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(I'm not a cryptographer)

Imagine a web where all links were magnet links. Each site could also have a magnet link to another site containing a diff in case of updates which the browser would automatically check.

The content hash in the magnet link would have to be based on something other than content (because content is not known at the time of page creation). The magnet link could contain a cryptographic hash of a secret string that only the owner possessed.


This would make for a great election stats website displaying live sentiment analysis.

EDIT: Even better if you could even annotate each point with the most tweeted quote.


Why would you use a human flight expert instead of an algorithm?


Hi science_robot,

The entire premise of Flightfox is that humans beat machines. Of course, in some cases if you only consider price this is debatable, but in many more cases, humans really do win.

Why? Because there is a lot of flight data and there is a material cost to performing a search. If you want a 6-Continent RTW trip, a flight search engine can't run 1,000,000 queries just to find you the cheapest route. The data providers impose pretty tight limits. When you hit those limits in aggregate, you risk very high costs.

Apart from that, and most importantly, humans have a wealth of knowledge that simply isn't catalogued. That's because it's too broad, too often changing, too obscure, or the airlines don't want OTAs to use that info; e.g. award flight availability across all airlines.

Our challenge now is to expand into many of these non-price factors and offer value even for short trips where we can't beat airline advertised prices. But as you can imagine, in its current state, Flightfox really comes into its own for complicated flights, even if just slightly complex.

The posted contest really beats anything on the web by a large amount. 6 continents for $1730 is pretty remarkable, or at least we think. It's not us who found it, it's our experts, who are the fabric of Flightfox.

Hope that helps.


Out of interest, how hard is it to get data feeds? Do you have to pay or is cost based on referrals? Do you have to enter an agreement? Understand if you can't answer.


List price (for minimum monthly spend) is in the 10s of thousands, but of course everyone does deals to reduce fees at this level. The problem is that those data feeds don't hold the key to the best flights. We're trying to leverage the stuff that won't be in data feeds for at least a decade (likely forever).


So coming up with your own data feed from human-generated/sourced data? ;)


Thanks! Must be hard to be a startup wanting to get into this industry then (edit: without an obvious capital injection)?


Because an algorithm probably hasn't been written that is smart enough to do the complex tasks required in these cases. It would probably also need the ability to scrape websites for latest prices.



Yes, exactly. Travelling Salesman with distance being measured in dollars.


Need to add one more dimension. Distance is dollars, given a particular day of the year.


You can't? Here's a MacRuby script that can take a photo with your webcam: https://github.com/pioz/snappy.


Now, given the content of the article a moment ago, the question becomes: "Should I trust science_robot? Or is this a trojan?"


Well, just learn ruby and read the source code of snappy, then write your own camera activation code -> no problem. If you don't trust your link, go to the well known github website and search for the project yourself.

"With growing wish for self responsibility comes growing need for power."


Sometime in the 90s there existed a Windows application that added a chat overlay to any webpage. Users had small rectangular icons and could move around the webpage. You could also create a "bus" and drive people around the web.


I can't seem to find the end condition for the Maze demo. There is no 'goal_reached?'


There isn't. I had to enclose the algorithm in a while (true) loop and if you reach the goal the program stops automatically. Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/0mape


When I solved it, the program just stopped running.


My browser crashes presumably because I use 'while true'. Chrome Version 19.0.1084.52


Cool idea. Reminds me of the novel _For The Win_ by Cory Doctorow.


Why are 4 CS geniuses from MIT using their talents to build pretty file uploading UI? Pretty file upload UI is easy!


Secondly, when building a simple fun tool to be used on websites, is a four-image team bio with MIT written in capital letters all over it necessary?


Putting images on a web page is easy, so we see images everywhere on the Web. If it were also easy, we would expect to see good file upload widgets everywhere. Good file upload widgets are not everywhere. From this, we can conclude that it is still an open problem.


Because we're tired of not being able to live entirely online, and this is one small step in that direction


I think the point is that is will support pulling files from any service you use to store them - dropbox, facebook, your computer, skydrive, etc. It's much more than a pretty file upload UI, and the fact that it looks that simple is actually its greatest achievement.


Why not? This isn't necessarily all they're doing with their time and (assumed) talent.


They've got this MBA dude who's calling himself a hustler so they'll be alright :D


The Brass Rat messes with those guys' minds.


Facebook has gone full circle.


I know, they should call these school groups "networks".


The logo reminds me of how the 256 color palette was augmented by combining them in patterns.



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