skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"There's nothing Bayesain about 2+2=4 -- that's the way the symbols are supposed to work."

How did you come to this decision that "that's the way the symbols are supposed to work"? I bet it's some sort of process of taking in information and updating your beliefs. And the idealized optimal version of that is Bayesian inference.

"Wolfram came up with a great question in NKS -- what if the universe is really discrete and not continuous?"

Sorry for the anal-retentive nitpicking, but this question isn't due to Wolfram. I'm not qualified either, but it's definitely a fascinating thing to think about. Maybe our universe is just a small computer program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
Why are you not working on a human computation startup (in the sense of the ESP Game)?
For more on human computation, see:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143

http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2005/abstracts/05...
I did not come to any decision about that's the way the symbols are supposed to work -- that's my whole point. The symbols represent the way it works. They are a self-referencing representation. There's no decision involved here at all. You can call it an axiom, but that misses the point. An "axiom" only has meaning inside certain formal symbolic systems. It. Just. Is. It exists. Different people with different numbers and operators? They'd be asking why %^ $% $#^ #$$%, for instance. But it's the same thing. The answer is in the question. It's like asking "Why is red a color?"

I didn't mean to imply Wolfram came up with computational reality, I simply mentioned that he brought it up in his book. It may turn out the integral was just a nifty little shortcut that took a lot of impossible-to-calculate math off the table for physicists. Thanks for letting me clarify that.
I have lots of friends but none of them are techie

I have friends who are techies. I've sent out feelers just to get an idea of what their business drive/competence might be. Answer: Not good. Obviously, I don't live near Stanford, but most people don't either...and it would be insane to pair up with people for the sake of pairing.
Intellectually I'd be inclined to agree with you, but it seems most of the top apps either have little or no website to which they drive traffic. They generate revenue directly.

The business model is simple and effective. Make people do stuff to get something virtual. Refer friends on a poker app, get 1,000 chips. Fill out a survey (which generates income) get 3,000. Sign up for a credit card, get 5,000. It's like those free ipod sites on steroids.
Your number's up
Fixed with linky.
When I was starting up my business there were a lot of nights that turned into day that turned into night. Each spring/winter/etc break during college was me sitting in a room with CS students I'd hired coding furiously and batting design ideas back and forth.

From the outside, you could say with a good bit of justification that I needed to go learn how to ski or drink some beer or something. I'd argue though that "getting lost" is one of the rewards of working on a startup project. There's a mix of satisfaction in the sacrifice, the joy of unbridled creation and the camaraderie of taking on something that you may or may not pull off with a lot of people you respect and trust.

These days, I live in a nice part suburbia with my wife, who would feed me every 10 or so hours during those projects. She's getting an MBA and I'm running the business I started, but our pace of life is much more normal.

My advice, having lived on both sides of the fence, and without knowing the specifics of your situation past what you posted, is to grab as hard as you can for that vision you see. You'll learn, grow and stumble into things and people that will greatly enrich your life.

Good luck!
Entourage

Weeds

Scrubs

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Actually it took Whitehead and Russell a lot of work just to prove 1+1=2. not kidding. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Principia_Mathematica_the...

It all depends on the axioms you use, iirc. I can think of cases where 2+2 does not equal 4.
For example (very roughly -- this example isn't really 100% accurate, but you get the idea), 2 protons plus 2 protons != 4 protons. in fact, you get the helium nucleus, I believe, 2 protons plus 2 neutrons. before you say this is an esoteric example, i might point out that this is the reaction that powers the sun and you wouldn't be alive right now without it. (for the actual reaction see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton-proton_chain_reaction)

Someone with more maths training might correct me here, but 2+2=4 is true because you're using the usual axioms you learned in school. you might also say it's obvious that 3 times 3 = 9, or that ab = ba, but there is a lot of interesting math around anti-commutative algebras where ab=-ba, for example. it's all about the axioms you use.
i just want to point out that einstein wasn't 'arrogant' here. he said what he did because he 'knew' GR had to be right -- it was just the generalization of special relativity, which was already known to be right.

of course, it turns out that GR is wrong, at least at small-scales. while special relativity is compatible with quantum field theory (indeed, SR was the motivation for moving from quantum mechanics to QFT, as quantum mechanics does not respect SR), general relativity is not.
Ha ha, that's a funny one...

Seriously, provoking people with that word only stirs the pot some more. It doesn't make the world a better place friend.
Artists tend to portray human faces with the Fourier statistics of complex natural scenes
The title is a pun actually, as the E8 group is technically both "exceptional" and "simple", in the mathematical sense of those terms, if i recall correctly.

so the title is a joke of sorts.
Interesting that the percentage difference between the winning solution with 107 blended approaches and the close-by solutions using only one approach was on the order of a fraction of a percent in improvement.
That's not what I said at all. Your second post is more in line with what I said.

