skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe you could use Kolmogorov complexity as a measure of simplicity?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
I find it ironical that Google, who bowed to the totalitarian control of China, is concerned about a MS/Yahoo! monopoly. To me, Google would have more credibility if they chose to not do business in China.

"It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."

Actually I think to Google it's about making a buck, and making sure the buck stops at Mountain View, not Redmond.
Too bad its gone. Seemed like a good read.
Kolmogorov complexity is with respect to a given description language, so that begs the question somewhat.
Ask YC: Expressive languages for spatial nodes
What do you consider flexible languages for spatial maths? I have a set of nodes in a space, they are connected to each other in a graph, have have different bond strengths. I need to navigate through nodes quickly, for instance grab a node and grab certain nodes that match a certain node strength that is adjacent through one or two dimensions/nodes.

Each node has attribute/values pairs, and I want to be able to query nodes by those attribute/values.

AWS SimpleDB is too slow.

I am an amateur python programmer, this is the last language I've learnt, this is my third week using it.

Before that I came from ruby, which I abandoned for it's speed.

Pretty good at jquery/javascript, which I spend time in, and, almost don't want to mention this, PHP. Of course SQL amateurish (learned joins only 4 months ago) but I really can't make a case for SQL being suitable for my needs. I have studied "SQL for smarties" by Joe Celko.

I have Ruby, Erlang, Smalltalk, or Lisp, or R(?), io(?) in mind. I do just know Ruby in this group, the others I have not much clue about. But I'd learn in a heartbeat if you can make a good case for your language of choice for my problem set.
reference: http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html
Google Toolbox for Mac
Given that most folks think that the merger would be a failure, it's strange that Google would put out something that sounds positively scared.

Google's reaction should be a confident, "Bring it on"
Why Google will remain king of search
22:23: down again.
Prolog. For info see "P-99: Ninety-Nine Prolog Problems" at https://prof.ti.bfh.ch/hew1/informatik3/prolog/p-99/

Scroll down to the section on Graphs (after problem 73).
Supporting an Open-Source Software Products Company with Service Revenues
An interesting example, but I'm afraid it wasted much of the time I could've used writing a succinct program in arc. :)
Try zip.
So I've been considering trying to get into Lisp. Any of you folks who have been playing with Arc have a sense about whether or not it would be a good dialect with which to start?
So far so good on that front.

Thanks for the advice. :-)
MonetDB could be useful here.

MonetDB[1] is good for applications where you load the data once and then run lots of joins over binary relations, assuming your application works well with an RM/T[2] style schema.

In RM/T you have one entity relation that holds your entity ids and one property relation for each attribute. All your queries become many-way joins as they must traverse all the property relations. This is something you would never do with an ordinary RDBMS but is exactly what MonetDB's binary-association table scheme is designed to handle[3].

With MonetDB, you use SQL to define your schema in the familiar way. At the physical level MonetDB stores your data in an RM/T-style representation.

You may also want to see if Proximity[4][5]'s QGraph is suitable for your application. It uses MonetDB in it's implementation. The tutorial[6] includes an example of how to use it with Jython.

[1] http://monetdb.cwi.nl

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_Model/Tasmania

[3] http://monetdb.cwi.nl/projects/monetdb/Assets/monetdb_lectur...

[4] http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/proximity

[5] http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/proximity/about.html

[6] http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/software/documentation/tutorial/ch06...
Sham or not, they're a reality and we have to deal with it. Just ignoring them is not going to solve anything.

>How did we end up in this mess?

Politics, money and special interest is a dangerous confluence.
"Unfortunately"?

That sounds empowering to me, to the contrary.
Stop trying to reduce the useful statement about succinctness being power into some logical rule or definition. Clearly its not a complete definition of language power, but contriving examples to break it doesn't prove an awful lot. I'm sure there exist any number of languages that are succinct but contain pathological clauses which make programming difficult.

