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patrickcollison.com

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Re: Questions

#41

Post by MrQuincle »

bpizzi wrote: post #31

> Will end-user applications ever be truly programmable? Emacs, Smalltalk, Genera, and VBA embody a vision of malleable end-user computing: if the application doesn't do what you want, it's easy to tweak or augment it to suit your purposes. Today, however, end-user software increasingly operates behind bulletproof glass. This is especially true in the growth areas: mobile and web apps. I'll pick this one: end users b…

This is an interesting one to me.

Will voice recognition at home coupled with AI allow people to start "programming".

Currently home automation systems through something like Alexa are only listening to direct commands. Interesting follow-up functionality:

* The capability for introspection. Alexa, who is home? Alexa, why are the lights on? Alexa, why are the lights not on? Especially the latter means advanced reasoning capabilities.

* You preferably also want to adjust the behavior by voice. Alexa, when I enter the room I want the lights to go on. Alexa, the lights only need to turn on when it's dark outside.

I had one student working on this problem: https://crownstone.rocks/attachments/thesis/nannewielinga.pd...

Recently I got a request from a person who works a lot with blind people. A system that allows them to query the state of the environment is very valuable to them as well.

It's a different take on being "truly programmable", but I think the different modality makes it an interesting one.

Re: Questions

#42

Post by chucky »

drakonka wrote: post #40
chucky wrote: post #35

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm? Several reasons. First, you need to recognize that any Sweden-based startup will, when it gets to be known internationally, have a Stockholm-based office. So it's not about a city of 1 million inhabitants, it's a country of 10 million that's the true number here. As an example, I believe Spotify opened their original offices in both Stockholm and Göteborg more…

I previously read someone's take on this in relation to people feeling secure enough to take risks here (not just in Stockholm but Sweden as a whole I guess). While notch's success may be an outlier, the process of trying to do your own thing isn't here. I'm not sure when in his development Notch left King, but in general there are quite a few people here who just try to go their own way (sometimes completely outside…

Definitely, having a social safety net that allows for moving on from failures is probably a huge factor.

Re: Questions

#43

Post by BlackFingolfin »

shawn wrote: post #20
panic wrote: post #8

> What's the successor to the book? And how could books be improved? > Books are great (unless you're Socrates). We now have magic ink. As an artifact for effecting the transmission of knowledge (rather than a source of entertainment), how can the book be improved? How can we help authors understand how well their work is doing in practice? (Which parts are readers confused by or stumbling over or skipping?) How can…

It seems like PDFs might still work in a hundred years. Just like zip files. Fun fact: HN's been around for 10% of a century. That makes Arc one of the longer-lived programming languages. Re: the ability to take books off the shelf and read it, Library Genesis has made a lot of progress in that area. http://libgen.io/

PDFs might still work - but will the storage devices they are on? There are good reasons to doubt this: tapes, CDs and DVDs age and degrade over time; plus devices to read them only last so long, and may not be produced anymore at some point. Classic "spinning" hard drives degrade, too; and even ignoring this, will there still be conputers supporting, say, SATA, in 50 years?

And then there is a trend to switch to onboard soldered flash in new devices which adds further problems.

Not saying this is impossible to overcome, but "PDF might still work" is at best solving a part of the problem, for only a part of all data (PDF is great - but only for some types of data) one might want to preserve.

Re: Questions

#44

Post by hyperpallium »

> Is Bloom's "Two Sigma" phenomenon real? ... one-on-one tutoring using mastery learning led to a two sigma(!) improvement in student performance.

When I tutored, I found students often had some misunderstanding, somewhere. So my task was to listen, to find that misunderstanding, so I could correct it. This "teaching" is listening, more than talking. The idea is they are lost, but to know what direction they need, I first must know where they are.

To correct misunderstanding without this guidance can be very difficult, and might only happen serendipitiously, years later... assuming they continue with study. Which an unidentified misunderstanding can prevent.

Recently, I'm seeing the other side, while self-learning some maths. I can see how much one-on-one tutoring would help clear up misunderstandings. Instead, I'm using the strategy of insisting on starting from the basics, chasing down each detail as much as I can, using online resources, and working out proofs for myself. Each step is a journey in itself...

Luckily, I have enough skill, confidence, motivation and time. By working it out myself, I think I'm also gaining a depth of understanding I could not get from a tutor's guidance.

But it sure would be a lot more efficient!

[ PS I haven't yet read the two pdf's in the question ]

Re: Questions

#45

Post by jacquesm »

Reading this I'd feel a lot better if YC was run by Patrick, I prefer people that know what questions to ask over those with all the answers.

Re: Questions

#46

Post by eigenloss »

> Part of the problem with blogs is that they're less rewarding than Facebook and Twitter: your post may perhaps get some thoughtful responses but it doesn't get immediate likes.

To me, this is not a problem. People should not be rewarded with instant dopamine for low-effort actions. [0] The reward for publishing on a blog is in the responses you receive from readers and not from a counter incremented by a click or pageview.

I rarely see more than shallow insight on Twitter/Facebook, as posts have a short visibility lifetime and replies longer than a sentence are collapsed. By contrast, blogs (not like Medium or Stack Exchange) will often receive deep, thoughtful replies months or years after they are published. There's no "algorithm" to please when you're writing a blog; your post will stay there until your domain name expires.

If you are having issues finding worthwhile blogs to read, ask people around you for suggestions. Not everything needs to be indexed by software.

> And part of the problem is, of course, that writing a good post is much harder than writing a witty tweet.

Where is the problem here? Thermodynamics and information theory tell us that a valuable long-form post ought to be more difficult to write by several orders (of orders) of magnitude. Yes -- it would be wonderful if we could all spit out fascinating 17-page theses every week or two, but that just isn't compatible with our biology. On the other hand, publishing 17 pithy tweets in a week is pretty easy, and people will probably give you plenty of attention for it.

[0] https://yihui.name/en/2017/12/so-bounties/

Re: Questions

#47

Post by unixhero »

chucky wrote: post #35

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm? Several reasons. First, you need to recognize that any Sweden-based startup will, when it gets to be known internationally, have a Stockholm-based office. So it's not about a city of 1 million inhabitants, it's a country of 10 million that's the true number here. As an example, I believe Spotify opened their original offices in both Stockholm and Göteborg more…

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of books.

I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia. There I was outside hanging out with friends or just doing stuff on the beach or whatever. The deep focus was harder to achieve. Quality of life was insanely better there, yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

Re: Questions

#49

Post by scandox »

> It seems that the returns to entrepreneurialism in cities remain high: Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, and others, have improved the lives of millions of people and appear much more contingent than inevitable.

I’m interested in this as a bald assertion. Have they improved the lives of millions of people? I wasn’t aware of that. Can someone give me a quick before and after?

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