Disqus - Friends of jonnytran

Re: Will a Colony on Mars Save Us Humans from Extinction?

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:00:14 -0000

Perhaps I shouldn't have been as casual with my language...

First off, I am well aware of the state of the technology. As background, I have a BS in Physics (minor in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences) from MIT and an MS in Technology and Policy, also from MIT. While there, I went to countless talks and meetings about colonizing Mars and Astronomy in general.

That being said, yes, it will be a long and difficult process. This is just more reason to have started decades ago! We should have never dropped the ball on this one.

I should have just left out the death of the Sun thing because for some reason people think that is a counter argument. What I said was it is a "start of a process...". It would be wise to colonize Mars before going extra-solar. Additionally, nuclear holocaust can happen any day.

No, a colony on Mars will not always be dependent on people and supplies from the Old World. Mars can and should be terra-formed to make it a self-sustaining place to live.

And finally, I do believe it would solve a real problem. It would start us on the path to having multiple self-sustaining groups of humans on different planets. Such that, if something were to happen on the Earth, we wouldn't face an extinction.

I realize this is not a risk people think about often, or if they do, take very seriously. And that is precisely why I wrote this post. I believe the consequences are infinite from our perspective--i.e. an extinction would mean the end of us. So no matter how low probability, and it isn't that low IMHO, we should make this (and should have made it) a priority.

Re: Will a Colony on Mars Save Us Humans from Extinction?

Gabriel Weinberg — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:28:55 -0000

No, the main point is that by staying solely on Earth we can get relatively easily extinct. Therefore, we should start spreading out in the universe. The natural starting point is Mars. After that, we should spread to other planets, and extra-solar ones at that.

I did not say we should stop there or that the Earth is certainly doomed. Just that it is dumb to have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. Mars is simply the "start of a process..."

Nor is it irrational thinking to suggest we would be better off with multiple colonies just because humans are on both. For one, then you need as many catastrophic events as there are colonies then to become extinct. If the rate of expansion exceeds that of catastrophic events then we will not become extinct.

Additionally, there is no control for other civilizations on other planets. Whose to say that their societies will face the same problems as ours? This becomes especially true if they move very far away (extra-solar) and have little or no contact with the other establishments.

Re: My Eccentric Approach to Entrepreneurship

Gabriel Weinberg — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:50:04 -0000

I agree. Good partners are almost impossible to find. Especially when you are as eccentric as us :)

Note that I am *trying* to spread the risk over multiple projects with multiple partners. Currently, I have only two partners though. One has been a long-term partner of mine with whom I have worked on several businesses. The other is a trusted friend who came to me originally with the idea. On my other projects, I am currently working by myself.

I have stopped actively trying to find partners. It just hasn't worked out for me in the past. Instead, I am letting partnerships unfold naturally, which they thankfully have to date. It just has taken a lot of time, and so I have learned to be patient.

Re: Obama's Smoking Makes Me Just Say No on 4/22 in PA

Gabriel Weinberg — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:12:22 -0000

No, I certainly might have voted for him. In fact, I would welcome real change in Washington, so in theory I am in a position to be quite receptive to his message. I actually switched my registration just to vote in this primary with no pre-conceived notions of who to for. I've watched several debates and a lot of the recent coverage, including local, surrounding the primary. So, in short, it simply isn't true that I wasn't going to vote for him originally, as you imply. And I do not see anything about this post that is silly or dishonest.

Also, like I said at the beginning of the post, I have come not to like either candidate and so I probably won't end up voting in the primary after all. In essence, I agree with you that Hilary has shown misjudgment. However, doing shots on TV (which I haven't seen) is different than smoking for twenty six years. The smoking is a repeated behavior for years and years and it is related to one the biggest issues in the campaign, namely health care.

As for John McCain, I haven't seen any real evidence of your criticisms. I'd be happy to be enlightened further, however.

Re: Obama's Smoking Makes Me Just Say No on 4/22 in PA

Gabriel Weinberg — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:15:38 -0000

Like I said in the post, he apparently quit last year: http://abcnews.go.com/Polit....

If he had quit twenty years ago that would be one thing. But the fact is that he only quit when he decided to run for president, and even then apparently only at the urging of his wife. He didn't quit when he was purporting to be a community leader. He didn't quit when he originally ran for political office. He didn't quit when he then ran for a national office. He didn't even quit when he became a Senator, and apparently could be seen regularly smoking outside the Capital building.

