skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know a lot about security -- certainly not as much as some here (although I can follow along with their banter easily enough)

But I know enough not to feel comfortable commenting on this in a public forum.

(Not trying to pass a value judgment on you, just suggesting a reason you guys might not be getting an answer to your question.)
Not only that, if it is known beforehand that my votes won't count don't show me the silly buttons.
Read "Good calories, Bad calories" for more surprising, yet scientifically valid, results.
The fact that any modern government agency processes information in such a backwards way is embarrassing, no matter what that agency is doing. If you want patent reform, campaign for it directly, rather than relying on how slow and tedious the process is.
* Nobody knew where Banda Aceh was

* Barack Obama was a little known Illinois state senator

* xkcd did not exist
I noticed the italics but don't have a solid enough knowledge of markdown to have realized that was what it was. Neat!
If C is proving too hard, perhaps they should use Lisp for embedded systems ala http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052858
My advice is not to try to read through these books (like Elements or Bishop's book). If I were to learn the topic from scratch again * I would:

1. Learn basic terminology (basically, skim the chapters and understand roughly what the topics are)

2. Work on a problem in depth. You are probably interested in a certain area or type of problem.

a. Read the relevant chapters in detail.

b. Pick up the necessary math along the way using additional references. This way you are motivated to learn it (whether it be calculus, probability, or linear algebra). E.g., it would be hard to approach McDiarmid's Inequality and be able to imagine its use. However, if you run across it in a book/paper you'll understand the context.

c. Lastly, checkout recent NIPS, ICML, and JMLR papers on the topic (nips.cc, jmlr.org, and icml isn't centralized, but each conference can probably be found online).

* - I am a graduate student and have been studying statistical machine learning for the last 3 years.
So you are axod are also in the same boat? But yours are some of the most interesting comments... and your comment averages are not below the 2 cutoff that pg stated above, anyway:

axod is 3.65: http://searchyc.com/user/axod?only=comments&sort=by_poin...

jacquesm is 3.03: http://searchyc.com/user/+jacquesm?only=comments&sort=by...

Possibly the code is more broken than pg realizes (or perhaps it's searchyc that's got it wrong).
There's a contract that user interfaces have with people, it kind of goes something like this: I will show you a button. When you press it, something will happen. I should do everything possible to make the same thing happen every time, because if I keep making it different things, it's probably going to piss you off a lot.

Seems like we're kind of getting backwards who is supposed to be in charge here, the person or the algorithm.
I suspect it's more akin to: "Jesus! What the hell are you doing riding a bike in this weather?! Do you want to get yourself killed? You nearly gave me a heart attack! Asshole!"
Adobe Acrobat seems to have been either cleared of suspicion: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358121,00.asp or involved in only some of the targets: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/google-hack-attack/ . I still find it hard to believe that IE6 was an important vector into Google- who there besides those in a sandboxed QA environment would use a browser that out of date?
Different, yes, but I don't think it's distasteful. Refreshing almost. I find some in our society look down on those that have tasted some success and who, instead of driving hard to the next goal right away, take some time and enjoy their success - and then pick up where they left off and keep pushing.

I admire that pixelmator is up front in saying so. That said, the comment about how much cash they've made that adamhowell quoted probably could have been left out.
it punishes people for a lot of things: for being nice to others and responding to unresponded-to inquiries, for participating in lengthy discussions that don't particularly keep the majority of people's interest, expressing an unpopular or contrarian opinion, etc..

why not simply implement a minimum karma score barrier past which your vote counts? it would simply mean that you must contribute to the community before your vote has weight. keeps newer people from flooding things immediately. could even be a rolling barrier based on the average karma per user.
As slipups go, this article called both Wikipedia and Aardvark huge companies, which well, neither of them are. Aardvark apparently has about 30 employees and just launched last year, and Wikimedia is a non-profit with 32 employees.
To get the spirit of many of these techniques with practical examples in python using numpy/scipy check out the book "Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective" by Stephen Marsland. It doesn't have the mathematical depth or proofs found in these other books, but the code is decent and will get you started doing some basic data analysis.

http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Perspecti...

Code here:
http://www-ist.massey.ac.nz/smarsland/MLbook.html
The campaign against saturated fat was itself spearheaded by the vegetable oil and processed food industries. I remember hearing a series of CBC radio broadcasts about this a number of years ago, and the role played by these industrial interests in shaping a pseudo-scientific nutritional consensus was striking. All that nonsense about how eggs will kill you, etc. etc., which was foisted on the public for a generation, was propaganda.

It seems the ship is now slowly being righted. The OP looks like a great example of this. I wonder how much mainstream attention it will pick up.

