skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Amusingly i think that Kurzweil demonstrates his ignorance all the more clearly in this post.

The brain is a product of not just the genome but the environment in which it develops. You are not just the product of your genome. You are the product of your genome and the womb in which you were incubated, and the environmental stressors on your mother.

You can't go from genome => organism without a WHOOOOOLE lot of Ceteris Paribus to fill in the gaps. Information theory is really pretty irrelevant to the subject of developing a biological model of the brain.

To clarify (having read Kurzweil's post more carefully), a lot of the interesting features of the brain are specified in the configuration and connections of the brain. The base building blocks and types of neurons might be specified in the genome (i'm not positive about that, i'm not a geneticist), but even if that were to be the case, Kurzwiel would have to demonstrate that environmental factors were not critical in the development of the structures of the brain that make us thinking beings.

I don't think he can do that. Biologists and computer scientists have spent a long time doing research on the building blocks of neural networks, and not only do the fields still face some difficult and fundamental challenges, but for the time being, it's very clear that we do not have the tools necessary to interrogate the brain in the manner we would need in order to be able to map interesting things out.

Perhaps things have changed in the 5 years since i graduated university, but... i haven't heard anything earth shattering that would indicate we do have the level of sophistication to computationally model the brain in an accurate manner, or even promising starts to such an endeavor.

Additional Edit:

Kurzweils assertion that we can't predict how technology will change is correct. Neither can he. Progress is a discontinuous non-linear process. It may be that we'll be able to track all the particles in the brain and watch them as the develop over time, but... then again it very well be that we won't be able to. Tinkering with brains in invasive ways is difficult, let alone non-invasive ways.
Fake AV, Fake Support
Harsh.

I wonder if having a catastrophic start-up experience is practically a rite of passage for the serious entrepreneur.

Obviously some people hit it big first time, but your very first business is obviously the one that's most likely to fail catastrophically, and if you can take that kind of blow (and it is a very big blow) and keep going, it's probably a predictor of success. Thoughts?
I've been partial to our jobs page art since it went up a few years ago http://www.telltalegames.com/company/jobs/
Is the bloggers location in any way relevant to the article?
It sounds like it's time once again to link to Bruce Sterling's entertaining, comprehensive review of the Singularity movement:

http://foratv.vo.llnwd.net/o33/rss/Long_Now_Podcasts/podcast...
Apple pruning Quattro Wireless in favor of iAd Network
I'm 28, married with 3 kids, house, full-time job, etc., and doing a startup on the side. In my experience, having a supportive wife, not just someone who will "let" me work 2-3 hours a night, but someone who believes in what I'm trying to do, makes all the difference. There are enough stresses in family life as it is. Add to that the stress of a startup, and without someone who is on board and has bought into it, and willingly bears all the crazy stuff that goes along, I promise it will be a disaster.

Also, the sooner you make money off the start-up, the better. Having something tangible to show for the hours you're away from your S.O. helps the situation tremendously.

For me, I try to stay balanced as much as possible. If I need to take a night or two off of hacking a week to watch a movie with my wife, or take my kids out and stay up past their bedtime, or just grab some beers and do nothing, I do it. You're only hurting yourself (and, by extension, your startup) by burning the candle at both ends, so don't feel bad about taking a night off. I also play it by ear on Saturdays and don't do any work on Sundays.

The toughest thing, I have found, is to be mentally and emotionally "present" with my family when I am not working. Doing a startup is all-consuming. If you give 100% of yourself during your family time, it will make it easier for them to deal with you not being around.
Iron Man gives $15K to MIT grad student for projector lamp
I've made an "all in" bet that AGI is going to be attained by the "human memome project" long before Kurzweil's biomimetic boondoggle achieves anything -- the biomimetic boondoggle is appealing to many, however, because the whole society is accustomed to flushing hundreds of billions a year down the drain on biomedical technology without any accountability.
Don't two out of three of the devices he pictures as "high-end smartphones look like this" have slide out hardware keyboards? Which when extended look exactly like his "high-end smartphones used to look like this" images.

http://images.smh.com.au/ftsmh/ffximage/2009/06/04/palmpre4_...

http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/550-...

