skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was using ignorance not in the pejorative sense of intelligence, but in the sense of lack of knowledge about a subject. Someone who would say that geeks don't shower is misinformed (or under-informed).

The point is that non-geeks don't want to be geeks because geeks have a lower social status (at least as perceived by non-geeks). It is perfectly reasonable for an in-group to perceive itself as superior to everyone else, and for everyone else to perceive it as inferior. (In fact, that is pretty much what always happens).

In admitting that there may be such a thing as a geek (which is actually presupposed by both the study and the author of the article, not me), we are also given license to define what it is to be geeky.

Focusing on comic books, energy drinks, and star-trek (or what have you), is focusing on geeky things. Things that geeks are likely to be interested in. This is the wrong thing to focus on, because clearly not every geek likes these things. (I hate energy drinks and comic books).

My whole point, therefore, is that this isn't about intelligence or anything else, rather it is about of set a personality traits that tend to make people interested in certain things.

From this perspective, being interested in Star Trek or enjoying energy drink is not in any way a different indicator than writing a lot of computer code.

What if the article had ended, 'Not only are non geeks missing out on star trek conventions, star trek conventions are missing out on a diversity of ideas and perspectives.'

It doesn't make any sense, as there is no obvious causative direction here. Geek ends up being a statistical clustering rather than a definable entity.

(If you go to a Star Trek convention, do you become a geek?
Or were you already a geek for wanting to go to a Star Trek convention? Can I be a geek without going to a Star Trek convention).

I also could just as easily say 'Not only are geeks missing out on people who are not interested in tech careers, the geek group is missing out on a diversity of ideas and perspectives.'

The entire conclusion stems from a solipsistic view that every person is going to be equally interested in a career in technology.

Hell, if I didn't have bad acne, a stutter, poor eyesight, an audible lisp, an addiction to MONSTERBAWLS energy drink, (as well as horrible BO and halitosis), I might quit my job as a programmer and go into marketing.

Or I might just be the most charismatic programmer ever.
As an aside, I noticed this popup as well and the atrocious grammar makes it read like a phishing message.

Specifically, the line "This is not true" is meant to refer to the idea that Google indexes your whole Facebook account, but the way it is written actually seems to indicate that there have, in fact, been no misleading rumors. This might seem like a nitpicky thing, but to me it just underscored the fact that Facebook is on the defensive right now and is scrambling to keep users' mindshare at the expense of the usual level of polish we have come to expect throughout the site.
We use it extensively at LinkedIn. Many of them data-driven features you see on the site are powered by it. It's greatly improved not only the speed at which the data can be built but most importantly what can be done.

I've also introduced it to a start-up I worked for 1.5-2 years ago. I essentially did much of the optimization Todd described "in the dark"; this was before Cloudera was formed and when #hadoop on FreeNode only had a handful of Yahoo, Facebook and Rapleaf people.

Despite the amount of work involved (including introducing Java-based project to a LAMP-based start-up which was very ambivalent towards Java), it was a great productivity boost (over the mix of ad-hoc shell/Perl/PHP scripts a MySQL datawarehouse we started with).

MapReduce isn't just about scalability and performance. You don't need to have a "scalability crisis" to benefit from it. It's also about being able to do a great deal more by applying parallelizable algorithms (see for example, the Mahout or Katta projects).
That's something that has turned me off of using mainstream media for anything other than fact-gathering: There's no consideration for what's actually true. Editorials and political blogs give a clearer view of what's going on.
Harry Potter expert here. Responding to your first question about poverty, there are some limiting factors on conjuring. First, although items appear to come from nowhere, they actually are likely to come from somewhere. For example, the feast appears magically on the Great Hall tables, but it comes from the kitchens below after being prepared by house elves. When things vanish, they also likely go somewhere else (remember the vanishing cabinet). Many things are transfigured (transformed) by starting first with a subject, like turning beetles into buttons, and some effects wear off (a lot of magic is non-permanent), so here it would make more sense to use actual buttons for clothing. The second limiting factor is skill level of the witch/wizard, as many possess expertise in one area, but not others (even Dumbledore being magically expert in many areas is not an alchemist, for example). This helps explain why places like Hogwarts and the Ministry are elaborate; witches and wizards of many skill levels and abilities worked together crossing spells for added conjuring complexity as well as durability from the magic wearing off.

As for Harry's parents having money, they were a highly skilled witch and wizard husband/wife team. Just as in the muggle world, as with a smart husband and wife tandem (think the Obamas), they would do well economically. Harry's money is riches for a single kid financing a few school years, not necessarily a king's sum meaning he is set for life.
Hi, I'm one of the main developers of Codenode, and I wanted to agree that the Sage notebook is a bit more mature at this time.

