5 ms·
Stephen Wolfram Uses This
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoThis (FTA) would be creepy to see roaming around: http://anybots.com/ http://anybots.com/
- philwelch 16y agoAnybots is also well known on HN for being founded by YC partner Trevor Blackwell. They even share YC's building.
- tommynazareth 16y agoTrevor must be half insane. Those people sitting around laughing with the Anybot is one of the most bizarre things I've seen. Can you imagine working in a factory where your boss roamed around the floors as an Anybot?! I'm not going to say this isn't a great and sensible product, but it is very weird.
- philwelch 16y agoTrevor must be half insane, but that's not the reason why. I've gathered that long term goal is telepresence robots that can enable transcontinental labor arbitrage. That has the potential to make Trevor, at least in the developed world, one of the most despised people alive. Talk about disruptive.
- voidpointer 16y agoJust imagine the immense satisfaction of delivering a well executed spinning kick to one of these things when it drives up to you on a Monday morning squeaking "Hey, what's happening?" - ka-zonk!
- conover 16y agoThere was a movie fairly recently called Sleep Dealer which incorporated virtual labor as a plot element. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/
- swaroop 16y agoOn a similar note, was the Bruce Willis-starrer "alternate body" movie called Surrogates (2009) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/
- Groxx 16y agoNeeds a laser drawing tool (think laser light show) to be even remotely useful, not just a pointer, else how do you describe something they haven't seen? "No, the $circle_7 goes below the $resistor_3_12, inscribed in $heptagon_3, like in a fronkit. What? Never seen one? Oh hell..." Until then, good luck designing anything collaboratively. I like the hat-like look to the top, though. Personality without uncanny valley, and still highly functional in design; perfect for something like this.
- philwelch 16y agoYou can just draw a doodle and hold it up to the webcam on your end. It doesn't have to be anything as awesome as a laser light show, though to be fair that would be pretty cool.
- Groxx 16y agoAnd to tell someone to connect lines A through G in this shape, when there are, say, 30 on the board? A doodle + screen works slightly, but certainly not optimally. And even if the laser-drawer can only manage a fairly small amount of detail, it lets you do at least part of an idea, let them see it / trace it, and then a later part, all lined up however you please. The screen's even pretty small, so it's not like you'd be able to show your masterpiece on it all at once either. Anything non-projected break down any time you've got a large scale - what's an efficient way to point out a sparse mesh between 20 objects on a whiteboard? Point to one, and then the next which it connects to, lather-rinse-repeat to 40 points (more if it's a directional graph), or draw 20 lines and leave them up for people to peruse simultaneously? People just can't remember that many things at once, so you'd rely on someone to marker in your lines... to be erased if you come up with something better? Even changing a single line means several dots + waiting for someone to walk over and do it for you, instead of just changing what's displayed. And how about completing a circuit diagram? Have fun pointing out a resistor, inductor, and XOR gate[1], dot-by-dot, or showing any complex replacement in a number of sketches + several points showing where each connects. Even if you're only able to draw a couple at a time, being able to draw them in place is a huge efficiency boost. edit: Or designing in groups: crowd around the 'bot to look at the screen, while you-or-they are unable to see the board, every time you have input that can't be elaborated by a single dot + words. The time it takes you to sketch something and hold it up to a webcam is the same as or longer than it would take to make those lines displayed, but then everyone can see it at once, as you intended it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Circuit_elements.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Circuit_elements.svg
- m0nastic 16y agoI'm hoping some day that he goes into more detail about the system he uses to catalog conversations. I'm actually trying to work on a project similar to that. Wil Shipley talked about it upon meeting him at Ted in this blog entry: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/ted-2010.html http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/ted-2010.html (towards the bottom of the entry)
- bretpiatt 16y agoYeah, I'd love a Xobni Desktop, maybe they can make it happen. The only problem I have with Xobni now is I find myself forcing important things I want to find later through email so I can easily locate it. If a "Dropbox" style product would also index everything I send it so I could have a search experience like I do with Xobni I'd certainly pay extra for it.
- jseliger 16y agoIf a "Dropbox" style product would also index everything I send it so I could have a search experience like I do with Xobni I'd certainly pay extra for it. This sounds very similar to DevonThink Pro: http://devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html http://devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html , which I use daily, mostly along the lines that Steven Berlin Johnson describes here: http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... .
- arst 16y agoAn idea that I've been dreaming of (and kicking around some prototypes of) for a while now is a integrated archive of all the communications services/mediums I use these days. I have close contacts who I may interact with across 5 or 6 mediums in a given week - e.g. email, IM, IRC, SMS, twitter, comments on their blog posts. I'd like to be able to go into a contact list, click a buddy, and get a timeline of my interactions with them across these mediums. Google's gotten part way there in the last few years with email, Google Talk logs and Google Voice voicemails and SMS all being searchable from the Gmail interface but it's not as extensible as I'd like and the results quality (ironically) leaves a lot to be desired.
- bhellman1 16y agoI love that... "my instant-on system" Why isn't everything instantly on?
