skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looking to build a small talented team for Facebook app
As the title says I'm looking to build a small team of "hackers" to work on a facebook app/widget. The application is called officebook and it a series off little applications that can be collaboratively worked on by friends. applications include basic clones of word,excel ,powerpoint. It will be hard given the restrictions, but thats what makes it fun. More details avialable, e-mail me if you are interested.

Also any feedback would great.
Does this mean that the best software by developers will always be consumed by developers?
An excellent piece. The Mercury News article is also worth reading.
I still think this quote from the Hamming article points to one of the biggest opportunities for making a difference across all fields (at least for a programmer):

"Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools."

One problem that will continue to need solving is finding better tools to organize and search through all the information out there. That's more of the problem Google solves, as others have mentioned above.

Another, related problem is finding better ways to get the information into our heads. To give you an extreme example, coming up with a way to access a hard drive directly with our brain could potentially allow us to tackle harder problems. That's pretty hard and probably a long way off. But you can probably imagine baby steps toward that.

There's also the whole AI problem but the media has covered that one enough that it doesn't really need mentioning.
To me it doesn't make sense to use a drag and drop interface for adding items to your cart. Just let people click an "add this to your cart" button. It's familiar and it's less work.
I think every research breakthrough is planned. Impact on civilization is what counts. I just have an impression people are not aware of the huge impact Semantic web will have. Why there are no more startups dealing with SW problems?
Quote: I donate to charities, and I've founded companies that have made really good products and offered great services, but I've never made the type of contribution that saves lives.

Making something that lets someone enjoy life more is equivalent to giving them more life to enjoy at the end. Anything that saves time during one's life is at least as good, if not better, than tacking time on the end.
Zillow Raises $30 Million More, Up To $87 Million in Venture Capital
> designing software and working for hedge funds

liquidity.

> So, if anyone here has any ideas to save lives
> or make a massive improvement in the world, give
> me a shout.

Find a way to destroy copyright and other attempts to allow people to own ideas. These laws are both bad for the economy and directly damage the ability of people in third world countries to get a leg up.
Good post. Just wanted to voice my respect.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you'd make an awesome girlfriend. :-)
Americans giving up friends, sex for Web life
I see this as a huge business opportunity as increase in web-customers !!
That's one Telsa himself was working on 100+ years ago.
I have been thinking of similar things, which is why I decided to take the risky road and know that if I fail at least I did it in pursuit of something worthwhile.

I am working on a somewhat educational software, Ajaxified and all that, which I believe could make a difference while being possibly profitable (perhaps not high-margin enough to attract VC investment, but if it can provide a stable income I'd work on it with no complaints). It seems to me that traditional teaching institutions, or the general public, seems grossly uninformed about the theory behind it -- which to me seems to be the only, theoretically and experimentally, universally solid method that guarantees learning results, as far as my exposure to relevant material is concerned.

I assume there lacks satisfactory implementations because those who understand the theory don't bother making a product that is accessible to all; I am simply tired of waiting.

I believe a good number of participants here are also not exactly short on the starting capital. The difference is in the mentorship and extended reach.

One reason why web-based educational software is absolutely necessary, in terms of making a difference, is that you can connect with users anywhere in the globe. Kids who use cheap laptops. Once you guarantee your learning method is good, you're on track.

At least I believe so :)
Is Hulu Doomed? NBC To Begin Offering Free Downloads
I didn't like the end of this quote:

"We are calling them 'digitivity denizens,' those who see their cell phones as an extension of themselves, whose online and offline lives are co-mingled and who would chose a Wi-Fi connection over TV any day," said Mack.

Why is it better for a person to choose TV over the internet?
Zed Shaw thinks FogBugs is junk:
http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/fortune_favors_big_turds.html
Ah right. However, this has a bad long term effect for the market as a whole. Just look at what such thinking has done to our culture as it is.
given the context, i don't think they meant it as a slight. they were talking about this group of people in terms of how you'd advertise to them, so in that case, tv would be right out.
I remember reading an article about how financial and other forms of aid adversely affect African economies. There was a massive need for small to medium size investment to build these economies from the ground up. Here's some people trying to do that: http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/A/africa/index.html?...
Hopefully it might provide some inspiration.
Or cars for that matter. I wonder if newspapers took the same poll when cars first came out and got popular for suburbanites.

"People told us how anxious, isolated and bored they felt when they are forced to walk."

or maybe

"They felt disconnected from the world, from their friends and family, [when forced to walk]"
I don't think I would be terrified, nor you.

While I'm too young to say, I think at the time you are old, your brain would have changed (or degraded) sufficiently enough to handle it with relative ease. That's the only way it makes sense to me when I read about ailing people talking about seeing the exit, the final candle, or whatever.

