most electric bikes I see are ridden dangerously to pedestrians; by NYC deliverymen (doubt I've ever seen a woman on one), swiftly and silently sneaking up to run you down on sidewalks or the wrong way on one way streets.
I would vote hard in favor of limiting speed and or requiring them to make artificial noise, unless we could get some other type of pervasive and privacy intrusive monitoring of riders' behavior.
I sometimes ride my pedal bike the wrong way, and sometimes on sidewalks (two avenue blocks out of your way in NYC to get around the block is quite a long distance) but I always do it "respectfully": slowly and yielding the right of way. Till there is a system in place to effectively educate the constant churn of the class of people who deliver goods, I am soooo anti.
electic bikes are technically illegal in NYC; it's a law that is never enforced.
edit, addition: the mix of cars vs pedestrians works as well as it traditionally has worked and I and many other people don't have a problem with it; due to various types of complexity theory, adding bikes to the mix does not work as well, it particularly degrades the pedestrian experience, and is quite dangerous for bikers.
I find electric bikes even more destabilizing and most objectionable, because they are faster and quieter, and I think because they are favored by a statistical sample that skews toward more selfish/self-interested.
Why is it so hard for discussion groups to accept that somebody has an opinion with muddying it up? What I said originally should not require so much refinement for people to grasp that it's my one little opinion and it doesn't threaten your worldview more than your worldview needs to be shaken up.
> most electric bikes I see are ridden dangerously to pedestrians; by NYC deliverymen (doubt I've ever seen a woman on one), swiftly and silently sneaking up to run you down on sidewalks or the wrong way on one way streets.
Both of those uses of a bicycle - operation on a sidewalk and riding against traffic on a one-way street - are a violation of NYC traffic law [1]. The operator is the one causing danger, not the bicycle.
what you say is true, but what I said is also truly what I wanted to say, so to clarify:
NYC has widespread ignoring of many traffic laws, and that does not bother me. I am talking about, in the context of widespread violations, what does bother me: the electric bikes. You could accept that there is some validity in what I say without agreeing with me.
Given the choice, I would not be in favor of pedestrians and bikers being forced to follow all traffic laws. However, I would be in favor of electric bikes being forced to follow all traffic laws, especially the one that bans them! :)
I see, and I agree that the accountability of cyclists (and slightly less so for motorists) in NYC is almost zero. I also agree that electric powered bicycles should be held to a higher standard than normal bikes, particularly in that their use is entirely illegal so it should be much easier to spot and ticket them. I mostly posted these facts because most non-NYCers don't even realize that these uses of a bike are actually against the law.
EDIT: I just read your edit,
> I find electric bikes even more destabilizing and most objectionable, because they are faster and quieter, and I think because they are favored by a statistical sample that skews toward more selfish/self-interested.
This is a good summary of my thoughts about electrical bicycles as well.
Cars are by far the most dangerous things to pedestrians. If electric bikes get people out of their cars, pedestrians will be better off on balance. Rather than banning electric bikes, NYC could to better to build separate infrastructure for bikes.
That has almost nothing to do with the post you responded to. Electric bikes are faster than normal bikes, and people treat them as mini mopeds rather than normal bikes (and there's already a problem with bicycle/pedestrian collisions).
I'm not being a smartaleck, but "you shouldn't be writing code" with your attitude/approach. "NEVER trust user input" is an important security mantra to learn all on its own, like "wipe your butt/wash your hands" is in another context.
The guy is writing a valid point on Hacker(!) News. People writing comments on HN (especially to summarize a takeaway from a longer form article) are not required to accurately recapitulate entire dossiers of how to process input. It is completely valid to say "you should never trust user input". Somebody who is looking to make that "actionable" or "clear and pretty useful" can very very easily google the phrase and will turn up a lot of useful answers and information.
This is what is meant by the idea that the simplicity of the iPhone UI and/or automated IDEs has created a generation of helplessness and entitlement.
The good advice remains good advice: you should never trust user input. If you can't turn that into sound advice from Hacker News, your options become limited to, nobody should trust the code you write, you shouldn't write code, or you shouldn't read hacker news for advice.
But the idea that people need to write what you personally need to hear or they shouldn't write comments? that's nuts. Could I have written a more useful comment to you and to the community? I'll tell you this, I did think about it, and this my best shot at what I thought you and the community could benefit from!
There used to be a guy on usenet news who posted all sorts of stuff, and had the name of his company in his .sig line, and he included the phrase "these ARE the opinions of my company" instead of that boring old boilerplate "none of the opinions I express are..."
NEVER trust user input" is an important security
mantra to learn all on its own, like "wipe your
butt/wash your hands" is in another context.
