skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe Oracle has seen some really weird group interactions on this level.
That infographic accomplished the unenviable task of making me want pie charts for some of the tables.
The statistics Nate Silver uses are extremely problematic. I would not trust them at all. Any index that uses Fisher price indexes introduces huge amounts of subjectivity. For instance, the decision to use an "overlap method" rather than a "direct comparison method" is subjective ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_index ). Choosing one method rather than the other can dramatically alter the resulting index. When you add up a large number of subjective decisions, the resulting numbers simply replicate the assumptions you started with. One government economist writes psuedo-anonymously: "Much of our time is spent 'forecasting,' which basically means making a common-sense appraisal of what some indicator or variable will do in the coming years, and creating a statistical model that confirms it. The second step adds nothing of value to the prediction – the math is just there for show, a means of impressing the innumerate by camouflaging shot-in-the-dark guesses in rigorous clothing." ( http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/public_service.ht... )
There are no other so powerful tool to promote than a good advertisement
Firemen, policemen, same thing.

Those jobs take a special kind of mentality to be able to do them well.
What you're describing are essentially the same as what happened in mumbai 2 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2008_Mumbai_attacks

In the article the Indians claimed that up to 37 people were involved in organising it. That's a pretty massive operation.

You can't just have 10 guys who not only have convinced themselves or other to kill themselves but also people to do a variety of tasks, like: coordinate the movements plan, recruit the other 9, get them to the right places with minimal chance of intercept, make sure none bottle out at the last minute, house them until attack, buy the grenades, etc. etc.

And that's just a list off the top of my head and more pop into it all the time. Like they also need the right clothes to not look odd, make sure they attack schools which are easy to get into, have maps to find the school. I'm sure there's much much more to plan in such an attack.

It's like saying that a special forces attack isn't backed up by a massive logistical operation. If it wasn't they'd be nothing special about them as they'd all be dead.
not really the DC snipers were idiots.

1. they set a pattern where they were killing a person a day + they were using the same car.

2. he constantly taunted the police, made calls, left them notes, left them cards. Shouldn't be that hard to use forensics to find out who it was.

3. he was actually connected to one of the victims. a truly random no-connections sniper would have been much harder to catch.

And yes people stopped running after he was caught...but that's because they knew the guy was caught. If it's a "terrorist organization", getting a few terrorists wouldn't solve anything, since you'd never know if there were more lurking waiting a few days till the next killing.
You should check out the borders sometime, both Canadian and Mexican. You're underestimating the difficulty of getting across, even if there were no border agents. It's miles of walking through harsh terrain. You start out in the middle of nowhere, get across, and you're still in the middle of nowhere. Most people are not Bear Grylls. It's far easier to just fake some ids and take a plane, which seems to be what most of the bad guys end up doing.
I agree in that I'd like to be able to tip people for good articles (I've started donating now that I have more income).

But I don't think good will is a sustainable source of income, or at least not one that will work in the general case.
The More Precisely You create the Separate Parts Of a Research Paper
Research paper is one of the principal kinds of scientific work. It contains the statement of the intermediate or final results of scientific research, takes up the separate particular question on the research topic and fixes scientific priority of the author.
Subscribe to premium data sources (like Navteq) via Microsoft codename "Dallas"
I was looking for another site, similar to Mocklinkr, but this does the trick. Nice and simple. Thanks.
The growth curve includes inflation. But both the calculations of growth and inflation are utterly untrustworthy.
For the purpose of shooting up your local mall, the difference between a fully-automatic and semi-automatic AR-15 is not that great (it's not like you're going to be laying down suppressing fire), and you certainly can buy the latter without any real difficulty.
T'so is one of the leading developers of the extended file system used by Linux.
I'd be terribly sad if google bought and killed them.
I focused mostly on the "Feet of clay: The CMM's fundamental misunderstanding of level 1 Organizations" section and I find a lot to disagree with.

The biggest issue, which I don't sense the author gets, is "repeatability". Level One companies are entirely dependent on "heroes" (or cowboys, take your pick :-) and their ability to follow their first success is not particularly predictable, except that it's likely to be poor. Look at Lotus, who's first product (the 1-2-3 spreadsheet etc.) was written by a team of 7 or so assembly language wizards for the first IBM-PC and that lost it's ability to develop software after that (1-2-3's mid-life kicker that saved the company (for a while) was an unauthorized project written by two programmer who left the company before the need for it was acknowledged).

I think we realize this less now because we're so much more leveraged and "powerful" today; a small team can do so much more and continue to do that if the company avoids Teamicide (http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S... , READ IT!!!) and doesn't have to grow its team (much).

