alexandros

You would expect a badly architected system to have -more- security mechanisms, as it has a more complex surface to defend. You wouldn't expect it to be more secure though.

Lesswrong.com is built on reddit's codebase. I guess that's a hurray for Tricycle (http://tricycledevelopments.com/) beating it into submission.

I hate to be -that- Greek, but the word typhoon in English is arguably either Greek or Arabic in origin. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=typhoon

May the mocking commence.

Anders Sandberg has a great Google TechTalk on Whole Brain Emulation you may find of interest here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs&feature=playe...

Don't be Google's bitch - but building on Facebook is just fine?

Also, when the constant pressure is taken off and their basic needs are taken care of, maybe some of them can reflect and take a less forced decision to quit. But maybe I'm underestimating alcohol's hold.

I wonder if this was in the plan all along. Schmidt acting as front-man until one of the founders has learned enough and garnered enough respect to credibly take over.

The interesting thing here is that Twitter hasn't even infringed by design. The celebrity culture is more a matter of who happened to find the service useful. If you can be sued for something you didn't even implement but is an artefact of how your platform is utilised by users, well, there's a problem.

What's next, suing Apple because consumers can stick an iPad to their fridge therefore infringing on 'System and method for affixing a touchscreen to a refrigeration device'?

There is a large discussion to be had and I do believe that I have some novel points to make on the subject, but what I would like to do at this point is note that just because you can't imagine another way that this could be done, it doesn't mean that it can't be done another way. You called this a fact, and that's a strong claim that I urge you to retract.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

To approach this from a different perspective, imagine somebody saying the following at about 1890:

"This ignores the fact that if we ever do make a heavier-than-air flying machine it will either be via (a) reverse-engineering of birds or (b) some kind of evolutionary algorithm."

That would have turned out to be false.

"This ignores the fact that if we ever do make a computer smarter than a human it will either be via (a) reverse-engineering of the human brain or (b) some kind of evolutionary algorithm."

Citation please?

Everybody else is doing it? Seriously? That's what discourse on HN has come to?

C'mon Sebastian, you've been called on building a whole argument on an anecdote, suck it up and admit your mistake.

I wonder if AMD could become the ARM of x86. They've already spun out their foundries anyway.

The word you are looking for is the Greek "hamartia" (αμαρτία) [1]. This does make the biblical association you're trying to set up significantly less tenable.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia

Awesome. I wonder if PG can use this to replace the upvote/downvote arrows that crack so badly under zoom and add unnecessary HTTP requests to boot.

For your seatbelt experiment, you can always separate the population based on license plates. There, randomness restored.

I know. Figured changing the title would put me in a worse position than just keeping it as it is. Perhaps a moderator can change it to something more appropriate.

Looking forward to it. Good luck with everything.

I see this is the Greek corner of the comments section, so I should also congratulate Stavros for going through the experience, and hopefully it altered his perception in ways that will help him in the future. Stavro, my offer still stands, if you're ever back in London, drop me a line and I'll buy you a beer.

Now if we can get him to read (and endorse?) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality...

This article is the seventh result on Google for "make violence on" (quotes included). Can a native speaker comment on this use?

It sounds odd/interesting to me and given that the rest of the article is well written, this puzzles me quite a bit. I normally associate such uses of 'make' with native speakers of Arabic, which obviously doesn't apply.

Here's how avg. karma has affected my behaviour (including its before the latest change, moreso now):

My average at this moment is 7.64. By giving all this weight to avg. karma, the message from the site to the users is clear: "higher avg. karma is better, work to improve yours". In my case, this means I should make a comment only if I expect it to get 8 upvotes or more. This in turn means that I should not respond to replies to my comments, as they rarely get to 8+. I should also not reply to articles late in the game as it's unlikely to get to the threshold also. So what will I respond to? Early threads where I feel I can make a contribution. It is also unlikely that I will make 'eccentric' comments that are a risk in terms of votes, but may help break the echo chamber as this behaviour is not encouraged. The only other case I may make a comment is when I feel strongly enough about something that I am willing to take the hit, as in the case of this comment.

Now, many will say that I should ignore karma altogether and that I should just participate in the community as if it didn't exist. For one thing, this is orthogonal to the discussion here. pg has made this change to alter the community's behaviour, therefore he expects it to have an impact. Even if I chose to disregard it, nothing will change in the general case. Secondly, poster avg. karma affects ordering of comments and therefore the impact that your comments have. So it materially affects your experience in this community, and when I have something to say that I feel needs to be said, I benefit from it having the highest possible impact. This makes me care about avg. karma in all other situations.

On the other hand, submitting articles is not subject to such pressures, so I will happily continue doing that.

In that case, I'd be shocked if Gabriel continued to tout the fact that DDG keeps no logs. Surely a court order can't force him to keep doing that.

Since you mentioned 'eye-opening fiction' I give you my wholehearted recommendation for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...

Don't be misled by the 'fanfic' tag, it's a mere shell for a very deep piece of work, endorsed by Eric S. Raymond and David Brin. Many have accused the author for slipping in a lot of his own voice, calling it his own 'Atlas Shrugged', but seeing as you liked that, I think you'll find this a pleasure, too.

Of course it is. Nothing at all is certain when working with so little information, which is why I mentioned probabilities.

However, we know that two such dinners took place, and that David Lee was present at both. Also if they didn't know what was going to go down, why didn't David Lee want to go in the first place?

Again, we are only talking probabilities here, there is a huge amount we certainly don't know.

This is getting tricky again... We now know that Ron Conway knew about the dinner beforehand. We also know that his partner did not want to attend, presumably because he knew the type of conversations that would be had. They talked and decided that David Lee should go.

To me it seems that what changed before&after the dinner, was the publicity it took, which switched Ron Conway from a 'wait&see' approach (at the very least) to the openly hostile approach we saw in the 'nuclear bomb' email.

While before this update I gave Ron the benefit of the doubt (not in small part due to pg vouching), it now seems that he was much less surprised than I thought.

My estimate that the 'nuclear' email was damage control intended to be publicised has just gone up.

First the revision of the language restrictions, then the publication of the App Store guidelines, and now this. I suspect Apple had a run-in with the FCC that gave them considerable cause for concern.

Socrates was grumbling that writing things down was impairing our ability to learn things by heart.

As far as I am concerned, the more rote memorization that things machines can take off my brain's to-do list, the more time+space I can devote to higher-level thinking.

Shall we tally up attempted suicides in the general population also?

I think this is Google's way of training the average user to search like a pro. Many people don't understand that sometimes it takes multiple queries to find what you need. This seems like an extremely effective way to communicate that and encourage users to fiddle with their queries.

What Hawking said is not that god does not exist, but that god is not required for the universe to exist. Subtle but important.