I'm pretty surprised that this community is having such a problem with language succinctness being an indicator of language power.
100 years ain't what it used to be
Advice from Google on Building Traffic and Conversions
Oi, meddling with such definitions indeed puts us dangerously close to philosophy. As PG says in one of his essays, "the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard". You're pushing too hard. It's a rule of thumb, not logical truth.

If you insist on a logical truth, however, I think it's best to say that everything else being equal, a more succinct language is more powerful than a less succinct one.
You can outsource design work to students and foreign workers for approximately US$2 per hour. Indeed, you're spoiled for forum that will bid for you work ( http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/the-monster-list-of-freel... , http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Employment_and_Wor... ).

However, if the functionality of your app will be greatly expanded then it may also require changes to your CSS. Alternatively, you can skip a large amount of design. People don't access your website to see its innovative style. They access your website to get useful information.
Google Assails Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo
I really found the following blog helpful for various math topics

http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-mindset...

In addition, I have found myself reviewing 'Discrete Mathematics w/ Applications' by Epp on numerous occasions;

My .02 - review logic / discrete math & move from there - The fundamentals of math logic and reasoning have been very important for me - I always felt this type of course should have been taught before a lot of the other subjects like Calc / Diff Equations etc.

Good learning!
DHH: In it for the long haul
11 reasons Google may know you better than you know yourself
AllegroGraph[1] sounds like it could be suitable as well.

[1] http://agraph.franz.com/allegrograph
I agree. I think the way forward is to just completely nuke the Lisp community from orbit and start from scratch. There are a few kind folks on comp.lang.lisp, but for me, I'm going to pretend that the world began last week, and the only Lisp community that exists is on the arclanguage.org forum.
Programming Considered Harmful
Wow, vitriol from the folks on c.l.l. How shocking.
I agree about the zig-zag path, but I don't think it necessarily means you should study calculus before set theory (for example). Only that you shouldn't delve too deep on your fist pass over set theory. Obviously, AOC independence proof would not be suitable for high school students. But it doesn't take much effort to understand what a function is in terms of sets. And don't they teach Venn diagrams to kids in grade school? That's already set theory.
The link is dead but have read a few articles and commentary on it. I think that Microsoft is not only buying "product" but Yahoo!'s talent pool (eg. I am pretty impressed with the new Yahoo! mail). I remember that was one of the main reasons why Microsoft bought Groove.
I agree with ekanes that you may see a few people leaves after the acquisition to start their ventures. Tech nowadays is so fluid and dynamic that new ideas and ventures will always flourish.
Ron Garret's "where we should be" from his Oopsla 2001 paper sounds a lot like a smalltalk environment.
You have a lot to prove. A giant as big as Dijkstra was, he publicly said that "corentin has mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration" and you're out to prove him wrong.

Good luck. :-) Makes me feel more lucky for starting with x86 assembly although I am not sure it's any better than BASIC. God bless us!
Upmod just for correctly using "begs the question."
How Democracy Produced a Monster
Google Works to Torpedo Microsoft Bid for Yahoo
Agreed. That almost never happens anymore! Well done.
Presumably, they would be done with installing the bug before they started to repair the cable, so this wouldn't be an issue.
This is interesting. No one gives any reason I'm wrong about what I said. I don't quite see the purpose of downmodding a post that's already on the bottom and greyed out. But I guess no one is going to explain their reasons.
I am planning to implement some sort of open standard for a social network - however mine is targeted towards kids so will have to see how OpenID will help or hinder our protection mechanisms.
maybe this is what they want them to think, that they are scared so that they do this merger.

It's useless to read/analyse something you don't know who wrote it because it's impossible to understand the motives.
Google Offers to Help Yahoo Fight Off Microsoft
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97625
Generally, people that pervade hacker news are pretty sensitive to cultivate a high signal to noise ratio, probably because a lot of us have the 'slippery slope' mentality, and seen what can happen if you give and inch, if Reddit and Digg are any indication.

