skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These guys got rocked at TC50, deer-in-headlights style. Paul and Marc Andreessen's questions were pretty devastating, given the team should have had answers at the drop of a hat.

Paul asked why they were helping other people buy tickets rather than using their secret price prediction algorithm to arbitrage them and make all the money themselves (assuming the variance is high enough).

They didn't have a good answer to that, although it's plausible to me that the variance is smaller than the transaction costs. But it's a bit like knowing about Black-Scholes 10 years before anyone else and sitting on it.

Andreessen asked them what their TAM was, and it seemed like they didn't even know what that meant. It was pretty bad; obviously their business isn't going to capture 100% of the secondary market, because most of the money is made by the people actually selling the tickets. At most you'd only make some % of that.

In any case, it's good to see them moving forward. TC50 must have helped them refine their pitch a lot, and given the quant nature of the investors they must have seen an opportunity that wasn't totally apparent from their TC50 demo.
"Sure, it's concise, but it's lots of small characters that you could misread etc."

To each his own, but have you spent much time coding Ruby and encountering this problem?

I ask because it's not a problem I've had or hear from people who have been using the language. It seems to be be an issue expected by people who have not yet spent much time using Ruby (much like concerns over the lack of static typing).

From a distance it may seems as though things would get confusing, but in actual practice this seems not to be the case.

Could be a selection bias, but I would like to hear from people who have truly used Ruby in earnest and stopped because of repeated annoyances.
Satisfy Customers' Needs. (this makes it three)
I see.

It should be noted that this assumption is usually, but not always, true.

It's possible to create a google account with a non @gmail.com address (I have two myself). I just tested and confirmed that Google Docs shows the local part of the email address but not the domain.

So you couldn't be 100% sure that "john.doe" is john.doe@gmail.com, though it would obviously be a pretty solid guess.
I just emailed the Gmail team to tell them.
It's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_character However, most of the combining characters also have an equivalent single gylph composed version. But unicode supports making your own by overlaying.

An important task of unicode encoding/decoding is inter-converting between the two forms. For example if you require a name to be unique, and one form uses combining characters and the other doesn't, they are identical, but different.
Hmm.

> You can't argue without evidence ...

I guess as a mathematician I find evidence based arguments unconvincing, and exposition of principles more interesting. I'm now aware of the issues (although in truth I already was before reading this article) and so if implementing my own hash tables would know what to be wary of, and be ready to do some research, analysis and measurements.

But each to their own. I think we'll simply have to agree to disagree.
What about the plans at GitHub seems pricey? (Not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely curious)

edit: what sort of guarantee of privacy are you expecting as well?
Serif fonts are easier to read on paper because of the extra clues provided by serif.

San serif is easier to read on a screen because screen resolution is not as good as paper. Specific serif fonts may work on screen.

I haven't seen an e-ink screen to see if that's different from normal screens.

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=serif+san-serif+...
The Invisible OLED Laptop to End All Laptops
You won't find consciousness in the brain
Not bad, but personally, I prefer four words: "Build something people want."
Merlin Mann on Scribd
How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?
Surely one downside is if OEMs such as HTC are able to make a better WebOS handset than Palm?
Worst SEC Filing Footnote of 2009
Aren't NeHe's tutorials very outdated? They seem to focus on use of the fixed function pipeline, which is deprecated in OpenGL 3.
E8 - "the most beautiful structure in mathematics"
Can you provide example code written in another language that accomplishes the same (element mapping) which you find easier to read or looks better? I'm not sure Java, PHP, Perl, C# or Python could offer an improvement, besides catering to a preference of keywords ("begin", "end", etc.) over non-letter tokens (parentheses, set braces, etc.). And string interpolation doesn't seem like it would be the source of either more or fewer bugs than string/variable concatenation.