Lee Smolin was/is a string theorist too but at least he's objective and is not religious about ST like Motl and some others.

This is a good link: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/stringtheory.html
Saul Griffith on winning a MacArthur, entrepreneurship, and dumpster diving
Physics needs independent thinkers
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/17/could-a-nigersaurus-get...

Here's a question, though: can we discard url's that only differ based on a # and whatever falls after it? Especially if they're right next to each other on the New page?
Setting aside ultimate scientific truths about this matter, if you come from a race that is not considered to be of high IQ on average yet you are highly intelligent as an individual, then it would help to demonstrate this fact.

For example, you can take IQ tests, get an MRI scan of your brain to determine its volume, get your DNA sequenced etc., to prove your high IQ as an individual.
I didn't bookmark it and can't immediately find it, but I saw him say that he would be very surprised if his theory was universal truth and that the probability of him being correct was low -- but he thought he had a better shot at it than string theory.
The problem with human computation is that people actually don't really like solving those sorts of boring problems without good incentive. Amazon's answer, of course, is paying them for their work. I like von Ahn's approach better: Figure out a game people will enjoy playing that has the side effect of getting at the solution to your problem.

I think the reason more people aren't doing this sort of thing is that game development is in and of itself difficult, and it's even tougher to make a game that gives you useful information on the side. Not to mention it's not clear where there's money to be made.
"I did not come to any decision about that's the way the symbols are supposed to work -- that's my whole point. The symbols represent the way it works. They are a self-referencing representation. There's no decision involved here at all."

There's a difference here between what you believe and what is true in external reality. (Yes, I know you can spend lots of time debating whether the latter is even a coherent idea, blah blah blah, but all that stuff isn't relevant.) You had to come to a belief about what "+", "=", "2", and "4" mean. You were not born with this information embedded inside your head! :) This is true regardless of whether the symbols by themselves unambiguously and uniquely pin down the meaning of the expression. Even if a certain symbol sequence has a "unique unambiguous" interpretation, you still had to read those symbols and interpret them, and you learned something in the process -- which means you updated your beliefs about the symbols. I agree that the "real" interpretation in external reality of these symbols didn't change (if such a thing even exists), but your understanding of the symbols changed.

In general, probabilities are subjective and a property of the observer. They describe degrees of belief that the observer has in various propositions, and don't directly have anything to do with external reality. The only way they're connected to external reality is that you make observations in reality and use the gathered information to update the probabilities you assign. This means the claim that the symbols "2", "4", "=", and "+" are unambiguous is irrelevant even if it's true.

BTW - Thanks for the link on your blog to the NYT graph of the price of gas in constant dollars.
I'm willing to believe that there are genetic differences in intelligence, some of which fall along racial lines. However, until we have a better psychometric than IQ, the research is going to be fundamentally flawed. The study cited here showing Africans have low IQs was bad research.
These are good tips for that guy who was asking about relaxation.
That's not necessarily true. Google's advertising market is based entirely on matching the impedance between customers and advertisers. People advertising valuable things that customers often click on don't have to pay much to get good placement, meanwhile spammers trying to get an undeserved spot pay a ton for the privilege.

Where Facebook differs is that with ads that aren't based on click through rates or some other user action, there's no concern for how users like or dislike what's being advertised. Facebook can focus on making the advertisers happy, and the customers have to bear that inconvenience as their cost of using the site.
7 Handy CSS Hacks
Flash Physics Engine
Note that this research is only offensive with regards to highly visible traits such as race and gender. The reason is that this leads to discrimination (a rational strategy in the absence of other info if the research were to be correct).

However, it would not be offensive for scientists to say that people with a certain DNA sequence are more intelligent -- at least not yet since personalized DNA sequencing is not common.

So one solution to this problem would be to simply hide race and gender by allowing people to work from home, meet online, etc. There are probably many sorts of businesses where this would be possible.
I think it's a good idea at any age to take some time off and have fun. But you don't have to do it each Friday and Saturday. That custom is just an artifact of people having regular office jobs. It might work better for one person to work 7 days a week but take two hours off each day, or another person to work solidly for two months and then take an entire week off.
Who cares? IQ isn't a good predictor of much, other than performance on other IQ tests. It's true that there are broad correlations between IQ and paths in life[1], but it's not like our greatest contributors to society have been the ones with the highest IQ. I'm just going to laugh at someone someone comes to me and says "You should hire me because I scored at +3 sigma on multiple 'intelligence' tests!".

1. See the graph at http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=321
Not really. We are at a new plateau, if you want: stuff that used to be hard is now standard. So people can lift up their heads and get going with something new.
> 1) Listen to the little voice. If he wants to be doing something else, so do you. You can only ignore him for so long.