Even the contexts are not so different. DNA is an information carrier, life is an information system, hygine and the immune system are information security mechanisms.
Though I am not sure who the user is in this analogy.
Finance Theory, the study of stock markets and related matters and which is recognized as an academically rigorous subfield of economics, does not offer the conclusion that being smarter is enough to win in the stock market.
I suppose you could say you could subscribe to and read all the news tickers more quickly? but you'd still have the problem of knowing what to do with the info, like you'd still have to realize how a 1 degree warmer temperature someplace would affect the banana crop, along with you'd have to know everything single thing everybody else in the world knows about their local industry, which the description didn't really say you could do.
To put it another way, IBM didn't conclude that they should plug their Jeopardy winning supercomputer into the market and let it trade stocks. To put it another nother way, the "perfect market hypothesis" says the best you are going to do is what the market is already doing, which is a good thing, it stops you from falling behind, but it doesn't put you ahead.
Now, you might say "what about Warren Buffett", but that's probably more along the lines of the robot's buy and sell people skills, like maybe go into real estate and be a super good salesman coaxing people to buy where there is a lot of sloppy money on the table. There is not a lot of money lying around the stockmarket; while we hear of winners, they are always balanced by losers, and nobody yet knows if the two can be separated in advance.
>Finance Theory, the study of stock markets and related matters and which is recognized as an academically rigorous subfield of economics, does not offer the conclusion that being smarter is enough to win in the stock market.
I understand what you are saying, but to inform other people it would be better if you indicated that you know what I'm saying. Refute the point? I disagree.
if this robot could do approximately what Renaissance has been already doing, that would not create wealth, that would take Renaissance's milkshake and share it for two, or worse, by creating competition, dry up Renaissance's milkshake for both. i.e. the money that Renaissance is making is not "lying around to be taken", it's already being wrung out of the market, and is being picked up and put in somebody's pocket, Renaissance's.
And for perspective, what Renaissance has been doing for all the time it has existed (65 billion in 25 years is your unicorn) is less than what Apple did, less than what Microsoft did before that, less than Berkshire Hathaway, etc. Facebook... Google... Uber is already closing in on Renaissance's value in a fraction of the time and in terms of trendline will blow past it. "Money lying on the floor of the stock exchange" is nothing compared to actual value creation.
Still, Renaissance is a pretty good gig for some uber mathnerds who realize they don't actually have other ways to create value (as our robot does) so I'd give it a bump for low opportunity cost.
Perhaps, it could just become very good at manipulating the perceptions of the reactive humans who are participating in the market? Create false crisis... Or real ones.
I agree the manipulation of, or it's hyper perception, is a good direction to take; the point I'm making here is that, that doesn't mean "in the stock market"; the stock market is a faceless buy/sell with a lot of savvy players. I think a more direct facing manipulable buy/sell is a better choice, like used cars, insurance, real estate, gold, etc.
the stock market is one of our most efficient markets, that's why it attracts big money, the money is safe; if you are manipulating the stock market to make it unsafe, you're going to attract attention. Better to manipulate as a rug merchant in a bazaar.
I felt like a lot of the answers people suggested were assuming it was actually more superhuman than we know it to be from the description.
The intriguing part for me was simply the question "assuming you could win/succeed at any endeavor, what endeavors deliver how much reward how quickly?" i.e. not about the robot at all, but what will our economy quickly discover and reward, because "building a better Amazon than Amazon" or a better Microsoft or IKEA would still take decades to pay off.
can you control getting onto Jeopardy quickly? And then there is no evidence that by being smart and informed that you can be smarter and better informed than the crowd-sourced stock market.
why isn't the answer "hang around outside Yankee Stadium hitting balls, running, and catching them, till you get discovered and signed"? or something athletic like that. Seems a lot better than the "super productive web designer" answer that was getting love over on stackexchange.
I considered boxing, but you probably have to pay too many dues (timewise) first. But you can be signed and stuck out on a baseball field pretty quick; signing bonuses, etc. Tennis? Basketball? Soccer (in one of the places that calls it football)? Golf?
Where can you get a signing bonus and start hauling in the big money right away?
Also worth mention, I have heard recently that there is a way to break PHP, hack Pornhub and earn $20k!
edit: just out of curiosity, why was this answer disliked by somebody? cuz I said Yankees? soccer? athletics rather than nerd dreams? Cu-uz, I still think this is the best answer I have seen.
If I remember the movie Tin Cup correctly, anyone can qualify for the US Open. Win that and you'd probably be on an easy path to a professional golf career.
well, winning the world series of poker is the way to make a lot at poker, otherwise you aren't make a lot at poker. And etc. for a lot of other endeavors.
The fun of the question is to engage in the speculation. The question didn't identify how much it was necessary to earn, and all the people saying "gambling" aren't saying how much is being talked about, etc.
