skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny you should ask, I just ordered a copy of a stats textbook I used back in undergrad because I remember thinking that it was pretty clearly written with lots of examples. It's "Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists" by walpole . If you get a used 7th edition instead of the 8th, it's $10 instead of like $100. http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Statistics-Engineers-Scien...

Introductory Econometrics by Woolridge is a pretty readable econometrics text you should also check out, since it'll be especially applicable for social science: http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Econometrics-Approach-App...
It's simple: Linux was ported to ARM chips soon after being invented and it's pretty much game over for Windows x86 when you can run X servers on ARM on cheap mobile phones.
This is interesting:

At this point you might be wondering how iWin ever expected to make money off of their originally business model. I wondered that for a long time too.

Here’s what I think: ... Most people probably quit long before they ever earned enough to get anything.

This is perfectly true from my knowledge of a sms quizzes where less than 1% of the people actually play the game (although 100% of them pay the subscriptions).
While I am sympathetic to the author's thesis, the discussion is pretty meaningless unless you acknowledge that there is opportunity cost to doing a startup. Sure, you learn a lot and set up good contacts even if your startup fails - but the risk is in what other opportunities you might be missing. It's not sufficient to just be better off than when you started.
Exploration by doing & measuring, versus theoretical research is the way forward. This has taken me a few months to appreciate. There's no prep or legitimate how to guide for building a successful business.

Many successful folks have their own best practices to share.
something is missing here, who is paying you when you starting your venture? your saving, angel fund?
thanks for that argumentated non opinionated answer !
At least I don't write like a slightly retarded teenager, and I don't pretend to be an expert on Statistics. Thanks for the "kudos" anyways.
Problem with facebook status updates? When you have more than 250 friends
Sounds familiar...this is what I do when I procrastinate.
Distributed Perfect Hashing for Very Large Key Sets
What this doesn't take into account is the fact that 90+% of kids out of college who decide to become entrepreneurs don't get traction, don't network with other CEOs, and aren't getting the respect of people even if they fail. It's like only looking at the failures among companies that have been YC funded, and not looking at all the companies that failed after not even getting funded.
I run a Windows install natively, as it's far more reliable than any desktop Linux distribution I have ever used. I then run Ubuntu 9.10 in a virtual machine on one of my monitors or in Unity mode or what have you. This works very well for me; when Ubuntu inevitably breaks, it's trivial to revert to a working snapshot, and it doesn't take down the majority of what I'm doing.

Linux still has a long way to go improving usability and user experience, as well as improving the generally poor quality of Linux desktop software.

I really like Linux. I use it daily, and I would like it to succeed. I hope that the things I've mentioned are improved to bring it up to par with newer versions of OS X and Windows.
Court Skeptical of FCC's Power to Impose Net Neutrality
thanks this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted. I've got wamu/chase personal so I may go that way. No fat wad yet, we'll hire scads of MBA's to figure things out if we get there. For now just need simple basics with none of the bs like you got from Bofa.
A more elegant way for him to do it might be to put his e-mail address in his profile "about" section, and to reference that in his post. BUT, I appreciate viggity's candor in his post, and the success he's had with his surgery. Also, I think it perfectly appropriate that he offered his e-mail to people who might be depressed or otherwise unsure of what to do, who might be in a position to consider bariatric surgery.

Good on you, viggity, for being open to helping people with that.
Social Computing- Virtual World Methodology
I guess it depends by what you mean by "advanced statistics". Is correcting for heteroskedasticity, a fixed-effects regression, instrumental variable regression, etc advanced? Because if so, all of that is pretty common practice in say, economics. Simple linear regression is easy and often illuminating, but good luck getting a paper published if that's all you've done.

I agree that in practice, data munging is 90% of the work and can be pretty tedious and discouraging when working with real world datasets, but if you don't know about issues like the ones I mentioned above, how do you even know where to start?

For examples of how statistics can be used to solve interesting problems in the social sciences, just browse through Freakonomics.
I've seen this kind of advice related to writing before. The idea is you may be working on a scene and it's almost all written/described/finished. You stop before the end and move on to something else. When you come back to the scene, you'll be able to merge it into the rest of the story more easily now - perhaps even because you've realized what needed to happen after the scene (because you moved on to start that part before you had finished the first part). This is supposed to avoid the block of wondering, "so now what needs to happen next?" where your brain starts getting stuck in a loop of endless possibility because the search space has become unbounded.