In the guidelines:
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "

If your comments don't add any information to the topic at hand, it usually gets downmodded. Exceptions seem to be if they're wise-ass or snarky comments.
Yahoo sale could be bad news for Silicon Valley minnows
Sure, the merger (like most) will probably fail. But why not increase the chances of failure even further with a little PR and regulatory FUD against the combination?
It seems obvious to me that there are many cases where you're better off writing longer code because it is either going to be easier to write or easier to understand. This is especially sometimes true for programs that are quick and dirty.

(It is absolutely true in mathematics. Sometimes a short elegant proof takes much more time to find than simply a correct and adequate but much longer one. I'm absolutely sure there are analogues in everyday programming.)
"One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general."
http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

Btw, your writer analogy is a poor one, since prior art exists for that story line and thus it would not be patentable. There are also industries that would collapse without patents (pharmaceuticals for one).
If this is perf. critical and your data easily fits in RAM, then your problem does not sound exotic enough to resort to obscure or special-purpose languages. You should be able to whip up efficient data structures for this in python without much trouble. In fact depending on your data set size and query specifics, it may be acceptably fast in any of the listed languages (including Ruby!) assuming you have the right data structures. You really wont know until you have tried it. I would suggest you start in whatever language you know best.

(If it doesnt fit in RAM, I would consider it a much harder problem and I can imagine resorting to an at least partially SQL-based solution).

Btw, for a very similar problem, I used C++ w/STL for pure performance. It worked well. But I'm migrating it to python to shorten dev time. I figure in the same amt of time in python, I can try a variety of approaches and algo optimizations, for the same time it would take to do a single one in C++ w/STL. And for algos on complicated data sets, you want to really understand your data set. That means playing with it a lot, which is easier in python.

The data structures you use often have a much bigger impact on performance, than the language.
Tip for doing this kind of thing, that works in any language:

In some cases, using more that one type of data structure at the same time will allow you to get the best of both worlds in terms of performance. Ie, a spatial index plus a hash table as an index, over the same data, would allow efficient lookups on spatial predicates as well as attributes, over the same set of nodes.

A simple insight maybe, but not one I discovered without a lot of thought. Typically in university they teach you to use a single data structure type at a time, but really that's like teaching kids the alphabet, without the concept of combining the letters into meaningful words.
For a talk (partially) dedicated to the vesion control system and why it sucks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
Upmodded for "It's a trap" usage.
Maybe digital computers, yes, but before that a "computer" was more of a job description.
Is Computer science paralyzed by accepting E. Dijkstra's research and comments as valid?
For spatial processing, you may find this MonetDB application a lot more interesting:

Sloan Digital Sky Survey / SkyServer provides public access to SDSS for astronomers, students, and wide public. A project to make a map of a large part of the Universe: 230 million object images, 1 million spectra, 4TB catalog data, 9TB images

http://www.win.tue.nl/~tcalders/presentations/ivanova.ppt
Of course it's bullshit. A generation of hackers started with Basic on TRS-80s and Apple IIs and Commodore 64s. Several generations, actually.

Given this comment of Dijkstra's and his (hilarious) swipe at PL/I in the article, here's a rather satisfying counterexample:

Up till then I had programmed mostly in Basic and PL/1.

http://wiki.alu.org/Paul_Graham's_Road_to_Lisp
Yahoo may consider Google alliance, source says
Ask YC: Rigorous CS curriculum with dedicated students?
I am beginning my college search and it seems that the most important thing (in the long run) for a college experience is a wide, rigorous curriculum and an involved student body. I am looking for a school that has demanding courses as well as at least the option to learn newer technologies (AJAX, stuff used in web startups). As for the students, I'd like for them to be dedicated and entrepreneurial, and basically be people who read news.yc.

If you think that other things are more important for a CS student, please let me know, as I'm shooting in the dark here and the above paragraph was basically a response to trying to avoid what I would not like.

