skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Trigrams are a very straightforward solution to this but they have one major limitation: They break with misspellings / alternative spellings. For example the words "vodka" and "votka" share no trigrams yet are obviously very similar.

I recently worked on this problem for a project and came up with a more robust solution using pre-computed Levenshtein indexes. You've probably heard of Levenshtein distance as a measure of word similarity. It counts the number of single-character edits that are required to transform one string into another. For example "vodka" and "votka" have a Levenshtein distance of 1.

Using a related approach (single character edits) it's possible to build a so-called Levenshtein index.

The major issue with a vanilla Levenshtein index is that it's impractically large. There is a way to make a space / time trade-off however that makes it much smaller. The basic idea is that instead of generating all Levenshtein variations for a word you only use the set of variations created by deleting single characters for a word.

Since that doesn't match all possible variations we have to compensate somehow. For example with a full index "votka" would be in the set of variations for "vodka" which means if we had misspelled vodka when searching for it we'd still get a match. With our deletions-only index, however, we'd get "voka" as our closest match. To work around this, we generate the deletion-only variations of our search term as well. In this case our search term "vodka" would become "odka", "vdka", "voka", etc. and each of those terms would be matched against the index. That means our query is slower overall as it contains a number of sub-queries but in practice it's more than fast enough.

I wrote a meandering blog post about it here: http://lattejed.com/writing-an-embedded-full-text-search-eng...

There are some additional ideas in there such as how to make a Levenshtein index handle prefix matches better (for e.g., incremental search) that may be helpful if you need to implement something like this.

If you do read that I'd like to point out that I no longer recommend LevelDB. That doesn't change anything of importance in the post though.
So it proves that the concept of irrational number is rather useless in practice ...
Is that you Tony Bruno? Should we fetch you some smelling salts as you fell on to your fainting chair?
And that is the problem, because Apple, owning both the Hardware and Software used to be the most optimized. Now Mac OSX lacks behind in performance and memory consumption, and if it wasn't for Safari being a better browser, Win10 will properly wins the Battery Performance race as well. ( Edge will likely change that )

UX on Windows 10 is better in many ways as well.Sigh
Hmmm, how about tradies? eg plumbers

They're not unskilled at all, but they also don't go to "college" for the majority of their on-the-job learning.
The other side from the vector adder ("front" side at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/StudentE... ) includes a circular slide rule with perfectly normal log scales for fuel, time, distance calculations, an extra scale to help with hours/minutes conversions, and some marks for various conversion factors, including lb/gal fuel and lb/gal oil for use in weight/balance.

The main difference between a straight and circular rule is that it has only one appearance of the index, so you don't have to move the slide around as much, and it's round so the equivalent of a 10" rule has around 3" diameter.

It also has other scales for converting altimeter/airspeed (really pressure gauge) readings into other numbers more useful for certain purposes like true altitude (good for missing obstructions) and "density altitude" (for estimating takeoff performance, also helpful for missing obstructions).
Hey! I was replying to your comment on my other thread and then it disappeared :P You sound like you're going through a lot of the same stuff that I am. I'm 27 also and my mind is a maze of incomprehensible things. Let me know if you want to chat about it, my e-mail is in my profile. Might be something that we can both share insights on!
If you're really interested, the decompiler I built as part of this project performs a symbolic execution of programs for a very simple architecture and (conservatively) tracks the values which could reach registers at a given point in the program:

https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Octo/blob/gh-pages/js/decompi...

I call the technique "register smearing" and it's only remotely feasible because Chip8 has lots of registers (if an accumulator was constantly being clobbered you wouldn't get much useful information) and programs are exceedingly small (<3.5kb).

As you'd expect, for simple programs this works great and has even helped find bugs in some of the example Chip8 ROMs in the wild. However, it rapidly breaks down when you start working with memory-intensive programs or anything involving self-modifying code. There's still room for improvement, but at the end of the day you can't solve the halting problem and there is a diminishing return on greater complexity in your decompiler.
A lawyer prepping someone for testimony will say: "Remember, your job here is not to score points. All you want to do is to prevent points from being scored." Meaning don't lose your cool, never be glib, never make jokes, don't try to pretend you're smarter than the attorney, don't lie, but most of all, don't state anything more than the minimum necessary to answer the question.

Good advice that's too easily forgotten in the moment.
When I was in college a girlfriend stole a video she had let me make of us. Should I have to worry about that coming back to haunt me for the rest of my life? Guess I should've taken care of it back then!
If I'm using RDS or Azure-SQL, I'm not managing a database server... The list goes on, but when starting, you may only have one person or two working on actual development... features are important... actual customers and actual revenue may well be more important than scaling to millions of users.

