spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Is online dating a failure?
One reason may be that the vast majority of young (very fertile) pretty women are not looking for dates online; simply because they have plenty of choices around them and therefore don't need to look in the virtual world. Males follow women in that category, wherever they are.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Is online dating a failure?
The author meant the users of the service, because it doesn't increase significantly the chances of meeting someone for a long term relationship, otherwise there would be less involuntarily single people out there (that's Greenspun's argument).
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Ask HN: Boss fired me. How to warn former employer about him?
Our site "Spottiness.com" may serve you well, in particular the "Blackspot" section. We help people communicate anonymously and allow targets to respond. If your anonymity is paramount, you should be careful with your writing style and other clues.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Startups should not use GoDaddy. Ever
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: How dead is dead?
"That those who do not are inclined to do so unless heavily prompted not to is curious indeed."
What a confusing way of ending an article. It would translate into Ruby to something like this:
def ascribe_mental_acuity_to_the_dead?
true
unless believe_in_after_life
false if heavily_prompted_not_to_believe_in_after_life
end
end
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Is That Review a Fake?
You mean a lot of "positive" fake reviews, in which case people tend to fake positive opinions much more than negative ones. Definitely better than the opposite...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Is That Review a Fake?
Amazon is a good example where "real name" reviews cause a bias towards positive reviews. I believe that most people are reluctant to write negative reviews if their real names are associated with it, even if the fairness of the review is not in question. Negative reviews always put a negative halo on the reviewers, so good reviews are overwhelmingly more common. Curiously in our site, where anonymity is a requirement, also the positive reviews dominate by far, which is indicating that there's much more good than bad in the world. Cool!
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Is That Review a Fake?
We are experimenting with reputation derived from complete anonymity since we believe that anonymity is required to maximize sincerity. In our current stage, we're manually moderating all the content generated, rejecting what looks fake based on common sense and intuition. If we ever generate traffic above a certain threshold then we have a mechanism where the content is validated by the creators themselves. Basically, the writers of opinions ("spots" for us) will have to evaluate other opinions before they can post their own, and a decision is made based on the number of coincidences among all the reviewers of a specific posting. We got the idea from previous work by CMU's Luis Von Ahn, in particular his (now Google's) ESP game.
These are examples of anonymous reviews about hotels that we have in our site:
A positive one => http://www.spottiness.com/spots/BHBZ8QJT
A negative one => http://www.spottiness.com/spots/RKTPXLJJ
Interestingly, they don't have the strong deceptive indicators...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Peter Thiel invests to create floating micro-countries
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Welfare state led to the riots in England?
The debate below the article is very interesting.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: New leukemia treatment "exceeded our wildest expectations"
I voted up your posting, but please use the original title "New leukemia treatment exceeds 'wildest expectations'". The HIV part is pretty irrelevant.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: 62 years old woman swims from Havana to Key West, without a shark cage
I agree with you. There's also the electronic Shark Shields that repels most species of sharks...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Cosmos Will Get a Sequel
I have mixed feelings about Neil. He certainly have the credentials and I like him, although he's never serious enough for me. I just watched the Youtube video that you pointed to, and there he sounds like a religious preacher. I found very weak points in his arguments, easily refutable.
I hope that the sequel also targets a sophisticated audience: those of us that loved the original when we were kids and have continued evolving our brains for decades.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Stanford "Intro to AI" course to be offered online for free
This is total awesomeness for the really motivated to learn. I don't think I'll have the time... although, maybe this is a good enough reason to quit my job. This is certainly an indication of what the future will bring for education. I hope other universities/professors do the same...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Mug-Shot Industry Will Dig Up Your Past, Charge You to Bury It Again
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: All that is wrong with the Recruitment Industry
By posting him "the blackspot"...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Thomas Jefferson on Patents
I couldn't help thinking about software when Jefferson refers to ideas. The thinking power called software...
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: How to lose friends and alienate people
Warren Buffet's bedside book, by the way. I read it a few years ago and have been putting its teachings in practice consistently with great results. The book seems a little silly at first sight, but it really isn't.
spottiness
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14 years ago
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on: Poll: How much do you make as a programmer?
That's only "renting" and prices are not too far off in Miami based on your numbers (a place equivalent to yours in Miami I would say cost "maybe" a little less). How about food, clothe, transportation? Are those things also more than twice more expensive? No way. For example, you can live without a car in SF because public transportation there is decent. In Miami you need a car as you need your legs.
And I'm not even considering the benefits that a globalized world brings to "expensive" cities. In other words, if we assume that everything is 138% more expensive in SF then savings will also be 138% larger and, in the "equivalence equation", you have to factor in the purchasing power of San Franciscans in markets outside SF and Miami, otherwise you'd be saying something of the sorts of: To maintain your standard of living when you move to SF from Miami you need to make 138% more money (and by the way, you'll get a 20 days vacation in Spain for free).