So far, Stanford seems like my first choice. I appreciate any of your suggestions.
I don't think Dijkstra's absolutisms have aged particularly well. On some things he turned out completely right, on other things staggeringly wrong. In this article, look at his endorsement of the idea that coding should be left to the final 25% of a project's schedule. It's all very hit and miss, yet he delivers every claim in the same godlike tone of infallibility. The idea that maybe everything hasn't been figured out about software development - that in fact, maybe not very much has been - seems alien to him.
Because who would pay for RnD if you can't go exclusive at least for a dozen or so years!
Well I hope that someone would, that the human social structure have evolved enough to create all what's necessary for it's survival and that the pharmaceuticals industry wouldn't collapse, it would just restructure and medicines will be cheaper!

The sad truth is, I really believe this would what would've happened!
It was just a conjecture of his that history didn't bear out. Thinking in basic is bad. Great leaps in programming and the availablity of knowlege about programming (other people's good code) made it easy to stop thinking in basic if one was motivated.

Great men once thought that the earth was flat and there were only 4 elements. It is trivial today for even a nitwit to prove otherwise. This does not mean that these great men are now less great or that nitwits are now smarter.
"Q	You are speaking of the leading edge of research of computer languages.....
A	Yes, What it is again in danger of being supported to death because one of the hopes of functional programming is that in the execution of programs written in a functional style it will be easier to exploit a lot of concurrency."

Interesting - well I guess that statement is over 20 years old, but probably still holds true. It also explains his other opinions.
Are software patents evil?
Yes, I don't really believe that RnD is software is that much of a big deal, or that costly to justify patents.

For how many years was windows vista tested on real humans before its being release? No, software testers don't count, they ain't real humans!
Yahoo + Google: A Last Alliance of Elves and Men Against the Armies of Mordor (Microsoft)?
Your advice is deeply appreciated, thank you everyone who has posted so far.
Brilliant, thanks. Yes, RAM is a good option for me.

I figure 2 GB will last me 4 months. Then I can go up to 4, 8, 16, ...

Pretty good.
Thank you very much. Can you give me your email? I'm @gmail with the same YC username I use.
MIT, though the CS students are probably somewhat less entrepreneurial than Stanford students on average.
Did you bother to read the interview?
Dijkstra could not predict that in 2007 to-do lists and message boards like Facebook will become multi-billion dollar businesses. Sorry to poop on your beliefs, but "agile" BS can be applied only on CRUD projects that have nothing in common with Computer Science.
yes, very much so. Just thought it was funny (it was how I read the headline at first). There was an amusing anecdote about a company not being allowed to start coding until 70% of the project time had elapsed - taken out of context (and there is a LOT of context) that is somewhat contrary to current practices.
Mark Cuban is a heck of a bright guy, but he's wrong on this one. Just do a gut check after reading his opening paragraph:

"One thing about Jerry Yang that I always have admired is that he cares. He cares about his employees. He cares about his products. He cares about his shareholders. Most of all he cares about building a world class company that can be great at what it does."

And the solution to building a great company is to allow it to be swallowed by Microsoft, most likely losing its best employees and its brand in the process?

Sorry, no.

(The deal might be the best option for shareholders, but when you talk about building a Great Company, you should be thinking of more than just money imho)
Yes, don't challenge anything Paul Graham says, even if you have some way to back it up.
It is not. Depends on what do you refer to by "current practices". Dumb CRUD projects surely can be coded on the fly using so-called "agile" approach without much thinking. "Steer left or right as required" works very well for them.

The thing is, most of online discussions, especially on YC are revolving around web-based CRUD to-do lists or something similar, whose complexity (something Dijkstra was very much concerned about) is close to zero.

Therefore "current pratices" cannot be used as a good example of software engineering in general, since most "engineers" are too busy dreaming of getting rich by implementing a high school programming project over a weekend and selling it to google.

