be used to manipulate governments to prevent its takeover.

Secondly, even if super-powerful AI is an inevitability, it's not inevitable at all that we should be routing all of our personal information to its creator so that it can be used to model and predict our behavior en masse.

I don't see why you describe Apple's approach as a 'trap'. They are providing a lot of software components that save effort for those who use them. The results are platform specific, but everyone who uses them knows that and chooses to make that tradeoff intentionally.

What you describe as "VM-managed library bundling" sounds a lot like "building your own platform out of open source parts and maintaining a compatibility layer to your target platforms".

That strategy works for a few of the largest most-well resourced projects - e.g. the browsers Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc, plus the Adobe Suite, and even these draw criticism for the results not being as good as they could be if they focussed on one platform.

Something like this works on the web too - where people assemble a 'platform' out of javascript libraries - because the base platform simply doesn't provide enough.

I don't see it being a viable strategy for a small team or an individual developer trying to build native applications though because of the amount of time you'll spend keeping the compatibility layer up-to-date with the rapidly changing underlying platforms.

The question I was responding to was simply whether there are compelling reasons for Apple to use Objective-C.

Supporting cross platform native development is clearly not a strategic goal for them.

I think I'd add another reason - which is that they are in control of the evolution of Objective-C.

It seems to me that the principle of government being solely to protect individuals from the initiation of force by others is a great one, and should be the primary one. For bringing this idea into my consciousness, I am grateful to Ayn Rand and those who propagate her work.

However, "sophacles" doesn't seem to be arguing against the principle. He or she seems to be arguing against a simplistic interpretation of its implications.

For example you say: "correctly applying this principle means that if something is always a poison to everyone, it's not a legitimate product. There is no legitimate use. Producing it and selling it is simply initiating force."

Who decides what is a poison to 'everyone'? Well since by the correct application of the principle, it is the government's responsibility to protect individuals from this initiation of force, it must therefore be the responsibility of the government to recognize these situations.

Does that mean that the government needs to set up a science infrastructure to decide what is harmful to 'everyone'?

If so, how is it to staff this infrastructure with scientists, and how is it to decide who is qualified to do the work? Perhaps it needs to establish an education system for this purpose. Given that working as a government scientist by necessity means giving up a lot of time that could otherwise be spent securing shelter and provision for the future, perhaps the government should set up a way to house and provide for its employees in their old age... and so it goes on.

I'm all for the principle, seriously. I just don't see how it helps to offer unrealistically simplified interpretations of how to apply it to people who are interested enough to engage.

Unless you really do think that Ayn Rand had a perfect and complete prescription for the best of all possible societies...

I can't see what they have to do with this argument though. The first one is basically a speculative essay with little to support its ideas, interesting though they are.

The second one is more rigorous, but it seems to me that it works against your argument.

It contends that Law and Order is provided by Xeer, Somali customary law, which is a tribal artifact that has developed over centuries, and depends on people being recognized as having loyalty to a tribe because it makes the tribe responsible for harms done its by members to other tribes. Thew piece also states that although private courts exist (funded by successful businessmen), Shari'a courts perform an instrumental function in creating legal order.

Both pieces also state that the Somali central state, when it existed, was weak, rampantly corrupt and never successfully displaced these tribal and religious institutions.

All this really seems to be saying is that, just like everywhere else before the emergence of the nation state, Somalia was governed by tribal law and religion. In the case of Somalia, a functioning nation state never really emerged, and so it fell back to tribal law and religion.

This turns out not to be as bad as the failing central state, or the horror stories portrayed by the mainstream media, but although falling back to tribalism and religion might not be as bad as the media portrays, it hardly seems like a model for how to improve on what we have.

Google may not have hand curation, but they do use manual raters as one of their signals.

It's also true that new content doesn't have a click history, but the click history as well as topological history of the internet can tell Google a lot more than just the history of individual items.

In any case, my main point here is that the position of competitors like yourselves would be strengthened if more people realized that Google wasn't somehow based on 'objective' algorithms.

You guys claim subjectivity and editorial quality as a strength and I agree that it is, but I think there's an argument that Google has been falsely advertising itself as objective and free of bias and could be forced to rectify that through advertising.

Indeed the reportage around this FTC settlement implies that Google has been 'cleared of allegations of bias', which is essentially the opposite of the truth.