And he could have used the popular Droid or Droid 2 instead of the Evo, which has the keyboard sliding horizontally:

http://i.afterdawn.com/storage/pictures/verizon-droid-4.jpg

A similar take is Nokia's high-end phone that looks more like a MacBook Pro than an iPhone.

http://www.cultofmac.com/nokias-n9-smartphone-wants-to-be-a-...

He's also scaled the phone images to hide their size differences (between each other, and compared with the iPhone) for some reason.
I believe that when it comes to things in nature that look impossibly complex, that they are really constructed using a series of simple patterns. Understanding the strategies nature employs to create a thinking human brain will yield much more usable results than understanding the bio-mechanical processes which transform genes into a fully functioning brain.
Thanks for the blog, will add it to my list of morning reading. I do read a lot, I love it! Apart from web reading I also read books, non fiction mainly - I recently read hackers&paints, 4 steps to epiphany, presentation zen, back of a napkin...I love reading stuff that makes me better at work. What I do not like is the lack of flexibility to try new stuff at work.

The interested part is what bothers me. I cannot seem to find an answer to that even though I spent countless nights trying to figure it out. I like reading, watching movies, going to the gym, dancing, skydiving....heck, I have loads of interests! But hey, can you make a living out of reading books that you like and dancing?

I moved away from my country of origin at 17, lived in 4 different countries and I fluently speak 4 languages. Relocating is not a problem at all.
Oh man, I wish the developers of the API I'm working with right now read this (or just had any common sense at all). XML feed is a load of tab seperated data held in one tag. Two, three or four API calls are needed to get all the data I require (using unique codes from previous calls so there's no other way) and when it sees something unexpected, as it wont to do since I'm passing a tab-seperated mass of meaningless codes, it just dumps back the XML you sent it. No error message, no stack trace - just exactly what you sent over before. Kind of like a teacher handing you back some work with the "want to try again?" speech.
Old joke in my office:

Q. What is the object oriented way of getting rich?

A. Inheritance

(its a Friday :))
It's not a screenshot or a mockup. It's your browser rendering a scrollbar. The "mockup" is actually usable. If you actually see how it works, you'll see you can use the actual "mockup" to see how it would work.

It's better then a mere screenshot or mockup.
Actually Dave buys about every new gadget. So I wouldn't be surprised if he has a joojoo as well.
You're mis-characterizing his post:

"It is true that the brain gains a great deal of information by interacting with its environment – it is an adaptive learning system."

Where does he say that the brain is only the product of its genome?
I wish bloggers could have these kinds of debates without all of the butthurt jabs like "... which so-and-so clearly does not understand..." or "I'm surprised anyone actually pays attention to that kook."

If we are so very intelligent, then shouldn't we be smart enough to see that ad hominem attacks result in emotional responses overriding the rational desire to open our minds and learn, instead replacing those instincts with the knee-jerk defensive reaction of tightening our hold on our existing beliefs, right or wrong?

I understand that we're all passionately devoted to truth and understanding, and we take umbrage when we perceive that someone is damaging those virtues. But the kind of thinly-veiled high school drama aired in these two posts is what disappoints me more than anything.
Apple may be looking to lock out unauthorized iOS users
What types of projects have you used node.js with?
The forgotten story of Chile's "socialist internet" 40 years ago
Here's something to think about. What does the bitwise encoding of the "brain related" part of the genome actually mean then? Say it's 50 megabytes. Does this mean nothing? Why is it 50 and not 500 nor 5? Surely there's meaning in the amount of bits necessary to encode the genomic information to create a brain. Kurzweil is simply throwing this figure out as food for thought, that from an information perspective this is the kernel of knowledge necessary (with sufficient simulation of the environment) to "grow" a brain.
Some people enjoy working like that, and enjoy their jobs enough that they don't care that they're actually working.