Edit: one interesting thing I remember from that radio series, which does not often get mentioned, is how much fear people had about heart disease in the 1950s and 60s. The meme of the seemingly-healthy middle-aged man who suddenly drops dead of a heart attack no longer has the power it once did. (Other fears have taken its place.) But in the early days of the campaign against saturated fat, this fear was widespread and highly exploitable, and it was deliberately and very successfully exploited. (This, at least, was what the radio program argued, credibly to me at the time. I'd like to hear it again.)
Wants vs. Beliefs : response to first page's "The future of UI will be boring"
Grocery Arrival Excitement?
Try reading it again.

“The initial piece of code was shell code encrypted three times and that activated the exploit,” Alperovitch said. “Then it executed downloads from an external machine that dropped the first piece of binary on the host. That download was also encrypted. The encrypted binary packed itself into a couple of executables that were also encrypted.”

One of the malicious programs opened a remote backdoor to the computer, establishing an encrypted covert channel that masqueraded as an SSL connection to avoid detection. This allowed the attackers ongoing access to the computer and to use it as a “beachhead” into other parts of the network, Alperovitch said, to search for login credentials, intellectual property and whatever else they were seeking
Sort of an inverse experience for me: Last year, I took my car into Mr. Lube for the first time. The technician craned the monitor around for me to see the items he was going to work on, and the cost breakdown, recommended maintenance schedule, etc. I listened for a short while, but then my attention was fixated on the fact that the screen was showing me Gnome, running on Ubuntu! You could see the taskbar, the Gnome "start" button, and the window decorations. I asked him if he were aware that they were running Linux here, not Windows. He raised his palms and just said, "You would know more about that than I would, sir."

Now, for basic car maintenance, I only go to Mr. Lube. :)

Anyone know of any other businesses or establishments that use Linux for customer-facing or POS machines? (I'm in Canada.)
I see you've adopted TechCrunch's winning formula for titles:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Atechcrunch.c...
>PS for some reason "dbench" holds mythical power over many folks I have met. They just believe it's the most trusted and standard benchmark for file systems. In my experience it often acts as a random number generator. It has found some bugs in our code as it exercises the VFS layer very well.

I wouldn't really call this "bashing" dbench. He is simply saying that it is a good tool, especially with regard to exercising the VFS layer, but is not complete enough to do everything they could ask for (like emulating their customer workloads). I read it more as a warning to see what it actually does for you and not get caught up in the hype.
You make some good points. I think there is some niche potential for tablet devices--hospitals, drawing, books (as you mentioned).

On the other hand, e-book readers have found success by doing things laptops can't, like lasting for a week on a charge, being legible in bright sunlight, and being extremely lightweight. I don't see the same happening for movies (laptops are better for movies since you don't have to hold them up) or music (iPhone/Android wins for that).

Also, e-book readers are replacing books, so while you're carrying another device around, it's probably a net reduction in size and weight for most people.

Here's a concept that would sell like hotcakes: Laptop with a dual mode LCD/e-ink 10", touch-sensitive, swivel display that can be held like a tablet, 24hr (or more) battery life, half-inch thick and less than a pound. Not sure if it's technically possible right now, and I'm sure it'd be quite expensive if it is, but when such a device becomes widely affordable, these niche tablet/e-book use-cases would just be part of your laptop.
Well I do tend to read them every day, so I guess it rubbed off on me.
Why freemium is bad for business
Ask HN: What do you think of my snail mail API?
I posted about my new side gig called SnailPad a few months ago and, now that I've managed to get a few consistent customers, I wanted to share the API that they've been using: www.snailpad.com/api

My "real" question: What tips would you give me on improving the documentation, methods or anything else?
While not a prototypical example, "fascist" describes China's economic system from the 70s forward better than "communist". Fascist systems seem to tolerate private enterprise better than communist ones, though the government tends to pick winners and losers (and shamelessly back the winners with force, as in the Chinalco example).

Of course, in such a system, the government is still mucking about in the economy, substituting cronyism for market decisions, and trying to dictate profits and define their rate of economic growth just like that state legislature tried to redefine pi. Even Europe and the post-bailout US look like libertarian fantasies of free enterprise and transparency in comparison.

We have nothing to fear from the Chinese Model. Their explosive economic growth has almost certainly been exaggerated, and even if taken at face value, this fascist system still leaves China, aside from a few rich spots, closer to the third world than the first. Companies dealing with China should be aware of what they're getting into - but to put it coldly, they should do so at their own risk, without tariffs or rattled sabers on their behalf when things go wrong.