Also bear in mind that, in Ruby, almost all blocks can be delimited with a "do/end" pair rather than set braces.
I assumed that "sequence is very long" meant "the time (and space?) complexity of your solution matters". Iterating over the sequence x times doesn't change the time complexity, so long as x << n (i.e. it's O(n) whether x is 1, 2 or 3).

Unfortunately, revealing whether my assumption proved correct would give away how they assess the solution to this demo problem, which some might view as a spoiler.

EDIT: since people are posting actual solutions, I suppose mere analysis of the testing methodology is okay. My assumption was correct.
"I tell people that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it."
This also allows some good plausible deniability. If someone knows you're using this sytem and forces you to decode your collection of random bit files, you can arrange 9 out of 10 of them to get a harmless plausible result (a bunch of harmless pictures / private tax files etc). Only by adding the last bit file does it turn into what you're trying to hide.

If you only show part of the solution, it looks like you've unlocked it and the result is harmless.
Really nice site. Well done. The example problem that showed up to me (equilibrium point detection) was not trivial, but didn't require advanced stuff which a halfway decent programmer wouldn't use day in and day out.

I also like the way you tell me what you scored on and what my result was.

I wonder if you should relax the condition that you can submit only once.

I gather TopCoder offers something similar. What's your strategy to compete with them?

PS: got 94 using C++ in 16 min b/c I didn't check overflow of large numbers. Good thing you check for that.
Washington Times: How we create and deploy sites fast with virtualenv and Django
I like the idea of "Python replacement." I'm finding Python grating in some ways these days...
Good criticism...

Yet, if you want to avoid your application occasionally freezing when the user hits a key, then isn't distinguishing worst-case scenarios good? You seem to agree with the article's claim that hash table sometimes give you an O(n) hit. Even if this happens very occasionally, aren't there situations where this could be worse than a constant O(log(N)) hit?

On the other, what keeps the hash algorithm from expanding the buckets little-by-little?
I guess spreadsheets is a different team. Even the multi-user chat is using a different gateway than gtalkgadget.
Kind of skewed to software startups :)

Lose the dresscode.

Use Best Tools.

Dual Monitors. Period.

Listen, Sell Later.

Ignore Everybody, Create.

Limit the features.

Live = Real Test.

No C Levels.

Distribute Authority & Accountability.

Don't over engineer.

Don't debate forever.

Share the Champagne.
Google's Near Me Now is Live & Good Enough to Replace Yelp
Schneier on Security: TSA Logo Contest
Potential benefit of hash tables: cache locality.

Assuming you already have the key in the CPU cache, computing the hash is relatively cheap and gets you directly to the desired value.

A binary tree structure always makes you traverse several levels until you get to the desired value. Of course, this can be minimized with high-fanout trees -- see clojure for example).
Perhaps, but I hope not.

One big difference is that they are advocates of "a new way of working." Also, they are being open about it and discussing and sharing their ideas with the world.

If it fails, so be it. If it succeeds (or more likely, some variation of it succeeds), then we're all the better off for it.
What Colour are your bits? Why XOR can't circumvent copyright [2004 classic]
Actually this is something the search engines can and should do. Offering this on Bing would be a very smart thing for Microsoft to do. They'd have a nice little competitive advantage from their easy access to the bundles of localization strings. (I doubt if it'd slow Google down much, but even if Bing were the best search engine to use for only a few days after the release of a new MS product that would really help them to get people to try Bing.
Final Fantasy XIII Transformable Odin Action Figure from Play Arts -Kai-
Netflix Caves to Warner Brothers
Hm. You make this sound attractive; I've been messing about with PLT Scheme for a few months and will check out newLisp to see how they differ.

That said, I need to disagree with you on one point:

> I realized that it was syntax that was at the root of most programming errors.

No. You're using the word wrong. Syntax is the structure of a language--e.g., curly braces vs whitespace vs parens vs etc to set scope. Syntax is trivial and can be caught by the compiler / interpreter.