The extreme example is John Carmack, who according to the book "The Masters of Doom", would crank music all night, and drink diet pepsi (early days of id, grant you, I don't know how he works now) while programming. He rolled in the office at 4pm and stayed until early morning.

There's nothing wrong with working crazy late hours if you enjoy it.
HTTP APIs typically use slightly different parameters, so there is no existing support, as opposed to an established protocol, such as email.
SiagaNews.com - Sedih Tak Sekolah, Remaja 14 Tahun Gantung Diri, Mati
"human memome project" - do you mean top down symbolic AI projects like CYC?
I think it's very easy to forget exactly how active, and imaginative, a child's mind is.
Think of it as the input to a fractal generator that will expand that input seed in to a physical structure many orders of magnitudes larger than the seed.
BlueGlass Interactive Launches SecondStep Enterprise SEO Platform
You sidestep the whole embryology problem like that. The 50 megs of data we're talking about encodes the basic building blocks, the scaffolding, and some of the process, but not the end result. DNA encodes proteins, not brains.
Or one 8 megabit HD video stream running 24x7.
It's not necessarily a binary thing, which I think is one of the problems people have when discussing this. We'll never actually run out of IPv4 addresses. There's 4 billion-ish of them and they aren't disappearing into the ether or anything. It's just another limited resource the market can deal with, and for the right price you'll always be able to buy a block of IPv4 addresses.

Mind you, that "right price" will start going up pretty quickly. Supply is fixed, but demand is growing pretty quickly. To some extent you can't see how fast the demand is actually rising because it's already hidden behind large NAT installations and such. The usual microeconomic equations for computing this sort of thing usually have a built-in assumption that for the right price production can be increased; when production absolutely can't be increased the price tends to rise faster than you'd expect. I don't know that there are very many blocks that are allocated but not actually used anymore, you'll be paying people to drop their block and pay the price of transitioning to a NAT setup or something, which can be quite painful.

So people watching the free-IP-block count aren't really watching the right number. The number to watch is the price of an IP block. Since I think the price of an IP block right has discounted into it the fact that we're moving to IPv6 and the crisis will be averted, it probably isn't as high as it would be if we weren't expecting to move to IPv6.

And so the real problem isn't really the "running out". The real problem is that IPv4 address as a limited, and therefore expensive, resource is just stupid. Yes, the market could allocate it efficiently, but it's better for everybody if it simply isn't effectively limited in the first place.

And then the consequence of that is that you end up with a lot of people talking past each other; "well, if it isn't running out what's the problem then?" The problem is that in 2016 a startup's largest expense shouldn't be their public IP block.
Agreed. Fortunately, CouchDB is great on its own merit. Also, CouchDB was using Erlang, JSON, and Javascript in 2005, before they were trendy.
Regarding the diamond problem, I think he means that in the event of multiple inheritance, your class heirarchy would look like this:

Object
/ \
A B
\ /
C

Where A and B are parents of the class C. In most OO languages there will be an implied parent of A and B, like Object.
I'm in Montreal, definitely not nearby. I'm not looking for a job either I'm just a nosy person. =)

I'll take a rain-check though in case I do someday end up in Newton.
Shuffler, pandora for music blogs.
Wow, this Fred fellow admitted to you that he committed arson? Is he identifiable from your story?
That should be "to sum up".
I know, but does the difference really justify the news?
2 TB isn't that much.
UK TV newsreader on being targeted by the ruthless Twittermob
Except mobile ones.
People "delight" in not seeing videos/pictures etc?

Granted the iPad has a nice experience. But as with the iPhone, the release of Android tables will crack open the market.

I held on the iPad for just these reasons. I don't want "massa Steve" http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/07/18/Mobile-Net... telling me what I can and cant' do on my $900 device.

