skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't agree we can't build a machine that out-thinks us, because the early iterations at least would be specialist self-improvement tools - NOT general intelligence. Glorified whole-program optimizers.

AI needs to be built from a theory of mind and a theory of intelligence - but there is reason for hope, as a combination of neuroscience and mathematics (cf: AIXI) is attacking this question. AI also needs to be built from a theory of "friendliness" (goals compatible with humanity) and there are people (cf: SIAI) working on this.

Your message strikes me as having the "mankind will never achieve heavier-than-air flight" quality. (As opposed to the "mankind will never exceed lightspeed" quality - there is no fundamental physics in the way.)
See 360 degree view of America
A similar story that I heard, though it didn't turn out as well:

A student was taking an exam for his class, and had finished most of the exam, minus the extra credit problem at the end. Because this student didn't know the answer to the question, he got creative. He drew a picture of a man holding a gun to someone (maybe it was a puppy or something cute, I'd have to see the exam again) with the text "Give me the credit, or the (cute animal) dies!"

When he got the paper back, he noticed the teacher's grade to the extra credit problem: 0, with the text "I don't negotiate with terrorists."

I've seen a picture of the exam before on my friends ipod, but I don't remember if he found it online or if it happened to someone he knew. Anyways, it's a funny story that this article reminded me of.
Does YC penalize startups with pre-YC funding?
Are YC applicants who have some funding prior to YC application disadvantaged?

Would you accept offers of angel fundings (about $100,000 in exchange for 10% equity) if you are applying for YC?
A Political Quandary | TechJaws
Being Socially Active Wins Friends | TechJaws
Google street view of tallest buildings in United States
The "Feedization" Of The Web
give the guy a break, nobody asked you to read or accept what he wrote
Ugh, no. You would just create a super-parasite. Evolution is parsimonious. You would need to know how to build a mind the simple way in order to direct evolution down just that one path that leads to minds - and meanwhile you'd have cruelly killed millions of by-then thinking feeling persons who didn't quite measure up. And who knows what other tendencies you'd have created aside from intelligence? The whole thing would be a nightmare.
Sims creator hopes to soar with Spore
I remember answering my chemistry exam questions in Python. If you care about your grades, don't write code to solve all your problems, some of them require sarcasm.
I liked the article (That's a first for me and TC), but one small nit: Payola is only unethical when it is not disclosed. In radio, payola was wrong becaue the radio stations claimed to be playing the most popular music as measured by sales or fan requests or whatever, when in reality they were playing what they were paid to play.

DEMO may be charging $18,500, but they disclose that up front. It may not be to their competitor's taste, but it isn't Payola.

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

"Payola, in the American music industry, is the illegal practice of payment or other inducement by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on music radio, in which the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast. Under US law, 47 U.S.C. § 317, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime, and that play of the song should not be counted as a "regular airplay." The term has come to refer to any secret payment made to cast a product in a positive light (such as obtaining positive reviews)."
zoho rocks aand so do lots of other online apps toolsets. but people just don't want to change, i don't know how else to explain it. the same idiots who were authoring in word and forwarding .doc attachments five years ago are the same ones doing it today. morons still cling to their outlook. people won't even upgrade ie6. i'd be shocked if zoho can break out of fringe status.
You nailed it with the code analogy, human knowledge is continually refactored and slowly but surely increased with each successive generation. To say we aren't getting smarter is absurd, we are getting both smarter and more knowledgeable at an ever increasing rate.
Find smaller communities, big forums are like that but if you lose the anonymity things get a lot better.
The first singularity has already happened - it happened the moment human beings started to create perpetuating social structures. A corporation, a society, a nation, a community are all instances of gestalt intelligence.
Yeah, but each one has pretty big flaws with it. None directly compare yet.
Lightweight JSON store for blog comments
Really simple way to post comments for a static page. Uses jQuery and PHP.
fuck yelp, i am ecstatic that their gig is up and their star fading.

astroturfing, rumored extorting of merchants...where does it end? yelp shot their wad whe they tried to turn it into a protection racket

nothing more obnoxious than having to suffer their two "me too cool" founders...but lovely watching the payday they thought they had in the bag fade off into the sunset

bye yelp
Thanks Daniel! Yeah, we've noticed many bloggers running contests via email/comments. Whenever one technology is shoehorned into another, there has to be a better way :).
Spore is out!?

Alright, see you guys in a week.
My family needs to eat, so I'm going to pretend that this whole thread isn't here.