The root of most programming errors is a logic fault--i.e., the programmer is either solving the right problem incorrectly (didn't think it through or didn't understand it) or is solving the wrong problem (incorrect / out of date / misunderstood requirements).
Me too.. I am totally ruined by Eclipse, so I depend on it to check my spelling/typos..

That said, as soon as the test popped up, I opened my eclipse, wrote the code, cut & pasted .. viola!
(in python btw)
> Wow, someone who thinks that me not trying to build Tarsnap and sell it off as fast as possible is a good thing.

That would pretty much be the deciding factor.

And I find it a real pity that not more people think like this.

I've had some business partners in the past of the 'get-rich-quick', 'retire-at-30' variety and I'm really not impressed with that mindset.

Especially not because most people that try that fail in spectacular ways, it's like gambling or playing the lottery.

I'm going a lot more slowly on my own projects, even though my investment profile is a lot more high risk than that.

$9K is a bit out of the budget though, I'm well under $300 for my current setup (which is 20T on one box and 5x3T on 5 others, but those could be condensed a bit).

A > 20 fold increase is probably not very smart.
Drug-Taking AI's
I don't see much exposition of principles going on when the author asserts that hash functions are much slower than comparison functions, for example. If you're going to make an empirical argument, you need empirical evidence.
Cocos2d is a 2d library that sits on top of OpenGL ES for the iPhone, it's rather nice.
http://ansistego.sf.net/stickotropes.tgz drug-adapted animals to try. use doses of 500 or so but i am about to go to 750. zow!
Wait,

Arguing from principle is great but ...not only does he not give numerical evidence, he also doesn't give evidence in terms of describing which commonly used libraries or applications use what hashing method.
Most of the benefits of a college educate accrue to the student. Sure, education is a public good to an extent, but people who can afford it should pay for the majority of it.
http://seleniumhq.org/
An exceedingly good one, both for the advice and the reference.
Pear Hub
MyPlaylist Finally Closes Its Doors
Since the OP is talking about XOR, why not use Information Dispersal Algorithms ?

I asked a similar question on #askreddit the other day, what if I put the odd bits of a movie on a server in Ukraine and the even bits on a server in Sweden, a special kind of media player live steam the content, reassemble small chunks in memory on the fly and playback it on a monitor directly? Technically I am not pirating the movie unless I was caught watching it right now.

The #askreddit people suggested me consulting a lawyer :)
No more advices.

Please no more.
Wow, you learn something every day! I don't hit incognito mode much, I hadn't tried going to my gmail or gdocs. So there you have it, when browsing sites you may not be able to trust (like Arvind Narayanan's blog ;-) be sure to do so in an incognito window.
I'm disappointed in 2.x so far. Google is making some good refinements but they seem to be ignoring two of the biggest usability issues in my opinion:

We need a real multi-tasking UI. If the OS is going to multi-task apps we should have a way to intuitively interact with this functionality. Installing third party utilities such as task managers shouldn't be required to use a major feature of the OS. The "alt-tab" feature and the inclusion of multi-tasking elements in the pull down menu doesn't cut it for me.

Copy & paste is a mess. It either just doesn't work right or I'm an idiot. I can't manage to make it select accurate text regions. Usually I just can't get the copy & paste mode to kick in at all
Hashtable routines are far easier to write and debug than balanced binary tree routines.

Of course there are open source implementations available for both. But I would guess it is easier to write your own hash function than learn to use somebody else's, and easier to learn somebody else's B-tree routines than to write your own.

So we live in a world with O(N) hash implementations and O(1) B-tree implementations, for N programmers.
I launched RubyFlow - a public link blog for Ruby stuff - on April 9, 2008. On the same day, 3 other people posted items. The next day, about 10 others. This kept up for a few weeks but it died down a lot so I picked up the slack, did more promo, and since late 2008 it's basically run itself.

