thrush

What scares me about AI is the omnipresence it can give small groups. Imagine that you are a government keen on preventing a particular argument from gaining traction in the media. AI gives you a tool that can listen for the argument becoming developed in chatrooms, forums, comment threads, etc. Once detected, AI also gives you a strategy to attack the credibility of the argument. Governments apparently do something similar to this today, although it seems like a much more manual process [1]. Society will continue to see benefits from developments in AI through software like Google' Search, Apple's Siri, Spam Detection, Network Security, just to name a few. Although certain uses of AI will only be available to small and elite groups, and the fear probably stems from the one-sidedness of this powerful technology.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/world-cracks-internet

Slightly related, but what are thoughts on using internet harassment for extortion purposes or personal attacks. In many ways, the technology and policies we'd use to prevent this harassment could be frightfully similar to technology that allows censorship.

Interesting related article: http://www.troyhunt.com/2014/11/ransom-is-new-black-increasi...

Great! Exactly the information I was looking for :)

How is Netlify better than Github Pages?

I'd like to completely retract my statement! Reading the Senator's letter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8633683) put things in perspective for me. Forget bad for business, it's bad for human rights. Ethical grey area is an understatement.

Is this Android only?

Agreed. Besides, they've never acted upon those words. It was essentially a thoughtcrime.

I agree. The policy issue is between Taxis and existing legislation. The ethics issue is between Lyft. Taking a step back, this is one of the craziest market competitions that can exist, and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Remember, Taxis didn't have nearly as fierce competition between themselves it reminds me of cable companies. Perhaps they'll eventually have to settle for different territories to manage.

It really seems like your points were towards legislation that prevents Uber from operating as business where Taxis are the main competition, not other similar services like Lyft. Journalists cover lots of stories, and I think the one that I linked in the Verge is a great example of something Uber would not want released. $1M is also nothing compared to what they pay their lawyers to fight legal battles against Taxi incumbents.

I think you've misinterpreted what Thiel meant about Uber's ethical problem. It seems like Thiel was actually talking about the competition between Uber and Lyft rather than Taxis.

The points you bring up are actually no longer huge problems for Uber. Some airports legally allow Uber to stop by. Uber is incredibly better than the previous Taxi service for both the employee (read about Healthcare), and for the consumer (this is obvious). Congress people use Uber all the time. Ordering and canceling rides is just one example how Uber might be overly aggressive (read more http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play...).

Is the app in the iTunes store yet?

Compared to the current amount?

If only there was an app for voting...

Would love to have an option to store state in the query string or hash so that I could share my favorite palette :)

What is the justification of this law? Seems arbitrary to me. Another question. Is not providing ample security the same as explicitly granting a backdoor?

Gotcha. The next step is making an animatable SVG. I'm trying to follow https://inkscape.org/doc/tracing/tutorial-tracing.html

Really silly request, but could someone provide an implementation where I can just drop in an svg and it would have this effect? Please, and thank you.

What can legally be done to prevent something like this? It's worth noting that this is not nearly as bad as the kind of stuff that ISPs do in some other countries...

May as well just learn everything on this list... http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok

I guess eventually those people will be at the top of government, which is really cool to think about.

You may need an account to see, but the important text here is:

  If you have questions about this statement or believe that we have not adhered to it, please contact us by mail at:

  Privacy Policy Administrator c/o Hive Cloud Limited
  Unit 512, Tower A
  Ming Pao Industrial Building
  18 Ka Yip Street, Chai Wan
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I couldn't find any other info about where the company is based or who its founders and executive team are.

Weight limit football is a thing in college: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_football

Discovered through Jason Goldman's tweet:

  As someone who hates negotiating I found this really 
  good concrete advice for how to ask for a raise. 
  https://medium.com/p/da34ee4ecd5a 

Source: https://twitter.com/goldman/status/521030226596618240

I wonder if this is how open source started.

I could see where you're coming from, but the two objective arguments I see that argue for the toning down of government surveillance, or at least major changes to our surveillance system would be:

1. The current policies and attitude are [seemingly] going to have negative economic impacts of enormous proportions.

2. Surveillance will always be a cat and mouse game as technology improves, and surveillance will become increasingly difficult, perhaps impossible.

How would things change if Schmidt held political office? What if all big time VCs we're politicians too. Basically, what I am wondering is whether this is a policy problem or a technology problem.

> In my opinion, Genius is not as compelling of a product to work on as they seem to think.

I guess it could be helpful to define what the product exactly is. Genius is a high traffic transactional site, so they probably have the same problems that any large site has. They're also incredibly text heavy, and I probably wouldn't being going too far if I said that they are striving to eventually have every piece of written text available. Looking at these two qualities alone, I feel that there is enough going on to make their product compelling to virtually any person that has done software engineering, applied statistics, machine learning, or read a book.

I'm impressed by the attention to detail. I also really like the "Run into the Spike" point, especially the line, "Want to chill and watch TV? Go to a gym-esque place instead." Having effective distractions is a great strategy. On a similar note, my hockey coach in high school used to tell us to stretch if we we're watching TV. Even if you are "chilling", maybe there's a way to utilize that chill time in a positive way.

This is possible, but it's also possible that the replacement will not have the same level of success. I assume that success distribution is more of a power rule than equally distributed. I think this is a fairish assumption because otherwise there would not be a tiered system for colleges in the first place. In this case, Harvard does in fact lose much.

My thoughts on the admission system is that there are not incredible incentives to improve it besides public outcry (which is powerful in it's own way, but not enough so to warrant a change overnight, perhaps not even over the course of 5-10 years). If a college overlooks a well-qualified student due to poor assessment, the two possible outcomes are that the student will go to another a school of similar caliber, or that they will end up going somewhere down a few levels of caliber. Although unfortunate, neither of these are too bad, and the hypothetical losses to the school and society are purely that, hypothetical. I believe that introducing an alternative to college that can offer a similar level of education without an application system (or with a more lenient application system) will help drive the incentives to where they need to be. For example, imagine Eileen is applying to Harvard and Harvard has the top program for her interest. We've measured that Harvard is the top program for her interest purely on the content that she would learn and the projects that she would complete. Unfortunately, Eileen gets rejected from Harvard, but now instead of going to UPenn, she signs up for online courses over the next four years that cover the exact same content and projects. Eileen goes on to invent the flexible solar-powered iPhone that reads minds and solves world hunger. She becomes Time person of the year. She donates a lot of money back to her online program. Future incredibly qualified applicants will want to follow in Eileen's footsteps and may sign up for online courses without considered Harvard at all.