
Ask YC/HN: What Should I Ask Dr. Wolfram? - Mystalic
I'm interviewing Dr. Wolfram in a few hours, so I wanted to reach out to the HN community and see what questions you'd like to have answered, technical or non.<p>Most of my interview is going to be straightforward, but I'd love to throw at least one tech Q in somewhere.
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ieatpaste
I would be interested in:

\- if they're leveraging any new algorithms (categorical, semantic, or
otherwise) and hopefully he could briefly explain the new ideas involved.

\- any shifts in research and development regarding semantic search
algorithms, semantic web and how Wolfram|Alpha plans to contribute to these
trends.

\- specific types of research information (DNA, relevant research information)
and use cases for businesses (i find that the service is novel, but not
particularly useful to businesses)

\- how frequent they will be updating the existing data, and how frequenty
they will be adding data

\- shout out to U of I?

btw - can you guys focus more on the startups instead of how-to's? i miss the
days when sites actually reported on new startups and not about gossip or top
10 lists.

~~~
Mystalic
I agree with you on the more startup reviews part. Part of it though is
startups getting our attention - sending emails to news[at]mashable.com
consistently work, since we read that account religiously. Also, weekends.

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brg
Has ANKoS had the impact you envisioned? If so, what are the most significant
results that have come as an outgrowth of its thesis.

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sgibat
His take on the singularity might be interesting.

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Donald
Search is a particularly disruptive technology. Traditional search engines,
e.g. Google, have made searching for certain types of information phenomenally
effective. This has resulted in interesting privacy ramifications ("Google-
stalking") and issues with research (easy access to bad information).

Wolfram|Alpha works by way of a new search paradigm: rather than simple data-
mining it seeks to construct /new/ information based on a query. What do you
foresee as the social consequences of a computational search engine?

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vaksel
I'd like to know whose idea it was for hyping Wolfram Alpha as a Google Killer

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paulgb
Did they, or did the press take that on all by themselves? I mostly avoided
the hype about it so I could well have missed something, but the only article
I saw quoting Wolfram as having said anything about search was miss-
attributed. Most of the direct quotes seemed to downplay any comparisons to
Google.

~~~
vaksel
yeah thats what I'm asking...was this their idea, their PR company's, or just
the press chasing a story

~~~
paulgb
Ah, sorry. I thought you meant who within the company is responsible.

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Mystalic
Thanks everyone for your input. I'll be sure to post the interview hopefully
tomorrow (well, technically today).

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barleyman
His Atlas of Simple Programs has excited me since I first heard mention of it.
Now with Mathematica 7 and Alpha out, will there be a little more free time to
take the Atlas to the next level?

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noamsml
Ask him about the population of japan divided by the population of china in
the year 2000.

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macmac
Why he insists on applying draconian terms and conditions to all his ventures
(NKS: <http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-iv?firstview=1>
WolframAlpha: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/termsofuse.html>)

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bravura
What living persons he admires.

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jlhamilton
Besides himself, of course.

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olegp
Ask him about "his new network theory of fundamental physics, related to
cellular automata" - <http://twitter.com/novaspivack/status/1815527180>

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fauigerzigerk
I gather that he employs lots of people to manually enter rules and factual
information. If cellular automata are the foundation of all higher level
complexity and even of the human mind, as he claims, why does he not build a
learning algorithm instead?

My hunch is that his approach to knowledge engineering doesn't scale very well
in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge and its rate of change. Not even
considering very far reaching inferencing capabilities. Of course it's
difficult to know that without knowing how exactly he does it. It's just a
hunch.

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zouhair
When Mathematica will be freed?

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HouseTrip
Ask him why claims on his website that they have 5.4M unique visitors
(<http://tinyurl.com/pwobdf>) when Compete shows they have 70'000 :)

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ntoshev
Wolfram Alpha's relationship with Mathematica is pretty obvious, would he care
to explain its relationship with NKS (he says W|A it's an offspring of both
projects)?

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Create
Is Mathematica a just clone of Macsyma?

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moonpolysoft
Why does he insist on taking sole credit for most of the innovations of his
employees and underlings?

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req2
Maybe Edison is his role model.