Working is better than not working perfectly.
Nobody besides YC has their network. The question is whether it is their selection process or other factors that contribute to a startup's success.
No Salespeople for Slack
So I read this a while ago and it really stood out in my mind.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/my-boss-revealed-everyones-salar...

It's a question addressed to "Evil HR Lady" (didn't know that was a thing...) from a woman. Her new boss accidentally emailed a spreadsheet with everyone's salary to everyone. The spreadsheet revealed she was underpaid and was embarrassed and now wants the boss's head on a stick.

This is the response from Evil HR Lady

"You are really angry, and you should be -- but your anger is misplaced. Your new supervisor made a mistake in sending out everyone's salaries. But because she is new, I can guarantee she didn't decide on your salaries. Your previous boss did. So, yes, you should be angry, but not at her. You should be angry with your old supervisor.

In fact, you should be thanking your lucky stars that the new supervisor did this. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she subconsciously did it on purpose. If I got a new job and on day one found out that there was a huge disparity in pay among workers doing the same job, it would be top of my priority list to fix that. And I would act as a thorn in my boss's side until it was fixed. Since the problem is a longstanding and expensive one, no one is going to be excited about fixing it. By revealing the discrepancies, she's just brought the issue front and center, and HR and the big bosses cannot ignore it anyone more.

By sharing everyone's salaries, she's given you the power and the tools to fix the problem. HR can't smile sweetly and say, "You're making the market rate, dear!" because you've got hard evidence that you're being underpaid. And you should use this information to negotiate a new salary, as should all of your coworkers. And your boss? She has plausible deniability. It was amistake.

You're angry because you're embarrassed that your salary is low. Not because your "privacy" was violated. If she'd sent out your medical records, or notes from a conversation about your marital problems because they were affecting your work, then that would be a privacy violation and you'd be justifiably angry. But this anger is coming from the unfairness of the whole thing. Yes, you should have negotiated better when you were hired, but because of the information asymmetry in hiring, the company was able to low-ball you. Lesson learned -- always negotiate.

This is precisely why I advocate more openness in pay in the workplace. If you had been aware of what other people in your group were earning when you negotiated your salary, your present salary would likely be more fair. Everyone shouldn't be paid an identical salary because performance and skills are not identical, but salaries should be justifiable and logical.

So forgive your supervisor for her mistake. Accidentally attaching a file in an email shouldn't be a fireable offense. Use the new information to get a higher salary. And if you have to be angry, be angry at the previous supervisor who allowed this to go on.

Good luck with your salary negotiations."
On the other hand

"The service hit 100 million users in November 2012, 200 million in November 2013, 300 million in May 2014, and 400 million in June 2015." and 500 million in Mar 16.

So still growing merrily. Also the shared folder connections have gone from 1.3bn end 2014 to 3.3 billion recently.

They are changing focus from personal file storage to enterprise collaboration stuff which may be why there is less on google trends, perhaps.

>That’s one of the big evolutions in terms of what people are doing when they have a platform like ours, going from access into connections and a huge collaboration network.

>The second big evolution has been the evolution from being an end-user tool into an enterprise tool

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/2016/03/11/dropbo...
> Rather obvious what is going on here - and it is pathetic

Because having people create fake accounts just to leave positive comments is far more likely than thousands of people being exposed to this thread via Sam and Jason's tweeter feeds?

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions with no data to back up your assertions.

For what it's worth, while I've never worked with Jason, I have met him once (briefly) and I have talked to many who have worked with him. I've only heard positive things. Everything being posted here are anecdotes from either one side or another; I wouldn't trust someone's anecdote to determine someone's character.
I totally get your meaning, but it could discourage potential applicants/newbies to startups. Could be misread as you not being open to their ideas (though of course I know you just mean execution is almost everything!)
for those of you who don't know the geography of los angeles, LAX is basically surrounded on 3 sides by dense urban buildup, and then the ocean. the flight path for landing goes over the entire city including downtown, and the runways are sandwiched by freeways and major boulevards on all sides. the approach at night is quite dramatic visually, if you're lucky enough to snag a window seat. i very much enjoy trying to identify everything as i fly over.

it truly is "the motherboard". people who have never flown in before are shocked to see it. it's something else. the only thing that compares in the US is probably chicago, but it's not the same scale, and LA also has geography which adds to the visual drama. tokyo is similar but not quite the same kind of approach. i don't recall any airport in europe even approaching the visual appeal of the LAX approach. i've never flown into mexico city, from looking at maps it's probably close, but physically it's nowhere near as large as the LA metro (including IE, OC, etc.). LA is huge. yuuuuuge.

