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i am doing something about it personally with the citizens climate lobby

Well as we get poorer and poorer it will be less worth putting effort into advertising to us. Im guessing AI will instead focus its effort on convincing rich people of various things.

There are a few clashing forces. One is the power of startups - what people love is what will prevail. It made macs and iphones grab marketshare back from "corporate" options like windows and palm pilot. Its what keeps tiktok running.

An opposing force is corporate momentum. Its unfortunately true that people are beholden to what companies create. If there are only a few phones available, you will have to pick. If there are only so many shows streaming, you'll probably end up watching the less disgusting of the options.

They are clashing. The ppl's sentiment is AI bad. But if tech keeps making it and pushing it long enough, ppl will get older, corporate initiatives will get sticky, and it will become ingrained. And once its ingrained, its gonna be here forever.

is clojure boring yet? Im considering using it for a web app.

I agree and think that this is a huge growing cultural expectation - "you have to live for your children". I don't think it used to be the case.

Well OK sure I get that that would be good for kids but you're also gonna limit the number of parents if that's the new normal.

Yes. But my understanding is that you have to be exceptional already - probably have a pHD and notoriety in some way so you won't be surprised when you get the offer anyways and already would have a strong opinion on it. Most of us don't have to worry about that decision.

I think I have unique insight on this. I used to prioritize "important" work especially things that improved the world (I didn't have a good metric though), and even more especially, something which was important for me specifically to do. The idea of Elon Musk starting SpaceX for instance, it really seems like something good which, if he didn't do it, wouldn't have happened. Thats what I wanted for myself.

However I think this is flawed. I have since realized that the world is too complex to control. It is not up to us to save it because there is no clear path to doing so and there never will be. Thinking there is usually leads to wasted time and opportunity cost of other actually important things you could be doing. The biggest thing you are missing out on is doing work that you love. Yes, love really is the most important option when deciding on what to work on, as opposed to value creation, unique skillsets, supply and demand, etc.

Remember that the world is nothing more than the sum of our experiences, the people we know, what we do every day when we wake up. Your choices every day create it, so by acting well you really are improving the world, every day! Doing what you love is improving the world - even if its working on ads. You have no idea what kinds of influence your actions really have so just do good work for yourself and your loved ones. Everything else takes care of itself and if it didn't, you wouldn't be smart or capable enough to do something about that anyways.

can you elaborate?

Where did the assumption that tech solves big problems come in? Consumer problems of course, but societal problems? Somehow people assumed that solving the problem of being bored on the train is a short jump from solving the problem of housing costs and its not.

Good startups are about making something that people will love. Not something that solves a global crisis.

Thinking of the latter instead of the former often results in "playing house" ideas that sound like startup ideas but aren't actually. At least this is what happens to me when I follow the thought process you are laying out.

My Dad did the coolest one for my fifth grade class that everyone still remembers. He showed us how binary addition in a calculator/computer works by giving us all 0 or 1 notecards. Then since the class is already arranged in a grid, each row is a single digit (8 bits). Then He gave input numbers and we raised our cards according to which bit we were an the person to the left of us.

Honnestly I don't remember the specifics but it was so awesome to see something as abstract as a computer/processor shown to us in a way we could understand and participate in. And the layout of the classroom just happens to be perfect for it.

go outside during lunch mang.

I think you're right but at least startups incentivize trying really really hard - as opposed to joining some big R&D firm. It challenges people to wrestle again and again with the ideas of value and what we want this world to be.

Trying and suffering leads to learning and progress.

Are you sure that human thought isn't basically brute-force bulldozing? Just because we don't feel like it is doesn't mean it is.

The time it takes us to learn something, the number of times we have to see/experience it could be akin to bulldozing couldn't it?

There are a lotttt of neurons in our brains that are constantly going off, perhaps comparable to the amount of transistors in a deep learning gpu if you account for the training time difference

"ing"

This is awesome. I have noticed this type of logic with most content online. If a message is targeted towards a demographic consistently it probably means its not actually a problem and that the reverse message perhaps needs more representation. I suppose its just another result of the clickbait economy that makes low quality articles popular on the web?

Yep, every item would be a node. Similar items like bookmarks would be in 1 cluster while blog posts would be in another.