In fact, I was one of the original creators of the Sage notebook (along with William Stein, Tom Boothby, and others).

We started Codenode with the hope of creating an even more generalized and robust online code notebook.
> I actually saw this lady at a bar once kissing another woman. But I had no idea she was a lesbian until I wrote a deanonymizer on a dataset of millions of rows and then combed through her IMDB posts to find one very suggestive comment.

The issue is really whether or not 'everyone' will know that she is a lesbian (really bisexual if read her IMDB comment which someone posted above). I highly doubt that someone wanting to conceal her identity as a lesbian/bisexual woman would go to a 'straight bar' and start making out with a woman. So the presumption here would be that you saw her at a gay bar kissing a woman. If so, not too many 'anti-gay' people go to gay bars, so I would think that she is relatively safe from discrimination in such a scenario.

> Netflix should have asked for permission before releasing a user's anonymized data. But I think they learned their lessons.

Obviously not because Netflix's second contest will release even more information on users (like zip/postal code, age, etc). Does that sound like someone that has 'learned their lesson?'

While the first contest could be put down to good faith, the second one definitely shows them at least attempting to push the boundaries.
On the topic of MapReduce, does anyone have pointers to articles detailing different implementations of the shuffle phase?
Mostly I agree with you but I think Calderon dealt with this more than most. Baggage trains where frequent plot devices and resource management was portrayed as an important mostly discussed off screen. Southern taxes supporting the shield wall. The Canim also had significantly more than 60,000 people, they had ~60,000 warriors and a few hundred thousand "people" because they sent a full slice of society across the ocean. They also took over a huge land area including at least one large city, several coastal towns, and a huge area in between which was something like a months march across. Something like (10 * 30) ^2 = 90,000 square miles is plenty of area for an army that size. Also, they did not appear to be limited to meat.
How To Become An Successful Affiliate Marketer From The Start
The key to success is choosing the right program from the start and this may take some research on your behalf. The affiliate marketer acts as the middleman between the merchant and consumer.
[I]f fewer bright, ambitious people go into business, economies may suffer. Instead the talent will go increasingly into the public sector, the law, medicine—which are already bursting with bright people as it is.

This must be some new definition of “suffer” that I was not previously aware of.
I've been waiting for this.

Clayton Christensen predicted the coming decline of the MBA several years ago in The Innovator's Solution (very good book BTW). The financial bubble has extended the popularity of MBAs, but it is a net loss to take several years out of your career to gain information that you could gain on the side while continuing working with an executive MBA. Eventually the market is going to come to accept that.
Inflationary monetary supply enabled by the federal reserve... lots of talent with large salaries.

This sounds like a villain-hunt: a well-known cognitive bias that seeks to explain circumstances in terms of human agents with simple, understandable motivations to the exclusion of environmental, structural, or probabilistic explanations that lack such features.

In this case, while I'm sure the Fed bears some responsibility, a lot of the growth of the financial sector over the last 30 years is probably due to the fact that several billion Asians have entered the world economy in that time. Their work creates wealth, which is useful as capital, for which there are markets, which grow from the influx and thus offer larger rewards to clever people who work in finance, should they find a better/faster/more efficient way of getting things done.
One the hats I wear is that of a recruiter (its business we operate here) focused on finance and biotech. I couldnt agree more: MBAs aren't that hireable right now, even in banking. In fact a good junior, with 2 years of experience, are much more placeable. As for higher degrees, if you want into banking or business, comp sci, physics, applied math, statistics are better MS degrees.

I dont have an MBA, and havent pursued one thus far, but for the cost and knowing the job market, I think the article is mostly right. Good managers can teach business stuff as long as the talent is dynamic enough. Those analytical skills, though, are highly valuable in this market to smart hiring managers.
Google Maps India learns to navigate like a local
That would make a lot of sense to me if I were to let myself believe that Microsoft just didn't have the resources required to keep up. It's more likely that they just don't want the web to obviate their platform, and so they're dragging their heels.
Not that I really know, but in defense of the contractor I'm guessing that the Predator-to-satellite uplink and satellite-to-HQ downlink protocols were dictated by the Pentagon in the RFP and statements of work to use existing military signal protocols and the contractors really didn't have a lot of choice in the matter.
Thank you :D

I've read HN for two years now... made an account just a few days ago... I don't write a very good english (I understand it really well though) so I've never felt like commenting...

I've been a IOI participant twice -> and twice a looser.
The thing is that perfect anonymization implies that the dataset would be useless since by definition it would contain no information. If you can begin correlating data points with enough outside information you will be able to extract at least a shadow of the original information.
It's good to see The Economist addressing some of the fundamental flaws in how "business" is practiced today, particularly at the end of the article.

