skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How does it sound to you? Too crazy, too basic?
I said earlier in a comment that I am stuck, I can not code for a week now.

May be the problem is that having been so long into the forest, I just see the leaves. May be. So let's do something: I tell what I am doing, and you tell me if it is as crazy as it sounds, ok?

My software reads a page in normal English, in a couple of seconds, and extract quite some information, facts. It relates the phrases between them, and produces a consolidated group of facts that are saved in a database. Then you can query: What, when, how much, how many, who, whom, whose, where and which. The why is answered only if the explanation is explicit in the text. The first thing I plan to read is obviously the Wikipedia, but there is no scarcity of sources on the Internet.

Trust me, at a symbolic level, it works, and it has more than 16.000 synonyms to extend the umbrella. At conceptual level it does not, of course, is soft, no hard AI.

Well, that's it.

How does it sound to you? Too crazy, too basic?

Max
In a way, YC is a PR firm and Hacker News is its primary outlet.
This is the best 404 page ever
Control Someone's Behavior for an Hour with Mod My Life
Not crazy at all. If it does what you say, then it is very useful.

But "trust me" is not enough -- you have to prove it works in a wider context. IR has many pitfalls, and success in one domain is not an indicator of general applicability. Your algo may work well on the subset of Wikipedia pages. It may spit out garbage with other sources or on search terms that would not occur to you.

Just as in crypto, IR algorithms have to be kicked around a lot before they get serious attention. I suggest you put something up that people can play with. You don't have to reveal the algo.
Yeah, if only it actually served the purpose of getting the user quickly and easily to another page that might help them...
Image Scan, Receipt, and Locate are all only a few years away. And in lesser forms, they could actually be cool features.
If Snocap failed to turn a profit, it isn't because the margins for music are slim, it is because they failed to run their business lean enough. All they had to do was provide a profile widget and market it. From the sound of the article, they were trying to do a lot more, and their overhead was too high.

It's too bad - I really like Snocap, often times its the only way for me to buy non-drm music electronically from smaller artists.
Someone's going to get sued.
correlation vs. causation, etc . . .
yep, release something. and you'll see if it works or not.
I do the same thing with a legal pad... it's just a running log of ideas I want to do. New stuff is appended to the bottom, so I can tell how old an idea by where it is on the page.

A lot of stuff never actually gets done (sometimes the idea no longer makes sense or isn't important in light of new ones), but I think the big advantage is getting the stuff out of your head. There is a lot of mental effort involved in holding on to several ideas at once. If you write them down, you don't have to constantly keep them in mind, so you can focus on actually doing something.
Surf already exists-- it's called behavioral targeting. Of course, no one (not even facebook) is stupid enough to directly report this information back to the user or the user's friends, except in the form of targeted ads.

Image Scan actually sounds like a pretty good business plan-- once again, for ad targeting. Although there are some quality issues--- do you really want your ad showing next to someone burning one of your shoes, or a picture of a sweatshop worker?

Locate-- facebook might not be working on it, but google definitely is.

Diary-- livejournal. fb notes. 'nuff said.

Receipt-- Beacon on crack. Marketers have been chasing the holy grail of tracking customers purchases across all channels. If you've ever given a "source code" or "catalog code" when ordering from a paper catalog, that's what you're doing. Cross-channel microtargeting is the future!

One wonders if the credit card processors are doing the kinds of under-the-table clickstream-data types of deals that the ISPs are doing.
Protected- satire. Though a clearer "satire warning" is probably needed for true CYA.
Reminds me of an Overcoming Bias post. If your source of stupid is pure enough you can just reverse it to get right.
Get a girlfriend!
One of the basic problems with this whole discussion, is that most are thinking like Americans: that everywhere in the world is like where we are now.

If you go to any lesser-developed countries they are not entrenched in "google" or "facebook" or anything for that matter because they don't have computers --but they do have mobile phones.