Tangentially, I'm a little amused that "locovorism" has a better cachet than open "anti-globalism".
For what it's worth, at jtv we used to have a policy of silently failing various actions when one of our many spam-like flags got raised. It seems like such a great idea - the spammers will have been caught, but they won't know it. Unfortunately I think we've found over time that the negative consequences for users who are falsely flagged as being spammers just aren't worth it, and we have become more explicit about telling users they've been flagged in some way.

Long story short: If you're going to disable some action I think it's actually better in the long run to make it obvious that's what you're doing.
I don't get it,

This is mostly a list of things that are current now but weren't current then. It makes it sound like 2001 was like today except missing a few things. But I know people filled their days just as fully in those distant days as they do today. What did they fill them with?

I would like to see a list of the positive assumptions people had then that aren't around any more.
There has been a few that have stepped into its place and provided the same high-level of quality and selection (for ex. what.cd). But they are difficult to get in to.

For those are unfamiliar with these sites, they have pretty much every album imaginable. Including tiny indie bands and vinyl rips from the 50s. They have very strict sharing requirements (you have to contribute not just leech).
Well they are huge by comparison hehe.

I did modify that line to clarify it
Digital analog of bumper stickers and Armstrong bracelets?
I'll "me too" this as well, though I'm only through the first chapter and part of the second. Pacing of the book is considerably faster than Halloway's so it's convenient if you like faster paced books. I was itching for a highlighter when reading through the stuff, but the material is interesting. The most interesting chapters, however, are the bits that they haven't gotten up to yet. Write faster! ;)

The promo discount code is pretty substantial, total cost of the print book was ~$33 shipped.
Linode and the Google Cyber Attacks
Your modification actually encourages groupthink.

If people are going to be worried that their vote average is going to be negatively impacted by a controversial view then they will simply keep it to themselves.
They were probably one of the first to see the activity across a few machines.
Facebook Self-Serve Ad Pricing Is Extremely Low
I think you are making an assumption regarding availability vs price vs demand. I would think that given the sort of capacity Amazon has, at some point of time the cost of a spot instance would be the same as or higher than the cost of a regular ec2 instance, at which time it would make more sense to just get a regular instance.

Per my understanding the attraction of spot instances is that you can get short-term instances at lower rates. Even as I say this I am making a big assumption that Amazon's spare capacity is much larger than demand for sport instances.

Finally slow ping times could be caused by any number of reasons, attributing them to one particular cause based on a coincidental date might be a bit much.
I just read yesterday a book on Non-parametric Statistics: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047045461X/ref=oss_T15_prod...

I found this useful and interesting, because a great deal of social phenomena are not normally distributed (do not fit a Gaussian bell-curve distribution, regardless of the size of the sample).

I am interested in learning more about non-parametric statistics, and statistics using alternative distributions (e.g. stable distributions, power laws, etc.). Does anyone have good references for this kind of statistics (preferably written in English as opposed to jargon)?
It should be noted that traffic in Moscow is in the semi-permanent jam anyway, so it's unlikely that this video contributed.

Photo of the billboard screen (NSFW): http://damian.livejournal.com/596391.html
One bit of feedback:

The title at the top of the newspaper should be clickable and link to the frontpage.

I found it difficult to get back to the index.
I always find your continued thinking on ways to improve and maintain this site to be insightful, thank you for sharing so transparently.
> If they get large enough their business will be manipulated to fail in the favour of a home grown competitor

Rationally, it's just the competitor will take advantage of your foreign identity to against you. Nationalism is an important market factor to consider when doing business in east Asian countries.

It's more serious if your business is in strategically critical industries.
They didn't even wait before they had a minimum viable product!
I think it's happening to me as well, and searchyc rates me as just over 3 points per comment.

I didn't realise it happened at all until seeing Jacquesm's comments about it, and I'm still undecided about whether it's annoying or not.

It's more annoying when a thread goes "comment by me no votes, comment by someone else upvotes, reply by me no votes", for instance, and the result of that kind of thing needs an internal adjustment of the sort "clearly my replies aren't as good as I'm thinking they are". I get a similar feeling from this - yes I'm going out of my way to vote up effortful comments and vote down weak, silly, effortless comments but maybe my votes aren't as 'good' as they should be.

Not like being patronised by a car with a plastic steering wheel as mentioned above, but like something that's out of alignment due to misunderstanding the "HN way".
I haven't been able to upvote / downvote for months.

I think the averages are behind the learderboard point totals, not what searchyc says (it doesn't have direct access to the HN db).
Microsoft: Programming is Kid’s Play
Even so, one isn't a company in the usual sense, and if there's a gap in the sizes, it's between Wikipedia and everything else. Wikipedia is the 6th most popular site on the web. vark.com doesn't break into the top 20,000.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wikipedia.org+vark.com+quor...