The past two decades transformed business from the valuable business-building concepts of management, distribution, and efficiency to obscure concepts like deal-making and arbitrage.

They have their place in the financial/economic systems, but they are not the foundation of business. With shows like "The Apprentice", these are the parts that are glorified, and it leaks into our business education.

Business isn't about finger-guns and handshakes. It's about creating value and then getting it to those who need it.
Every time I get my haircut. When did I mention intelligence? This is all about groups. Talk about attacking a straw doll.

I have no interest in the latest winner of strictly come dancing, big brother, Susan Boyle's latest single. I don't like grime, r & b. I think that the Sun newspaper is little more than compost.

It's to do with a social group. It's to do with interests. We see extremes of this in high school (pg has a great essay on this).

My point was that the author is singling out one 'clique' for their double-think experiment.
Agree with the others who say make it a web app.

What is the business model? Ad supported? It's definitely a good effort. Thanks for sharing it!
I have this problem with the 24" monitor I have at home, but the 21" i have at work next to my 30" is just fine. I think it varies a lot by screen.
> As a male, computer science major, and avid coffee drinker, I too am repelled by energy drinks.

Repelled as in, "I don't want to be around anyone that drinks energy drinks" or as in, "I don't like to drink energy drinks?"

I find it wildly unbelievable that women would be shying away from Computer Science/Engineering because they are afraid of people who consume energy drinks. There are plenty of other more believable things for them to be repelled by. Are they only talking to women who choose their profession based on whether or not they want to meet their future husband in the workplace (i.e. "I won't find a suitable husband among energy drink consumers")?

I find it hard to believe that 'energy drinks' are associated with 'being a geek.' I've certainly never seen anyone that was considered as 'geek' drinking a Red Bull + Vodka mix, but they are wildly popular in areas. I've certainly never seen any energy drink marketed to geeks in advertisements either.

> That aside, in my experience I see two mostly-exclusive classes of "geek": people who are much more fascinated with producing technology and people who are much more interested in consuming it.

I know plenty of people that do both. My friend/co-worker bought himself a 30" monitor for his work desk (with his own money) just because he was annoyed at only having 2 20" monitors at work (his home setup is 3 screens). He's happy now because he can fit multiple Gvim windows on the screen at a 'usable size.' Yet he has all the latest gadgets (Kindle, iPhone3G, etc). [edit: I should make it more clear that he is a 'builder-type' person that has no love of meetings and would rather 'get the job done.' I really don't think that he falls into the 'people that are more interested in consuming it' category.]

I don't see how those two groups are mutually exclusive.
I hope we don't lose Dragons’ Den. The Canadian version is great entertainment.
This article is bullshit. It's premised on a single piece of evidence: the decline of jobs for MBAs. Holding the decline of jobs in a recession as a sign a qualification is worthless is ridiculous. The demand for engineers has gone down as well, does that mean engineering qualifications are worthless ?

Following the same logic if the demand for MBA graduates went up then it would make sense to argue that MBAs are valuable. So if we look at the early 2000s where this was true was Lucy Kellaway writing articles calling out the merits of MBAs ? - well no, it turns out Lucy Kellaway has been writing articles slagging off MBAs since the 90s.

Ms Kellaway is just using the recession to ride her hobby-horse.

We shouldn't be any less critical when reading articles that support our personal opinions than those that oppose them.
Liked the post!

Interesting point about allocating too many Writables. This problem is an indication that *Writable classes are poorly designed. Instead of having public constructors, they should each have some sort of static method, akin to that of a factory class, that implements some sort of intelligent pooling and reuse.

Also, NullWritable is awesome! I don't think you mentioned it. Very useful for counters!
The User's Journey - How to design for ecstasy
>>Also, do you realize how much effort (and energy expenditure) would it be to manufacture 10 square meters for every human being alive?

Please think before writing.

Even today, much less energy is used making solar cells than they create... For material, the latest thin film is not a heavy weight per square meter... (also a hint, we're not running out of silicon for glass...).

In fact, this would take very little resources compared to what a person need to live.

If you want to make a coherent point, you'd note that my "energy budget" didn't include transportation or industry.

We can apply all the clean energy sources we will have in twenty years, for that.

Note that I'm just arguing known sources in one-two decades, assuming the remaining decades are without developments! And you can't answer even that.

Let us assume space based solar in twenty years... 90? I can't even guess.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1215313...

Did you have any counter arguments against Thorium reactors? Or you're silent because you lack arguments?

>>100 billion square meters [is a lot of area, sic]

You must be unique on this site to never have thought about how many square meters go into a square km. :-)

10 km X 10 km == 100 million square meters. Enough to give 10 square meter to 10 million people, a BIG city. Go check a map, that area is less than the area of the roofs of such a city...