That aside, I also consider "what happens after you die" to be the ultimate question. Because nobody alive, dumb or smart, knows the answer, and nobody has come back to tell us. It just depends on when you think you are ready to find the answer. Perhaps after you solve the unified field theory everything will converge.
It's been a while that I read it, but I think

"this sentence is a lie"

sums it up nicely? Isn't the whole book about driving home the point that there are unprovable statements in mathematics?
Brilliant: FIQL Avoids Copyright Trap Through Music Videos
I can assure you though, that Cape Town is years ahead of Pretoria.
CSS 3: A Giant Serving Of FAIL
With IPTV days are not far away whether every source of infotainment is on the web - any ideas related to infotainment on net/mobile/IPTV platform will be big hit ... Net is where we will live (no boundaries, no war) ?!
A prediction market like http://us.newsfutures.com/ works by having an ultimate arbiter of value: Either the event in question happens or it does not happen.

I wonder how one would implement a market based system for recommending articles. Could you elaborate on your ideas?
http://disastr.org

exactly those kinds of technologies, and could save a lot of lives in disasters in America.

It's also a prototype for a more general approach to handling disasters in the developing world.

That is a platform for handling the Routine Disaster of global poverty.

No way to get to that stuff without tools like EC2 or Mapreduce. We need massive compute and excellent software running on mobile devices to pull this off, and YC is the sort out community that is developing the tools we need.

So... yes, you're saving the world, in aggregate if not as individuals, just like the Unix guys were 30 years ago, and continue to do.
Semantic Web: Difficulties with the Classic Approach
Eh, most of them have plenty of friends and sex on the web...
Wow! Thats a great story. Thank you for sharing.
photovoltaics, slow but steady. not much else counts if we don't have the juice to run it.
continuing with the energy theme, the fusion reactor is approaching unity with the next iteration predicted to >= unity, if that bad boy can generate more out than in, we'll be in a very different world 50 years from now.
less is more (all-time record)
Wixi: one more webOS ? 
Wixi was presented at TechCrunch40. The activation code "tech40access" may still work. The business model is based on disk storage renting.
I think pg's point is deeper than that. Research breakthroughs are made by one or two (usually one) very smart guys. Breakthroughs don't happen because consortiums and commitees declare "let the web be sematic!", which seems to be the case with the sematic web idea.
Wixi was presented at TechCrunch40. The activation code "tech40access" may still work. The business model is based on disk storage renting.
If anyone wants to make a difference in medicine without letting their CS education go to waste, my understanding is that bioinformatics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics) has lots of unsolved problems.
"My posts are too long."

In this case, no.
"Or that this reality is a computer simulation and we wake up in a bigger computer simulation where we get bored sometimes and choose to spend lifetimes during interesting periods of time."

"Either of these are much more likely than the eternal afterlife of a theistic god..."

What's the difference between these two?
Permalinks:

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/robby.html

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/music.asp
It's all about the Mxit guys in SA - lightyears ahead
> Saving time is to me the most important point of doing a startup.

I mis-read this in an interesting way: some startup ventures may seem like "not a big deal", but if they save 1% of the US population 1 minute of time every month, that's almost 70 person-years per year.

I can't imagine how much time GMail has saved for me that I would have spent setting up mail clients. Ditto for reddit, or news.YC - there is no way I could have found out and kept track of so much information out there in the blog/entrepreneur community while being a full-time student, doing research, and working two part-time jobs.

This is not to say we shouldn't donate more of our time and money to giving to those in real need, of course, just that sometimes we give to society indirectly, or even without realizing it.
Seriously: What kind of stupid journalist would swallow such BS?

Fact check, people. I wouldn't trust a 12 year old to run a lawnmower.
Guns Germs and Steel is possibly one of the most fascinating books I've read in years. No wonder it won a Pulitzer.

Also I have to add a Carl Sagan book. "Varieties of Scientific Experience" is fantastic. "pale blue dot", as well.
I would ask yourself a few honest questions if I were you.

1) Do you want to change the world, really? Or do you just want to feel good? Lots of people have spent lots of money on eliminating poverty. And it's still here. That's not saying it's a lost cause, only that the benefit for all those other people was that it made them feel like they were trying. One day we will succeed. Until then, the numbers look like a long-shot.Same goes for a lot of other feel-good type investments: curing hunger, curing cancer, eliminating oppression, etc.There's a huge multi-billion-dollar industry built up around making rich people feel better by writing checks. It's a noble cause, if that's your thing.

