skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting. Sounds like you're effectively doing a sparse matrix-vector multiplication for each request?

If you want to buy yourself a bit more time performance-wise, might be worth looking into using a numerical computing library for sparse linear algebra which has optimised routines for this (e.g. http://math.nist.gov/spblas/ at a first glance). Looks like there's been some recent work on parallelising this via the GPU too: http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~wnbell/

Some kind of dimensionality reduction is probably one of the next steps scalability-wise though, and should hopefully improve the results too if you tune it right. Latent Semantic Analysis the term to google if you're not already aware of it. Testing the success of your predictive model might be tricky though in the absence of user-specific tagging data.

I experimented with this stuff a while back for music recommendations - got as far as doing some simple SVD-based dimensionality reduction but the results weren't as good as I'd hoped and it got put on the backburner. So, respect for polishing this one up for launch :)
I am not exactly learn from an audio podcast type but I really liked listening to John R Searle's class of Philosophy of Mind, at UC Berkeley Webcasts[1]. The quality is bad as hell, but the content not so much.

Also if you want to have some light listening (you don't want the all intellectual boring life do you?) then I would highly recommend Bells in the Batfry[2] by John bell and Decoder Ring Theater [3]. Listen to everything produced by them, its a treat.

[1]http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=...

[2]http://thebatfry.com/

[3]http://www.decoderringtheatre.com/
What is A Proxy Server And How To Use It for Security?
BlackBerry Services Will Be Halted in U.A.E. as Traffic Can't Be Monitored
If your goal was to prove that some code unambiguously "sucks", then your example works against you. Because as I read this I see what may be a perfectly reasonable solution to common problem. (For future-proofing, the developer wanted to be sure most of the code shared a single INSTANCE rather than a CLASS with all-static methods. Then later, multiple instances could be used if needed. But since for now only one is used, she took the quickest and easiest approach to instantiating that single instance: no need for fancy factory classes when the instantiation will only be done once!)
is he the same bloke as the square guy?
So these are all really well done videos -- very professional, and probably cost a ton. anyone know of a web service that lets you easily create your own demo vid?
How much is a 'friend' worth?
Popular Open Source eCommerce Products
I have a virtual server since about one week. It is not that hard to use. Maybe you need a few hours, but that's it.

On the other hand you can install whatever you want, no problems with new software that is not installed on you shared hosting.
At least that story has a happy ending.
Friends don't let friends work in job shops.

The fundamental problems aren't about code, they're in project management. Job shops occasionally strike a good balance, but inevitably bad clients drive out the good clients.

From time to time I think about a business model that works a lot like a job shop but tries to build equity in a software product line, learning from experience, continuous improvement, all that... But then I look at my 'sunk costs' and how I can get them back quickly to pay for my vision and I see the need for a 'moon shot' that maximizes the revenue I can get in the medium term... That's life, I guess.
As a general rule of thumb my unease with a line of code is proportional to its distance from the left margin. There are exceptions, naturally, but that's generally how I judge myself: if I open a file and see 16 or 20 spaces on a line I'm probably Doing It Wrong™.
Personally, I would make the P Python and not PHP. I really do not like working in the latter.

The thing about it, with the new development model of abstracting the UI away from the server and writing it in the trinity (I love that and am going to steal it). The back end choice becomes less important. Say you start writing services in PHP and decide later that "yeah this thing is a tar ball", you can just write your next service in Python or Java or Ruby or whatever. Sure you still have to maintain the old ones and possibly port them to your new language of choice, but what you don't have to do it port over an entire server side UI layer which has traditionally been a difficult proposition. They are riddled with proprietary idioms that don't one for one translate to a different languages web framework.
I could probably scour your backposts to find this, but where do you draw the line between worthwhile keywords and completely uncommon keywords?
They are very expensive compared to most other services. I was going to host with them, since I live in Lansing and am acquainted with the owner, but Linode is much cheaper (for VPS) and I found the support to be nearly as good. If you're hosting on Linux you may want to consider taking a look at Linode.
It's not earth shattering, but it's an interesting look at the broken criminal system (can't call it a justice system...) from the type of guy who is rarely in a position to really see it.
EngineYard Cloud (EC2),
S3 for images,
Edgecast for CDN
Hell yeah. All day every day.
You apparently have ADD. You should seek help. There is a difference in preventing distraction and people "intruding" your thought process. I shut a lot of things off (preventing distraction) as well during the day (including Mail at times), however, IRC doesn't "intrude" in my daily work, it just sits there, open, and I check it when I can, participate in a conversation, and move on.
You would be standing on the shoulders of giants. Just do a bit of research to see what other big players on the net are running on. Lots of Python, Ruby and PHP. You won't find as many people suggest PHP, but much of Facebook runs on PHP (though this is a case where the company now wishes it could have a "do over" on that one.)
Same here. Only complaint is a significant spike in attacks. Which may or may not have anything to do with them, but started right after we switched from ServerBeach.
Is Dave the 1st investor to explicitly say and invest in pre-product/market fit companies? I though First Round Capital also did that but the sense that I get from reading FRC team blogs is that they are quite hot on investing only after customer acquisitions costs are lower than life time value I.e. After they have proven fit.