Everybody's talking about China & India, great. But what about the many nations on the African Continent? In five to ten years, countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, etc. will be the new technological and economical hotbeds.
Even if it did sound nuts - go for it; hell look at twitter or even tetris (a game of making rows of blocks - sounds boring and retarded as a concept)
Sun Releases Open-Source PDF Renderer
That's actually been around for a number of years...
+1

If you release something, and people like it, that'll be very motivational.
I thought the same. Disabling voice service will probably work anyway - just like velvet rope does.
IIRC satire isn't protected speech, only parody.
That's a pretty cool T-shirt.
The C10k problem: time for web servers to handle ten thousand clients
The thing to note here is that some areas, especially (pop-)cultural (Nintendo (as mentioned in the article), anime, food products, candy, gadgets, vending machines, etc.), Japan is absolutely bursting with creative energy.

The ailing big business sectors mentioned in the article must (perhaps inadvertently) be doing a lot to suppress that creative spirit.
The Economist seems to be linked quite often around here. Hackers like it?
> I said earlier in a comment that I am stuck, I can not code for a week now.

You have a good idea, but take a break and code something fun in an area that has nothing whatsoever to do with what you're working on.

I find that "coder's block" while doing web app work can be resolved quite nicely after whipping up a quick OpenGL demo or little game in C.

Failing that, drink some tea, take a walk, take a hot shower, take a nap: do things that are unhurried and give you plenty of time to relax and think.
This is actually a serious problem for me. I tell everybody I'll do everything (at least everything that is sane and good for a sizable number of our customers). I eventually will, but sometimes it gets overwhelming and I end up weeks behind on some of those promises. (My current albatross is that I promised full FreeBSD support in our products well over a year ago...I still haven't released complete FreeBSD support. I think I probably would have finished it long ago if it hadn't taken on this feeling of dread and perpetuity that it has gained in my head.)
> This kind of thing is pretty common, especially when you have multiple projects and you are in love with one.

I came to this realization myself in the past couple of weeks. Nothing focuses the mind like realizing what you really want and going for it.
A long time ago I worked on a very large AAA game. We had over 100Mb of word docs, PDF's, 3DSMax and PSD files. At the time we didn't even have Spotlight. I would have killed for something which would work at a higher level then grep. We just couldn't find ANYTHING without getting 10 managers together and then they would all sit around redesigning whatever they'd just 'rediscovered' :(

Good luck and keep going. Please make sure people like me can add data to your system with plugins.

Good luck.

BTW it's fine to put an idea down for a while, if you can't motivate yourself go and do something else. Make sure you don't fall in to a pit of despair and negativity though.
I'm not sure why this was voted down. Sometimes playing games helps. I play Nethack or FreeCiv when I'm feeling overwhelmed or under-enthusiastic (the only problem is they are both very long games...I need to find some less-demanding distractions, like heroin or hookers).

But getting out and exercising is usually better for me.
Yes. Underpromise, and over-deliver. Never the other way around.
Nethack is a long game? You must be ascending every time..
I can't imagine how one would define this as "too basic". Natural language processing on a conceptual level is an extremely hard problem. Sounds pretty useful, though, if you can then use that data to inter-relate and analyze seemingly disconnected facts. We have more data than at any point in human history (I guess that's tautology), and more is being added every day, and many scientists and medical researchers have argued that one of the biggest problems today is making good use of all of the research and anecdotal data that already exists.
A 3d model search engine
I don't count the "you were killed by a kitten while frozen" insta-deaths--obviously that game didn't count, and I have to start over immediately. Once you survive to level 7 or so, and have the intrinsics, it becomes a very long game.
Venti Capitalists: There's a great story to be told about the success of Starbucks.
Perhaps happiness is not binary?
"Of course, this would be after 2 weeks of sitting around in awe that I had arrived at what I dreamed of as a teenager."