(Most people will live in cities, it seems.)

Enough of the pre-high school math lesson...

>>As for fusion, you could add the chances of success if they were completely different approaches, but they are not.

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Please explain how a known success/failure of one of the three projects I mentioned would influence the likelihood of the others? I can honestly not see how you could argue that.

I am sorry, but I wonder if you're a troll. I can't be bothered with the rest.
... The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn to recursive expressions instead of fearing them. I read and code strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exultation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to read all of SICP. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a C++ shop as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await me below, and I shall seek them soon. Defun progn r'assoc-if rplaca a ia! Defsetf! No, I shall not manage my own callstack-- I cannot be made to manage my own callstack!

I shall plan my cousin's escape from that Murray Hill mad-house, and together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Cambridge. We shall take the T out to that brooding lab near the Charles and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-threaded CSAIL, and in that lair of the Bearded Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.
"But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said."

Right. Because people in third-world countries are clearly far too backwards and ignorant to understand anything involving computers or technology.
This is as official as it gets!
I have been following Scott's site for several years. He is at the top of his field, one of the most qualified quantum computing theorists. Sometimes his sarcasm is juvenile and falls flat, but this post is classic. Yes you would have had to been following along to appreciate it. And it would help to know D-wave at one point actively recruited Scott.If you want to know whether or not quantum computation is taking place, this is your man.

I highly recommend reading further on his site, including his papers and lecture notes. I especially recommend his lecture notes "Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science" http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp08/6.080/materials.html and "Quantum Computing Since Democritus" http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/

Enjoy.
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Bellisario’s Maxim: “Don’t examine this too closely.”

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BellisariosMaxim
This article is from their speculative 'The world in 2010' publication, which attempts to forecast the coming year. That means its a bit more speculative than standard economist articles.

Wall-street bailouts definitely made business less sexy on main street
So it has less to do with 'energy drinks' and more to do with general dirtiness/untidiness?
D-Wave keeps making the news with their 'adiabatic quantum computers' solving puzzles and doing pattern-matching. They claimed last year that they built a 128-qubit quantum chip while other research efforts only managed couple of qubits.

The problem with all this is that they've still not managed to prove that their hardware is actually a quantum computer (in the sense that there's usefully entangled qubits)

In a previous press interview they were ripped to shreds - rightfully so - for being so vague about how they knew that the devices they build are quantum computers. At one point someone asked them about a really simple test: To maintain a quantum superposition the hardware must be kept close to 0 Kelvin. Therefore they should be able to slowly increase the temp in their rig and at some point it should change behavior - it should revert to the classical physical behavior and the quantum effects should stop. D-Wave admitted that they've not done this simple yet extremely obvious test. And today, a year later, we're still no further.

The only logical conclusion is that they've not succeeded in making a 'real' quantum processor.
Outrageously cool. This is a textbook for how to build stuff in the modern way.

1) Start with a design

2) Get feedback

3) Improve design

4) Goto Step 2

This would also be fantastic in other places with roadnames. For example, walking direction around a city like D.C. "walk away from the Washington Monument and Towards the Lincoln Memorial."
To me studying business because you want to be good at business is like studying the concept of winning if you want to be good at a sport.

That could probably be phrased a little better, but I am just amazed at the number of smart young people I know who aspire to study an MBA rather than something tangible/critical that will give them a useful or scarce ability.
2009 Open Source Top Ten
I can't believe some of those deals. $25,000 and 50% plus a renaming of the company to include the investors name.
It depends on the school as well. The "3.5 cutoff" is the result of massive grade inflation in recent years. By comparison, my school, Harvey Mudd, has it such that 3.0 is the cutoff for the Dean's list. This seems absurdly low by comparison to most schools, yet doesn't it seem ridiculous for everyone even mildly competent to graduate with a B+ or above?

The current system encourages schools to raise grades solely to get more people to pass the 3.5 cutoffs, allowing them to say that more graduates got good jobs, creating a grade inflation feedback loop.
Something I've always appreciated about Lord of the Rings is that it actually took time off from the story to tell you how the army of Mordor is fed. Apparently they have absolutely enormous amounts of farmland by lake Nurnen in southeast Mordor.
I go to Northwestern. We share a number of courses (some of the OS projects, Computer Systems, etc.). Definitely not easy.
So this suggests..."read it more than once, writing down which parts were tough to understand?"

That's...it?
Awesome. The directions shown in the example are pretty much how an Indian would give directions (minus the hand waving of course :)
Seconded. BS becomes official. (Dilbert doesn't count; The Economist has to say it)
Really, Think ambulance chasers, class-action specialists, and medical specialists. Why are there so few family practitioners, yet so many specialists.