2) Are you smart enough to know what to do? The beauty of capitalism is that progres chases benefit: you don't make money for _not_ helping people, if only a little bit. Now you can take the profit factor out, but then you've got a charity, not a business. Businesses have to provide value.

3) Isn't the best thing you can do is provide man-hours? In your example, you ask if use by 1% of people in the richest country a good moral choice. Let's say the toy saves an hour each week. That's 4 million people, saving one hour a week,in the richest country in the world. Assuming $40 per hour, You've roughly created $8 Billion in time for those people. Maybe 95% of that time will be spent playing Donkey Kong, watching American Idol, or picking their nose. Still, you've got $400 Million in return for what? A few hundred grand or a mil or two? And those 5% will spend their time doing things they are passionate about that _they_ feel will make a difference.

So if you're still feeling guilty, target some investment money in saving time for scientists -- all scientists. If you could save them a few hours each week, imagine how much value you could add?

So yes, time-saving toys for rich, productive people are the best use of my time that I can see. Perhaps other see it differently.
I donate to charities, and I've founded companies that have made really good products and offered great services, but I've never made the type of contribution that saves lives.

Charity doesn't work. "Human dignity is more important than wealth" (1). What we need is working economic systems, not handouts.

Have you looked at Acumen Fund? It's the organization Google.org works to spur economic development in places that need it.

http://google.org/development.html

Take a look at this presentation by Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder of Acumen:

1. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/157

I don't know of a place money can do more good.
So it seems like there are two questions here:
1. All said and done, when one is about to die, do you look back on your contributions to society and say "yes I am glad I did that, even at the expense of not being with my family as much as I should have been". Or do you say "despite all that, I wish I spent more time with my own family and kids" It sounds like this profs answer is the latter. It is humbling since death seems to be such a ultimate leveller. He has certainly led a 'special' life, spending many years in research contributing to the pool of knowledge for humanity, yet at the end, it is almost like he rediscovered what was more important was something very simple and had nothing to do w/ "the world" or "humanity". It was just his family.

This is slightly disturbing for me, since I want to make a difference in the world and I do think its important to my life. Will I look back one day, on my deathbed as he is, and discard all of my contributions (or attempts at contributions) as worthless and readily trade it in for just a few more moments with my family? Will i then be overcome with regret that I sacrificed so much to pursue something that meant so little to me? It does give me pause. Perhaps some of my friends, who are not trying to do so much, are the ones who really understand the meaning of life.

2. Changing careers and giving back
On the career side, I agree w/ you. Staying in your circle is the best. I have also come to the conclusion that the best way I can help the world is through entrepreneurship and business. I'm not talented enough to do research. One day I hope to be able to support a professorship for some talented maverick professor who has game changing ideas for humanity but is not 'fundable' by government programs.

I did a successful startup that got acquired by a larger company, and we do software to allow businesses to get better feedback from customers. "Whats world changing about that" you might say, but the way I talk about it with my customers and my coworkers is that "if we do our job right, we are changing the strategy of these multi billion dollar corporations by allowing them to make what their customers want. This touches millions of people in the products/services they have available to them".

I know, its not like we found the cure for aids. We did not solve global warming. (Definitely a big concern of mine) But we are here at work. And we are here doing this job. Lets make it meaningful, do the best we can, and see if we can't help in whatever small way instead of lamenting how we are not doing x or y. Maybe this will not be enough for me 2 years down the road. But for me, feeling my spine tingle as I explain how much impact our product can have is enough to keep me going for now.
About the concept, can you please tell me what is wrong with it so we can think about changing.

Thanks.
In 5-10 years, I'd say personal fabrication.

In 10-15 years, I'd say perhaps Human Genome
What is the education method, or is it proprietary?
Google Wants You To Share Stuff
This is kinda cool as Google's aggregating sites that are themselves about aggregation. For a site with not too many network effects in play, I might be worried. And since Google actually knows a lot about your network via Gmail, they might even have an edge over other sites that make you go through the pain of explicitly adding friends.
I knew lots of folks that loved this guy's class. Building Virtual Worlds is the kind of class where you may as well not take any others that semester because you will have neither the time nor the inclination to work on anything else.
Dude, I've been reading Joel since 2002, and every time he goes on to blog about hacking he looks silly. His posts about "harm of exceptions" (he prefers -1 as a return code), about "mistake of .NET" and, from relatively recent ones, about poor Ruby performance do not make him look good as a hacker in my opinion.

Besides, he never really was a programmer. If I remember correctly he started his career as a program manager at Microsoft.

He's great as a general technology trends observer and I find his thoughts on business side of software crafting immensely useful, bug a hacker? No.
It is hard to believe that the bill board belongs to a company like google.
I am in Austin, TX and the front page took 5 seconds. I did not type anything or clicked anywhere.