[Just quoted - to upmod it individually.]
Protecting Your Ruby Source Code for End User Applications (Clever Hack)
The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. - Linus Pauling

The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate. - Thomas J. Watson Sr., founder of IBM

Name the greatest inventors. Accident. - Mark Twain
That's why I suggested using FreeNX and a bootable flash drive, then you DO have all the power on the back-end and aren't limited to a browser on the front end.
Try "kludge". I never write "temporary hack".
It's not a tautology. The Dark Ages was a period when we seemed to be worse off than we had been when Greece and Rome were powerful. The reliable, continual improvement of human knowledge, without stuff getting lost, is a recent phenomenon.
It's an interesting point. A few quick reactions -

1. I don't know how to test that hypothesis (and indeed most neuroevolutionary "conjectures"). A mutation is one thing, but linked to very specific aspects of cognition is something else. For instance, how can we run a controlled study while leaving evolution free to vary? Some animal models may help, eventually, with certain aspects of knowledge (e.g., tools), but abstract thought is a whole other beast.

2. We've done some preliminary developmental work, and it seems with a specifically targeted instruction we can radically improve performance in young kids, and quickly too. So one answer might be to start early and never let kids (or users) go too far afield. The best way seems to be to show kids that only biological things move toward goals (e.g., you go to the sink when thirsty, roots grow towards moisture). But we don't know if that learning sticks or if they fall back into old patterns.

3. An alternative approach is to test a population that may not see animacy in the same way early in development and so may not exhibit the same types of traces later on. One idea is to follow up with autistic kids. To me, that's the difference between evolutionary accounts and a testable hypothesis about neurodevelopment. If the results show less potent traces, then we can use brain imaging to examine how early differences in the neuroanatomy lead to different processing streams.

4. If I were to agree with anything in that direction, an evolutionary foundation may reflect a static versus dynamic division (rather than living or non-living) of the visual system. Problem is, to understand biological mechanisms, static things (e.g., plants) have to be seen as dynamic, and dynamic things have to be seen as illusory (e.g., cloud). So irrespective of the true first cause, learning involves overcoming biases that initially "appear" to be powerfully important.
This reminds me of the scene in Garden State where the rich friend who invented silent velcro has a huge mansion with nothing in it.
Notice the "Sign Up" link points to ConnectU, who is currently suing Facebook? Might be a little more at work here than mere satire...

At any rate, it definitely took me a minute to realize that this was NOT real.
Well, I know I'm interested in what you're up to and your background. Passion is the best gift you can ask for. Sometimes you just need a new place to nurture it.
Book the damn flight. Go meet your friends. If and when the time is right, open up about what is happening. Otherwise, just say that you are there to get away from it for a bit.
No.

[Matter could still be finite in an infinite universe. And even with infinite matter flying around - gravity gets weaker with distance.]
They could have easily gone back on their offer like they had done after the last war when India committed 1000s of soldiers.
I agree. Beyond the Castle likes tedium.
Heh, I also thought that Beacon was fake too. Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction.

Alex3917, had a really good post on this. He basically said that as FB becomes more and more desperate for revenue, they'll try more and more audacious ways of selling your personal info. So I don't think this parody is that far off at all.

Edit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=86427
Funny, the first entry in my thesaurus for parody is satire. And vice versa.

Also, last time I checked, the first amendment protects pretty much all forms of speech.
I read about a study where they found that people noticed moving animals faster than equally large moving cars. (I could look up the source if anyone is interested.) For your point 3: As far as I recall this effect did not seem to rely on whether those people grew up with animals (African subjects) or not (American subjects).

Perhaps if you would find some other task for your volunteers to test you learn/unlearn hypothesis with. Some task that we do not suspect of being hard wired into our brain. But a task people would nevertheless encounter at an early age.