Microsoft, on the other hand, by the 1994 date of this essay was most certainly not a Level One company. I've long said the secret to their success in the period that includes that year was that they retained the ability to write software that basically worked (compare this to all their Windows Office competitors who lost in the transition to Windows 3.x: with the exception of WordPerfect, the others couldn't get past the "crashes too often" stage, and WordPerfect's release was a sad joke. Sure, it didn't crash, but it also would frequently move all your figures and tables to the bottom of your document.)

It's No Accident that Microsoft was run during that period by a seriously good hacker (anyone who can successfully rewrite an assembly BASIC interpreter (without benefit of a computer) during a transcontinental flight earns my respect.)

I too prefer Gerald Wienberg's approach to this, and CMM can obviously be fetishized and at best promises little more than "we can continue write mediocre software", but there's something there that's worthwhile that it's trying to achieve.
This is why I find it funny that civil servants have such a bad reputation. This sort of thing happens in all big corporations and government is just another big corporation.
Ted Tso wrote the majority of the filesystem in question, so he is pretty much the authority on the matter.

He was hired by Google, and his point is that if Ubuntu is going to make a distribution, they need to have the engineers available to solve it, instead of just bugging actual engineers over and over again, which I see is reasonable given they sell support.
I'm sure that's the way they see it. A company with more foresight would realize that its users are its lifeblood.
Counter argument to this would be that we (US) try to avoid broadcasting when we catch people involved in relatively clandestine networks so we can try to continue doing so.
The Poetics of Coding
"I can’t afford any of the houses I grew up in — and it’s not like my dad is a millionaire or anything; he’s a professor just like me. Identical social standing. The difference: I am poorer than he was. My children will be poorer than me."

Bullshit. You may have less money in the bank, but that doesn't make you poorer. Could your dad afford to buy a 65" TV when you where a kid - NO. They didn't even exist. Can you afford a holographic entertainment system - No, they don't really exist right now, but I bet you're kids will have one when they're grown up.

Stop looking at money and start looking at standard of living.
Or they figured if they get in on the ground floor they might be in a preferred spot if they decide to attempt a buy-out later.
Why the social-media aggregator has croaked
you don't need full automatic weapons...you can just buy a regular gun like an AR15 and kill just as many people.

the fort hood incident isn't on the list of 2009 attacks. Here is the wiki discussion about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_terrorist_incident...
Am I the only one that was wondering what Roethlisberger was doing in the UK?
The next twitter API method: account creation
Possibly even more so than at malice. If an organization acts out of malice, you can change its behaviour by educating it about its best interests or moving to disincent its malicious behaviour.

But incompetence, especially systemic incompetence, is extraordinarily difficult to change. Facebook appears to have ADD around user privacy and its interface. Designs come and go, defaults change capriciously, and security seems to be an afterthought.

We've seen this movie before, with MSFT in the role of the bumbling centi-billionaire. Hopefully Facebook will steer a different course.
This is an interesting point - I wonder how debt also impacts individual risk aversion and wealth accumulation and if these effects can be seen (measured) in the post-mid-century US.
Your account is one day old. Are you trolling?
Yes, there's OpenJDK, but I'm a bit suspicious over whether enough of a community has built up around OpenJDK to continue development without Sun support.

I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, of course.
I knew who he was and still thought it was an asshole comment.

Though I was particularly put off by the bit at the bottom, where he says that even if Ubuntu does hire and train up people to work on upstream kernel or filesystem issues Google's deep pockets mean they will just poach them once they are trained up.

Hopefully at Google they'll actually work on the upstream Linux rather than the Android fork.
In my (inexperienced, non-lisp-coding) book, Clojure looks really cool and the sort of thing I can see myself using a lot.

CL looks old and painful to deal with, although it does have all the lisp goodness in there somewhere.
Siteparse: Bookmarklet for scraping Web data and saving it to .CSV files
Last time I checked much of the work in Ubuntu was done by the teams (Kernel team, Server team, several translation teams, etc), the majority of members of each team are not employed by Canonical, and this is a problem.

As a matter of fact, I know of someone that worked in one of the Ubuntu teams, when his work became well known, and someone at Red Hat discovered that he was not paid they just hired him.

EDIT: I do not see this as a problem though, I watch closely the Dragonfly BSD project and as far as I know the majority of the developers are not paid to contribute with the project.
I suspect there is a missing qualifier there. i.e; "Bombs are easy to make if you have some common sense".

Bombs can come in all shapes and forms; I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people here (for example) could overcome the problem of a) building it and b) not using obvious "tell tale" materials. Off hand I recall Meth can be created out of "household" products and the reactions involved can be very volatile/explosive - that seems like the possible makings of an effective bomb right there.

