rweba

Well, he WAS a child prodigy who published his first major paper at 18 and got his PhD when he was 20, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually did independently come up with the idea of hashing at age 13.

In general I think people should just stop being triggered by Wolfram's comments.

Yes, he does go out of his way to emphasize what he feels are his personal contributions.

Yes, in some cases some of his claims do appear to be a bit exaggerated (e.g. some of his cellular automata stuff)

But at the end of the day, he is still a pretty smart guy who actually writes about math/science topics fairly well, and I think that is far more important than raging every single time he gives himself credit for something or emphasizes his own work on a topic.

I have been thinking about it and I think the issue with Facebook in particular is how AGGRESSIVE and CARELESS they have always been in violating privacy. Just like Uber their philosophy is "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission". And of course they have an official slogan of "Move fast and break things".

So all these different controversies are not just a coincidence but are very much baked into their organizational culture. They are obsessed with winning at all costs and clearly see privacy issues as just inconveniences to achieving their goals.

I am not sure if it is possible to imagine a social network that truly respected privacy at its core, that didn't try to get away with as much as it could, that put its users interests ahead of increasing Daily Active Users.

But if Facebook actually operated like that, I suspect there would be a lot less concern.

I don't know if that is even possible though.

This should not be viewed as a failure.

This is the nature of startups, even if you do every single thing right, work hard, manage the cash flow, innovate, etc., there is a more than 90% chance you won't get that billion dollar plus exit.

The only unique thing here is that Lytro got a lot of hype and raised a lot of money, so people naturally expected a unicorn.

What I am saying is these guys don't necessarily have anything to be ashamed of. In the worst case they gained a lot of experience that they can apply to their next idea.

That said, I am curious: Will the founders get ANY money out of it? A comment claimed that they raised $200 million at $360 million valuation, so theoretically they may end up with nothing.

This is great stuff!

I am a CS professor and these are exactly the kind of things my undergraduate students struggle with!

Especially these two points:

* Start assignments as soon as they are given out. Stupid, right?

* Be curious. You are there to learn, which means digging beyond the provided material. So many students are sadly focused on the grade or assignment, not on the learning.

You should definitely write a book!

Eh, I still don't buy the hyperventilating.

The breathless narrative is that Amazon is some all-consuming all dominating monster that is just going to crush everyone everywhere.

I don't see any justification for this.

(1) Walmart is much bigger. Not to mention Tencent and Alibaba who.

(2) They have well-funded competition and no monopoly power in any of their sectors.

(3) They only have 4% of all retail (online and off) hardly a stranglehold.

Yes, they will do well and grow, but I don't think they will just effortlessly win in every market like this article is implying.

I really like this obituary, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Penrose not only understands the details of Hawking's work at a much deeper level than most of us, but as a contemporary of Hawking's he has followed his career for decades and can give us a good overall impression.

I think there are a few factors:

(1) The culture started by Paul Graham, back when he used to write lots of essays, emphasized a certain "hyperrationality" and attracted a lot of super-logical people in the beginning.

(2) Heavy moderation to keep things from deteriorating and discourage overly polemical debates.

The bottom line is that people quickly get an idea of what is tolerated and what is not tolerated so they work to stay in line which doesn't seem to happen as much on other websites.

I lost so many comments on IMDB.

I haven't even bothered to visit since they removed the forums.

I understand why they did it, the racism and trolling was ridiculous there, but there were some good comments, especially on the forums for the less popular movies.