Careful; he can get you in trouble. Wear protection. ;-)
The greatest contributors to math and science have had high IQs.
San Francisco Startup Weekend: HelpHookup.com (live progress)
Ask YC:  Getting In the Zone?
Noprocrast is a great feature, however in my experience anti-addiction tools have a limited effect on procrastination. Procrastination is avoidance behavior by definition, and I've found that I can always find something to do instead of dealing with the large context switch that comes with hacking.

One thing I'm trying is looking for opportunities to leave easy compiler/interpreter errors in my code, so that when I sit down to work I can just run the module I was working on and the compiler will immediately point me to a place to get started. This is somewhat similar to the advice pg gave in Hackers and Painters about saving up bugs to do when you're tired, but I've found it works really well for remembering where you were.

Even if you don't leave a bug on purpose, sometimes having a routine like that can help. What techniques do you use?
10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets
totally, people can give you feedback on ideas. If its too big for you at that time store it until you have made some contacts that can help you do it or have the money to hire the skills needed. I work this way.
This is the San Francisco startup weekend. We're in there right now, locked up in a big room, and hacking away our Community Response Web application. It's intense. We'll be releasing today.
Ask YC: Is distributing your source code a stupid idea?
A lot of web apps these days are hosted, but there are still some that are licensed (haveamint.com, fogbugz, warehouseapp.com).

I'm thinking about making an app to sell cheap, $30, but should the source code be included with it? The application is meant for anyone with a shared hosting account or VPS, so the source code might be useful for hackers who want to change things for their own needs.

But at the same time, giving away the source code feels like you're giving away your hard work.

What do you guys think?
huge second to this - definitely the funniest show in years
Wow, so now all us wanna-be essayists can thank people at the end of our posts like PG does. Except that nobody will have ever heard of the people we thank.

Of course, you could just send copies unbidden to people anyway. Hmm.

Thanks to Al Gore, Donald Knuth, Warren Buffett and Sergei Brin for reading early drafts of this comment.
I think it really depends. Most of the applications that currently exist on Facebook are defined by Facebook itself. That is to say, the applications add to the features of Facebook, rather than Facebook adding to the application. I think that soon, we will start seeing sites rely on Facebook's API to drive the social infrastructure of their site. In this way, the site would be self-sufficient, but could take advantage of Facebook's platform to add value to their own offering.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that the applications that receive grants from the fbFund will be of this ilk rather than a SuperMegaUltraPoke or Vampires and Pirate Ninjas application. At least, I hope so. If not, Facebook apps will never mature, and will be the flash in the pan that many think they will.
Hacker New UI issue with comment voting
I accidentally voted up on a comment I meant to vote down, then voting disappeared and I don't have a way to correct the problem. Could the voting links just fade a bit allowing you to change votes? Or a user thread that shows all votes a user has made with the ability to change your mind. That could also be useful if someone convinces you of a new point of view.
I build up a list of todos of small things to take care of. If I am having trouble getting into something bigger I work on that list until I am drawn into the code and the project and then I switch to larger / more complex tasks.
It's all about eliminating distraction. That means an isolated location, with sound isolation, and no irrelevant people around. Getting in the zone is just a matter of time for me. Spending 20 minutes on something means I should be able to get a good few hours.

The biggest barrier to this is the "i'll start right after [X]". Go the the bathroom, chat with someone about an idea, get a cup of coffee, check my mail, comment on a news article, write a blog post about a cool dancing robot, submit a time card, get a long lunch, go to a neighboring cube to get a piece of candy, get a glass of water, check on my finances, etc.

People fill days doing junk like this. Even if interleaved with real work, the lack of focus prevents the coveted "zone". Identify and eliminate everything besides work that you're doing when you should be in a long stretch of work.
Death of the Hit Parade?
I have ended up watching several Leave it to Beaver episodes lately.
To get into the zone, Mountain Dew + Nine Inch Nails, and keeping small dev tasks on hand, as suggested elsewhere, works wonders. I like todo lists (BaseCamp), haven't tried GTD.

To stay in the zone, /away on AIM/Gtalk, check email once per hour (thanks, The 4 Hour Work Week), phone on vibrate or off. Making sure processes are handled as a queue and not a stack so as to avoid the mania (stress++) of putting out 1000 small fires.

No re-prioritizing anything if someone manages to get through the screens above.

Most of all, as mentioned in another thread earlier, remembering that this is a lifestyle; "ok I'll just binge now and start doing x,y,z when I've [launched, fixed those bugs, implemented the next feature, gotten funding, ... ]" is a way to burn out and ignore the value of and need for finesse and balance in all things.
I know about the case "not even wrong" and all that, and I agree. My point is: you can be a good string theorist, as well as you keep objective, as you say. I agree with that. Otherwise, we risk repeating the history: Schwartz was being believed to be nuts, until his team found some new interesting stuff. We don't know if that can happen again...