There is no Spore.
The world is becoming a happier place
Europe Pulls Ahead of U.S. in Physics
Ironically the one who needs to calm down the most is Arrington himself. I was taken aback at the harshness and drama in his comments.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/07/everyone-needs-to-calm-...
I guess that's what happens when you have 25 years of development time in a product (Word was originally released in 1983 called Multi-Tool Word) vs what... 2 for the rest?
5 Great Tips On Buying A Telescope | The Astronomy Blogger
I'm a manager in an in-house corporate IT dept. Far from running scared from this kind of thing I'm constantly trying to get the rest of the business to except off the self software for all the little tools that they ask for so that we can focus on the key business differentiators.

Problem is, they're a big company and they want slick corporate branded stuff that integrates with our ActiveDirectory and where the drop downs have sucked values in from other apps so it all just works. Which is fine, only, it costs loads and its in most cases it's not worth it.

I think it'll be hard for a lot of big corporates to accept that it's better (for example) to adjust their business to Zoho CRM than to hire people to adjust SAP CRM to their business. I think a few startups will have to adopt things like Zoho and then grow big, before the incumbents change.
Nonsense. I started climbing mountains not long ago, and, having lifted weights for many years, was able to go further and faster than most experienced climbers. (Though of course in mountaineering your brain is more important than your legs.) Same with skiing, trail running, backpacking... strength helps with everything.

Your biceps and triceps must work against each other or you will have no control over what you're doing.

Sounds like you've fallen under the influence of quacks.
Do any of you use Salesforce.com regularly?
SF was created to be a less sucky version of SAP. Their motto is "The end of software."

I've been playing with it recently and I have to say, it's absolutely horrible. The most complicated and unfriendly piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of using.

Do your sales people actually like this thing?

Are you developing applications for their platform?
How Did Our Solar System Form? | The Astronomy Blogger
I rent, so it doesn't seem fair to me. I lose while foreign banks and homeowners gain.
Google Satellite Reaches Orbit
Fall Recipes - Yummy Autumn Recipes
In the case of the linux desktop, I have to say that I think it is a lot closer than 8 years ago. I have tried installing Linux at many points over the last 8 years or so. I have always abandoned it because configuring hardware took too much work. I recently installed Ubuntu 8.04 on 3 different machines, including a brand new Dell laptop, and the install worked flawlessly on each. Most importantly, every piece of hardware I've tried worked with basically no configuration - sound card, internal microphone, wireless, and graphics card. I did install a new driver for the Nvidia graphics card, but this was mostly optional. Also, when I've needed to tweak settings or install the new driver for the video card, I've done it through a GUI rather than the command line and various cryptic config files.

Installing software through Synaptic is also awesome. This is one place where Linux now actually excels over Windows. Of course, I haven't actually needed to install anything that's not in synaptic yet.
A World Without Google
I think his chief exception is the timetable laid out. He is not saying he doesn't believe in evolution. He disagress with someone's extrapolation, that is all.
...there is no fundamental physics in the way

He didn't say that:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=297576
I think what Michael & Jason are doing is great for the startups launching at TC50. They're taking all the heat for their PR ways, while the startups will reap the benefits of increased visibility.
How to Scrape Websites in Ruby on Rails using scRUBYt
He's a blogger... no scratch that, he's a lawyer turned blogger.

Bloggers by definition are highly opinionated, do you expect anything more?

Seems to me he's just doing his job.
As a startup founder, paying $18.5K to launch may not be unethical, but it really sucks. That cost just doesn't really take into account the fact that tech startups are so incredibly low cost to create now.

In YC, we created companies for < $15k, with plenty of money to spare. There is no way we would ever spend that much money on a launch.

Though I think in the long run, Arrington/TC has not a whole lot to worry about. It's a pretty obvious value prop -- the smart startups will end up going to the one that matters that is free for startups, and the ones who get rejected will end up at DEMO.

DEMO is subject to the same competitive pressures as startups. Innovate or die.
Nice work, script is a lot simpler than i thought.
Zoho CEO: native video will be nail in coffin for Flash
WRONG

I think most of this 'WebOS' bullshit was kicked off by web-dilettante Jason Kottke, and it's even more ridiculous this time around, because Chrome is the least OS-like modern web browser yet made (and Firefox would be the most OS-like by far).

Chrome is not trying to be the operating system, it's trying to get out of its way. By using a shared-nothing separate process for each tab and plugin, it's letting
the Kernel and libc do the job they were designed to do.

Most modern browsers (especially FF3) are trying to do an operating system's job — scheduling logically independent processes, micro-managing memory allocations, mapping virtual memory, providing an internal windowing system, providing an internal GUI scripting system. The whole point of an 'operating system' is to present a lot of layers.