However, as you have done, I often see this idea coupled with a quip like "If you don't like it, go find a new one."

Why do people keep saying this? It's clearly not a valid option. Doing fast, high quality search has gigantic barriers to entry. Some of these may literally be insurmountable because the data Google has archived from the past of the web will never be available to new entrants.

We simply don't have a range of search 'voices' to choose from. Telling people to choose from a range of options that doesn't exist solves nothing.

Personally, I think there's an argument for forcing Google to at least publicize that their search actually has an editorial voice to counteract the misleading idea that it was somehow algorithmically objective and free of bias, which was their position for many years.

At least that way consumers might question what they are seeing and recognize that it's not 'the web' but Google's opinion of what you should see.

1. The object model is similar in complexity to Java (i.e. no multiple inheritance, templates, etc. that fill C++ with corner cases).

2. It is C but with an object oriented message passing layer on-top. You can think of an Objective-C program as a bunch of C programs that have a more loose coupled way of talking to each other. This gives it a balance between the abstraction of a high-level language and the performance and control of C that is different from Java and most scripting languages where you need to use a native-API to talk to C. Whether this is objectively good or not is debatable but it certainly supports Apple's strategy. Personally I find it liberating.

3. The dynamism and looseness of the language make code transformation tools much harder to write - which is why XCode is only now starting to approach Eclipse on refactorings and completion. The upside is the dynamism enables a bunch of things whose equivalents require bytecode manipulation in java - e.g. property observers, Core Data synthesized accessors, Undo proxies etc.

Java is evolving slowly to make these kinds of thing easier, and Objective-C is evolving slowly to a tighter language that's more amenable to automated transformation.

These are just a few reasons. I think it's also fair to say that Objective-C was pretty crude and was 'behind' even as recently as 2007, but the rate of improvement since then has been high and has brought it up to date. (Declared properties, blocks, ARC, GCD, are pretty major steps into the modern era)

There are definitely a lot of rough edges that still remain and there's a lot more to learn than say a scripting language, plus a very different philosophy to get to grips with by comparison with the java family but once you do know it, it's a powerful language with some great strengths.

I'm very interested to see what happens to it over the next few years.

Maybe, but I'm not arguing about the 'strength' of the language. I'm arguing about the accuracy of it.

The messages are accurate, Twitpic was unfortunately a distributor of malware. Here's a copy and paste of the current detailed report.

Actually, this report proves my point. Twitpic is implicated because ad networks they embed have distributed malware.

This is a perfectly good reason for warning people, but it is not justification for calling Twitpic "A known distributor of malware" - a statement which portrays Twitpic as an intentional agent in this.

If I called you "A known distributor of falsehoods", and my evidence was that you made a few mistakes on a math test, and mistyped the a URL in one of your postings, I imagine most people would consider that a misrepresentation, because the phrase "A known distributor" implies agency and intent.

Another analogy would be if a grocery store carried a batch of improperly pasteurized milk from that people got food poisoning from.

Calling the grocery store "A known poisoner" would be an obvious misrepresentation.

In just the same way, Twitpic is not "a known distributor" of malware.

I'm not sure why you're placing the business interests of Twitpic over the safety of users, but I disagree with your attitude.

You are simply misrepresenting my position. You keep making a false dichotomy, as though the users safety and accurate messaging are in conflict with one another. This is not true.

It is perfectly possible for Google to strongly state their opinion about the dangers of clicking through without misrepresenting twitpic.

I think that the communications of those in a position of power should be critiqued, and I think that misleading people 'for their own protection' is almost never justified and certainly shouldn't be casually accepted as a necessary tradeoff.

I disagree with your attitude too, but I guess at least we know where we stand.

So even by your judgement of what is 'mealy mouthed', an effective and accurate warning is clearly possible. You might not have liked the wording of my first suggestion but that doesn't change the argument.

There is no valid trade-off that requires Google to use accusatory wording in order to protect people from malware. It would clearly be an improvement if their messages were more accurate.

An accurate and informative statement like:

"Google's Scans detected malware <X>, which is known to do harm <Y> within the past <N> hours at <Z> percent of the pages operated by <COMPANY>. Google recommends that you do not click on this link until this warning is lifted. [Site owners click here for detailed information]"

...would be just as effective.