The trick? Have a popular site in the niche you can use to promote the heck out of the new site ;-) Stack Overflow is a great example of this technique working on a bigger scale.
Triple Double-Pendulum
this is not the goal of mocksmtp. It's for first level testing.
Checking html and correcting rendering with webkit. Then of course you need to test other mail/weblmail reader
Apple And Google Just Tag Teamed The U.S. Carriers
Yay you. This whole thread I've been thinking of that, feeling alone. And then I saw your comment. :D
John Gruber had an interesting explanation for this with his Auteur Theory of Design (with Steve at the top):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk3UcgbbmxQ
As someone who lives in LA your rationalization by neighborhood micro climate is falling on deaf ears haha

I have never been more consistently disappointed by weather than that of the bay area. Personally I'd rather have a snowy winter than be greeted with 58 degrees and overcast every single morning all year long, but maybe thats just me...
Fixed, I think. Sorry about that.
I tried to do this in the late 90s with a team I lead. The plan was for an A and B team. The A team (did the theme song spring into your head?) would work on new features and the B team would do bug fixes in existing code. The teams would switch roles back and forth each month with the idea that the team that just released something would be the logical bug fixers when it went into production. The main problem with it was cross-polination -- ideally you want the teams to mix up every iteration but that breaks the follow on bug fixing period.

I think we made it 3 months before it collapsed due to conflicting outside schedule pressure I couldn't control.
I think those issues will go away now that the developer program is actually open to everyone.
Ask HN: Open source software liability?
If you are running an open source web framework like Django or Pylons and a security vulnerability or bug (in the framework itself) causes sensitive/private data to be leaked (like for example, online banking data), who is liable?

My understanding is that big corporations tend to stay away from open source because they cannot pass on the liability to someone like Sun or MS, but I'm having trouble finding any specific information on this subject.
So you have to offer piles of intangibles that make your best people say, “Yeah, I could get paid another $50k across the street– but it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Or, if you work at BigCo, what would it take for you to take a 30% pay cut?

These numbers seem somewhat high to me, but this could be Silicon Valley bias (arguably still valid due to our tech startup hub-ness).

I don't think there are enough intangibles to compete with an extra $50k and/or the inverse of 70% of my current salary. However, since I work at a startup, I also believe that such salary gaps don't exist, except maybe at the junior end.

Before the current recession (became obvious), I was at another company trying to lure a network engineer friend to come work for it. The intangibles, including working with me and not being in the Sales universe, were worth, at most, 10%. 30% would have been laughable if not insulting. He took the chance, but, since then, suffered a salary cut and my departure. My bet is they won't be able to keep him much longer, even if salaries are retroactively restored.

What has struck me about senior managers at a number of startups, especially very early-stage ones, is that they underestimate the effect of the intangible of risk on potential (or even current) employees. It can be a doozy and that's what all the other intangibles, including equity, balance out.

Personally, my situation is quite compatible with risk, and I've been around the block more than once with startups of varying sizes and levels of success. Even so, I'm only willing to "do more,"[1] not get "paid less." After all, with notable exceptions, the whole point of the exercise is commercial.

It should come as little surprise that this is the essence of the advice my parents gave me, having been veterans of the local semiconductor industry. I pass on this advice and live by it myself.

[1] A longer commute, flexible schedule (which can work both ways), being on-call, even doing less palatable work, for example. Notably excluded is working excessive hours, since there's little, if any, evidence that it can increase productivity, except in the very short term.
If I had to get it down to only 3 words, they might be "iteratively satisfy users." Awkward, bad rhythm,
and prone to double entendre, but you have to compromise to get all that into 3 words. (My first try was "understand your users," which sounds better but says less.)
Great video on how a pretty good teacher (as conventionally measured) learned how to really teach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI

titled: Confessions of a converted lecturer.
Follow the link and look at the participation rate in the 16-19 (pre-college) demographic. Headed to nothing.

