This is fun and I really like it, although honestly don’t think I would use it. Not entirely relevant, but figured I would make the connection: I work in healthcare tech and knowledge management “lists” or ontologies are a huge area of investment. Example use cases: list of drugs, diagnoses, side effects etc.
Interesting. I used to work in a similar space. And yes, the lists of data are huge. Some of the projects I had to do to generate lists were just bonkers. But it works out cost/value, generally.
It's great to see Bezos invest in a way that is quite different than other folks in tech's Big Philanthropy approach. Many are piling their money into trusts to avoid taxes now, but don't deploy their philanthropic dollars quickly. Even with increasing wealth and charity dollars in cities like San Francisco, local charities have had a hard time making ends meet. International philanthropy and trusts are not bad in and of themselves, but need to support local charities as well which seems to be the goal. Pretty awesome.
That's awesome! I've been playing around with some machine learning stuff recently, and because of my art background, I've been wanting to tackle similar stuff to this. Did you let your genetic algorithms run on real-life paintings? i.e. Did they get refine after making a physical model, or did you do the refinement and evolution before it got the physical creation phase?
The GA was based on an open loop simulation. I tuned a digital canvas / painting simulation by hand and then evolved the paintings in simulation. After evolving the painting I would execute the painting with a robotic arm. I did some preliminary work on closing the loop: using the actual output of the painting to tune the simulation but didn't get too far. A paper on my methods / simulation and results: http://carlos.ag/GA2008paper.pdf
I completely agree with Josh that there is a gap in functionality that needs to be filled. I often hear the argument that I should be grateful for this free online service... Poppycock! My attention on the internet is worth something. Especially for such a profitable industry as classifieds.
If I'm looking for a house on the internet I want to be able to zoom into a certain area on a map and click 'refresh' to see all the relevant rentals with little pins on the map. This is not rocket science. Craigslist has a rich database and could make it far more useful and user friendly. There is something to be said for simple and minimalist design. Craigslist, however seems 'not designed' at all with little regard for making things easy to find or relevant.
So somoene is free to go out and fill it - craigslist is under no obligation to do this. They're private. They can do what they want.
Just because a whole LOT of people would love to get their hands on it because they think they could make billions off it or monetize it better doesn't turn it into an obligation. Craigslist is what it is - and if Newmark is pulling in 50 million a year off it, for all this time, he's probably not all that concerned if the site dwindles out over the next half a decade, if it does that. Unless he has a horrid gambling habit he's probably sitting awfully pretty right about now.
Nobody's forcing you to use craigslist. If you have a better site out there, go use it. IF you think you can do better, try pitching it to them. IF you just want to whine that it's not as good as it could be and you aren't satisfied as a customer... wait.. you aren't a customer. Nevermind.