I do think this is one of those "easier said than done" kind of things, similar to "buy low, sell high." However I've had days where I've done the equivalent while coding. Say, while working on an increasingly large method and then stopping because I need some additional, independent functionality. So I put the big method aside and build that functionality only to come back and notice that I can now factor out some prior stuff in this big method and call parts of the other method I was working on.. and oh if I do that again, look - more things in common! And factoring just kind of happens all before I even knew exactly what the big method originally was going to do in the first place. (In some cases, the big method just disappears entirely and there's nothing left of it.) Of course if I could make this happen all the time on demand, I'd be golden...
To be credible, you should not try to dispute the simple truth that derives from conservation of mass and conservation of energy. Cal in = cal out; however, I do agree that our bodies are wired in such a way that particular substances trigger 'calories in' without a concomitant immediate increase in 'calories out', thus leading to increased weight and a new homeostatic baseline. This is not merely a pedantic point: it is the difference between making a credible statement about human nutrition and looking like someone who rejects chemistry.
LOL. Pincus had the absolute worst speech at "Startup School". He didn't prepare anything and just meandered aimlessly from one thought to the next, rambling on about his life story. It was almost intolerable.
Sorry for the sarcastic answer, never a good thing.
My point was, despite Zed's tone , that i found irritating, he does actually provide content in this article, that a newbie like me can use and put at profit (wich i did when the article first came out).

On the other hand, your post sounds angry, gives no insight as to why / how he lacks knowledge (which would have been interresting) and use condescending expressions like "pseudo intellectual garbage"
High level languages is also an example. C is really an abstraction layer upon machine code, but in most cases compilers produce faster code than what you would do if you wrote assembler. So C is an abstraction layer that helps you improve performance.
This is a pretty rosy "worst case" scenario. madhouse was acquired; most people would consider that a success. The vast majority of failed startup founders do not get a VP position at their next job.

I suspect that for the vast majority of failed startups, the cost is mostly pride and the lost wages of having a steady job for that 2-3 years. The benefit is whatever experience you gain from that time period - people will judge you based on your skill level and what you've learned.

There's also a much-worse case where people take on $100ks of debt, lose their friends, lose their home, get divorced, and waste 10 years of their life on a venture that was doomed from the start. This outcome is fairly easily avoided by keeping perspective and constantly re-evaluating whether the potential upside merits the risks you're taking, but it does happen to some people.
Posting from cell here - Yes we asked users to vote for us via a one time ad after 15 mins of use- we wanted to win and a button in the client was the best spot. But on the same hand we are not just some random startup with no traction- I think we are actually the highest trafficed of all the competitors.

We are seeing amazing growth and should hit 5mm uniques/mo shortly! :)
Anyways thanks to those who voted for us and enjoy tinychat
this is one of the best visualization I've seen in recent times. Wonder why Netflix doesnt do this on their website itself - an year end wrap-up on movies
the comment requires no further argumentation. what could anyone take away from this article? "most programmers are idiots, zed shaw is fucking awesome" and "SD is important yo!". this isn't HN material.
Windows Mobile 7 to be released in February | TheComputingGeek.com
According to recent reports, the Windows Mobile 7 is set to be launched in Barcelona in the coming month, claimed an anonymous Microsoft Executive.

The widely anticipated Windows Mobile Operating system will be displayed at Mobile World Congress but this comes as no shock to many as the public expected the release to occur at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 10.
I'm pretty sure your system is useless without a statistically significant sample size.
Compiler for a new programming language. Implemented in Haskell, compiles to LLVM.

May go in to work and do some work stuff instead, though, since my project there's in a fairly exciting phase.
tl;dr - No

At this point, I don't think there's any technical reason that Linux on the desktop/laptop/netbook/smartbook wouldn't fly.

End users never see a command line in mainstream Linux distributions, anymore than they do with Windows 7 or Mac OS X (though power user still use them). Applications are available from a nice point and click GUI, very similar to the apps marketplace on smartphones, making software installs a snap.

Linux now has the best hardware support of any OS; hardware that doesn't "just work" is kind of rare these days. There's no driver installs, making the end user process even easier.

Since smartbooks will be the next big push, Linux will have an early advantage, as it did with netbooks.

All that said, unless more vendors start offering and promoting pre-installs, Linux on the desktop will not be mainstream. No one (expect we few) installs an OS. If viruses take over a machine, they take it to Geek Squad and pay $150 for e re-install. That's just the reality, just as most people don't do their own car maintenance anymore.

The single largest failure of Linux (which I use exclusively) is that it has no serious marketing. 99 out of 100 people I encounter have never even heard of it, after all these years. They know Android and Tivo and Google and Sharp and all the other brands that run Linux under the covers, but they have no idea what it is or that it's something they can use on a computer. I understand that the free distribution model doesn't lend itself to paying for marketing, but there isn't even a way to contribute towards advertising. The only thing Linux has is word of mouth.
This case, before the D.C. Court of Appeals, just had oral arguments on the question whether the FCC has legitimate authority to impose its net-neutrality rules.