Is there anybody else other than angels?
RegExr
> In most countries on earth (and I believe this is true in south africa as well), it's just plain easier to be white.

This is your naivety speaking. A poor white person in South Africa is fucked. Here is why:
-	It is impossible to get any type of government job (includes military, government owned institutions such as Transnet, Eskom, Telkom, etc…).
-	White people are not eligible for any scholarships or bursaries (government or otherwise).
-	Entrance into university is determined by racial quotas. For a white person going to a fancy private school, it is possible – but not for a poor white person that has to go to a government school.
-	It is very difficult for a young white person to get a job in the private industry. Because companies have quotas, they have to preferentially hire black people. White people with scare skills can get a job – but for manual labour, it is easy to preferentially higher a black person.
-	Rich White and black people look down on poor white people.
-	Many middle income white people received “severance packages” to make space for black people (both private and government jobs). This is basically their pension as a lump sum. Many had to start business in order to survive – some made it, some were screwed. Starting your life from square 1 when you are 50 is not easy.

> So good for you for achieving whatever you have in life and overcoming whatever obstacles you've overcome,

Nice sarcasm. The point I tried to make was that, if just one little thing went different in my life, I would have been fucked.

> but the world's racial intolerance of white people isn't one of those obstacles.

You assume that the world is exactly like where you are from. The problem is that SA is a black majority country with a black government. So their intolerance towards white people is much greater (than for instance the USA government).

The difference between rich and skilled white people and poor white people is that skilled white people still have a skill that is needed (so they are not as expendable as poor white people).

I also guess that you would not view a leading figure in the ruling government (and probably next president) encouraging genocide of white people.

---

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that hate for white people in South Africa – especially Afrikaans people is pretty high in the USA. It seems that the consensus is that white people do not belong in Africa and if they are poor it is either their fault or they deserve it.

The problem is that the poor are a lot less socially mobile and it is impossible for them to immigrate. They are simply stuck between a hostile government and bad economic situation.
I cannot recommend this comment highly enough! I urge you to waste no time to read this comment over and over again.
No Agenda, for real news, no tabloid shit.
Of course you need no college debt for this plan.

I don't really see how it's so easy to get 10% returns as well. Stocks may average 10% long-term but for the last five years you certainly didn't double your money.
Not only should you roll with LAMP, but you should get yourself a framework, too. The top comment in this thread from about a year ago says it all, particularly the first bullet point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773447
reddit search returns reddit, but the other results look good
This American Life is pretty much the gold standard in podcasts.
Typesetters aren't the ones that concern themselves with the content of the newspaper.
Flipboard 1.0 not so great
I'm a fan of Jon Udell's interviews with Innovators:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/innovators.html
Also heroku. Install gem, write app in Ruby. A shell command or two...
Wonder what the costs are like, for this kind of quality.
Also, You Look Nice Today - great comedy.
I've also noticed a couple of glitches on _Mad Men_. In the first season, the glass doors of the upscale-wanna-be department store the agency is working with has machine cut film lettering, a poorly spaced script, rather than hand painted letters. It's not impossible there was some kind of manual, stencil based system in use in the 60's, but I'm not aware of it.

Also, a lot of the hand drawn layouts and designs pinned up on the wall in Sal's office are actually pages from Andrew Loomis's excellent book _Creative Illustration_. And most of the designs would have been more at home in the late 30's to mid 40's. But hey, in this case it's just wallpaper...

Still a great series, and as a child of the late 50's, early 60's I can say they get an amazing amount of details right.
Nearly Half of US small businesses think economy got worse
Cloud Human Resource Tool
We are looking for a cloud based human resource tool that will allow our company to track start dates, performance issues, vacation, etc.I do remember running across one 6-8 months ago but I must not have booked marked it. If anyone has used a service like this that they can recommend I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!
Actually, I should amend this in the interest of not being a hypocrite, seeing as I'm building out a side project right now on top of Cassandra, which is arguably much slower to get out of the gate with than SQL. But in this case I know from the get-go that I'm going to have massive data on my hands and that I'd have to be sharding a SQL implementation almost immediately, so in the long run it's worth the outlay now.

Otherwise, as much as I'd love to toy around with node.js or Tornado or some such, I've got no good excuse and I'm sticking with Django because a.) I'm already familiar with it, b.) batteries are included, and c.) I can move very quickly with it.
That's exactly what you need them to do: 10% average long term. And they always have.
hackermonthly.com seems to be down, I don't suppose anyone can mirror the PDF?