So, if by "some time ago" you mean last year, than sure, he quit some time ago. But that's isn't long enough ago to make a difference, in my opinion.

Re: Obama's Smoking Makes Me Just Say No on 4/22 in PA

Gabriel Weinberg — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:37:42 -0000

Well, like everything, I don't think this is a black and white issue, and I didn't mean to insinuate that it was (if I did). Yes, we all do stuff we're not proud of. But there is a sliding scale of what that stuff that is, how not proud one is about it, and then what you actually do about it thereafter.

In this case, what he did (smoking) is related to a central issue of his campaign (health care). And there were many great opportunities to quit--when he became a community leader, went into politics, went into national politics, or when he actually became a Senator. The fact is he only quit when he decided to run for president, and even then only at the urging of his wife.

Maybe for you, that doesn't add up to much. But for me it adds up to enough not to vote for him *in this primary* (note the general election is a different story). In other words, this isn't just a general "do as I say, not as I do" argument. Instead it is a specific instance of that argument, in my opinion a strong one, that goes something like "Obama thinks health care is one of the most important issues because of rising costs and not enough preventative care but yet he chose to smoke for twenty six years thus contributing to the rising costs even though this was totally preventable. And additionally, he says he has had this strong position for years, and yet only chose to quit last year."

So yes, I agree there will be more important issues in the general election (e.g. economy, foreign policy) and there are probably great reasons on those issues that you may not to vote for him (e.g. he is a political lightweight or whatever). But in this primary, I can choose only to not vote or vote for one of these two Democrats and I'm saying this smoking thing has given me enough reason to not go out and vote for him in the primary. The general election will be a different story.

Re: The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Warren Buffet Say

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:39:58 -0000

Well, I think he was making two different arguments. The dumb one was the one I mentioned, and I do think he was saying it was too high to believe. More evidence for this is in the paragraph about the 24M where he says "If your adviser talks to you about double digit returns from equities, explain this math to him - not that it will faze him." The "math" he is referring to is the calculation of the 24M, which he again uses to shock you to being too high to believe.

The other argument (about the last 8 years) was indeed also in there, but that was not what the post was about. But since you bring it up…

Claiming the past 8 years will predict the next 92 is also a ridiculous argument and just the same as saying the last 100 will predict the next 100, which he is attacking. More importantly, however, an 8 year period in the history of stock returns doesn’t hold much weight. There have been obvious business cycles and exogenous factors at play in the past 8 years. I don’t want to go into more detail since this is already long (in less someone else continues the conversation), but just go look at returns in the 1930s vs the 50s and 60s and then again in the 70s vs the 80s and 90s.

Re: The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Warren Buffet Say

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:42:46 -0000

Good call. My spelling sucks. Fixed.

Re: The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Warren Buffet Say

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:12:32 -0000

The 2M has absolutely nothing to do with inflation. That's sort of the point. It is just a result of taking the 5.3% and compounding it annually for the century.

Re: The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Warren Buffet Say

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:10:58 -0000

I'm not sure about its accuracy. For the purpose of the post, I was just taking him at his word. But I hear you. There are certainly legitimate arguments on both sides.

Re: Search Y Combinator - Feedback

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:52:47 -0000

What are you using to handle word stems?

For example, http://searchyc.com/techmem... bolds aggregator.

Re: Search Y Combinator - Feedback

Gabriel Weinberg — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:15:12 -0000

On the ask. section, could you add the # of comments in addition to the # of points?

Re: Techmeme vs. Hacker News

Gabriel Weinberg — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:03:54 -0000

Check out http://hacker.watrcoolr.us

It is an aggregation of (parts of) all of the above I put together last week.

Re: Search Y Combinator - Feedback

Gabriel Weinberg — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:01:11 -0000

It would be very useful to me, personally. When I'm going through the last week's ask posts to update the Ask YC Archive I am looking for "quality" posts. Usually this means a subset of the ones with the most points, but occasionally, there are posts with few points but with a lot of comments. If those comments are good, I want to include those posts. I don't click on absolutely everything, so I think adding it would help me avoid some false negatives.

