skarayan

It computes because it is detached, there is no feeling. To learn, we would need to first create something that is conscious, an ever-changing self. It needs to be in reference to itself, not some notion of compute in a detached paradigm.

We can reason subjectively from the perspectives of Mozilla/Google, or we can reason objectively from the perspective of people.

The concern from people is always about too much power (control) in the hands of a select few.

What choices will they make?

Will they be the best choices?

How will we know?

How much transparency will there be?

Some of these might not apply directly to the open source world, but Google is at the forefront of decisions on the internet.

Actually, I was trying to be sincere -- our actions have consequences on other people and the world at large.

The flip side is that we become observers when we don't take any action in fear of affecting the world.

Other times, we may think that there may be a certain consequence, but the actual outcome ends up being considerably different.

Reference experience becomes important at some point -- it ensures that we take action, make mistakes, set boundaries, and live in the world.

You come off intelligent and thoughtful. I'm not sure where you are located but I'd love to connect with you. I'm Sarkis -- skarayan@gmail.com

Just continue teaching people, like you are doing now.

It is interesting. He is intelligent and has a very good grasp on reality, but does not seem to know himself very well. (e.g. not being able to control his thoughts and visualizations/memories)

It would be tremendous to master the self as well as reality -- then one could control his emotions and visuals, as well as channel it according to their will.

I think this is one of the reasons TDD/BDD have caught on lately, small refactors are easier to manage than changing large chunks of code.

Looking back at my coding workflow early on, I would often get lost in my own code because I would attempt large changes without testing or version control. Interestingly, instead of developing a better workflow, I first learned to keep more inside my head.

Sensing is easier to model out than intuition. Intuition requires the self component because it comes from feelings and past experiences. The current algorithms are important too, but they do not model the self.

The problem is that showing explicit screens and granting authorization and doing all this stuff manually is not a viable solution. I think it is natural that companies won't do this, specially when they make tons of money from the current model.

Privacy needs to be baked into the internet. This is more central to human needs than a google search or facebook connection. People are doing what is easy and using these services, but once a true privacy service comes up neither Larry/Sergey or Zuch will know how to respond. This will likely be outside of their mental framework and new privacy centric companies will emerge.

The problem here is that the whole security model is upside down. No one else should see or have access to my data.

I am sure that Congress could eventually interfere and set certain rules around the handling of personal data, but more likely, we will soon start seeing alternate technical solutions which puts each user's data in that specific user's hands.

There will come a time when it will not be ethical for companies to store un-encrypted personal data.

Bezos is trying to take over the world, like the guys at Google and Facebook. They are architecting the new world as they envision it. It isn't about just one industry or some obscure way of making profits, it is really about all of it.

Educated/uneducated may not be the right terms, but it is possible to have hindsight just by understanding the landscape.

Privacy is becoming a large problem in the internet and encryption will likely be part of the solution. Without encryption, the ownership of data is on the service provider instead of the person.

Privacy is a feature just like free storage. One day, privacy can be available to the masses just like storage is today. (also think back how many people actually wanted or needed multiple gb of free storage for their emails until one was provided by a service like gmail)

In the large projects that I have seen, when I think about how much of the work being done is the core product vs frameworky stuff and/or integration, I think 100-1000x is more accurate.

The pure business logic constitutes a very small part in comparison, but the type of environment/company also matters. Startups tend to have less fluff than large enterprises.

What level of control do you have for authentication? I didn't see much info on this on the website.

Years ago at an interview, I answered this question with "Sometimes I get so excited about what I am working on that it gets counterproductive." :)

IMO, this shows how important each respective product is to each company.

I don't know about published, but I have been able to measure my campaigns by measuring people's feedback to my posts, clicks on links, total sign-ups, conversions, etc.

Some things work better than others, but there is a definite feedback cycle once you have some followers/fans and provide interesting content.

I disagree with just about everything in this article. Social marketing works and it is measurable.

In my experience, the first step is to gain followers or fans. The best way to do this is through targeted advertising. While it is possible to build a follower base without advertising, it is harder. Advertising gives the advantage of speed and targeting.

The second step is to keep providing people with good content, while at the same time, promoting your product. As you provide content, you can measure the number of comments and get a feel for peoples' thoughts. This becomes easy after a while because you become accustomed to your audience and know what they like.

Does this mean that you are going to be able to sell your product? It really depends on your product and the market, just like with anything else.

I would question the product-market fit before I questioned the value in social marketing.

You're right, but we need more transparency. What are the skills of the 9% or so of people that are unemployed now? Do the majority of the unemployed people work at similar types of jobs? What was the reason they lost their jobs?

These are all important questions for reducing that one overall number, but everyone seems to be just focusing on the total number.

While the overall unemployment number is a good indicator for the economy, it is far from the best indicator. Instead of looking at an overall "jobs count", perhaps we should be looking at how the state of technology (or the job market) is improving the overall efficiency in the economy. After all, our lives improve as technology becomes more efficient.

For example, while Amazon may step on the shoes of the likes of Borders, look at what it is doing for consumers. On a global scale, we should be focusing on improving the lives of people, but at the same time we should continue to promote competition.