With a three-judge panel to render a decision, the FCC got some cold water thrown on it during the arguments.

Chief Judge David Sentelle, addressing the FCC's claim that it had implied authority to impose the rules: "You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good."

Questioning the FCC's general counsel about where in the underlying communications statute (giving the FCC its ultimate authority) the agency could justify its order imposing an open-Internet policy, Judge A. Raymond Randolph said: "You have yet to identify a specific statute." (Judge Randolph repeatedly stated from the bench that the legal provisions cited by the FCC were mere policy statements that can't justify the FCC action.)

That's two out of three judges expressing extreme skepticism about the FCC's authority to act as it did here. Having argued legal cases in just situations, I would say that, at least at this level, the FCC's action is very likely about to be struck down.
> he does actually provide content in this article, that a newbie like me can use and put at profit (wich i did when the article first came out).

what could you possibly use from this article? if you're really interested in learning stats concepts and tools you can be better served by blogs with actual content.

here's a good one: http://incanter-blog.org/
Had the same thing done to me by a lawyer at a tech meetup. No email upfront asking if it was ok, just automatically on his bi-weekly newsletter which contained links about crap.
You can put contact info in the 'about' section of your user page.
I see some kid finding his dad's porn collection through this screensaver.
Enterprise 3.D – Living and Working in Virtual Worlds
There's always the danger, though, that you will run into Zeno's paradox.
The deadliest place on Earth is probably at the bottom of the ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep

The GCC isn't eligible for that. It has to compete for Deadliest Place in Earth, and by that standard it doesn't rate. The bottom of a back-filled hole in my yard is worse, to say nothing of conditions in the Mantle or the Core.
While making his case against fructose, Lustig makes a few offhand positive comments about glucose -- but it's not clear if he'd actually recommend ingesting it from nearly-pure sources, or using it as a sweetener instead of sucrose/HFCS. (Others with similar dietary recommendations often view pure glucose as bad as any other sugar.)

Sweettarts, Pixie Stix, Lik-m-Aid, and a few other brightly-colored super-sweet candies are almost entirely d-glucose, aka dextrose -- often with no other sugars listed as ingredients. I wonder if according to the Lustig analysis, these are relatively OK, or still have other problems (like triggering rollercoaster blood glucose/insulin levels) and so should be avoided.
Gotta' love Saturdays.
Without steak (protein and extra calories), steroids don't work - so yeah, you're doing the cheapest way to build muscle ;)
This page has side-by-side graphics and a split-channel mp3
http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax1.html
The four models of organizing relationships
I'd love to be able to understand some complicated bit of code by watching an Etherpad-style timeline, with audio commentary of the whole (test-first?) process.

I love all those special characters, too. So much easier and quicker to read (chunk) than method names and so on.

And I expect the audio track to be sampled on a forthcoming relaxation tape.
Narcissus JavaScript engine
Linux now has the best hardware support of any OS; hardware that doesn't "just work" is kind of rare these days. There's no driver installs, making the end user process even easier.

Let's see, I've got 3 computers using linux that needed drivers installed via apt-get.

1. Wireless card (well known card) was detected as an Enternet card and assigned eth0. It obiviously didn't work.

2. Wireless card (Broadcom) didn't have open source drivers so the drivers weren't installed. Had to enable the nonfree repository through synaptic to get the driver I was looking for.

3. Video card is forced into a mode it doesn't support because it wasn't detected properly. (GeForce 2 NVidia, worked just fine with Debian Sarge) Had to modify X11 config files manually.

I think I'll stick with my Mac for any serious work. I love linux on my servers. Keep it off my desktop. (Anyone ever noticed reading anything on a linux gui causes eyestrain like it's 1995 if you don't change the defaults?)
Look, I know it's none of my business, but if you're a newbie and you want to learn some Statistics, wouldn't you be better off checking the MIT OCW pages, or the countless lecture notes in PDF format that can be found on the web? This is an honest question.

Contrary to what many short-sighted "pure" mathematicians think, Statistics is hard. You can't explain statistics in a bunch of blog posts, not even if you are a true expert. You can't condense all that knowledge in a blog post, one must read the books, though painful that may seem.
Um yeah I don't disagree, but there is also this thing kids do, I think it's called "make-believe" that some would say is an essential skill that is all too quickly lost.
Palm CEO and former Apple VP Jon Rubenstein has never used an iPhone
That really depends on your definition of improvement. There's been plenty of technological advancements that haven't improved our collective lives, and they are entirely due to a competitive motive.
I did, and I got a Rio 500 out of it. I didn't hack it though, basically my method was this: during lunch my friends and I would go into the school computer lab when no one was there and turn on every computer. Then we'd open up as many instances of IE as I could, clicking on an ad and keeping the browser open for the requisite amount of time. After about 8 instances of IE were open the computer would crash, so we'd power cycle the computer and move onto the next one. By the time this computer was rebooted we'd have already gone through all the other computers, so there wouldn't be any loss of time.