Re: Duck Duck Go

Gabriel Weinberg — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:32:24 -0000

Thanks coxy! There are a few more comments on the Duck Duck Feedback page: http://duckduckgo.com/feedb...

Of course, if you have any ideas for improvements, please share them :)

Re: FreeBSD One-liner to Group Referrers

Gabriel Weinberg — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:25:23 -0000

@kyleburton pointed out I could drop awk & use perl's autosplit command line option instead (-a). I've had never used that before, but after a bit of trial error, I manged to drop awk:

grep [kp].js /var/log/nginx/nginx-access.log | perl -ane '$F[9] =~ s/^\"http:\/\/([^\/]+).*\"$/$1/; print "$F[9]\n"' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Re: Keswick Theatre Refund Policy Lame

Gabriel Weinberg — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:26:33 -0000

Indeed. That is just pure ridiculous since you know there is no marginal cost for them there, and in fact, there is cost for you in time & printer ink!

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:43:17 -0000

Dias, you are absolutely right. In retrospect, there are a lot of things I should have done differently when making this video.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:48:41 -0000

Daves, actually we've been in development for over a year now, and about 9 months before Yahoo BOSS even came out! We have our own Web crawler, and we only use Yahoo BOSS when, in our opinion, we don't have anything better to show (yet).

In other words, Yahoo BOSS is a fall-back. Before it came out, we obviously were showing all of own results from our own crawls. After it came out, we decided to focus on our core strengths, aggregating and parsing human edited sources. For most topics, we already display results from these sources not from Yahoo BOSS (and, again IOHO, better than).

When we do show Yahoo BOSS results, we do our best to manipulate them to make them better than the general feed as well. In short, there is *a lot* under the hood here that makes Duck Duck Go very different from a standard Yahoo BOSS feed. Over time, Duck Duck Go has and will continue to look even less like the BOSS feed. For more info, see http://duckduckgo.com/about...

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:56:41 -0000

@Jon, thanks for the kind words! I'd be interested to know what you mean by "very limited"?

With regards to the "human factor" I want to clear up that we are very distinct from DMOZ and others before us on this front. We are not managing any of these humans ourselves. Instead, we are drawing, in an algorithmic fashion, on the best parts of human edited sources (like Wikipedia) where communities already exist.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:58:42 -0000

People love or hate our name :)

Just to be clear, we're not using human labor directly. Instead, we are drawing on human-edited sources in an algorithmic way.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:03:08 -0000

Here are the two main differences between us and Mahalo. First and foremost, we are a search engine, not a content site, whereas Mahalo started out as a search engine and is now more of a content site like Wikipedia. As such, we strive to be super simple with the least clutter possible.

Secondly, Mahalo is actually managing humans to make their content pages. We are simply drawing on human-edited sources in an algorithmic way.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:08:04 -0000

Anthony, I actually agree with you wrt the title :). I don't use it on a day to day basis. I used it here bc I thought it appropriate after watching the other TC pitches and reading their About page: http://pitches.techcrunch.c...

Wrt to BOSS, we are significantly different than the standard BOSS feed, and are departing more and more from it every day via our own Web crawler. For most topics, our top results are not from the Yahoo BOSS feed at all. See my above comment in reply to @Daves.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:55:26 -0000

If you use Duck Duck GO, you will find the information you are looking for faster and easier. This saves you time and energy, and it adds up.

How do we do this? We provide zero-click information in the form of synopses at the top of results pages. For many searches, this synopsis is the end point! Then we identify official sites, always put them on top, and label them as such so you don't have to think about what is official and what is not. Another large % of searches are for official sites.

Next, we have simpler, more relevant, human powered results for most topics. These results are simpler & more relevant because they were actually picked and edited by humans. So they have titles and descriptions that actually make sense.

And that's only the beginning. Check out our about page (http://duckduckgo.com/about... for more details & examples on how we are different. In addition, we're thinking of new ways to expand on our core goal of making a simpler search engine. Stay tuned.

As for marketing, we're just getting started and are not really sure. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Elevator+Pitch+Friday%3A+Duck+Duck+GO%2C+The+Hybrid+Search%26nbsp%3BEngine

Gabriel Weinberg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:58:45 -0000

Hondo, our growth to date has all been organic. We do have some internationalization plans in the works though, but none of this work has been released.