Hacker News Reader

So, Wikipedia should be showing just large donations? ;)

I wonder what would happen if they changed it to just a $1000 donation all the time?

It would be cool for them to create a genetic algorithm that trawled through a primordial soup of pitches and talking points, mixing various appeals, quotes, images, and quantities to see what would make the most money.

Reminds me of Teracent, recently acquired by Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/displaying-best-displ...

Evolving ads are very cool. And a little unsettling.

Why not take it to the next level and do a whole campaign like that ? Even ... a whole company ? Called [name to be found by market study], doing [TBF by customer survey] using [TBF by best practices review]. Or by an evolutionary algo :)

It all depends on your 'soup' you start with. Online advertising is a perfect example of punctuated equilibrium: big ideas that get gradually refined, until the highest return on investment comes from creating another big idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com