
Stephen Wolfram does an AMA - instakill
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha
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Jun8
I didn't know that Alpha can tell you what planes are currently visible
overhead, _holy crap_ , that's awesome!

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=planes%20above>

Ran the query and looked at the sky like an idiot, only birds! And it's pretty
clear today, too. Can the flight schedules be that off?

Also learned how many calories a cubic light-year of milk chocolate is:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha/c3xxxyz)

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larrywright
You can do the same thing for satellites and stars
(<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=satellites+overhead>)

You can answer a lot of cool questions with Alpha. Nutritional information for
1/2 an avacado? It can do that. Number of kilobytes in a petabyte? Yup.

Overall, very cool tool.

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libraryatnight
I use it occasionally for word finding, like a friend who wanted a clever .me
domain I pointed to: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=words+ending+in+me>

Also, you can use that same idea to cheat at Scrabble (or any variant), though
I would never condone such a thing ;)

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hornbaker
If you like that, try <http://morewords.com>.

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groks

      grep me$ /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
      1699
    

(WolframAlpha: 210)

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zackzackzack
I will be interested to see if he answers any questions about reviews like
this about ANKS:
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1579550088&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful)

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freyrs3
From past experience at lectures, he tends to avoid questions about NKS. His
magnum opus turned laughing stock is kind of a touchy subject.

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cobrausn
He does address NKS at least once, here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha/c3y04k2)

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kruhft
Disappointing that the top voted 'questions' in these AMAs end up being
scandalous statements and conjectures while the actual questions get pushed
down to the bottom.

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w-ll
That's my question, HattoriHanzo is my name on Reddit. I tried reaching him a
year ago when that happened. But sadly, nothing came of it. It's not my fault
everyone else wants to know :/ I still use and suggest other to use WA against
my better judgement.

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scott_s
Looking at the Android app page, they may have gotten confused because the
screenshot has WA in it. That is, it's using your app to input math symbols
into WA. That may have triggered a simple policy of "issue takedown for
anything that is not ours that has WA in it."

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johansch
Worse. According to the Market blurb, it goes further:

"Bonus: Launcher icon opens a quick dialog box with input box to query the
WolframAlpha Computational Knowledge Engine and launch your web browser.
*Wolfram Alpha is a trademark of Wolfram Alpha LLC"

[https://market.android.com/details?id=net.schwiz.wolfram.ful...](https://market.android.com/details?id=net.schwiz.wolfram.full&hl=en)

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eggbrain
Somewhat unrelated, but does anyone know the cost of the Wolfram Alpha API is
after the free 2000 calls? No website seems to give the pricing (except for
the old 2009 pricing scheme), and the Wolfram Alpha API site just says to
contact them -- quite frustrating (yes I sent an email, but got no response)

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clone1018
I think it's dependent on the type of project you do, for instance a school's
math program whatever might get charged less where a fortune 500's x project
gets charged more.

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mvkel
Looks like he's getting preemptively skewered by the Redditerati.

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CptCodeMonkey
I often wonder what kind of thought goes through a person's head before they
do an IaMa on reddit. You need to be either crazy, stupid, crazy stupid, or
Neil Degrasse Tyson to think "Hey this is gonna be awesome!"

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redthrowaway
I disagree vehemently. The vast majority of AMAs by celebs go very, very well.
There've been a few well-known trainwrecks (I'm looking at you, Woody
Harrelson), but for the most part they're quite successful and a good way to
engage with fans.

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CptCodeMonkey
I used to subscribe to IaMa a while back and yes they were and to some extent
are still a fantastic opportunity for the unwashed masses to quiz celebrities
of all walks of fame.

Still considering what happened to Woody, I would think that incident would
give a few celebs and PR managers a moment of pause to think "Is this really
worth the risk?"

On the other hand, generally the dark side comes out of Reddit only when
people are obviously (ab)using r/IaMa soley to benefit their current PR
campaigns.

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bobbles
The problem with Woodys AMA was that it wasnt an 'Ask Me Anything'

It was 'Ask Me Anything About Rampart'

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Drbble
Oh that's why posters are saying the Wolfram AMA "ramparted". I had thought
they meant that people were ambushing Wolfram (with "ramparts").

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ez77
Interesting link provided by Wolfram, and funded by his company:
<http://www.computerbasedmath.org/>

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hinathan
Seems to be an awful lot of asking and not a lot of answering.

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binarycrusader
Did you read the story? 3pm-5pm ET is when it happens.

