Just a few reasons today's Web trumps anything from the 'Technorati' (seriously?) era: Open API's that reply in JSON, Cloud VPS's at $0.02 per hour, 10 Gb ethernet, 54 Mb fiber in my house, multicore computers in everyones pocket, GPS at everyones fingertips, web frameworks like Sinatra (yes, it took more than three lines of code and two bash commands to publish 'Hello World!' to the web back then), caching solutions like Redis, data crunching pipelines like hadoop, payment processing like Dwolla...need I go on? There will always be folks hankering for the glory days of alt.religion.kibology and compuserve. Ignore them. Create something game-changing instead.
Uncanny. I can claim in true honesty that I had a remarkably similar vision for a comprehensive life 'experience quotient' app not even 2-3 weeks ago. The travel portion looked very similar: GPS enabled tracing of a global map space with percent coverage. But travel would be but one table in a comprehensive database of life experience: financial, relationships, science, arts, drugs, sex and everything else worth living for. An algorithm would tally a grand 'statistic'. It's the stuff of Borges' wildest fantasies, n'est-ce pas?
Indeed, this cogent essay has been a long time coming and should be a pre-requisite for anyone thinking of getting in the game. "A barbershop isn't designed to grow fast. Whereas a search engine, for example, is." Brilliant.
Both the app and the team made a strong impression on me. There is some real heat here. 3x3 is soo much better than double dating. And the 'bathroom intercourse' metrics are certainly a unique measure of 'penetration'.
Interested to hear what mechanics they are considering adopting to drive long term engagement. After all, who wants to bear the mark of having the reputation about town of being a 'serial grouperizer'.
Also, how do they plan to make money? Revenue share on the pre-paid date?
Congrats, Kurt!
An entire generation of game devs bestow their most humble appreciation for showing us the path to enlightenment.
Hopefully the new content will reflect the changing state of the field, for example: OpenGL ES 2.0 hacks for smartphones and WebGL.
While the author of the linked article expiates the hit coding performance can take when fasting I have personally observed an interesting phenomena during my observation of Ramadan. Namely, I can experience moments of acute lucidity and penetrating insight into a problem at hand.
Usually this occurs when I am in the midst of something that requires a good bit of effort such as tackling a thorny algorithmic conundrum or analyzing a particularly complex call stack. If I attune my mind to repress the pangs of bodily need I occasionally feel as if the external world melts away and I slip into an almost mystical state of oneness with the task at hand. Needless to say, I have been surprised immensely by this development.
One theory I have is that the blood flow that would normally be assigned by my body to the act of digestion is now free'd up to be reallocated to the ole cranium. Plausible? Unsure, but am certainly enjoying these life experiments!
Side note: for those observing the fast I have also noticed that my immune system is closely linked with the gut and my self-imposed starvations can lead to immune system compromise. Make sure you supplement your Iftar goodies with some replenishing nutrients such as pro-biotic yogurt smoothies rich in vitamin C and home-cooked chicken consomme.
Not sure current technology is capable of yielding real creativity. Perhaps as we enter the era of quantum computing.
But fun level design and infinite gameplay generated using AI/ML techniques are a welcome addition to casual games.
Very slick UX and very informative as well! I would love to be able to create custom topics, such as 'D3.JS' and generate timelines with top tweets.
Quick question: how did you obtain the real-time metric "# of tweets per hour"? Are you sampling to determine an estimate using the Search API, or do you have access to a proverbial "firehose"?
Not sure I agree with the correlation that the 'most talented engineers' are those that 'scored highest on the AI class HWs and Exams,' but I certainly wouldn't refuse any of the folks who were able to solve the ApproximateAgent PacMan Search problem in under 30 seconds from joining my team ;)
Its wonderful that Sebastian & Peter are reaching out like this after all they have done so far. Congrats to everyone that slugged it out, and good luck on the final this weekend!
Kudos to Matt Fisher on an heroic undertaking. Internal states of D3D devices can be substantial on modern hardware, e.g. 100+ renderer calls in that single frame alone. And there are many impressive components in this AI: translating texture glyphs into literal meaning, the scene 'tree' gamestate, rational action choice based on a combo of said extracted gamestate and what I can only assume is his secret play strategy honed over countless hours of battle...
Here is one who is unwilling to sit idly by while an official API arrives from the vendor. And for that he should be applauded. But it begs the question: when will Blizzard release an official SC2 API? Or is there a way to take Matt's work and create a 'sandbox' battle.net solely for bot enthusiasts?
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
In materials science labs around the world, researchers are performing 'miracles'.
Aerogels could eliminate most of the waste heat from buildings. Piezoelectric nanogenerators could power mobile electronic devices. Graphene transistors could attain speeds of 1THz. And multiferroics like the beastly Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 mentioned above could replace bulky laptop batteries.
But what is achieved with multi-million dollar government sponsored research grants in controlled labs is difficult to transfer to ones doorstep.
One barrier is economic: an aerogel house would cost $50M! A pricetag that may be acceptable to the Department of Defense, but won't do Peoria Joe much good.