The unfortunate consequence of competition is that some people lose out. To rectify this, perhaps we should focus on creating the right types of jobs and promoting constant education. In addition to the unemployment number, I wish we could see some additional metrics.

At a previous job, I was responsible for data management and business intelligence. My team basically looked at the company's numbers and sliced and diced it every way possible. I would love to see some more metrics from the government. I would also love to see some better tools developed by the government to help us visualize the data. (One tool that comes to mind for this sort of stuff is an OLAP cube)

Without going too far away from the point, a simple "unemployment number" isn't enough. Let's look at some more data and see where the problems are. Also, let's make this transparent so that people start talking about the details instead of one number.

"It gets a LOT more into the nitty-gritty of personal politics"

That's the feeling I get from the author's last few posts that have made it to the top of HN.

It seems very superficial and focused on how he felt versus something substantial.

In my opinion, a reason for concern is different than believing their product is inferior.

At the end of the day, this is business. In business, there are many ways to battle the competition.

G+ is clearly gaining some initial traction and Facebook doesn't want their platform to be used to better the competition.

Thank you, I will read it.

The problem for the web design community is that web design has become a commodity.

"Your example is a good one, but as others point out, the computer has been designed logically. Biology hasn't been."

I'll do a little play on words here. Are you saying that biology isn't logical? Does it defy the laws of the universe, physics, and the axioms in math? Certainly not. I think what you are saying is that it isn't the same as a silicon chip and follows different rules. We just don't know enough about biology to peel away the layers, but there are definitely layers. There has to be at least a one-to-one mapping between the genome and a live being, but I would bet that the layers are far more complicated.

I read a study a while back which monitors the different areas developed inside a mouse's brain. The study concluded that a certain part of the brain gets more developed as the mouse tries to run threw a maze vs a mouse that does nothing at all. I gather that the study is trying to point out which area of the brain is responsible for memory, and perhaps certain type of memory.

I fail to see how this study could tell us something meaningful regarding our ability to take information from our senses and store it into our memory. How could we understand more about how this process works? Are we that far away from understanding the inner workings of the brain that we need to do studies like this? If so, then I tend to believe that we are far from the singularity.

"My larger point is that lots of biological science is a collection of edge cases. We know so little about the systems we're studying and have such crude tools to investigate them, that we get blindsided by things sitting in plain sight all the time."

I understand. From my previous example, I would probably come up with edge cases too if I was trying to look at binary code for the first time and trying to figure out how a complex computer system works. Perhaps I would poke the system and monitor which part of the file ended up with more 1's and 0's.

"Lots of smart scientists really believed that once the human genome was sequenced, we would have the keys to the biological kingdom."

Here's my (a computer scientist's) view on the matter:

Imagine that you have a relatively complex computer system written with object oriented principles. Now, imagine that you are looking at the binary representation of this system and trying to make sense out of the whole thing. Also, imagine that you have no knowledge of how computer systems work and how the layers between the computer program, programming language, possibly virtual machine, and native code work.

There are layers involved between these objects and their binary representation. I imagine that there are also layers between our genome (analogy to binary code) and the leveraged representation of ourselves (analogy to object oriented system).

I think that this is why it is hard to make much sense out of the genome, even though the human genome was sequenced.

I also imagine that this is why it is hard to make sense out of the brain by looking at the brain directly. An analogy would be that we are again looking at binary representation of information.

It would be far more useful to figure out how this stuff works. I am not sure how this is done at this time.

We remember what matters to us. For example, ideas, concepts, and feelings matter because we shape everything around these things. But, how much do facts matter in comparison? To remember facts, we have to memorize the information itself rather than the metadata (information about information).

It is all about leverage, we can leverage more information by storing this metadata in memory. Additionally, metadata is a lot smaller in information content than the information itself. (it takes up less space in our minds)

Recruiters contact me all the time for startup positions in NYC, almost on a daily basis (no joke). They find me from my profile on LinkedIn.

I would say that it is important to optimize your LinkedIn profile for a particular type of position and monitor how many people are viewing your profile and how often you come up in search results.

I just don't think that comparing programmer salaries across the board makes much sense because of the different domains. Understanding the domain is often more difficult than understanding the programming language.

It depends a lot on the domain and your expertise of the business overall. For example, working for a non-profit is completely different than working on trading algorithms for a hot hedge fund where you also partake in creating the algos.

I originally wrote from my iPad and I have a hard time using the touch keyboard.

Here's my 2 cents:

1) Cheaper than Adwords, much much cheaper. The ads tend to be expensive when you first get an estimate from Facebook, but in practice, this number goes down 5-fold. Also, in comparison to Adwords, it is at least 5-fold cheaper.

2) Easier to target people. This depends on what you are doing, but I believe it works better if you are trying to build a community with a specific interest. However, Adwords is probably better for targeting advertising for an e-commerce store.

3) If you advertise your fan page, you have a hook to constantly advertise to your fans. I like building my fan page, generating conversation, and sparking interest. It is important to give users good content, but it also doesn't hurt to self promote about 10-20% of the time. It all depends on what you are doing.