The funny thing is that IIRC this wasn't even against the TOS until a few weeks before they went bankrupt. I was also fourteen at the time, same as the submitter. I don't really consider it unethical, or at least were weren't hurting Point Click, because they were basically in the business of scamming advertisers. And the advertisers didn't care because they were getting $800 million valuations because of all their hits. And the investors were happy to invest at these prices even though they knew what was happening, because they thought that the economics of business had changed forever and in just another two years they'd be insanely rich. And all of my friends and I, being fourteen, thought the investors were right.

So even now it's hard for me to feel bad about it. At the time it wasn't even clear that Point Click would go bankrupt or that there was a larger economic bubble, we all just thought the free stuff was somehow because of Moore's law. And because we did legitimately work pretty hard for those points, we just sort of assumed that whatever we were doing was somehow creating value.
The show isn't really run by the smug idealists- they're just the loudest.
John Mauldin: 2010 - A Year of Uncertainty
It's not just a question of needing to move often as much as benefiting from being able to move often. I walk to work and save a lot of time and money by doing so. But, I was willing to take a job with an hour+ commute because I knew I could quickly move there.

PS: The cost of renting tends to balance with the costs of buying a home (including transaction and maintenance costs etc) such that it's rare for one to win out over the other in a healthy housing market. I do spend a lot of money living in this area, but I also invest a lot more money than I could if I was trying to buy in the area even with a long commute. Even with the huge drop in housing costs buying in this area is extremely expensive in large part due to the number of people renting their houses / condo's.
I think we can expect to see something interesting in the next couple decades, in that the stereotype of the 'Hacker' will completely disappear. When ALL kids are exposed to technology at the very beginning, I think computer programming will become increasingly mainstream. I think the end result will be a lot more 'hackers' who are actually a lot better. I also think this will result in a boom of Open Source, as 'scratching his/her own itch' will jump from version control/web browsing to a much larger variety of things.
Really hard to read, like all of his writings.

A version with my edits as I read: http://akkartik.name/blog/naggum-atlas

My surgery likely butchered the original. Errors in where I inserted paragraph and section boundaries will correspond to limitations in my understanding. I'm putting it up partly so you can tell me what I've totally missed.
All the more reason why the industry ought to wise up before unionization starts to look like the better option anyway. Abusive management and powerful unions are a lose-lose situation for everyone.

It's basically the double-defect equilibrium in the prisoner's dilemma, which is where short-sighted self-interest so often leads.
I find a more effective version of this trick is to leave some "gimme" task for the next day. I always try to make sure I leave some easy, 15-minute task for the next day. That doesn't mean I don't complete what I'm currently working on however...
I don't know about always stopping when I'm going good, but I almost always leave myself with a concrete "next step" for the next day when I do decide to stop. Sometimes this means getting the task I'm working on to 95% completion, or forcing myself to work a bit longer so that one of tomorrow's tasks is already started and approximately roughed out (tests written or methods stubbed or HTML roughly laid out).

If the day's boundary falls on a major task boundary, the next day starts with me figuring out what to work on next - not nearly as conducive to "getting into the groove" as tying up a few loose ends and then jumping on whatever I need to work on next.
The way I was taught to ice skate was to try and walk on ice with the skates, not actually try to slide along. I suspect this too is the minimum amount of complexity that still lets you get a feel for the situation and develop the ability to stay upright. I think it worked pretty well for me, I don't have any bad memories about it. (I was 6)

Learning to cycle was less successful. I distinctly remember crashing into a tree; in fairness, my dad's decision to teach me in the middle of a forest on uneven ground was probably not the smartest move.
The commercial real estate crash: was it cheap debt that made us stupid?
Sampling is not relevant to smanek's point, since he can look at all events. You don't need to sample when you have all the data.

On the other hand, I guess this argues against smanek's points being relevant to Zed's point, since statistics aren't really involved for the same reason. You don't need stats to analyze your performance if you have all the performance data; just read it off.

(Edit: I suppose his point that you shouldn't be using averages but just thresholds is still a statistical argument, against using the wrong tool like "average" on the grounds that you don't actually want the "average".)
Are you implying Rand was secretly critical of a selfishness-driven capitalism? If so, that's a pretty radical interpretation of her work, and one that I doubt many objectivists would support...
Gaming addiction causes intimacy problems for men
You mean because of the dog? Chihuahua is the largest state in Mexico. A bit bigger than the UK. The copper canyon is also here. If you ever visit us, I'll buy you a beer.
How to make a font: Vesper
Why shouldn't the natural world and science in general be an interest for hackers?