skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, as one who has been sub employee #10 at two startups that managed to make it to 500 employees, (One of which sold for $1.6B, fingers crossed on #2 going out for north of $1B), I'd suggest that there is a certain class of employee who can act in a supporting role, but isn't necessarily going to create the product.

Salary/Equity are usually pretty good in VC funded startups (As opposed to Self Funded/Angel Funded - where I agree, be the founder or come in later on)

Of course, I totally agree, ymmv - You apparently have seen the low end of the return, whereas I've seen the alternate.
It's simple economics as far as the malware/security track record goes. Since windows holds the most marketshare in OS business, most of the effort in terms of malware or virus creation is directed towards windows systems. It's been shown at Pwn2Own that Macs can be easier to break into vs. Windows esp. Vista onwards.

If you were a hacker and you wanted that data, it wouldn't have stopped you if the target used Mac OSX ... you could just target some other unpublicized exploit. I mean all you need is Flash to do some damage.
Or mystical bs that is trying hard to show understanding.
Sounds like the kind of thing that a company like Google could tackle. It would be especially good in the mobile world, where bandwidth is more limited.
20621 is greater than 10000.
This feels to me like giving a kid $0.25 for a glass of lemonade, and him telling me he'll bring it to my house after he's built his lemonade stand, bought the ingredients and actually produced a beverage.

This is exactly the state of the project unless there is a whole lot that the Diaspora team has not publicly documented.

But, as far as I know, they have never stated that this was not the case. Their video made it pretty apparent they had yet to build the lemonade stand and buy the ingredients.
Citation? I haven't seen anything near the equivalent of Windows flaws on OS X. How many remotely exploitable OS X vulnerabilities have there been in the last 2 years?
I thought it was great, except the way "let" was introduced was a little shocking. You just assumed what it was doing was intuitive (which it was, coming from a lisp background). I look forward to more!
This is how big companies work. They want even the smallest task (like, "viewing documentation for the product we just bought") to take days and require multiple levels of managerial approval. Because I guess it's cheaper to have 10 employees doing the same job than it is to get sued if one employee posts confidential information to a blog, or something. (If you've ever wondered why you only get 0.00025% interest on your savings account... now you know.)

(This is being downmodded, but it's really true, at least where I work. The IT system is set up for HR people and bank tellers, not programmers. So the programmers just have to deal, because the system isn't setup for "average joe" employees to do anything useful. The good news is, we bought some company that says they won't be able to continue doing business if this stuff doesn't change, and the company we bought is more prestigious than we are ;)
Yahoo Visual Timeline 1996-2006
Lossless data compression and information complexity in general has been kind of my hobby for last 13-14 years. More out of OCD/curiosity than practical purposes, like a puzzle if you will.

From what I gathered, I think future of compression lies in the way we look at data patterns itself. That is, not looking at patterns statistically, and not looking at the problem as statistical, but some new approach via discrete math.

That is, a fresh new "out of this world" approach. I have some ideas where it might come from, but I don't want to sound like a mad man.
also, the infected URL was sent through MSN Messenger and upon being clicked, it launched the infected page. That would mean, correct me if I'm wrong, that the default browser was still IE.

Also, are IT policies applied consistently throughout the world or different regions have a diff. IT policy?
I've heard anecdotal reports from a few developers that OS X's IOKit driver framework, and its limited subset of C++, works very well. It's very limited in terms of the language features available, and sounds like it strikes a good balance.

Of course, this is all anecdotal. YMMV.
How do they test Chrome for Windows?
PCA is optimal from an L2 perspective, but with images, that is often not the metric you want to use.

Of course I was a little bit confused by the fact that he's talking about lossless compression but then mentioning jpeg, which is lossy.

If you consider lossy compression algorithms, then for images what matters most is human perception. JPEG and the various MPEG standards for video already take advantage of this, by more heavily quantizing things that humans have trouble distinguishing changes in. Thus, while these compression schemes may increase the L2 reconstruction error, the results look "better" to human eyes than the results of PCA, where artifacts are quite noticeable.

If you do want to use PCA, then the following method is quite a bit more efficient than straight PCA on images:
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/publications/pdfs/Nishino_P...

That's for a single image, but you could extend the idea out to multiple images.

