[Useful_Idiot]

Just for an interesting comparison:

Top 100 mining companies in the world:

You'll note that even BHP only hits ~$200bil.

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=95...

These are companies that fundamentally provide the materials for our societies.

Shall we change into energy?

ExxonMobil is top, at roughly ~ $300bil

http://www.platts.com/Top250Home

This is a company that powers the modern world.

~ $6 bil for this, $8 bil for Skype, $100 bil for FB is nothing more than Peter-Pan land.

aQuant was MS attempting to get Google to move on some issues, and an attempt to monetise chewing the cud. Skype was MS attempting to control P-2-P interfacing - which will probably succeed (and wasn't ever designed to be monetised) FaceBook was attempting to give the proles the same inherent networking architecture that the elites always enjoyed, and the $100bil is a pay-off for reshaping the world

Hint: mining & energy deal in reality. Tech stocks deal in 'societal value' [where said value is not value to the consumer, it is value to the code controllers; "if you're not paying for it, you're the product"] and are largely to do with the cost of control.

$6 bil in this case means nothing, because MS made billions from nothing.

"It's worth a punt". Translation: if you spend $100 bil on liquidity per day, $6 bil is a joke. Remember: Gates has spent $18 billion on "African circumcision to prevent AIDS" already, and the US government spends that in a month on foreign military adventures (both aggressive and passive).

~

It was worth a punt. Google turned out to be aggressively competitive, however (and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok?)

Be seeing you.

[cheez]

> and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok?

What?

[Useful_Idiot]

I'd look into AI specialists who all decided to kill themselves in that "very common" way of putting a bag over their head, wrapping duct tape around their necks and then 'doing an oven' to finish the deal. You know, like those pretty wives of CEOs who commit suicide when their hands & feet are bound? Or ex-Dictators have heart attacks all of a sudden? [And yes, I can cite those ones too for bonus points].

It was very common for a short period of time. And yes: at least one was a kook of huge bullshit; the other two were not. And with tenure, the other two really had no reason to go all in. Especially with their family ties. Additionally, there was a car crash and so on, but these are mere accidents.

The hidden history of success is paving the road with the bones of your competitors.

This isn't to say Google themselves had anything to do with this evil: it merely... widened the broad spaces for saplings to grow, as the forest does when mature trees fall. In broader terms, one might call it: protecting ones investment.

And yes: I can post this with 100% immunity, because the conspiracy police meme will eat this for breakfast (see my above being junked), and nothing I say matters. It was just a sad time in AI research, when a few of the top theorists (and a bullshit artist) off'd themselves. Nice search algos though... nothing ever to do with anyone else's research.

Do you your own due diligence: if you want to be a player, know the game (and the real costs).

[whatusername]

[citation needed]

[Useful_Idiot]

HN doesn't disappoint! Down-votes, and no-one can do due diligence.

<CTRL+F>Push Singh

He was named one of the "IEEE Intelligent Systems 10 to Watch," an award that honors young researchers in artificial intelligence. He planned to take a faculty position at the Media Lab this fall...There has been some public note of the similarity between the suicide of Push and that of another more renegade AI Researcher a couple months earlier, Chris McKinstry

http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/

Bhuwan Singh G

The Boston Herald reported that Singh suffocated himself with a yard-waste trash bag.

And so on.

As I said ~ that whole "killing yourself by applying common garden bags in what in most countries would suggest torture / outside interference" is... rather common in some circles. Blinkers. Wear them! Fear the wider world! Down vote everything outside of your cubicle!

(Hilarious ~ no wonder the Angels love this site, so easy)

Bonus round:

The death of Shacknai’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, was determined to be a suicide, Gore told reporters today...

Zahau, 32, was found nude, with a rope around her neck and her hands and feet bound, a sheriff’s department official said at the time

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/medicis-ceo-shackna...

You're all so cute! Committed to the Homo Sapiens 2.0 meme, with nary an eye at the real world. Delightful! Oh, and I rate the ~15+ downvotes as your votes for blindness & wilful ignorance over enlightenment and ability to do even an iota of original research. Not a single one who did an even cursory search / knew enough about the field to give a "yes-coincidence-but-not-conspiracy" post.

:Case proven ~ HN is, indeed, for Useful Idiots. . . . . . Now I've provided a citation or two, does this mean all the Aspies in the room will actually do a bit of research? Doubtful, but there we go. [Citation needed if anyone on HN actually is intelligent enough to do basic research]

“"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”

~ How very true, and how easily you're put into hutches here. . Hint: I mentioned three, and only linked to two! Not to mention that whole accident thing. How dangerous AI research can be, when algos rule the world ~ remind me how many young PHD students go into Finance these days? That would be a good place to start one's ruminations! So many random and pointless deaths in the Big Apple.

[kitsune_]

What are you getting at? Just spell it out.

[sek]

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimyst...

Interesting Story with weird personalities, but Google has nothing to do with it. They didn't even remotely work on something interesting for Google.

He Probably watched Antitrust too many times.