The problem with EC2 and other super-managed hosting solutions (Joyent comes to mind) is inconsistency: I am sure they're moving VMs around, and occasionally they end up on overloaded servers.
Just curious, what's the ultimate value here? I feel like I can already do that sort of collaborative editing through a number of existing services. And I can't see what being inside of Facebook adds to that experience, since editing documents together isn't something friends casually happen upon.
Nice post. My advice for any college grad is to stay away form this stinky industry. I wasted two years out of college on billing systems with 1,500 Oracle tables with endless dumbest PL/SQL data-pumping procedures and dumbest data entry client software written in VB.

And nobody really cared about quality or efficiency. No algorithms, nothing even remotely interesting from a technical standpoint. Only schedule, "feature list" and annoying salespeople who kept selling features we did not even built. I hear that VB got replaced by Java now. And that is true: to keep those piles of shitty code running clients had to buy "service contracts".

We had a guy whose full time job was to write report generators. Ugghh...

It's not "software". It's "software porn".
If it's your best chance at a big first step, then you're doing the right thing.

I think it is.
Shooter--if you're interested, check out Altruistiq (www.altruistiq.com). Our entire mission is to create products and services that cater to the double bottom-line of social impact and profitability. We're working on a NASDAQ for the non-profit world to help NGOs raise financing a lot easier. There are no real capital markets in the non-profit world--everything is basically hand-to-mouth donations. We think a non-profit "stock" exchange could really change the way the US funds innovation in the social sector.

If you, or anyone else is interested in Doing Good while Doing Well, feel free to email me:

neil dot abraham @ altruistiq dot com

Sorry for what may seem like a plug...but this thread is all about trying to create true impact with your work, and I really would love to get in touch with like minded people on this subject. As someone else mentioned, we've been creating products for the richest 1% for way too long. There are 4 billion people living on $2 a day that we can impact with our skills and talents.

Let's get together and see how we can create real change.
I'm a huge fan of ending endless speculation. It drives me nuts when coworkers sit in meeting after meeting and speculate about how something might work. How bout just trying it out?

From the article: "If you have a question about what you should do code it up, let people use it, and see which alternative gives you the results you want."

Love it.
i just got a cease and desist letter from facebook for owning facebookfund.com...hmm...
Why single out support vector machines? Sure, the kernel trick is neat but there's really nothing about them that stands out above other classification methods. It would make more sense just to say "the field of machine learning".
Christmas Tree Machines. We've seen the beginnings of home fabrication (including fabricating entire homes!) but as this technology progresses, it will impact the entire supply chain and wholesale/retail sector. May be a hundred years, though. But we've seen the beginnings already.
Founders At Work - Startup advice straight from those who have done it and have been successful.
I totally agree, even more so considering recent advances in real-time fMRI (http://paincenter.stanford.edu/research/rtfmristudy.html),

I also nominate EROS (http://www.answers.com/topic/event-related-optical-signal) as a revolution in the making. I think it will deliver some huge discoveries in the activity of the human cortex.
Business 2.0 is dead
Is anyone else sad about Business 2.0 being killed?
Was it that the backgrounds were gray, or that the default browser background was gray and no one set bg colors? I remember thinking the weirdest thing about IE when it came out (or was it another browser?) was that all the backgrounds were suddenly white.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned it: Dexter.

http://www.paulgraham.com/anybots.html
Sure. If all information was traded like stocks, then, the person who speaks with the most authority would get the most investment. If they become senile, then they lose value. In terms of the recommendation system, then, it would simply recommend whatever/whoever has the highest market value, plus whatever metrics you added in.

You don't have an arbiter though, because information keeps increasing, and at very little cost, and is not limited by resources in the actual economy. Also, you aren't making a yes/no prediction, so you are not measuring something like accuracy (which is measurable). You are measuring a subjective valuation. Steve Jobs might be only 60% correct that the iPod is the best music player in the world, but a fan would think he's 120% correct. Even though the prediction market says he's 60% correct, in the actual market, he earns lots of money. Something like that.

It's not so far from the karma system, but the karma system is inherently flawed because it's based on democratic principles. When you see a likeable merchandise, you don't think in terms of "buy" or "not buy." You think in terms of value, relative to some baseline. A better system would give users the power to express this.
Without PCR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCR) almost none of the biotech research of the past 20 years would have been possible. In the past few years PCR has got absurdly fast and convenient. I think RT-PCR is kind of mind-blowing. You can get an off-the-shelf solution that will (in about half an hour) screen your blood for a set of known virii. Or snoop or your food for toxins. Or whatever else you want to do with DNA...
NBC to release their own video download service