Techmeme: Disappointed with application-driven AI, Douglas Hofstadter seeks to recreate mind in software (James Somers/The Atlantic Online)

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October 27, 2013, 3:05 PM

Top News

Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:

Amazon and the “profitless business model” fallacy — [DISCLOSURE: As always when I write about Amazon, I'll note I worked there from 1997-2004 and that I still own some shares in the company. I still have many friends who work there, though I have no more idea what Amazon is working on now than any of you in the public.]

More: A VC, TechSpot, Beyond Search and Slate

Tweets: @jeffweiner, @bupbin, @jonfortt, @gregbettinelli and @monkbent

James Somers / The Atlantic Online:

Disappointed with application-driven AI, Douglas Hofstadter seeks to recreate mind in software — The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think — Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means.

More: The Verge. Tweets: @alexismadrigal, @deatkin and @tsimonite

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Thoughts and Observations Regarding This Week's Apple Event Introducing the iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini — The Show Itself — There is a certain sameness to almost every Apple event. A pattern, a formula, a structure, a rhythm and pacing. Does this make them boring?

More: Forbes, Business Insider, iMore and the rajam report

Tweets: @natebarham, @mattlynley, @monkbent, @stevecheney, @panzer and @pbyrne

USC:

USC Study: Google Search Serves Users From 600% More Locations than A Year Ago — In a shift in strategy, Google reuses existing content delivery infrastructure to speed up searches — Contact: Robert Perkins at (213) 740-9226 or perkinsr@usc.edu — Over the past 10 months …

More: Digits, TechCrunch and The Econonomic Times

John Lilly / Medium:

Free software strengthens Apple's business - systems, while disturbing Microsoft's - software — Cups of Water … My partner Reid has a fun metaphor he uses when he's describing how companies think about their core strategies (which don't change very much).

More: Benedict Evans. Tweets: @chrisyeh and @monkbent

Cory Scott / Official LinkedIn Blog:

LinkedIn explains security features behind Intro, its controversial email routing product — The Facts about LinkedIn Intro — This blog post is intended to provide more information and address inaccurate assertions that have been made as a result of a product we launched on Wednesday called LinkedIn Intro.

More: The Verge, The Next Web, WebProNews and The State of Security

Tweets: @digiphile and @jacobian

Jim Newell / Guardian:

Thousands gather in Washington for anti-NSA ‘Stop Watching Us’ rally — Statement from whistleblower Edward Snowden read to crowd featuring groups from left and right of political spectrum — Thousands gathered by the Capitol reflection pool in Washington on Saturday to march, chant …

More: Firedoglake, The Hill, The Huffington Post, Associated Press, RT, CNET, PC World, SlashGear, The Raw Story and I4U News

Tweets: @stopwatchingus and @sinak

Joel Gascoigne / Buffer Open:

Buffer restores all sharing services after hacking incident — Buffer has been hacked - here is what's going on — Update: All posting should be working normally again, read more below! — I wanted to post a quick update and apologize for the awful experience we've caused many of you on your weekend.

More: The Next Web, Geek News Central and WindowsObserver.com

Tweets: @buffer and @buffer

John McCrank / Reuters:

Exclusive: Aiming to avoid Facebook chaos, NYSE runs Twitter IPO test — (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange on Saturday did a test run of Twitter's highly anticipated market debut, as it seeks to avoid the types of problems that plagued Facebook's initial public offering on rival Nasdaq.

More: The Atlantic Wire and Forbes

Mark Gurman / 9to5Google:

Upcoming Nexus 5 leaks in white, Nov. 1 launch date reported — After leaking a clear image of the black model yesterday, prolific leaker @evleaks has posted a render of the upcoming Nexus 5 in a white color option. As can be seen in the image above, the white model is actually a two-tone device …

More: The Next Web, The Verge, BestTechie and Gotta Be Mobile

Tweets: @evleaks and @evleaks

Thomas Gryta / Digits:

AT&T's Plan Revamp Signals the End of Voice Minutes — The days of worrying about minutes ticking away on your cell phone plan are nearly gone. — As of today, AT&T is dropping the availability of its old plans for new smartphone subscribers, and all of the remaining plans include unlimited calling …

More: SlashGear

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Next on Deck for Snapchat and Pinterest: Some Sales Help? — Earlier this week, AllThingsD broke the news of two major fundings of a pair of hot startups: Scrapbooking service Pinterest and messaging service Snapchat. — Pinterest's round of $225 million at a $3.8 billion valuation …

More: Dalton Caldwell and PandoDaily

Evelyn M. Rusli / Digits:

Snapchat looking to raise up to $200M, declined more than $1B bid by Facebook

More: Business Insider, TechCrunch, Mashable, VatorNews, PhoneArena, Gigaom, Softpedia News, The Next Web, AllThingsD, Forbes, Betabeat and socalTECH.com

Tweets: @danprimack and @evelynrusli

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

The FTC is set to investigate rules for the internet of things — Next month the Federal Trade Commission will meet to discuss how it plans to regulate the internet of things, and how connected devices share consumer data. There are two issues at play here, one being the privacy of consumer data …

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