(also; tracking fertilizer sales is probably not going to help you ID terrorists :) I bet the numbers are just crazy - also, any sensible terrorist will be nicking small quantities from farms etc.)

On the other hand terrorist converts acting alone are, I suggest, less likely to be able to do the correct research and construction.
> it's running within abstraction layer upon abstraction layer, with various other abstraction layers involved to help make sense of the fact that there are too many abstraction layers.

"Every problem can be solved by adding another layer of abstraction--Except for the problem of having too many layers of abstraction"--Alan Perlis
Computer- Internet - Privacy: Integral to child education
Good point.

One of the major issues with patent law is that it is stuck into the U.S. legal system and ultimately governed at the highest level by the Supreme Court who are technologically incapable. They do not have a scientific background, they are not even other patent attorneys, they are often people who have no idea what is going on and ruling on these issues.

It is the same with the legislature, where they are making laws related to technology without understanding the implications (e.g. net neutrality).

What we really need is some system whereby those who are technically capable of making good legal decisions about the subject matter in question are the ones doing so instead of those who cannot (or choose not) to grasp it.

Until we reach some reasonable way of doing so, we are going to be stuck with things like patent law in its current incarnation which shouldn't really have any applicability in most cases when it comes to software.
I'm going to have to send that man some money.
Is your argument that if your TV is big enough you won't notice your otherwise poor standard of living?
Interview with Rockstar Web Applications Programmer Leah Culver
This would require them to get into Canada as well. Now instead of breaching one border, they're breaching two borders. Also, think of the states that border most of Canada...Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. You think a few Muslim guys showing up near the border without transportation in these almost exclusively white areas isn't going to cause some suspicion?
He probably means it's hard to sneak known terrorists into the United States. That much is true. Illegals coming across the border have a decent shot of getting caught, even if they hire experienced professional help, which terrorists might not have. Good luck going to Mexico with an Arabic accent and finding a coyote to smuggle you across the border. I'm sure there are plenty venal enough to take you, but there are also plenty who would recognize the prudence and possible intangible value of tipping off the cops. It's easier to train a new guy and get a tourist visa for him, but then you have to make sure the FBI never knew he was at a training facility, which is probably difficult these days. (With all the heinous stuff our country has done in the last ten years, do you really doubt we have a bunch of terrorists' wives and children living in custody somewhere, maybe in a very nice facility with schools and playgrounds, but still somewhere where we can send pictures from little Achmed's birthday parties as a warning to big Achmed of what might happen if he doesn't keep supplying information?)

Also good luck finding nine terrorist friends who wouldn't tip off police to a plot to kill children. True sociopaths are very rare; how rare are true sociopaths who are loyal to a group or a cause?
In fact, the best thing we can do is stop reporting terrorism in the media. Don't give these fanatics the spotlight they so much crave.
> Artistic intuitions of game designers have been measured in the crucible of conversion rates and been found wanting.

Artistic intuitions aren't a factor. Game design is heavily playtested and even split tested.

Being led by the arm is fine and it makes people do things, but then they forget how to do them without guidance! They're learning that a feature exists, not how to do it and apply it for themselves.

That WoW example isn't there to make players learn how to use features. It's there to sell the game: "Some day, you'll be able to do all this"

That's kind of what you're saying but you're not making the distinction between teaching the player skills and selling the product. Miyamoto is talking about the former.
While I agree with that, I thought he said the only source of wealth is ideas and then say it's manufacturing instead.
Intelligence agencies don't report on their successes. So how would we know how much terrorism is being stopped by intelligence?
Most people I know (midwest USA) think it is BS and are annoyed. It doesn't give them comfort when the visible signs of security are so flawed.
Investment, defined as current production used (saved and invested) for future growth, is critical to growth. Since the federal reserve has gotten control of the dollar, the dollar has been steadily dropping in value. This discourages savings and investment and rewards borrowing and consumption. Also, the government has been steadily growing. This crowds out investment. Also, government regulation discourages investment. As investment decreases, so does growth.
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." -- The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)
Even though chat is blocked, you can still see pending friends request on anyone's profile. In fact, one can probably use this to add anyone as a friend. Send a friend request, view your profile with their id and accept the request you just sent.
- Shostakovich #11

- Abbey Road side B

- The End (The Doors)
Link Building- Let your Website Breathe Visitors’ Oxygen
Link building, it may take only seconds to say that we need to build links but the process takes even months to show its results. And your website would only get the result if it attracts lots of visitors towards it.
It doesn't let you accept/reject those requests - just shows them (afaik)
Servers remain up the entire time we just have less cost from dedicated machines that were being wasted. They were more power than needed and we consolidated the architecture, and their cloud servers are much less expensive.
There's nothing wrong with Mozilla. The browsing consumer has a choice to choose another browser. I happen to think more than one video format in HTML5 is good for the consumer. If H264 does become the dominant format, then there is nothing to stop the licensing being revised a a future date. To prevent this perhaps you would have an alternative codec ready as an alternative so licensing remains competitively priced.