Of course one can see that just by walking into any fast food restaurant, coffee shop, or supermarket in the USA. All the jobs are being held by adults who want the work, as low-paying as it is, and the kids could care less. That work is beneath them. They'd rather stay home on Facebook playing Farmville.

I'd like to see more analysis there. If these kids have no work ethic now, what happens in 20-30 years?
There's a P2P system that uses a similar idea: http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/
I think most open source licenses specifically disclaim any liability for damages caused by faults in the software.
This is great! I was working on revamping the emails we send out a few weeks ago and spend a long, painful time working in terminal with tail -f development.log | grep -A 30 -B 5 Mime-Version
This could be an opening for a startup.
Wow, you're way overthinking this. If you are responsible for getting a copy of some copyrighted material into the hands of people who don't deserve it, then you are almost certainly liable. It doesn't matter how obfuscated the process or where the bits live.

If you have a copy of Copyright File A and through some actions cause another copy of it to be simultaneously possessed by someone else, then you distributed it.
Sure, latencies can be a problem. Though even extraordinarily large tables aren't going to have user-visible latencies, really. I'd worry more about real time applications where occasionally high latencies would cause things like buffer underruns. Think packet routers, video transcoders, things like that.

But even then, the naive solution would just be to pre-size the hash table and be careful about insertion/deletion architcture. Not to chuck it in favor of an AVL tree or whatnot.
It would be great if this app provided some other functionality that helps with problems like that.

For instance, MailChimp takes CSS styles and modifies your HTML by placing your CSS into inline style tags. This is great, because you can have cleaner markup but still support clients that don't apply CSS well.
Chapter 5 of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book is out
Particularly important takeaways:

o Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.
o Form is important
o Master the reveal
I don't understand the anguish over a 28 day delay. Actually I don't even understand the interest, beyond how it relates to the eventual take-over by streaming.

You had a chance to see the movie in theaters. You either saw it or you didn't. The DVD comes out for sale. You either buy it or you don't. 28 days later the movie is available for rental, however long after the theatrical release. It just increases the wait time from the theatrical release by 28 days. ?

By the author's own definition, if you're renting at all instead of buying, it's crap. It's OK to wait 28 more days for crap. I may have even said this to my 12 year old in another context.

It's an amazing amount of text for such a trivial issue. What am I missing?

[Edit: added 2nd to last paragraph; the "crap" paragraph.]
Haha funny I think I've invented a new fundemental data structure as well. Hopefully we haven't all three invented the same one! Mine is going into proprietary software; I don't know if I'll write a paper over it. It doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't do before, but it takes the best and worst case performance of a well known data structure and reverses the two. So it's useful in places where the other structure would perform poorly.

Good luck with yours, both of you.
There is a really good rebuttal to said implementation entitled "What Colour are your Bits?" at http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986).
France considering "Google tax" to support dying media
I like how the performance evaluation seems to be fairly realistic - I used Ruby and my algorithm could have been more efficient (O(n) space, and O(n) time but with more traversals than necessary), but I scored 100 because I met all the stated constraints. (http://codility.com/demo/results/?id=demo8XKE77-H8G if anyone wants to refer to and/or mock my code.) It seems to me "ability to solve problems well enough under time pressure" is exactly what you want a simple hands-off test like this to screen for.

In face-to-face interviews you'd probably follow up by adding constraints: "your algorithm uses O(n) space in addition to the input, can you do it in constant space?". It would be cool if Codility supported that kind of workflow - following up the submitted solution with refinements on the original question. (Relatedly - do you support the workflow where you get a second try if you didn't get 100, maybe because the evalution revealed a constraint that wasn't clearly stated in the problem outline?)
Language design isn't a solved problem until we have a language that enables the average programmer to add any syntax they need. Lisp only comes close by punting and rubbing everyone's nose in the raw parse tree, and the average programmer ritually shuns it anyway.

Ruby doesn't even attempt to solve this problem. You can tell because if it didn't already have try/catch or begin/rescue or case/when, adding them yourself would be impossible.
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