Edit: No problem, I downloaded it from Scribd (although I didn't want to have to auth with Facebook).
Mark Zuckerberg: Operation Payback
This sounds like nothing more than a tuned resonator, like a dichroic mirror or a Fabry-Perot resonator.
http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Intelligence-Action-Satnam-...

http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Intelligent-Web-Haralambos-...
Because of the first paragraph of the article:

[..] quote stuffing by HFT algorithms in tens of stocks, in which thousands of
cancelled quotes would reappear each second with a definitive periodicity
and regularity, [..]. Aside from the fact that it is illegal to indicate a
quote without a trade intent, this form of quote stuffing is in fact
manipulative when conducted by HFT repeaters in specific "shapes" as it
actually moves the NBBO actively higher or lower, in cases pushing the
bid/offer range up to 10% higher without even one trade ever having
occurred, [..]

Incidentally, if your algorithm spams the exchanges too much (i.e., your fill rate goes way below 1%), your broker will shut you down

Except that that doesn't happen if you essentially are the broker, as is the case with large enough institutions. JP Morgan's broker isn't going to shut them down.
When you're in a restaurant setting the quality will suffer if you want more ingredients than the budget will normally allow. The end-result of that is McDonalds. In a software setting it is also the quality that suffers, the end result of that is visible all around you.

McDonald food is poor quality?
Please tell me where those software engineering basics are written down. I'd really like to learn how to deal with clients that come up with new requirements along the way on a two week project with a hard deadline. That's not an engineering problem I'm afraid.
>no company with in-house counsel

I've actually found that companies with actual on staff lawyers are much more likely to change legal documents then those who just have some outside firm who they pay by the hour.
Nitpicking on their review of "Dead Again":

>Technically, it was possible to kern wood type by physically cutting away parts of the type, but it would be a rather impractical practice at a newspaper. [referring to the "LT" kerning in a newspaper]

True. But it would be in their interest to make it into a single glyph for printing purposes, as it would save space. (not sure if that'd fall into the "ligature" category or not, as they're not visually joined)
you're wrong.

The messenger had a responsibility with the information they received. They willingly gave out the information with no regard for the people in the documents.

The difference between Wikleaks and the actual person that leaked the information is that Wikileaks has a large audience.

They could have removed names, but didn't. Now the blood is on their hands.
IMO 'In Our Time' is less useful than it appears at first. Melvyn Bragg invites a few University professors to discuss a topic in every episode and things go straight to the deep end with everyone trying to sound smarter than everyone else. It's an intellectual knife-fight where the listener hasn't even been told the rules.

ABC Radio National's Philosophers Zone http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/ is way better and covers much the same topics. Great interviewer; talks clearly and slowly and summarizes key points periodically. It's the Mixergy of philosophy.
A very similar idea underlies the Scrum framework (and probably some other similar) - an explicit product backlog with estimates from which the product owner chooses what to implement next.
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952
I hope that when there are discussions about the "drug war" in the US in the future, that people blame the cartels for murders and not the fact that drugs are illegal.

After all, the government isn't the one doing the shooting. This seems to be the defense of the Wikileaks guys.
A Gentle Introduction to Node.js
TED Talks: "Riveting talks by remarkable people" http://feeds.feedburner.com/tedtalks_audio

Conversations with Richard Fidler: a little-known, even in his home country of Australia, radio interviewer who is better than Michael Parkinson http://abc.net.au/queensland/conversations/conversationspodc...
Entrepreneurship Thought Leaders:
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html

It's an excellent podcast from Stanford. The guest speakers give a good idea of the quality of the podcast: Marc Andreessen, Steve Case, Steve Blank, Eric Ries, David Heinemeier Hansson, Mitch Kapor, etc
econtalk : http://www.econtalk.org/

1 hr interview show (usually a writer promoting recent book) by a Hayek influenced economist. Most shows relate in some way to economic issues but not much. Many are about truth, bias and knowledge in social science fields.

I recommend starting with the archives and picking out guests you know and like already.
The History of Rome looks good. Here's the link for their home page, for those of us who don't use itunes: http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/
$1.99
Business online: Link Building Using Video Marketing
This is beautiful not only because it reminds me to stop working. It's sunday and life shouldn't only be work. Bye HN.
I second that. One ethe best radio shows ever - an interdisciplinary popular science program produced like a radio play.
Astronomy Cast: A hard science (almost exclusively discusses accepted peer reviewed theories) podcast about cosmology. Everything from the Big Bang to Missions to Mars: http://www.astronomycast.com/

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: A skeptical podcast by Steven Novella & co. They cover a lot of interesting topics, and some other ones that I'm not a big fan of. But overall pretty good: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Study how to Write High School Essays Using the Essay Writing Tips
After you get the assignment for writing your high school essay, consult your advisor for choosing a good essay topic and the research material. Devote more time for research to write an excellent essay. This article offers some tips for writing your essay.
- Why would the auction loser forfeit their money?