The problem with PCA is that it's a linear method, and lighting effects are not linear across a full image. However, in local settings (i.e., small patches of the image), the linearity assumption often holds, and you thus get much more bang-for-the-buck.
Stanovich cites many studies in his book. He would like to produce "RQ" tests to be used alongside IQ tests, but so far no test publisher that I am aware of has taken him up on his suggestion. So except for the (sometimes small-n) studies on specific cognitive abilities that Stanovich cites, there has yet to be validation of "rationality" for occupational counseling or the like. What has been shown, very well indeed, is persistent cognitive illusions that result in irrational decisions, even among persons presumptively selected by high IQ score, such as financial professionals. Behavioral economists have of course been very interested in these issues, and Stanovich cites their primary research papers extensively in his book. Some of those experiments have been replicated by dozens of investigators over thousands of subjects.
Ok, I applied the patch mentioned in the other post. Please try now and let me know if the issue still exists!
athletopia.com
Pretty good start and cool idea.

Would be more impressive if the program responded to movement of the ghosts or followed a known pattern around the maze.
That all makes sense. I actually do a lot of time-killing blog reading on my Blackberry, of all things, so I could see it being cool for that. I'm just not in an income bracket where I can drop that kind of money for that kind of gadget, since it falls so squarely between a smartphone and a laptop. Perhaps when I do have the cash, I'll pick one up.
Are you talking about Fractal Compression methods?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://news.ycombinator.co...

EDIT: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.google.com&...

I suppose we should by this logic be 4 times more confident in Diaspora than Google, and 15 times more confident than HN.
Yeah, I chose MIT because I wanted to get my ass kicked, which didn't happen so much. It's still possible, but it seems that they've been watering down everything. They banned triple majoring, and I think they've even stopped granting dual degrees now.

The administration has always seemed pathologically risk-averse, and mostly come from the wrong sort of background to run the type of school MIT should be.
Regardless of the security record, it is often the case that hackers and virus writers target the most popular OS. So I don't see how all switching to the same OS is a good idea for security.
are you suggesting... everybody just shut the data up behind closed doors so people can say whatever they want and at least none of those pesky dissenters can stir up trouble?

Absolutely not. And I think you should know that. Do you know why I think you should know that? Because I wrote "I'm not telling them to conceal anything. I think they did the correct thing: they published all their data, and they disclosed exactly what data points they removed and why they did so" in the comment you're replying to. So, why exactly do you think I'm suggesting that any data be hidden? How many times do I have to explicitly write that I think no data should be hidden before you believe me?

You really can't argue with #s - if I include studies X,Y,Z the mean is M and if I exclude Z it's N. You may argue about Z but people should make those decisions for themselves.

You certainly can argue with numbers. Numbers do not burst forth from the head of Zeus; they are always produced in a particular context and that context provides fertile grounds for argument. Here's an example: is the mean temperature of the earth changing? We have datasets from weather stations all over the globe going back centuries. But there are people who claim that many of these weather stations used to be located in rural areas that have become more developed over time and that this development can introduce heat islands that create the illusion of global warming. This is not an obviously false claim. These people can and do argue with the numbers. Later research by scientists has shown that this claim is wrong anyway, but lay people lack the time and training to figure that out on their own. And it seems bizarre to expect them to.

If the data is out there, more people will see the truth.

I don't think this is true at all. People do not generally scrutinize raw data. And if they do, they lack the skilled needed to decipher them.
William Gibson on writing, science fiction and the Future
Yeah, and it defaults to Windows.
Do you really think Twitter, home of the Fail Whale, can actually process your tweets in real time just to censor you? What would they get out of that? Money spent on hardware and software just to discourage people from using their product? Seems unlikely.

What seems likely is database replication issues or a buggy caching algorithm. You are not important enough to censor.
But clearly it's censorship!!11!
An illustrated guide to communication in startups (cartoon)
Well funded organization could do it for sure. And Google would benefit from it, of course. But, from my limited research over the years I'm not convinced anymore that any further significant advancement could be done via continuous mathetmatics. It might be my personal bias from my experience, but I have a strong hunch on new approaches via discrete mathematics will be the key for any serious advances approaching shannon's limit / kolmogorov complexity (if those hold true, and they should as far as we know).
As Google still develops and tests for Windows I question that line about needing CIO approval for any Windows machine. Still, great to hear.
That's definitely a pattern I'm seeing; people don't like the way "let" is introduced. I think in writing it I hoped it would be intuitive. I think, actually, someone suggested that I spend a few examples demonstrating it to ease the idea into the reader's brain. It seems people don't mind weird things as long as you explain them. Interesting lesson. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for trying!
Colors in Culture
The number of games supported on Windows is much better than for Mac/Linux.
It's still not a bad place, but I think I could put together a far superior program, attached to another research university (to have access to grad students), to educate undergrads for $15-20k/yr (vs. the $60k/yr MIT claims to be spending). Take risks!

I think something like KAUST (in Saudi) could end up being what MIT should be -- or Olin (the free school which has lots of MIT SM/PhD instructors).