My personal opinion is that Steve is keeping flash off the phone to control add revenue and media buys. Since most players are flash based, denying flash keeps you away from slacker, pandora etc (iTunes revenue). Steve has a way in with ads now. He can say, hey content producers (news sites, etc) check your stats, you flash ads aren't showing up, come talk to me about what will work on those nice juicy devices that rich people buy (targeted ads).

Btw, flash works on my HTC Incredible on adroid 2.1. It's not a great experience but it is a phone. (I personally don't like flash, but so many sites use it, it's a necessity to be a first class citizen on the net).
> Wow, this Fred fellow admitted to you that he committed arson?

Yep. He even said that he'd gone back while the fire was still being fought to look.

> Is he identifiable from your story?

Not by you. I figure four or five people could put 2 and 2 together, none of them read this blog and they're already in the know.

It was reported to me after the statue of limitations had expired (nobody got hurt, even though that was pure chance) so as far as I know I'm in the clear.
The illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
Ask HN: What business competitions are out there?
There's a lot of talk about getting funding from angel investors.
But I seldom hear about business competitions being entered to raise
some money without giving away equity. Why is this?

One possible problem is that many of these competitions are geared towards minorities
or are actually urban development programs. And the businesses (or business plans or pitches) are judged by suits
generally, who often prefer more traditional businesses.
I've entered Jellly, my web app, into two such competitions with no success.

Are there any competitions of this kind that are more web or tech-focused?
I'm also interested in hearing about competitions that aren't focused in this way.
Yeah, apologies, i've edited my post to clarify
I don't think we need another bug tracker - bugzilla and trac do a great job already.

What I'd love to have is a command line interface to existing bug trackers.
To me, attitude/personality is a huge factor when start ups are hiring. I've been on both sides. When I was first hired, I had about 2 years part time work experience. When I was hiring, we often looked for recent graduates that would be our next rock stars.

If you can show that you learn fast and have the right attitude that should be enough. You mention you have worked on several personal projects. This is a huge plus to me, as it shows that you like to learn, that you like to code and that you have initiative. I'd make sure to point this out and allow them to see/review your projects.

All that said, it sounds like you are in the process of creating your own startup right now. If you left your current 8-5 job for a start up, you most likely would have to put your own project on hold. The description of your market is the exact type of market to go after. Perhaps you should give yourself a bit more time on your own project before looking for a job at a start up.
The problem is not Unix as much as it is the work habits that Unix users have developed. The rm command is hard core, and yet everyone (including me) uses it regularly. It would be much smarter to create a command named "trash" or "del" or whatever to instead move files to a trash folder. Then "empty-trash" could actually use rm.

Alternatively, just slow down a little bit before using rm, especially when operating as root. Understand that it's (intended to be) permanent. Use echo first when using rm with a splat in order to ensure you're actually deleting what you expect to delete.

The question, "Shouldn't this be made safer?" is irrelevant. At some level, you have to have an rm command. If users decide to use it regularly, then it's up to them to "Just be more careful!" The smarter thing would be to create a workflow that doesn't rely on using rm at all. Why whine and complain (not you, I mean users in general) about an operation that can be easily changed?
If we are so very intelligent, then shouldn't we be smart enough to see that ad hominem attacks result in emotional responses overriding the rational desire to open our minds and learn, instead replacing those instincts with the knee-jerk defensive reaction of tightening our hold on our existing beliefs, right or wrong?

Human rationality and human intelligence does not alway meet each other. Human that are selected by evolution tend to use cognitive shortcuts as a matter of survival. It is not so useful for finding the truth, however.

So we're going to trip and make mistake. That's OK. As long as somebody point it out.
I'm currently on my second startup-- I cashed out of my first a couple years ago.

At the time I was starting my first, my eldest daughter, then 2 years old, was diagnosed with leukemia, and between that time and cashing out, my wife and I had three more children, and she lost her father to cancer.

