Hacker News Reader

rpm4321on Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)

You should add a (2005) to the end of the title.

These related lists have some of the omissions people are pointing out:

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

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

rpm4321on Google Shames Slow U.S. ISPs With Its New YouTube Video Quality Report

I know Google is traditionally very stingy when it comes to adding elements to their interfaces, but this seems important enough to dedicate at least a small portion of screen real estate to it on every YouTube video page. It would certainly have more of an impact than a report that 99% of users will never see.

It doesn't have to be a big deal - maybe just a "cellphone bars"-like icon, linked to further info and net neutrality content.

rpm4321on Baidu Hires Andrew Ng

Norvig himself has a different take on that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4#t=86

rpm4321on Feeling depressed after multiple failure, any examples of failure to cheer me up

I just came across this yesterday - "Stories of failure and redemption – 18 startup founders share their lowest moments before coming out on top":

https://www.attendly.com/stories-of-failure-and-redemption-1...

rpm4321on Microsoft Is Suddenly a New Company. But Is It Too Late?

The fact that they've just recently promoted the mastermind of the "Scroogled" campaign to Chief Strategy Officer probably doesn't help:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/business/mark-penn-ex-clin...

rpm4321on A Review of Her by Ray Kurzweil

I think Ray uses "upload" as shorthand for something more complex.

Say over the course of 10 years you replaced 1 of the millions of cortical columns in your neocortex every minute or so with a functionally equivalent computer chip. You would never stop being you. Your consciousness would never be interrupted. You would simply become something greater.

This is already happening in a very limited way with the various brain implants used to treat Parkinson's, hearing impairment, blindness, strokes, head injuries, etc.:

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

rpm4321on Famo.us Demos

I've always wanted to use one, but the fact that very few domain hack startups have taken off keeps me away.

last.fm and del.icio.us are the best examples I can come up with of successful startups with domain hacks, and I don't think del.icio.us was ever a huge hit outside of the tech world. Plus they both ended up buying/switching to the dot coms anyway.

rpm4321on Doom’s Creator Looks Back on 20 Years of Demonic Mayhem

This was interesting:

"The worst aspect of the continuing pace of game development that we fell into was the longer and longer times between releases. If I could go back in time and change one thing along the trajectory of id Software, it would be, do more things more often. And that was id’s mantra for so long: 'It’ll be done when it’s done.' And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by—if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game."

rpm4321on AWS instance was scheduled for retirement

This is somewhat unrelated, but what's the general consensus on the security of EC2 for very sensitive computation?

For example, I have a client who has some algorithms and data that are potentially quite valuable. EC2 and other AWS services would be a huge help with their project, but is there any way measures could be taken to ensure that no one - even Amazon employees - can get to their code and data?

Edit: devicenull makes some good points - I guess I had the CIA's $600 million AWS contract in my head when asking my question.

rpm4321on Why we revert to original titles

Hey pg, I've often wondered if something similar to this might help with the civility issue.

I'm not thinking blink tag gaudy :) - but seeing an "unmissable" reminder message as you are typing your comment into the textarea would probably be helpful in curbing abuses.

rpm4321on Video Of The Week: Paul Graham in 2005

One of my favorite pg videos is the one where he's being "heckled" at Defcon 2005:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Lb8ZgQP74

I don't know why, but there's something sort of inspiring about rolling with the punches and then going on to keynote PyCon.

rpm4321on Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?

Yes, those are the broad strokes. For that prize amount, you would probably have multiple teams applying for the prize and providing proof of their accomplishments, and the donors would then vote on whose project best accomplishes the prize's goals.

rpm4321on Show HN: Kickstart Your Own X-Prizes with FuturePrize

Thanks Daniel, appreciate it.

Regarding the points you made:

1. Time span - there may be some "erosion" in the prize amount as it goes on, but we follow up with pledgers to update payment information as necessary, and update the prize amount accordingly. Unfortunately the time span can't really be helped due to the fact that prizes have to have time to build in value in order to attract teams to the prize, and then there's R&D time for those teams to actually accomplish the prize's goals.