If I had kids, I'd probably push toward an undergrad-focused school like Reed for pure science education, or Stanford or UC Berkeley for someone who wanted to be an engineer, just to have access to the silicon valley ecosystem. I think there is a strong case for "take 1-2 years between HS and college to work", too.
Yes, it does. Recent versions of Windows (Vista and especially 7) have had security track records at least on par with OS X and desktop Linux. Mac OS X hasn't been doing terribly well lately, and Apple is notoriously slow to patch known security flaws, e.g.: http://bit.ly/62bTNQ

I'd provide a link to hard data, but for some reason Secunia's taken down their list of unpatched vulnerabilities in OS X (?!), even though they provide this data for most other operating systems, including Windows.
"No skeptics believe there is a vast conspiracy of scientists working together ..."

uh, isn't that a suspect extrapolation? Just Google what Sen. Inhofe has to say on the subject.
Just like the article said, there is a significant overlap between those who deny AGW and those who deny evolution. And if over a century of empirical evidence is not enough to convince them that they're wrong, what good is a few decades worth of data?
i'm sure they still have dedicated windows test machines (that are sandboxed from their super-secret data) ... or using virtual machines
how did they go from having a nice visual & simple logo http://www.facebook.com/album.php?profile=1&id=118635234...

to having this horribly designed website?

They likely didn't even need to use the money they have to get a half decent design.

This is not instilling much confidence in these guys.
Ninite.com (YC W08) releases new product and stats - 10 million apps installed
That's a myth. There are some parts like libc and the command line apps that were ported from BSD, the the kernel is a mach-that-isn't-anymore hybrid oddity, and the user interface is an Apple-only system.

So, to a good approximation, you can say that the command line is based on BSD, and the rest came from NeXT and Apple, with a bit of GNU mixed in.

The BSD heritage is rather insignificant when it comes to security, since the largest attack surface comes from Apple applications like Safari, or the file manager, or other apps the end user uses directly on a regular basis.
one suggestion is to use some sort of ad platform, for your service I would just suggest reddit, google and bing.. try to cheaply target certain niches, with customized ads. That way if you see out of the many campaigns you will be creating you can see what gets traction based on location, demographics.. etc.
Facebook Android SDK
Well, fractal compression is lossy based and sort of a reconstructive process which resembles original, but isn't. So, no.

I am talking about lossless compression. There are various things putting limits to what can be done ultimately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem

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

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

those being the most important ones. Current methods are more or less all analysis/statistics/continuous math. I think, from what I gathered that new approach will come from the area of discrete maths. Mainly combinatorics. Also, this is where mad man part comes in, cellular automata kind of systems.

Discrete math in itself offers great tools to make r&d on paper, but requires severe computing power later on to prove right. New research also needs new minds un-poluted with "what can and can't be done" in order to bring new ways of thinking. I won't bore you with details, I had lots of ideas over the years, but pretty much all were fluke for lossless.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9129978/Researcher_cr...

Mac isn't significantly more secure. In fact, after all the bad press, Microsoft has invested significant amounts of money on intrusion mitigation systems like address space randomization, non-executable stacks, and so on. Linux is playing catch up to Windows in some regards there, and from what I know about OSX, it's also far behind in intrusion mitigation techniques. (edit: here's a blog post that covers some of them: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michael_howard/archive/2006/05/26/ad...)

There are perfectly good reasons for switching to OSX (like, for example, the fact that the interface isn't a pain to use, and the command line doesn't suck, although I still favor Linux with a good tiling WM), but I don't think security is a valid one.
I don't know, but I see it as distinctly different from knowledge/experience. ie. A surgeon would be much more likely to be able to learn to be a mechanic, than vice versa.
i understand the utility of their application, but I see this as worse than a seasonal type application. I mean how often do we need to reinstall a lot of software at one time. Also I saw spotify on the list.. might cause some confusion for US users.
Agreed, this is such a common problem. Another really common manifestation is when you A/B test while looking at multiple variables. If you observe the results of 20 variables, you should expect one of them to have 95% confidence!
iPad = no flash = no grooveshark or google finance.

So I won't buy one, since those 2 sites are pretty much my staples, along with HN of course:-).
If I can get a revenue stream of approximately $1000 a month my entire website will be literally a call to a few different web services and some fancy-shmancy CSS files. God I love hacker news! Ok fine there will be some of my code in there, hopefully not for long because soon there will be a tool to solve any other problem as well :P As long as these don't get too pricey.
Actually, I'm already into Haskell; my comment was poorly worded but I meant I hope it does the same for other people :-).

> It's planned that there be a text editor where you can put top-level definitions

Good to hear, I like the way Dr. Scheme does it and it makes for a good learning environment.
Bad logic.

Popularity is unrelated to quality of code.