Anyway - thanks for reading through my amateurish ideas.
Surviving the 2008 recession
Architecture of Detention
Amazon removes the database scaling wall
Lick of paint for the BBC homepage
You can not imagine how important are your comments to me. My former colleagues think this is useless, even if it works, and they don't believe it does in the first place. I am very isolated, more now after 8 months of hard work.
I am about to open a blog to connect with more people. It is difficult to reach people interested in natural language or semantic. At least, here in Europe.

Max
I agree completely with you both. I have some amazing figures about it.

But the hard issue is not to understand at a symbolic level, but being aware of all the consequences and possible relations. I solved partially some things, but others are completely impossible for me. I have the impression that I could find a niche market: people interested in getting precise facts, and its sources, not so much on letting the machine do the thinking for you. This will not change the world, for sure, but it is very interesting though.

Max
2008 predictions from a VC: Android will succeed...
"The prisoner falls in love with his chains." - Edsger Dijkstra
Shirts for Ruby Nerds
Shirts for Ruby Nerds And Ruby on Rails Junkies. Haberdasher to the Ruby elite depuis 2007.
The first amendment doesn't protect using someone else's brand with only a few exceptions, parody being one, satire not being one. As for the difference, parody:satire::sarcasm:facetious
release something when you are ready and only listen  your users
Too bad it's implemented in Java. If this was in C it would make the GNU PDF project redundant.
Google tight-lipped on U.K. spectrum bid
 ?
The point Dave missed is that Google for example doesn't really want to open its infrastructure to outside users, they consider their infrastructure and scaling ability to be a key competitive advantage.

They want the walls in place, the walls limits the list of their potential competitors in their key market of search.

The problem is that once one big player releases a service or technology that start leveling the playing field, your only choices are to join the band wagon or be left behind.
The best definition of burnout I have read is a "crisis of self-efficacy". You know all the stuff you're supposed to do, and you may tell yourself you love doing this, but deep down you don't have any faith that anything will get better.

Burnout can happen if your expectations don't match what the task will deliver. Sometimes the job is the problem. Paradigmatic example: idealistic teacher in dysfunctional school. Sometimes your expectations are the problem. Paradigmatic example: former prodigy trying to make a living by being more brilliant / dedicated / obsessive than others. Unfortunately, there's always someone nerdier than you.

Whatever the reason, you may have inadvertently trained yourself that work = dissatisfaction. The solution may be to try to train yourself out of this. You know yourself the best; figure something out.

Suggestions:

- pair programming. Instant social rewards, shared victories, less chance of distraction.

- accomplish something smaller but still valuable. Start a fucking Blogger account, fuck managing yet another stupid piece of software.

- visualize what it will be like once the task is accomplished. Do you feel better? If so, try to keep your "eyes on the prize". (If worse, re-evaluate).
The Peachfuzz Billionaires
Yeah, it's definitely a problem. It'll need SEO work on our end and that's what we're doing.
The pimped out mouse gives you instant cred, scrollin.
How non-Godelian of them.
I've been in this position before. The reason is pretty simple: it's boring. More to the point, it's too much stuff to do for the payoff you'll get from it. C'mon, 5 steps to install a blog server?

I'll second everyone who says "Do something else." This is your subconscious telling you that the work you're doing is not important. Go find something that is. Then when you've gotten farther on whatever that other stuff is, come back to this and see if it's time to do it yet. If installing a blog is really a pressing problem, you'll be motivated to do it.
Look more carefully: there are many stops along the way with people jumping out on "Laziness" station for instance or taking shortcuts.
Harvard and Yale Setting an Example?
By opening up the middle income bracket and making it cheaper for upper-middle incomers, are they doing good or bad for students? Also, will they set an example for other schools to follow?
This doesn't seem like such a great idea. A competitor or someone trying to pirate the software will be able to get in, and it could have a performance hit for the user, not to mention an increase in difficulty and more things to go wrong.

Obfuscation is generally poor protection, and a bad idea.
No, it seems like a rip-off of a better one that's been around for a number of years. I'll see if I can find it.
The distinction is highly subjective. Nevertheless, its actually a somewhat interesting subject.