Chrome does none of these things. It parries them off to the real operating system, where they belong — instead of adding another five nested layers on top of the pile of indirection.
U.S. Unveils Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants
a world quickly approaching its carrying capacity, exhausting its natural resources, ruining its oceans...

A great example of how a smart person, and a decent writer, can still drive an essay into inane irrelevancy when trying to wrap up with a snappy conclusion. No--the problems associated with agricultural runoff and AI tech are completely different, have completely different economic contexts, and should never be in the same article.

I'm surprised the last sentence wasn't "Vote for Obama!"
SQLalchemy, detailed tutorial
Yeah, I think there's some renaissance man posturing going on in this list.
Yes, sales people love it because they hear from other salespeople 'Oh you have to get on Salesforce dot com'.

I haven't developed anything using their API.

I have used it a bit, and it is much better than it was ~5 years ago, but still is pretty much horrible.
And no one asked him to blindly rip and shred numerous startups after looking at them for less than a minute.
"MYOB Indonesia" nyang sebener-benernya ?
When All Your Best Employees are Going Broke
I would say "Lifelike animation heralds new era for story telling". Games that involve story telling will improve (Half-life, Final Fantasy, etc).

Maybe I'm just old, but I like my games to be fun. I don't particularly care if the graphics are archaic, and I really don't like when game-makers think they can sell me on flashy/shiny graphics. Viva la Tetris!
READ: Something that everyone has seen before and provides nothing new.
i'm not excusing his lousy attitude. He should be more careful assuming he has an audience. What I understand though is that it's not his first time to demonstrate such attitude.

I don't quite understand why Hacker News is giving attention to this guy.
> Do you get the sense that everyone in the web world knows that desktop apps aren't going anywhere?

When I worked at a company doing enterprise financial software, I got the distinct impression that it was virtually impossible to sell a new desktop app. Our customers wanted everything to be web-based. I was hired as a desktop app developer and got switched over to web development after 8 months because all our new products were web-based.

I suspect that we'll see something similar to what happened with PCs and mainframes. The PC didn't kill the mainframe - all the old apps that used to run on mainframes still ran on mainframes. However, all new software, the category-killers that created new markets, were all developed on the PC. Mainframes stuck around for years before finally being killed by Y2K and web-based intranet apps, and some are still working.

Similarly, I think any attempt to displace office suites and such on the web is a losing battle. PC-based apps are "good enough" for what they're used for. But virtually all new killer apps, the ones with exciting market opportunities, will be on the web. Or they'll be web/desktop hybrids like DropBox, RescueTime, or BitTorrent, in cases where the app needs some local data that the browser can't provide.

Then PC apps will finally be killed by whatever new thick client ends up replacing the web, but we've got a while (maybe 10-20 years) before that happens.
> So, yes, Chrome is an alternative to traditional operating systems.

Chrome is basically a launcher for web-based programs so it is more like a alternative to traditional shells.
Wow, thanks. I'd love to see the 1 cubic mm version that we use when mapping function to anatomy! Plus, that would be one heck of a 3D puzzle!
> Usually when I want to be really productive on my computer, the first thing I do is unplug the DSL router. :-)

Is that literally true? (I've done it - but not for a while... maybe I should start doing it again)
The reply is to an extreme douchebag who deserved that. I think it's a good idea to be firm and shut the trolls up quickly.
You asked people what they thought and you're arguing with them.

If there are other people who like overtrainer, great. However, right now the only feedback is negative. Until you've got more, you're wrong.
TC50 is not really that transparent and all about loving startups. Bottom line, it's the money. In reality, no one would organize an event that will cause them money. Profit is ultimate driver ( not that it's wrong ), it's perfectly fine but just don't act so benevolous in the process of doing it.

http://www.inquisitr.com/2486/techcrunch50-35-million-x-disi...
Absolutely! And that's the point. Design costs money, and there are people who actually care about design.
What makes you think that the winners will want to work for you?

Many of the schemes for hiring great programmers assume that said great programmers are (1) looking and (2) want to work for you. Neither one is true. WRT (2), you have to sell them.
Should be retitled "Europe Pulls Way Ahead of U.S. in Expenditures on Particle Physics". Or "The Albatross is Passed to Europe".

I wish Europe all possible success in nailing down the thirteenth significant digit of the electron's Lande g-factor. May string theorists ("B Ship") flock to Europe, abandoning the U.S. in droves, so that those few remaining physicists can get some useful work done with their ever-dwindling government grants.