Scare tactics, especially those that might be laying blame incorrectly, simply breed ignorance, and ignorance is the enemy of security.

There doesn't seem to be any argument for making the site work 'properly' in 'every' browser and discontinuing the iOS version other than a dislike for iOS or iOS users.

Why should they discontinue a successful product?

iOS users are not price sensitive and Apple doesn't make any pretense that content is free. People who buy into the Apple world are choosing to buy into an ecosystem where they are going to have to buy content from a collection of proprietary 'Stores'. Apple is well known for the iTunes store and the App store so it's a conscious choice for their users.

Most Android devices (obviously not the highest end ones) are sold on price, and Google as a brand is known for providing free, advertising supported content. It's no great surprise that people who choose that ecosystem expect to get free stuff and don't want to be buying a lot of digital content.

If they'd wanted that they'd have bought an iOS device.

See Zaheer's comment on this thread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4991585

I imagine they get a lot more support that way than they would if they put it on the web with a 'donate' button, so basically they are putting their effort into the audience who is willing to pay them.

Why would they just give it away rather than going to the market that values their product?

Security is sometimes a trade-off but in this case there is no trade-off involved. Google can just as easily block the malware without the potentially defamatory language.

The accuracy of the algorithm is utterly irrelevant.

Twitpic is part of the Twitter ecosystem and is such is certainly competitive with Google's social and photo sharing efforts (i.e. Google+ and Picasa)

Being a known distributor of malware (described by Google as: software which causes things like identity theft, financial loss, and permanent file deletion) is a crime.

So yes, they are a competitor, and yes they are being accused of a crime.

Google can perfectly well block the malware without making such an accusatory statement. It's not a tradeoff, so I don't really know why you are defending them.

Rather than accusing Twitpic of being "a known distributor of malware", it might be better if the message said something like "The site appears to be infected with malware. This warning will be remain in place until the malware has been removed."

If it turns out to be true, that's fine. If it's not true, don't you think Google should be held responsible for the damage to their competitor's reputation?

"Danger: Malware Ahead! Content from twitpic.com, a known malware distributor has been inserted into this page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware.

Malware is malicious software that causes things like identity theft, financial loss, and permanent file deletion."

If this turns out to be a false positive, it certainly looks as though Google has committed a serious act of libel against a competitor by claiming that they are known to be malicious and involved in crime. Furthermore they prevented millions of customers from reaching another competitor (and partner of the first competitor) in order to deliver this message.

There's no mention of the possibility of there being a false positive, or how the conclusion was reached, or the general rate of false positives, or the fact that it's Google's opinion.

The fact that we assume it's an automated detection system doesn't absolve Google of responsibility for what they are communicating and the damage it can do to their competitors reputations.

If it does turn out to be a false positive, will Google contact all the people who saw that message to inform them that they were wrong?

I hope it's not a false positive.

This is the first time I've heard anyone make this claim.

As I said, they don't have the power to close the internet that you attribute to them. This has nothing to do with their culture, however great you might think it is.

I agree that culture is not irrelevant. I don't even dispute that Google attracts people who have a certain ideology. I just don't think that Google's ideology is all that clear or meaningful.

When they use words like "openness" or "freedom" these become a rorschach onto which people project their own hopes.

I would like to see Google succeed by proving the competitive advantage of openness, not by moralizing about others who are choosing to test another theory of how to provide value.

The commenter I was replying to claimed that Google chose not to build a walled garden around the internet because of their good character.

If they were able to do this, they'd be able to limit the threat of Facebook and other advertising based competitors.

They haven't done it simply because they can't. Not because it wouldn't be to their advantage.

The reason Google hasn't built a walled garden around the internet because they simply don't yet have the power to do that.

You talk as if it was something they could easily have done but have chosen not to. I disagree. They just aren't in a position to do it.

It makes no sense at all to say that innovation on the web has vanished because of the Appstore. We are in in a boom time for internet startups, and we have healthy browser competition leading to web standards advancing much faster than at any time in the past.

There is room for both the open web, and for more controlled environments like the app store or Facebook to coexist and compete with one another. Each offers different tradeoffs.

The existence of different kinds of environment is a good thing. It provides a variety of different economic opportunities, and choices for consumers.

Google would naturally like to have more influence and control, but the reality is that they exist in a competitive environment.

The more they consolidate their power, the less they seem constrained by this. I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.