This paper outlines the historical legal perspective:

http://www.abanet.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/rou...

Among other things, it suggests that the dichotomy of satire and parody is artificial, and furthermore should not be within the realm of the courts to distinguish.
I buy the broader point around Google, but I think they make too much of the iPod / iPhone - those are down to one man's passion for design, it could have come from someone in Japan, Steve Jobs just happens to be here.
I looked into the ConnectU connection a little more. Apparently, there's nothing to it, besides the link being an additional joke:

http://pranks.com/2007/12/15/facebook-takes-it-on-the-chin/
i submitted the comment from my mobile phone. i don't know why it sent those characters
Bootstrap Design for Hacker-Founders
This post was a response to a fellow YC Winter '08 founder, but I figured it might be valuable to other folks, so I threw it up on my blog.
Another Goog vs Microsoft article, but with some good new info
Excellent paper. For those who don't want to download the PDF, the relevant paragraph is as follows:

"The dichotomy approach is certainly easier to apply: if the new work arguably criticized or commented on the original, a parodic character reasonably can be perceived ... and a fair use finding is quick to follow. On the other hand, if the new work used the original work as a mere vehicle to criticize something else (such as society in general), it is satire, not parody, and therefore not fair use. However, while the parody/satire distinction has become the central issue in many cases, the proper dividing line between quintessential parody and satire is blurry at best. Creative
lawyers and judges have taken advantage of this blurriness..."
Multi-User Interaction using Handheld Projectors
Wow, its like I posted this. I'm exactly the same way... no clue on how to stop it.
Man, I wish I had your friends. Most people I know think such OCDness is weird. My parents are always telling me to 'have fun.'
Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft
Bell Labs Is Gone. Academia Steps In.
What a fatuous observation. Yes, if only Godin had thought to build an auction site, like OnSale did, he'd be a billionaire. Or a search engine, like Infoseek and Teoma. Or an ordering system, like Cybercash.
I hear folks at facebook planned on adopting a corporate philosophy like "don't be evil" but instead decided upon "too late"
Where is the Xobni of social networks? Why social network "friends" are not necessarily friends.
Isn't part of the appeal of harvard and yale that for the most part only the wealthy and well connected can get in and afford to go there. That way you will make connections with the leaders of the world and write your own ticket after graduation.
It became unreal when the status bar kept trying to ping onlinehome.us
Create Software, Not Code
Diagram summarizing the Zuckerberg talk referred to in the article: http://www.killnine.com/comics/25.php
High performance server architecture
Wow! Just wow! I see myself in all of that (i.e., I'm getting older) and it just hits the mark.
This is an awesome article. Lots of people confuse graphic designers with interface and user experience designers, and they often end up with shitty applications with pretty outer shells.

Good user experience and also pretty: wufoo.com

Pretty, but lacking user experience: imthere.com

Awesome UI: cdbaby.com

Sadly, bad user experience ("noprocrast" implementation), also not pretty (though simple): news.ycombinator.com
"... Too bad it's implemented in Java. If this was in C it would make the GNU PDF project redundant ..."

My sentiments (had a similiar post before I scrubbed it). What is it about the language that leaves a sour taste for developers?

Is it the inability to integrate into gnu software as
easily as C that makes it just another attempt
to push their own language?

Is the advantage of not dealing with pointers worth the cost of dealing with JVM? Maybe it's a developer thing? I imagine 9/10 users wouldn't bat an eyelid if told it was developed in "foo" language.
Maybe a better one would delve into defining/tutoring some S-expressions with an introduction to Common Lisp? It could go on for hours.
Ah, former colleagues. It may be more appropriate to say "jealous bastards" because thats the truth.
It doesn't seem to mention yaws, the Erlang web server.

http://www.sics.se/~joe/apachevsyaws.html
"kludge"