Thanks a lot for the article, too.
It all comes down to passion/love. It's easy to get in the zone while hacking with new technology, eating Thanksgiving dinner, or having sex you know... but there's no way I could get in the zone while baking cookies.

It's simple, if you're not excited enough to automatically "get in the zone," then it's not worth struggling or trying to get in the zone... do what you love, the rest comes naturally
The Bell Curve cites studies that say that raw IQ is the single best predictor of future job performance, higher than experience, interview, and everything else.

Too bad it's illegal to give IQ tests as part of the interview process. I think that's partially why the brain teasers have become so popular.

Though I do agree with you that you'd be right to laugh at someone who claims you should hire him simply because of an IQ test. They should also be motivated and interested in that line of work, otherwise I would imagine the intelligence would be wasted.
I think of my project as my woman. Sure she nags and has all kinds of quirks that drive me nuts, and there's so much about me that she simply doesn't understand, so I just wanna get away from her from time to time. But I love her so! She's like a magnet for me, calling me back, tempting me back in a way only she can do. Oh, and that sweet nectar of clean compiles, finely tuned common functions, and her lightning like response to my clicks and keystrokes that just drives me crazy! Face it, fellow hackers, it's in our DNA. Nature has designed us to follow that path of least resistance to propagate our digital genes into perpetuity. We can't resist. We must get back to her. SHE is my zone.
(Sorry, I can't continue this post, my mouse is getting hard, I'm in the zone, gotta go...)
I don't try to avoid procrastinating.

Ok, that sounds wrong. Let me try again: I find that when I'm procrastinating about writing a particular piece of code, it's because there's something nagging at my subconscious telling me "this isn't the right way to solve this particular problems -- go away and think some more".

Once I know what the next step is and know that it's the right next step, I find that I don't procrastinate any more.
I like chilling and engaging with a nice station on Pandora.com. Music really seems to do it for me. It has to have the right sort of ebb and flow to bring me up and down and back, just like my attention, for a mood optimized for building :-) Right now my favorites are John Fahey, John Adams, Explosions in the Sky, and Tommy Emmanuel. For some reason, instrumental, folksy tunes do wonders for my productivity.
A variation of what you propose: advocates of test driven development suggest you always leave your coding session for the next day with a failing test.

A common advice for variants of writer's block is to have some sort of ritual to get you started cranking away. The exact actions are not that important. It could be taking a shower, doing a tea, tidying up your desk, taking some deep breaths, whatever. When you do these things everyday in the same order, your 'muscle memory' eases you into a creative state. I haven't tried this, though.

I'm bad at fighting procrastination. When it gets really bad, I just abuse until I feel the honest urge to get back to work (I mean honest urge as opposed to remorse).

There are some things I found that help when I follow them, although I admit I don't follow them consistently enough:

- Find the time of the day that works best for you. It doesn't need be the same clock time every day. In my case I have screwed sleep patterns (tending to a longer day), so I set it as a delta from my waking time. (I'm considering trying to settle into a 28 hour day, as in http://xkcd.com/320/ , but I'm digressing.)

- Be proactive and aggressive about freeing such time from interruptions.

- Allocate time to do other things you want to do too, including the things you procrastinate in. Doing this helps you not to feel more deprived from (other) fun than from work.

When work time comes and I feel like doing something else, I make myself realise I'm practically missing the working day if I do so. Most times that will get me an honest urge to work. When it doesn't, I just go ahead and do something else all day. I can chain a few days like this, and not everyone can afford this. Eventually I come back refreshed and with no remorse. Other people (and myself, in my late teens/early 20s), would just get into a procrastination/regret spiral instead. YMMV.
First i used to sit on the couch in my lounge using my coffee table, as my laptop table... couch was becoming uncomfortable, so built myself one of those little indian/chinese/japanese styled desks, where you sit on the floor, cross legged...
Then I moved from the lounge (with the TV) into a study/music room. Did miracles to my levels of concentration with absolutely no distractions. Any time I was out of the room, I "knew" i wasnt working, hence forcing myself to get back into the den!
Plus being in the den meant lesser and lesser interruptions/nagging from the wife!
Shared Mutable Memory Must Die
Anything with "Certification" and "Microsoft" in the title. It was a present. I swear. IT WAS A GIFT, OKAY? I have elderly relatives. [sigh] On the other hand, that really shouldn't count as a technical book.

Also, "The Road Ahead" by BillG. From my aunt.
Amazing.. there are so many paths to realizing a startup. These people bootstrapped, consulted, etc. and finally found their startup path, not unlike Cognos which was recently acquired by IBM for $5B.
The hardest part for me is getting the ball rolling. My primary method is to pick the most fun thing I can think of to do. I try not to feel guilty for starting with something easy or fun, because it's such a good way to get going. Once I'm on a roll it's not nearly as difficult to tackle the nastier problems.