As others, I suspect this is more the Silicon Valley attention bubble than astroturfing.
Pennu.ru do not know who or how the display was accessed and aren’t ruling out a competing advertising company being involved in this eye-opening event.

That is a ridiculous statement. They aren't ruling out a competing advertising company, but that doesn't mean they have any proof at all.
Taubes deserves a Nobel-level award just for that book.
> it's probably going to piss you off a lot.

We're getting there.

The last few weeks have been pretty rough in this respect.

Cheating your way to the top is fine, simple requests get denied, basic site functionality appears to be broken but turns out to be working as designed only nobody thought of making it plain.

It's a fine line between subtlety and disrespect.
> especially KFC and McDonalds

P&G

Most Chinese choose P&G without even knowing it's not a Chinese company. It's the best localization I've seen so far.
Paul addresses this in his reply up at the top. You're viewing the averages after the update, but there is a lag.
Eliminating Small Business Threats
All the pitfalls of open source with none of the benefits.
No, this is much more than something like "Buy American". It is not an appeal to the consumers patriotism. It is structural and government favouritism and outright corruption.

If it were up to the Chinese consumer they would actually prefer to buy a foreign product assuming they could afford it. Foreign brands are associated with quality and status. And after all, foreign companies are not poisoning their milk and killing babies.
Maybe I'm paraphrasing or reading too much into it, but this line implies as much

"The other secret of Big Macs is that you can have an IQ that hovers somewhere between "idiot" and "moron" (to use the technical terms) and you'll still be able to produce Big Macs that are exactly as unsurprising as all the other Big Macs in the world."
Isn't the Christian/Catholic Church in China run by the Party?
The Tesla Model S will have a 300 mile range option, which comes close to the range of gas cars its size. However, that model will obviously be much more expensive than the basic 160 mile range one.
Any threshold is wrong.

Votes are a currency with which users tell each other what their feelings are, setting some arbitrary limit on that ability to express means the underlying system is broken.

Either voting works as a mechanism to identify quality content, or it doesn't.

If voting is to be limited to those that want to engage in group-think (the quickest way to boost your average is to post stuff people will find agreeable) then we'll soon have very bland conversations here.
It's a common gotcha in markdown. Some implementations, e.g. Python-Markdown, actually default to ignoring middle-word emphasis. Others, e.g. Python-Markdown2, have ignoring middle-word emphasis as an optional parameter when calling the function.
The overall goal here is not to make any one person feel like a special snowflake

If I understood the OP, their issue is not that they don't feel like a special snowflake - it's that this is a site that is driven, among other things, by the warm fuzziness of user contribution, predominantly expressed by voting, and that if users get the feeling that voting is irrelevant this might cause a lot of users to stop contributing.

While one can always say, correctly, "It's PG's site and he can do what he like with it", I think it is fair to comment on things like "if my vote doesn't count, showing me the button regardless and eliciting my vote seems unfair". If The Great Algorithm In The Sky has decided my vote doesn't count, I think it is fair to indicate this to me in some way.

My comment average is 4.24 right now so I am presumably not affected - who knows?, but I sympathise with the essence of the OP's argument. I also sympathise with PG's attempts to maintain the integrity of the site in the face of increasing popularity. I think the issue is not the why, it is the how.
Beyond SQL and Database Technology
> It is structural and government favouritism and outright corruption.

It's not free market and it's not fare game, but each side has their own shorts and longs. What if I tell you Baidu is not an Chinese company either?

http://www.tektalk.cn/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/baidu.jpg

Baidu got its investment from US even Google. Its boss Robin Li has a US passport.

Strictly speaking, many large companies in China are, in fact, not actually Chinese companies.
The source for Cisco's IOS has been in rogue hands for quite some time. The Chinese network equipment manufacturer Huawei was caught selling routers in the running IOS with only cursory changes back in 2003. Identical CLI, identical features, identical bugs.

I think we must assume that the source code for most major products is available on the black market.
It didn't use to be such a problem, say, a year ago, and my theory was that this was largely because there were fewer voters a year ago. Using comment average seemed like the best way to decrease the effective number of voters. But as I said, it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.
I take it Google used Linode as a neutral/anonymous place to access stuff from?
MIT report reveals biotechnology funding troubles
Hi, we are indeed working on a hosted version and hopefully will have it out later this month!
> Wouldn't it discourage such conversations?

Absolutely.

You can expect a complete change in atmosphere due to this.