2. Regarding fraud, there is a final up or down vote on any leading prize applicant that didn't receive 70% or greater of the vote. I don't want to get into too much detail publicly on fraud prevention, because it's obviously counter-productive. ;) - but we're certainly confident we'll be able to prevent someone from pledging 70% of the prize in order to capture the remaining 30%. Also, the majority of that 30% would surely cancel their pledges if a sub-par project was about to win - that is if we hadn't already disqualified the fraudulent applicant.

3. Regarding free R&D for a big contributor, I suppose that's a possibility, but I'm not sure it would be a very big concern. Presumably any R&D that would motivate a scheme like that would be pretty valuable, and all I.P. would still belong to the prize applicants themselves.

rpm4321on Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?

No worries, it's a slightly confusing concept. You can basically crowdfund cash prizes for anything you want to see get done in the world. Teams then apply for the prize with proof that they've accomplished the prize's goals.

You basically can crowdfund your own X-Prizes.

rpm4321on Ask HN: What is the stupidest startup idea you ever had/heard?

Apparently mine, based on the number of upvotes my Show HN is getting right now ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374377

rpm4321on Show HN: Kickstart Your Own X-Prizes with FuturePrize

Hi HN, FuturePrize is a crowdfunding site for incentivized prize competitions – kind of like if you mixed Kickstarter with the X-Prize.

This isn’t a minimum viable product (we had a couple of alternate takes on the site that we ended up scrapping), but it’s definitely a more basic version of what we have in mind. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but we would greatly appreciate any feedback HN might have.

We’ve gone ahead and seeded the site with half a dozen prizes of varying degrees of crazy, that we hope illustrate the range of projects you might see on FuturePrize – from absurdly ambitious, literal moonshots like the Icy Moon FuturePrize, to something pretty basic like “A Software Fix for Glowing Pet Eyes in Photos” that just represents an unmet consumer need.

We realize this site could be a bit controversial on HN, where the “Idea vs Execution” debate happens frequently, and usually leans pretty heavily towards “Execution” being everything. That’s mostly true, but it’s our view that ideas can definitely be very important. People seem to know this instinctively when they hang on to them like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, even if deep down they know that they may never get the chance to execute on them. It’s our belief that providing a platform that allows the free exchange and funding of ambitious or novel ideas - where people can get a bit of recognition for their idea, and maybe even choose to keep a very small portion of the funds raised - could be a very beneficial thing.

Also, just to clarify, when we picture our average prize creator, they look more like your average HNer with a folder full of side projects that they don’t have the time or exact skillset to take on, rather than your stereotypical “Idea Guy” - although there could definitely be a lot of diamonds in the rough from them as well.

If the site is successful, there will probably be a lot more “noise” than on Kickstarter or Indiegogo – unfunded prizes, or crazily unrealistic prizes that get a lot of pledges but have very little chance of being won. It’s our view that this is actually a good thing. These prizes would be more like crowdfunded moonshots… stretch goals for humanity. If no one wins, none of the donors are charged – no harm, no foul… but, if someone manages to pull it off, there are tremendous benefits for everyone.

Also, just wanted to post this before anyone else does:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q

;)

rpm4321on [dead]

What a phony little post. The author appears to be willfully conflating the act of hiring with the act of investing, which are held to completely different legal standards.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies here - but also to pretty much every sentence in the last two paragraphs ending in a question mark.

Edit: Completely forgot to mention the fact that PG has made it abundantly clear that his statements revolve around "the ability to communicate", not some sweeping bias against immigrants - which is absurd in itself, considering how diverse YC funded founders are. I think it's really unfortunate that people seem to want to exploit his candor, when he's essentially giving helpful advice to immigrant founders that it would be well worth their time and effort to improve their communication skills.

Had the author spent even a few minutes researching this, he could have easily discovered the full context of PG's quotes, PG's clarifications, and the fallacy of his investor == employer logic, which really makes it look like he's trying to deliberately mislead readers.