Monopoly isn't the foundation of industry, but often laziness.

Mozilla's outpourings, I think, are more of a campaign to get a free alternative to E264. As with all campaigns it could be economical with the truth. It remains to be seen if they have made the right move.
Yeah, Halliburton is going to save us.

More likely they'd want to license their "technology" to other patent trolls.
Hmmm. I'm 26 and I still forget all the times my dad admonish me for overestimating people. "You can't assume everyone else thinks like you do or knows all the things you do".

I think the problem though is when you 'require' all students to be in class as part of your grade. This is little different than classrooms in a high school that are set up to help students falling behind that end up hurting / punishing the top performing students.
One thing I wonder about, but have no basis for knowing, is whether it was easier ten years ago for Al Qaeda to convince the 9/11 attackers that they would have the adulation and gratitude of the Muslim community at large. At that time, terrorism in the Muslim public's mind was mostly associated with Palestinians fighting Israeli occupation, and the 9/11 attack was framed as a blow against U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. I'm sure many potential terrorists have since heard their friends, family, and neighbors comment unfavorably on the 9/11 attacks and their consequences for Muslims and for the image of Islam. That might hurt recruiting among people who are smart and social enough to be part of a large-scale attack.
It's a little snarky, but Ted isn't the first to have observed that Canonical has very high developer turnover rates.
At least they seem to patch up things whenever bugs like this are discovered.
I can't quite put my finger on why The Daily WTF's writing style reminds me so much of Reader's Digest. Thoughts?
That would be an interesting addition to Facebook's like button. The site gets a dime and you get the option of having your generosity show up on your online social record. People often like having their generosity very visible to others.
I think the point he was making is that more and more American manufacturing is following a service model itself.

As we centralize our manufacturing to a few larger companies (per industry), the only innovation available is really optimization which is not the leaps-and-bounds/change-the-world stuff of tech startups.
مشاهدة مباراة ريال مدريد وريال مايوركا بث مباشر
I don't include working 8-5 in my definition of "efficient". Although I do think working the same hours as the rest of your team has benefits too good to ignore. I mean having a life where you can still exercise, eat well, enjoy some hobbies, spend time with friends, etc. Means that when I sit down to work, I'm so much more focused and willing that I ultimately get more work done.

I agree following a process to the letter without really thinking about what it's doing for you is bad. If you feel agile is not allowing you to pursue other needed things then that's bad. Take what works for you from a process and leave the rest behind.
The iPad has been on the streets for a month now. Has it saved newspapers yet?
Also notable as an early anecdote on the development of user interface/experience. It's funny how complicated simplifying the user experience can be from the engineering perspective.

Another interesting tidbit was Microsoft's habit of storing bytecode (to be interpreted) making the developer's life much, much harder. Hmmm, sounds like curiously similar to more recent news...
How Woolworths might shake up the hardware space down under
Where’s the Grown-Up Version of Zune?
Is it possible to see someone's connections in a systematic way? (i.e. other than randomly appearing in the small box to the left of the connections page).

The only bit that holds a particularly serious concern to me is the global snippets bit which drags your wall posts out into the connections page - I've seen some random and utterly irrelevant messages appear there and that is worrying... (it would, perhaps, be better if they implemented the # tag style system similar to what they've done with @name now)
Personalize your own Personality Infographic
Wow... I read that as 'Wooden Adolf Hitler'... <smacks head>
Think of the drug trade, which manages to organize far larger groups in disparate cities who actually have to transport large shipments of physical goods, and have to do it _repeatedly_.

There are backwoods meth labs that display at least as much coordination as would be required for the type of attack I'm describing.

You're asserting that no terrorist organization has the resources to coordinate a group of 10 people to act in concert.

The alleged U.K. 'liquid explosives' plot resulted in 25 arrests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo...

My core question is: why would terrorists choose such a complicated, risky, hard to execute method of terror when easier avenues are available?
I've started a status update campaign for all of my Facebook friends to educate themselves on these matters.

I'm leaving my college pictures up there because its not unheard of to be a drunk American college student, plus these years are behind me.

But my Facebook activity is now limited to keeping in touch with my friends by reading their content. Not the other way around.

Next thing we know our inboxes are public. We simply can't trust Mark anymore.