I am fully aware that I do not represent the common "spirit" of this board by stating these views, but there is no way in hell you can do software for F-22's pilot's helmet can be done using "current practices" you're referring to. In fact, the best "current practice" (as some MBAs believe) is to outsource your typical CURD job to India. Hard to argue with that.
I assume pg is referring to http://www.gamespot.com/news/6117964.html when he writes

The one example I've found is, embarrassingly enough, Yahoo, which filed a patent suit against a gaming startup called Xfire in 2005. Xfire doesn't seem to be a very big deal, and it's hard to say why Yahoo felt threatened. Xfire's VP of engineering had worked at Yahoo on similar stuff-- in fact, he was listed as an inventor on the patent Yahoo sued over-- so perhaps there was something personal about it. My guess is that someone at Yahoo goofed. At any rate they didn't pursue the suit very vigorously.

I can't help but wonder if pg thinks the same way about software patents now that there is a very real chance that his own patent could be used against him at the whim of someone at a company he's been publically bad-mouthing for some time.
It can also be applied to p2p music sharing =) http://www.reble.fm
I hope that is what would happen as well. Unfortunately, humans are, as a group, most strongly motivated by money.
mooneater, do you have any suggestions on how to actually store and persist such a data structure in RAM?

Would I use something like a wsgi webserver, that runs as a daemon, and occasionally dumps the data structure to disk?

Or is something like memcached better?

My preferred way of storing into RAM would be of course only storing changes, instead of storing the whole tree into RAM on every write.
Appreciated, definitely clean code to express nodes and relationships.

Is there a modern implementation that's well supported by a community?
Posted on MSN.com no less...
Should I go to NKS Summer School? (please read details)
I presented an application for the Wolfram's NKS Summer School (http://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool/). I think my application could be approved, but I've just found out that the total costs for assisting there are very expensive (I could manage traveling alone, but traveling + local accommodation, which I first thought was included on the course and now I know is not, is just excessively expensive for what I could afford now... US dollars are a very expensive currency in my country).

But maybe any of you assisted to some previous years of the Summer School and might give me some pointers about whether it would be good for me to use my savings (and maybe some extra money) for going there.
Interesting.

Why not include the "labelled cups" in the UI? Perhaps everything would have to be redone with RFID, but once done, the balls could be mapped simply by touching a new cup. I'm imagining clear marbles, or perhaps ping-pong balls, with potentiated tri-color LEDs indicating their current state. ...Or we could do it the easy way, and just fill the cups with paint.

Also, I imagine their next project to be using a large one of those "elastic pegboard" things (normally used to teach elementary Maths), along with several differently colored rubber bands, to simulate a piano roll.
Hi,

I had the same feeling as you (when I was 38) and I started a blog:
http://fermatslasttheorem.blogspot.com

I started with a sketch of the historical approach to Fermat's Last Theorem (Diophantus, Euler, Gauss, etc.) and I tried to resolve all proofs down to postulates.

I would recommend finding an area that you are interested in and then finding a famous problem. My favorite books are:

* Euler: Master of us all

* Euclid's Elements

* Hardy and Wright: Introduction to a Theory of Numbers

* Jonathan Stillwell: Yearning for the Impossible

* Ash and Gross: Fearless Symmetry

* Jean-Pierre Tignol: Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations

* Edwards: Fermat's Last Theorem/Galois Theory

I've been doing it now for almost three years and it's really worked out well for me and surprisingly, I am getting around 11,000 unique visitors to my site every month.

Glad to see all the responses to your comment. :-)

-Larry
How come people who want a high signal to noise ratio, downmod a short, helpful comment which lets someone know not write "thanks" 6 times? In other words, I was asking someone to improve the signal to noise ratio.

As far as getting downmodded for my additional comments, I expected that and don't mind. I have read the rules. BTW, I do think people here are far too inclined to downmod stuff they dislike without refuting it.