Maybe it's time for PG to update his "What you can't say" essay:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

rpm4321on TEDx talks discredited: Sheldrake speaks, argues that speed of light is dropping

If you haven't seen them, make sure to check out The Onion's TED parodies - Onion Talks:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4NL9i-Fu15hhYGB-d0hmS...

They may be the funniest thing The Onion has ever done.

===================================

Edit: of particular interest to the HN crowd would be their takedown of the "Idea Guy":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q

and the "Social Media Consultant":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK62I-4cuSY

rpm4321on Bankers now Too Big to Jail

Thank God this is at the top of the page. I'm always shocked to see Taibbi get so much attention on HN. I would take his commentary about as seriously as I would any other polemicist of the Glenn Beck / Michael Moore variety.

rpm4321on Netflix releases House of Cards

I've been saying for years that Netflix ought to have a tiered product, where I can choose to pay 3 or 4 times as much a month and have a commensurate increase in selection. I could easily see paying cable TV prices for a service with a universal catalog, that lets me stream the movie or TV show of my choice instantly.

rpm4321on Ask HN: What's the Best DMCA, Privacy Policy, and ToS Boilerplate Out There?

Hi Dan, I'm aware of how DMCA works, but from what I've seen there's a fair amount of variation between how the DMCA Notice pages are written.

Examples:

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

https://www.dropbox.com/dmca

EDIT:

In case anyone's interested, here's the relevant info and forms from the US Copyright Office:

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

as well as a few other resources:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loo...

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/

rpm4321on Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

"I'm saying this because he is a businessman, not an engineer."

Musk is the Chief Designer at Space-X, Product Architect at Tesla Motors, and a member of the Stanford University Engineering Advisory Board. He has previously served as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. - Wikipedia.

rpm4321on We're hiring - but we probably won't pay you.

The "Webmaster" better hope he doesn't pay his attorney either.

rpm4321on We're Entering The Worst Period In Modern Search History

Just curious, when you say that it's easy to roll your own web search engine, are you referring to things like Yahoo BOSS and Common Crawl, or are their other OSS projects / data sources out there I'm not aware of yet?

It's relevant to an important side project that I'm working on, but I'm new to search, so any links or other info you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

rpm4321on Former Microsoft executive says Ballmer culls internal rivals to retain power

Interestingly enough, Larry Page is on record recently talking about the possibility of Google scaling up to a million employees:

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Lar...

rpm4321on You Are Going to Die

Hey Eliezer, what do you think it would take to bring the price point of cryonics down to a level where it could become commonplace?

Right now, the primary barriers to its widespread addoption are still probably incredulity and religious objections, but I think those would quickly fall by the wayside if it didn't cost as much as a house.

Perhaps an X-Prize style competition to develop more cost-effective technologies and techniques?

rpm4321on You Are Going to Die

"all we do is delay it by another number"

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 > 80

rpm4321on Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

Pic is of Rafael Reif, not Heymann.

Wow, I think there probably should be consequences for Heymann (and possibly Ortiz), but in one sentence you've probably given the best demonstration of why vigilante justice is so troubling.

rpm4321on Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

You may be right about the industry as a whole, but I'm betting you're wrong about this particular instance based on what I know about PG and YC.

When I was reading the original TC article, I was thinking that there is actually an incredible opportunity here to create a legitimate ad network that would allow desktop developers to monetize similarly to how it's done on the web - to basically become the DoubleClick of the desktop world.

Why should ad supported desktop apps be any different than ad supported mobile or web apps?

Edit: These downvotes are pretty surprising, I didn't realize I was even being controversial. Can someone explain why creating a legitimate, privacy-respecting ad platform which allows desktop developers to monetize their applications in a manner that's almost exactly the same as ad supported web and mobile apps is that awful?

I'm not even saying that's necessarily what they're up to, I can just see where there's a tremendous opportunity to try and clean up the industry, and how, based on the people involved, the author and the commenter above could very easily be jumping to the wrong conclusions.