it is bounded by office highrises, datacenters, hotels, and housing. in my opinion it's likely the most dangerous airport in the US in terms of potential damage from a non-terrorist crash. i can't think of any airports in the US that are quite the same. it's currently the global #5 volume airport but the insane amount of traffic from asia will probably make it #1 within a few years. there is a major expansion and renovation project happening right now.
Most of Gawker is terrible, but if the company goes down I hope Jalopnik survives in some form. They write good articles about cars and racing, and appear to maintain high ethical standards. http://jalopnik.com
Well, to be exact, you can always go to court and dispute the termination is illegal.
What does trying to bury a post for absolutely petty reasons add to a conversation?
NLP pretty much has to be task-specific, but the task-specific NLP that will solve the Pentagon's particular problem almost certainly doesn't exist until someone writes it.

When you describe "Watson" as a task-specific supercomputer, if you mean the Watson that played Jeopardy, that's certainly not what they're going to be using. "Watson" here means hiring IBM consultants to write them some software that runs on IBM hardware.
Once you need to scale, you need that expertise... if I can use RDS, Azure SQL, or a number of other options to manage database services, or other systems without dedicated staff, that buys time to keep the lights on while actual solutions and features are created... an MVP needs to work... And "wasting" a few hundred a month on hosted services while trying to get something working is better than having to spend that time becoming experts on infrastructure, databases, or any number of other systems.

I'm not saying don't optimize, but I am saying that you shouldn't switch infrastructures unless you are saving enough to cover additional talent.
Real-Time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos
Regardless, I'm assuming they want it to be visible (hence their Show HN post)? If so, names certainly help with (or hurt) visibility.
There is a huge list of vpn services compared a couple of days ago on Hn.
When I first started reading I actually thought the article was about backslash against him.
The community (other founders) is amazing. We interact with them all the time via YC forums, which is extremely useful.

We just don't have much interaction with the partners anymore since their focus is better spent on the recent batch rather than helping 4 year old companies.
As a CS/EE grad, and having worked as an EE for 7 years then several more since then as a fullstack developer (I got sick of the EE world) as an individual contributor, lead, and manager, I have to completely disagree with this characterization.

Honestly I think being a good engineer is 10% domain training (CS Degree etc), 45% learning good practices on the job from more senior people, and 45% individual temperament. I have a degree from a very good CS program and yes I learned a lot about languages, theory, algorithms, logic, etc and I use about 1% of it.

I've worked with tons of CS, EE, etc from good programs who were terrible engineers because even though they had a more formal background, they were sloppy, didn't practice decent engineering rigor, didn't follow good practices for code management, weren't good or methodical collaborators, etc, etc.

In the last few years I've hired several bootcamp people and several CS grads with varying degrees of experience and the best people are just the best people, independent of their education, because of their passion and discipline for their craft. Of course on day one an AppAcademy grad doesn't know jack but 2 years later they have every opportunity to be as good or better than your average CS grad with the same experience.
Well, except for those pesky wingtip vortices that can down a smaller airliner.
How Netflix Works with ISPs to Deliver a Great Viewing Experience
Are you sure you are extraverted?

You say,

> I'm pretty extroverted (whatever the hell that means)

But then you also say

> The extra noise and distractions in an open-plan force me to use more willpower to focus and end up depleting my mental energy.

And that's pretty close to the definition of introversion.

You know introversion / extraversion is not about being shy vs outgoing. That is a very common misconception.

Introversion means that social interactions and situations lacking privacy cause you to become tired and experience mental energy drain.

You might love hanging out with friends and being around people, it just makes you tired. Extraverts on the other hand experience an energy boost from social situations, even if they don't prefer being in some specific social situation (e.g. an extravert may hate going to work, but still feel that "buzz of activity" just from being around everyone).

It's about how your cognitive fatigue is triggered: is your fatigue triggered by social situations, or is your fatigue lessened by those situations.

The effect you describe about the fatigue your open plan space causes for you makes me strongly suspect you're much closer to the introvert side of the spectrum than you believe.
I could be wrong, but last I heard google's self driving cars still required a high-precision 3D map of any route they operate on. They can drive on marked roads in mountain view and a couple other areas Google has mapped, but they're a long way from sensors that let cars drive an arbitrary route on any road.
I generally agree that mentioning downvotes is boring, but so is downvoting for petty reasons.
Its about the First Amendment encroaching upon the right to privacy. Where is the line drawn. That was what this trial is sincerely about.