- portman 16y ago"I've also had systems built for me personally. One of the more important is my archiving and searching system, which includes 25 years of email (and 20 years of keystroke data), as well as searchable scans of all my archived paper documents." What do you think he means by "20 years of keystroke data"?
- mmaro 16y agoA keylogger, recording all keystrokes.
- samratjp 16y agoLike this one at the kernel level http://code.google.com/p/logkext/ http://code.google.com/p/logkext/
- Tim_M 16y agoHe once said that he records all of his own keystrokes(Sorry don't have the link). You need to remember he is a very unusual person.
- Donald 16y agoWolfram seems to keep a searchable index of all his keystrokes. From the 12 December 2009 issue of New Scientist: "I'm an information pack rat," he [Stephen Wolfram] confesses. Recording our interview is just the tip of his peculiar obsession with documenting every moment of his life. "I have a keystroke logger that has collected my every keystroke for the last 22 years," he says. "Every day I get an email that tells me how many keystrokes I typed the previous day into each application. I find it slightly interesting." He shrugs off my suggestion that it's a way of securing his immortality; he believes that soon everyone will be doing it.
- j_b_f 16y agoWeird then that he regularly uses an iPhone and iPad which presumably don't offer this functionality.
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- powellc 16y agoI like a man who spouts off about how great it is to use software builds that are (gasp!) an hour old! That's so 1337 dude! Welcome to the world of open source, douche bag. I appreciate that I probably shouldn't be nagging on the guy who built Mathematica. But seriously? webMathematica? yawn.
- atuladhar 16y agoHow do you down-vote around here?
- nkurz 16y agoYou gain the privilege after you've accumulated enough 'up' votes for comments and submissions. The exact number changes over time due to inflation.
- xtacy 16y agoInteresting; I didn't know that. Right now it's at about 200.
- prs 16y agoExactly at 200 - Once you have 201 karma points, downvoting functionality is unlocked.
- bmm6o 16y agoOT, but it's always amusing to see an answer to this question (which comes up at least once a month) hit double-digit points. The rich get richer...
- tzs 16y agoUntil you have a certain amount of karma, you cannot down-vote. When you have enough karma, you'll see down-vote arrows below the up-vote arrows.
- gaius 16y ago
- BoppreH 16y agoI loved the "interview" and also the website. I have always wondered what the great people use on a daily basis. But it could use some sane URL organization. Sub domains are horrible for quick "select and erase/replace" actions, though I understand the final result is quite beautiful.
- sophiebits 16y ago> What would be your dream setup? > Mathematica + Wolfram|Alpha everywhere! That's a funny dream, considering he charges a few thousand for a copy of Mathematica. I'm sure he'd have a larger user base if it were less expensive (or free…).
- tzs 16y ago$300 for home use.
- gecko 16y agoThat's still literally more expensive than the main computer I use at home.
- Adrock 16y agoComputers are commodity items.
- Synaesthesia 16y agoWell Mathematica is really ridiculously feature-rich and sophisticated software.
- philjackson 16y agoIt could be an indirect way of saying everyone, everywhere buys a copy of Mathematica.
- zmmz 16y agoBeen a fan of the setup for a while, thanks for the engaging interviews. Wanted to let you know that your rss feed seems broken.
- paxswill 16y agoIt was broken for the past couple days (that I noticed) but I got this post.
- shin_lao 16y agoAm I the only one to think that Mr. Wolfram manages in few words to appear to be both pretentious and unfriendly?
- jacquesm 16y agoMost likely not. He actually manages to do that time and again, examples aplenty.
- JabavuAdams 16y agoI don't get that from this article. The one time I met him (at StartupSchool), he seemed like a really pleasant person I'd like to invite over for dinner. He was not faux-humble, but he was also not boastful. Now, from other publications like NKS, I do get the vibe you mentioned.
- shin_lao 16y agoIn the introduction: My main job is being CEO of Wolfram Research. I spend most of my time figuring out technical and strategic things, sometimes short-term and sometime very long-term. Compare with: "I am the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research." Which contains exactly the same amount of information (because strategic planning is the job of a CEO, isn't it?). No subtle "Well everything I do is pretty heavy and it doesn't fit in this little paragraph, you see?" Nitpicking, I know, but that's how I feel when I read the §...
- there 16y agoin response to the last "the setup" interview posted here, i created a "setups" subreddit for people to post links to their own articles describing their workspaces http://www.reddit.com/r/setups/ http://www.reddit.com/r/setups/
- nanairo 16y agoOnce you've got that much money, and therefore don't need to make a choice, this kind of information becomes a lot less useful. It would be like wondering which car a top class football player drives, or which flight tickets the USA president uses. :(
- gcb 16y agoThis was the most uninteresting usethis. He barely touched the thing his usethis would be most interesting, the fact that he claims to record so much. He may be a good mathematician and project manager. but hardly fun for a usethis
- long 16y agoI find it incredibly goofy that he uses Mathematica for everything.
- jcsalterego 16y agoYes but where's the cellular automata? Those things can do EVERYTHING