While it is true that popularity = bigger target = more incentive to attack the platform's security, it is also often used as an excuse to try to hand-wave away bad, insecure code.

Another platform becoming more popular would indeed mean that it would have more people targeting it. But it does not, in any way, mean that the people would have the same level of success exploiting it as they do Windows.

We could probably safely expect that the platform would be successfully exploited more than it currently is. And people that think OS X is a security panacea are living in a fantasy world. But the argument that "[i]f everyone jumps to another OS so will the security problems" is a woeful oversimplification, and confuses two separate issues.

Also, as a side note, people seriously underestimate the level of incentive that currently exists for targeting non-Windows platforms. It is not the case that the incentive scales proportionally to audience size. Any sufficiently popular platform is a desirable target to attack. It's not like a platform has to have 90% of the market to be worth the effort. The relative ease of attack is a far more important factor than the potential audience size once we're talking millions of users.
I went to the apple store with a friend last week. He badly wanted the iPad but could not find a valid reason for it, other than goofing around on the sofa. After half an hour thinking we ended up deciding that the iPad is really useful if you want a way to carry around and read your PDF library of scientific paper. I don't think it has rivals for that.

For everything else it's just a cool toy.
It's worth noting that those are content aware, lossless compression for single image files, not cross-file.

That said -- very cool -- I didn't know those existed!
Diaspora FAQ reads like it was written for HN readers--are we its target market?
Ask HN: Please review my startup (www.spibby.com)
Spibby intends to be a game centered around check-ins and purchases (via the Foursquare and Blippy APIs).

Our minimum viable product is a real-time, user-generated stream of what people are spending on / recommending. We plan to gradually integrate location and purchases into this stream.
Foursquare integration: A user will see a list of recent check-ins and be allowed to enter purchases made at these locations. Blippy integration: A user's credit card swipes will be pulled into the Spibby stream from Blippy. Points will be earned from a combination of swipes, transactions and Spibby posts (and the conversations around these posts).

NOTE: In its current avatar, Spibby might seem like a non-automated version of Blippy / Swipely, but that's quite intentional - we hope to integrate with these services and eventually build our game on top their APIs. The value-add around the user generated posts (that we currently allow) is the ability to discuss wishlists / cash transactions / questions before a purchase, which we think is quite significant.

We'd like to a) receive feedback and b) start building a community as early as we can. Spibby, right now, is extremely basic - we let you make simple posts and follow other users, but we've already seen some interesting conversations unfold between our initial users.

We're quite sure we're in for some really compelling feedback from the HN community.
1) We'd love to hear what you think of the concept.
2) We'd like to know if you think the path we're taking (from MVP to version 1.0) and our complete apathy towards stealth makes sense
3) We'd like your inputs on how we can make Spibby better

Thanks a ton in advance!
I've not been too excited about most of his recent music, secretly hoping I suppose that he'll wake up one day and make another Warm Jets or Tiger Mountain kind of album.

On the other hand, as big of a fan as I was of the Ramones, I think I stopped buying their albums after about the 4th one. It was pretty much the same stuff, over and over.

But Eno certainly keeps after interesting ideas, asking good questions, and avoiding the rut of getting old.
The danger here is that they will lose touch with the 80% of their user base that uses windows. If they don't have enough people who intimately understand the computing experience of their users then their products could suffer.
cliff notes: the author of the article has an IQ of 150 (did anyone think that there was really any other point?)
Are free trials the answer?
>oh, there's no reason to believe the school's water supply is dangerous

This is obviously false. I understand the idea of the confidence interval, I'd say the interpretation is : credible evidence for arsenic levels above standards, high variance in data requires further testing.

Here is how I am saying it should work :
All 33 samples are in a public database D. The R script that generates the statistical analysis is in that same database. Company C says because of results from R based on D I conclude X. Similarly for other companies.

The bottom line is if the data is public and competent, unbiased observers exist (many of them do exist) then it becomes much harder to lie with stats.
Ok, happy for any feedback - I'm in the bay area
You could combine IP geolocation and caller ID phone verification. Geolocate the user's IP during the sign-up process and provide the user a code to activate their account through a 1-800. Compare their area code against the location they provided and see if they're close enough to trust.
Uh, citation, please?

You liked to an article that says "there once existed a vulnerability in Safari" and then right away claimed that Linux and OSX are "still catching up to" Windows in terms of security. Now, I want to believe you, but it sounds to me like you're speaking with a little too much conviction relative to the evidence you're presenting.
Mark Frauenfelder: Made by Hand
Security in software is relative. Everything is vulnerable. If someone wants to hack into Google's super-secret data and Google is running Linux or Mac OS X, then the hackers will find exploits in that software. This article is a joke for implying that this switch will in any way make them more secure.