String-theory humour at http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/01/06/string-wars-hit-the-msm...
I once did sort of the same thing with my keyboard. Do you guys know how much dirt my right windows key had? like half a millimeter at least. And it had some tomato sauce and i have no idea how all the hair got inside, but i found a lot of it. Took me hours to clean the thing, its sparkling now.
honestly, all the points above, I have heard few years ago for Java and the Applets who were portable, and would replace desktop apps, and Windows didn't matter anymore....
Sun even managed to create a Java only Os. But the whole thing went nowhere.
Chrome will probably never be able to do 3D, or very intense computing tasks, so I think the OS is still here to stay.
The Power of Confusion at Fresh Start After Divorce Blog
You said something similar in the other thread, but from the horse's mouth, http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/process-...:

"Web content has evolved to contain significant amounts of active code that run within the browser, making many web sites more like applications than documents. This evolution has changed the role of the browser into an operating system rather than a simple document renderer. Unlike current browsers, Chromium is built like an operating system to run these applications in a safe and robust way, using multiple OS processes to isolate web sites from each other and from the browser itself."
I'm glad that somebody got something good out of all of those hours watching the Road Runner.

I'm just not sure that Road Runner is the source of all goodness when it comes to advertising. Sounds more like a simplistic meme than a principle you can actually use.

I like the ads, but then again, I still like my PC. Perhaps they should switch to more of an Elmer Fudd paradigm.
An uncle of mine received a letter from his local police department with a speeding ticket and an enclosed picture of his car speeding through a photo/radar monitored area.

Maddened, he wrote out his check payment, took a picture of it, and mailed them the picture.

I few days later he received another letter from the police department containing a picture of handcuffs.

Nice correspondence, I think.
No, the process of human evolution is a tale of organisms adapting to their environment. There is no guarantee that human beings will evolve into something more intelligent.

If the average person is granted the ability to manufacture their own reality without any need for earthy concerns, one might think evolutionary forces would push people into becoming marginally intelligent beings focused on decadence.
FaceBook’s Advertising and Marketing Potential - Video
Turing complete: "Get up to a certain threshold, and every machine can simulate every other one, albeit some slower and others faster".

This view has always fascinated me: if AI is possible, it's possible right now (in terms of hardware). What's missing knowing how to do it (software inventions).

But it's true that faster hardware can open our eyes: (decades ago) the inventor of a new way to use silicon to make CPU's faster said that once the extra silicon was available, the solution was obvious to him. But before then, no one had even tried to think of it. It was already possible before, but the greater power (more silicon) made it practical to think in those terms.
Ask HN: What does your room look like?
I'm re-organising my room to make it most productive for my work (which includes some coding). A while back I saw a really interesting section on the Guardian website featuring pictures and descriptions of famous authors' rooms (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms). So I thought it would be cool to find out what hackers rooms look like.

What does your room look like?
401k Rollover into an IRA or New Employer's 401k
Agreed.

In our building there's a "modelling agency." Young girls are always going in their with their mothers, and usually coming out a few thousand dollars poorer for their "courses" and their "portfolio." From time to time I hear them talking about "the business" while they chain-smoke outside. I am always reminded of Sean Young's incredible line from Bladerunner: I'm not in the business, Mr. Deckard, I am the business.

If you are paying to demo, if you pay fees to people to find you money, if you pay fees to your investors... you are not in the business, you are the business.
You are assuming that the required knowledge can be presented in a modular way, to reduce its complexity.

Knowledge can only be simplified so much... what if the knowledge required for AI, after being made as simple as possible, is still more complex than the most gifted human being can understand?

I like to think that the ultimate nature of reality is simple and beautiful. But all I can be sure of is that the things that I can see are simple enough for me to grasp.
We don't discriminate against startups who've taken funding, unless the deal is so overreaching that no later stage investor would touch them. For example, we once rejected a startup whose investors had something like 90% of the stock, because a company starting out with that much stock already belonging to investors is doomed.

If you think you have a good chance of being accepted by YC and you want to take some investment now, I'd try to take it in the form of a convertible note. If the round has a fixed valuation, YC would be a "down round."
While this sounds good in theory, I get the feeling this is one of those easier-said-than-done situations. Even if there was a replacement liquidity provider ready to replace the two firms, letting them fail would cause a huge amount of stress for the market.
I guess my only problem is I don't see the point.

I'm probably making a foolish assertion. Perhaps the future will be better or different but I don't trust any corporation enough to just hand them the everything over the network.

I hear a lot of talk about "cost" being an advantage but I don't quite see how "doing it over the network" is going to inherently going to bring costs down.
If you can't find pro bono, I think you'd definitely be able to find an attorney who would just work for 33% (or whatever) of the settlement. No cost up front.
What are the major flaws in Buzzword? I find it vastly superior to all its competitors.