- Bidding on a $20 bill is stupid.

- I understand you wanted to get it up fast and try it out, but you couldn't design it a little better?
If this was actually an implementation of "my network, my rules," I suppose it would be OK. From what I've read, though, it's not. It's "my Internet, my rules." Just like RBL, if some random sysadmin decides he doesn't like your domain name, it goes on a blacklist and you will vanish from most of the Internet.
And my FOSS/Linux related podcast feed http://friendfeed.com/fosscasts
Depends on where you live, but your house doesn't have redundant connections and service contracts to fix them ASAP.

Your home net connection may be reliable, now, but if something bad happens it could be down for days, not hours.
How making money changed my perspective on startup ideas
For some values of quality.
The problem is that it does not tell a story. It may indicate that they are financially irresponsible, but it also may indicate that they are willing to (and have) bet it all on an idea. The first being a bad trait for a start-up the latter being a very good trait. Overlooking the guy that would bet it all out of worry of him being the guy who cannot manage money may eliminate some people who have exactly what you are looking for.
+1 these are excellent

EDIT: not sure why this was down voted, all I did was concur with the above statement.
You'd need at least one trustworthy party because you can not trust the mutually untrustworthy parties to not give similarly faked logs.

If the goal is secrecy, increasing the number of parties that have access to the inputs undermines that, especially if they are untrustworthy, even if they have "contracts".

While the solution you've outlined may be mathematically sound, I don't think it is very pragmatic.
This is incredibly silly because nobody will ever win a $20 for less than $20. As an example, let's say you & I are bidding on the $20 bill...

- After bidding for a while, I eventually place a bid of $19. At this point if you quit I make $1 and you lose $18.

- So now you bid $20. At this point if I quit you would break even and I would lose $19.

- So now I bid $21. Why bid $21 on a $20 bill? Because if I win I only lose $1 (rather than $19) and you lose $20.

- Now of course you would rather lose $2 than $20, so you're going to up the bid to $22, right?

I'd be interested in hearing from somebody more knowledgeable than I in game-theory: When should an agent quit bidding and accept their losses?
I love Adam and John, but it's not "real news" -- it's conspiracy theory devised by two guys who don't understand how to think critically.
For a lot of questions here concerning the psychology of the $20 bid:

http://mfinley.com/experts/bazerman/bazerman.htm
New Open Marketplace for Mobile Apps works on iphone now
Coolness Roundup: entertaining gadget reviews by two charismatic, fun guys. http://coolnessroundup.com/

Chillcast: if you like chill music at all, you'll love Anji Bee and her tasteful playlists. She's got a great voice, too. http://www.anjibee.com/
He died poor after having spent more than 300k in expensive Polaroid films.
I listen to them all the time.

Not just educational but also motivating.
A couple great quotes:

"I had seen at close range the injustice of sentences one hundred times more severe for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, a straight act of discrimination against African-Americans, that even the first black president and attorney general have only ameliorated with tepid support for a measure, still being debated, to reduce the disparity of sentence from 100 to one to 18 to one."

I'm honestly surprised (& pleased) he would say that outright. I'm not particularly familiar with the workings of the U.S. justice system but a disparity of 100 to one sounds fairly unjust.

"America’s 2.4 million prisoners, and millions more awaiting trial or on supervised release, are an ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead; they are no one’s constituency."

This quote makes loads of sense when you consider that in the American justice system, prosecutors win over 90% of their cases (a point mentioned by Black).

In summary, I love that Conrad Black wrote this article. Most in his position wouldn't have.
My favorite podcast these days is The Tobolowsky Files: http://www.slashfilm.com/category/features/slashfilmcast/the...

Stephen Tobolowsky, the actor probably best known for Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, is a fantastic storyteller. He's been recounting stories from his life, inside hollywood, and everywhere in between. Funny, poignant, and something I look forward to every week.
This guy really do pick some very interesting companies or people that often later on turn out to be important or popular.

Highly recommendable.

Also Phill Windley's show technometria.

Of podcastsites I can recommend both itconversations.org and spoken word.org
I didn't know if you were referring to Titanic and being sarcastic.
I am glad to see this on the HN front page - excellent overview of graph theory and interesting ideas for using data flow and also a common API for several underlying graph datastores. The first part that used matrix/tensors to explain different types of graphs and operations was good also.
NPR Planet Money podcasts
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/

They discuss very interesting economic issues that everyone can relate to. Suitable for any audience.
This is the only implausible part of '24' I noticed too.
Appropriate domain name. It would "astound me" if anyone actually paid you $1.99 to be your internet friend.