Even if you are a "lucky phenom kid" in baseball, you aren't all that famous till you establish a bit of a track record; plenty of journeymen players remain completely unkown, and our people-smart robot could calibrate his goodness (he's not even stronger than a human, he just has fast reaction times)
I'm not trying to weasel out of your point, it's a good point, I'm trying to weasel into this thing being an interesting question, and find some parameters that would find an interesting answer.
I'm still looking for the answer to, what does our economy recognize quickly and reward greatly, and how quick are we talking, and how greatly are we suggesting, and ok, how obscure can you remain?
I think "super smart high end real estate broker" is lucrative and not that "famousy", and perhaps within the easy win range of this robot, but it's deathly dull so what would actually be a good, robust, and fun answer?
stop and think for a minute about what you are saying. Did you go to college, and did you learn anything? High school? Those books are all written by academics; very few of the smarter better informed people you're reading could write a single textbook without spending a stupid amout of time studying the field first.
Nothing wrong with you being interested in reading what smart, well-informed people have to say on a variety of topics, and nothing wrong with being interested in everyday practical stuff over the edges of academia... but there is a little something wrong with thinking that your preferences indicate something "interesting" about academic writing; I read a lot of blogs too, but get a grip, man!
a four digit PIN is pretty secure when you have centralized authentication (the one bank) and get very very few tries before account lock-out, which is how Debit cards work.
If you had 3000 stolen debit cards, you'd have a shot at guessing a few of them while locking out 2990+ other ones, and I'm kinda thinking the bank might notice you doing that.
have you heard that thieves are guessing PINs someplace in the world? I haven't, and the world is full of dedicated thieves.
and even then, do you know how long that would take versus what you get when you guess one? $500? you might actually make more money panhandling or flipping burgers; of course you've got to trade that off against free meals and healthcare in prison :)
Sounds like organized crime, which is to say a rogue employee was forced, paid, or conspired to only generate one of three PINs knowing that they'd the theif would get three chances.
Today, pretty sure that a solicitor in the same situation would be required by law to report the information to the Serious Organized Crime Agency.
My bank sent me a new card with the same PIN as my old card. Somewhere my bank has a backup of each and every PIN.
Now, it may be encrypted (not during renewal) or hashed (10000 values, <1s verification) but neither gives any security. (It's safer however than sending a new PIN with the card or in another letter)
By storing the public key of your unique debit card and you only have the PIN inside the chip. This limits attacks to physical access and trained professionals in chip deconstruction.
This however needs a way to send your initial PIN over an insecure channel. To limit the attack surface go to the secure website to receive your PIN (no humans) (either an old card/digital state ID) or go in person and force a new PIN.
All the previous poster said was that the bank said they sent him a card with the same PIN. The bank can do this by storing PINs or hashed PINs.
As rrobukef noted, storing a PIN hashed offers little additional security as storing them unhashed because of the small number of unique PINS that are possible.
pure speculation, because i don't know the interior history of python:
1. perl has always prided itself that "there's more than one way to do it" including repeated, prominent use of an acronym for that. see timtowtdi.
2. there is a theoretical idea kicking around out there that, if a language allowed for only one way to express any idea, then that language would be a better language (all else being equal) because if you and I always write the same code for the same task, we could easily maintain each other's work. see for example "egoless programming" or the ideas that led to Simonyi's "metaprogramming" (whether or not you agree)
3. perl is a mess
therefore, it might, given the history, make sense to say that about python as a way of trying to point out a salient difference from perl
I would vote hard in favor of limiting speed and or requiring them to make artificial noise, unless we could get some other type of pervasive and privacy intrusive monitoring of riders' behavior.
I sometimes ride my pedal bike the wrong way, and sometimes on sidewalks (two avenue blocks out of your way in NYC to get around the block is quite a long distance) but I always do it "respectfully": slowly and yielding the right of way. Till there is a system in place to effectively educate the constant churn of the class of people who deliver goods, I am soooo anti.
electic bikes are technically illegal in NYC; it's a law that is never enforced.
edit, addition: the mix of cars vs pedestrians works as well as it traditionally has worked and I and many other people don't have a problem with it; due to various types of complexity theory, adding bikes to the mix does not work as well, it particularly degrades the pedestrian experience, and is quite dangerous for bikers.
I find electric bikes even more destabilizing and most objectionable, because they are faster and quieter, and I think because they are favored by a statistical sample that skews toward more selfish/self-interested.
Why is it so hard for discussion groups to accept that somebody has an opinion with muddying it up? What I said originally should not require so much refinement for people to grasp that it's my one little opinion and it doesn't threaten your worldview more than your worldview needs to be shaken up.