My point is: life happens, often while you're busy making other plans.

Other people here have brought up the "late hours" issue. Obviously, you and your spouse ought to both be comfortable about the kind of hours you keep.

But another issue-- more important, in my book-- is how you and your spouse relate to risk. Startups are, by their nature, perceived as being riskier than a stable, nine-to-five job. (Whether they actually are or not is immaterial-- it's the perception that's relevant here.)

When I got started, it became clear to me that I had a much higher tolerance for financial risk than my wife. This was not a problem, as I was able to make it clear to her that if there was ever a problem providing security for the family, I'd give up the startup and get a "real job".

By the way: based on your "possibly one with kids, ugh" comment, I'd suggest you make sure that you and your spouse are on the same page as more fundamental things as well. If you view the possibility of children as warranting an "ugh", you should be working to remove that possibility, for the sake of the eventual kids, if nothing else.
As others have pointed out this is more about the person you marry than the act of marriage. But realistically if they like to cuddle on the sofa and watch 10 episodes of Ugly Betty with you and you want to code, you'll probably work that out a long time before you go as far getting married.

What does make a massive difference is kids. And more precisely sleep deprivation, especially in the early stages. Coding until 2am, going to bed and 5 minutes later a little person is crying and you are up again etc is hard. Also when you are just a couple your SO might not mind you rolling out of bed at 10am, but most aren't going to be too happy about having to get up at 7am 7 mornings a week to look after the kids whilst you are snoring quietly. And even if you do get away with that, don't discount the amount of noise etc that at least stops you from getting a great sleep. Some people get lucky, some people think they "trained" their kids, but for most people the first few years are tired years.

And as they get older your unsociable hours don't really work either. Most kids operate from around 7 to 7/8. They wake up in the morning they want to jump on your bed. They want you to tuck them in. You'll love it too - but family life is hard to balance with the typical lifestyle the average hacker on here probably lives.

Please note it is not all bad, I work from home in an office in my garden and see my kids for hours every day - something most people don't get. You probably also have more flexibility to go to sports days, plays etc. But never underestimate the tiredness in those first few years!
I'm noticing that these fonts aren't working on the iPad. Very disappointing. Typekit has iPhone/iPad support, though it's still an experimental, opt-in feature.
And the Motorola RAZR sold 50 million devices in the first 18 months and over 110 million units within 4 years.
I thought that comment was still a little inaccurate — "the environment" in biology is not only what the brain actually processes and learns, it includes the chemical environment as well. The genome does not explicitly describe how the cells should develop, and this is different from how the brain changes in response to neural input.
Bootstrapping "How To" with Hampus Jakobsson - Experts Corner by Grow VC
Flippa hits new sales record: a million-dollar week
I mean, Kurzweil is making the same sort of statement that Stephen Wolfram made, claiming that the entire universe is probably one or two lines in mathematica.

Is that a meaningful statement? What does that actually imply?

If you look at the sort of neurological problems that humans exhibit, particularly due to developmental defects, the genome actually encodes a wide variety of possible brains. It may very well be that the human genome encodes for all sorts of general neurological matter. I think that we really are giving short shrift to the importance of brian development.
Decider: Behaviours and abilities of feral children.
Winner: Myers.

Next? ;)
That exact line illustrates that he does not understand Meyers' objections. He thinks Meyers meant that we need to also model all of the information that the brain gains as it interacts with its environment. That is not what Meyers meant.

What he meant is that we need to model everything that happens to the brain before it becomes a brain. That is, how the proteins interact with each other in the physical world to form the brain. Meyers' analogy was that the genome is the data, and the physical laws of the universe are the program. People are modeling how proteins fold and interact in the physical world, but it's a hard problem, and we're far from being able to do it for an entire organ.
Toyotism? Do you mean kaizen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

Also, did you mean Kanban?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
Yeah, I thought mentioning that he was from the UK is a bit strange too.