Privacy outweighs the first amendment at this stage. But lets remember, that Gawker is a pretty far stretch to say they are living within the 1st amendment rights.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/28720/how-to-get-...
What separates a bad SE from a decent SE?
Sam would be doing YC a huge disservice if he told YC founders that their employees were applying to YC. First of all, it doesn't even mean that the applicant is necessarily leaving. Getting in is pretty hard to begin with. Secondly, he would probably be missing out on a very talented pool of potential founders, which at the end of the day would return YC far more than a few employees at already successful YC companies.
The comments have made me reconsider my question. I also saw the article about a YC basic income experiment.

Have you considered structuring the experiment in terms of creating a intentional basic income community? An example fitting my bohemian ideals would be: Funding a group of people by providing a place to live (warehouse) and a monthly stipend for food and fun stuff and seeing where they end up after a few years?
I keep hearing that autistic people have no empathy but I find ones that do have it. They can't read people but they care about people when they are hurt or sad.

Sometimes they get upset when someone tries to belitte them for being autistic. Working with the public is hard for them.
Hilarious that Bloomberg published this -- a company famous for no offices and a leader who is insistent that if he can work without an office, so can everyone else, with zero consideration for legitimate physiological differences between workers, like introversion vs extraversion.
Umm Why are you acting like Canada is just Toronto and Vancouver? Montreal is a better place for startups than Vancouver.
Yeah, I actually like that a lot. I was thinking of something along the same lines.

Do you think it would be cool if there was a way for people to choose which lists to post their tweets to? Like, I follow some people who do research on type theory and I love their insights, but I really don't care what they've had for lunch, or if they find some cat picture funny. So maybe if there was a way for them to tag things in such a way that when I filter by "type theory" I only see their posts related to type theory and nothing else.

I like the idea in general, but my fear that it might be a bit too complicated for a lot of people? I think it's important to have a really simple and intuitive user interface, and something like that could just overcomplicate things.

I don't know, what do you think?
So in talking in generalizations, it might not apply to you specifically. But broadly, over the industry, I think its slanted this way for the reason I described.

Even here, you ask the candidate for their salary range, instead of just stating what yours is.

If the salary isn't posted, it's a negotiation. There isn't a hiring manager alive that will blow off a potential hire because they ask for 5-10% more than the initial offer. They might not give it to them, but they won't walk away because of the question. Naturally, as a hiring manager, you might very well offer 5-10% less than your maximum in order to either give you bargaining room, or come in under budget for the position.

It's lightly adversarial, sometimes unpleasant, often annoying, but a part of life unfortunately. Some places more than others for sure, but I think it'd be hard to escape it fully.
I'm Googling and finding a few things called "RODB" that don't quite match your descriptions. What in particular is it?

Or are you talking about just rolling your own format to dump your data into? I've done that, but I'd still appreciate if I could use something that someone else had put the thought into. (Something like "cdb" by Daniel J. Bernstein, but that's an old 32-bit library that's limited to 4 GB files.)
I didn't mean for you to edit your posts (I didn't even think of that actually) I meant could you change it for future posts, since you'd already made two posts with that term.

Funny thing is, if anything, I expected people to agree with the sentiment expressed. That it's virtually buried - and the one person who openly agreed, and suggested an alternative, was also downvoted - blows my mind.
Most everyone I know who is primarily technical who's total compensation, ah, starts with a two has a base that isn't out of your range and the rest is bonus/stock. So yeah, on a good year? (like last year) a quarter million is completely reasonable, but that's not gonna hold if the company has a bad year.

also, everyone I know in that income tax bracket works for those big companies. Startups just don't pay that kind of money. If you want to get paid (I mean, paid now, not paid if you get lucky and pick the right company and it gets huge) - if you want to get paid, go get a job from a big company.

why don't you want to work at google, facebook, uber, apple, etc...? (amazon, btw, is on that list, too.)

Also, on another note, while I get "what is your salary expectation" a lot, (and I often return with "getting X now, need X+y if you want me to move" because maybe I'm a terrible negotiator?) I've never had any but the lowest of body shop recruiters actually ask me for a previous salary.
Well i'm extroverted around people. I get a huge burst of energy. I get too excited and can't focus. I just want to keep talking to people and moving around. When it's time to dig into a rats nest of JS code I need serenity and quiet. The reason I don't really buy the whole introvert/extrovert thing is that its way too broad of a distinction and presents this binary of personalities when it's really more of a continuum. I think you just made my point.
To avoid the barrage of out of office auto-responders, add a "Precedence: bulk" header.