As far as publishing, its mainly for my own personal use, for me to organize my thoughts, bookmarks, aspirations, etc. Im not sure how to integrate that part (what a visitor might see)

I started on this road because I have a lot of notes in a variety of apps/files on different devices and every three months or so, I write them all down on a big whiteboard to see any common threads/themes, and to try and reorganize/prioritize my life. Its very helpful but every time I do it I have re-erase the whiteboard. This is a more permanent tool to replace that need.

However, finding a specific node might be tricky. Maybe something like a search bar up top with a zoom to node function (like google maps). Or a sort by feature? I haven't thought that out yet.

Ill try out your multikanban site and get some feedback to you. My initial impression is that setting up a kanban board is work - work that could be spent doing other things. To use it in the first place is a time investment. I wonder if it could provide intermediary benefits before the long term benefit of getting your work done more efficiently? So for instance, if you were using it to blog somehow, and a kanban board was created just by happenstance, the user could kill two birds with 1 stone! Anyways, Ill give it a go and let you know what I think.

Im still learning/building. I will link you when I have something more substantial to show. For the first iteration, I am making it with d3.js - something like this: https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3127661b6f13f9316be745e77fdfb08... where each note will be a point. The placement of the notes on screen will be generated by the classifier model. So all bookmarks should be in one cluster, all hobby aspirations in another cluster. I may even use k-means to cluster them.

Then when a classification is incorrect, the user can drag the item to another location so that it is where it should be which will trigger a callback to re-train the classifier model so that it can continually improve.

As far as the classification itself goes, check out this recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14733562

Finally, Id love to hear about your iteration, what were you thinking? (feel free to pm me as well)

as opposed to what? An app? A website is accessible from the largest number of places - my phone, any computer, etc.

Also, 1 intention of this is to streamline my browser use. So that instead of just opening up a new tab and getting distracted with social media/article aggregators, I can organize my time online. I open a new tab to this website and see my todos, things Im interested in, projects Im working on, etc. And thus I have a starting point to go from.

Im also considering adding Kanban board type functionality to it so that I can prioritize my personal tasks/notes/todos and then move them to in progress and done. This needs a lot of screen real estate.

Im building a personal notes classifier, a website where I can write down links, bookmarks, ideas, thoughts, blog posts, projects, articles, etc. and it classifies them based on the text. It also knows whether something should be public or private - so that just I can see it. I want to get it to the point where I use it as part of my daily workflow as a way to organize my thoughts. My hope is that by process of needing/using it, I will understand well what is needed to make it better and the feedback cycle will make it a valuable tool quickly, as opposed to me making something that is intended to be used by someone other than me.

This thread provides a wide enough sample population of people who have a problem with these services. Additionally, this population is getting bigger. I do hear friends and family concerned about facebook -even in the early days. Does grandma care? no. She doesn't need to. We just need to create replacements for these services that replace the need to use them (facebook and google for instance) to 100% satisfaction for those interested. Then we can worry about growing them. We don't need to worry about the entirety of mankind... yet. Startups 101

She wouldn't. But there are many people who don't like Facebook for privacy reasons or other reasons mentioned in this sub-thread. They might opt for such a service. And then it would grow organically if the experience/total package really was more in line what people want out of a web presence. Its not like the whole world would switch overnight

do you use this?

I believe that the internet is powerful because it connects us to people rather than content. My dream is for our portal into the internet (currently google or Facebook) to become a search engine for people. I am interested in x. This person is the top authority on x. Here is a chat window. You can ask it questions that his/her bot will answer at first (to save this person from being spammed). However, eventually if you ask the right person, he/she will be interested enough to join in the conversation.

What am I doing about this? Nothing yet, but I have been thinking about this recently.

thats because its tough! Its tough to come up with good useful things to build. Ideas may not be everything but they are something.

whats your new company?

I think this is a great idea. However, I share kkotak's concern

These innovations are not widely publicized. Perhaps it would be beneficial to all if people could learn about new innovation at Walmart as easily as they can about Amazons. I wonder why the two are different in that department?

do you have advice on whether it is worth going back to school if your goal is to build novel and useful software/ai tools using deep learning - not necessarily improving the algorithms themselves. Would you expect to still need those 5 things you listed as advice.

Interesting. Ive run into this issue before. How do you get around it? I am not a parent, old person, hiker or knitter (a generalization but you know what I mean). Thus how can I solve their problems and solve my own problems at the same time?

Basically is there a way around this inconvenient truth?