skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not death, just the diseases of aging (which aren't so different from other diseases in their effects, when it comes down to it).

The general idea is that our bodies accumulate damage as a side product of metabolism (stuff that evolution hasn't equipped us to deal with - various long-lived molecules that we can't break down); over a certain threshold, that damage turns into pathologies. So your skin is less elastic, your arteries aren't as flexible, your immune system doesn't work as well, your brain accumulate beta amyloids that lead to alzheimer's, etc. If we could periodically repair that damage before the pathologies happen, we could potentially keep young bodies indefinitely and cure many diseases without having to understand how metabolism works, thus reducing human suffering tremendously (about 150k deaths each day).

For more on this, check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthrough...

Or these presentations:

http://citywire.kuluvalley.com/player.html?pguid=E586AD51-41...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8554766938711591377&...

Or the work of this foundation (I'm in no way affiliated with them - I'm just a fan and individual donor):

http://www.sens.org
"If you create value, readers are going to keep coming."

People subscribe to your blog based on expected future value, not based on perceived past value. Unfortunately there are many scenarios where every single one of your past posts could have high perceived value, but the expected future value is relatively low. For example, if each blog post is about a completely different topic. There are very very few writers who can get away with this, and most of the ones who do are only able to do so because the writing follows a predictable pattern in some other way, e.g. Malcolm Gladwell. The sad truth is that how often you update your blog is usually a better predictor of the number of readers you'll get than the value of the actual writing.

In the end it's maybe 25% about having good ideas and helping people and 75% about putting on a show.
Yeah except in Ruby (I don't know about smalltalk) private access has the loophole of the send method. FreeHouse.send(:open_employees_only_door)

Matz would never deny us of our right to snoop around where we don't belong.
What do you mean by "heavy lifting"? Are you saying you tend to work on simpler mobile apps as opposed to more complex apps, since the back-end calculations are too intense?

If so, then we definitely need to work together. :)

Note: I don't see an email in your profile.
Noprocrast caught out my attempt to edit. The normal variance is too large.

Here's the plot. Black for discretized(n=1000) binomial likelihood, red for normal approximation. The effect is clear, but a t-test won't show it. I'm not familiar with the theory behind the g-test, but there's clearly a lot of room for improvement at these sample sizes.

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/4880/bindiff.png
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.ht...
Likelihood a user of one of these languages will be interested in Clojure
If Apache is eating up all of your RAM with children, you should really look into using nginx or Varnish out front (depending on how cacheable the content is). You'll see your need for more Apache children drop considerably, due to the spoon feeding problem.

Hope that helps, have really enjoyed reading your posts.
Seconded. I love to read about investing/trading and would definitely like to read blog by an individual who is producing original content.
From a quick test, it appears that it can reference everything the parent can reference and does not make a copy.
If you make an app for this, please do announce it on HN. It sounds like a great idea.
I compared those numbers to the TIOBE popularity of other languages and found that Ada and Scala developers are 7x more likely than their C# brethren to be interested in Clojure:

http://www.sharingatwork.com/2010/07/likelihood-a-user-of-on...
Where did you get the feedback from? From readers or just from yourself as you blogged?

I just feel like I have 20 little projects I'd like to do, but don't have time. Is blogging the top thing on the queue?
Hey, "Scott Pilgrim" isn't actually out yet; let's not herald it as a year-saving success yet, no matter how good the trailers look.

Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but whereas Toy Story 3 has broad appeal, Scott Pilgrim looks more like something destined to be a cult classic. A lot of "bad movie years" generate a fair crop of movies with cult appeal, we still call them bad movie years by most standards.
Is SaaS Killing the Appliance Business?
dispensable= easily replaceable
indispensable = not easily replaced
not indispensable = not not easily replaced = easily replaced.

Luxuries are easily replaced and also hurt the progress of mankind.
I can't overstate how awesome it is having tech savvy customers. Support requests for S3stat (one of my businesses) more often than not come with implementation suggestions. Everybody who signs up has to at least gotten as far as to get Amazon S3 working for their site, so my userbase is essentially pre-screened for smartness. They just plain figure things out on their own, so if they contact you it's because something is actually broken. It rocks.

Compare that to the consumer-facing site I run where the biggest tech support request I get is from people who can't tell the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org, followed closely by people who sign up for an account, never do anything with it, then demand to have their account deleted.

My next project will be another one targeted at tech-savvy users. I'm already looking forward to the first bug reports with patches included.
The typical trading range for the day is $100 to $110.

Scenario 1:

So someone offers (is willing to sell) a limit order at $100. Buyer bids at $110. They wait until the other order appears and cross according to some market rules (perhaps at $100, $105 or $110), no-one else gets anything.

Scenario 2:

HFC works out the trading is in range $100 to $110, puts bids in at $104, offers at $106, and makes $2. The sellers gets $104, the buyer pays $106 and both are better off than scenario 1?
Recently had a local politician use this beauty, right after he asked my rates: "Well I have this guy who will do it pro bono, but he's got a pretty busy family..."

Like a) the rest of don't have families and b) it's going to make me want to compete with free. :)
The link you cite for your numbers does not support your numbers. In fact, the link has almost nothing to do with what you are citing it for. Did you by any chance paste in the wrong link?
Howto: Build a Hadoop cluster in five minutes
Medical information standards are similarly convoluted, but getting better.
Clojure is a Lisp for the JVM, so in a sense they are using Java. Besides, Clojure has been used in several high-throughput data analysis applications (FlightCaster for one), so it's not exactly an "unproven second-class language".
My favorite features of Erlang/OTP in descending order:

1. built-in distribution (i.e. Erlang distributed RPC)

2. bit-syntax

3. light-weight processes

4. pattern-matching
Mars Rover Spirit May Never Wake from Deep Sleep
I didn't see a criticism of modern things per se. The argument was that people are flocking to things based on poor evidence of quality, like advertising and lists of the latest things, rather than finding good stuff regardless of when it was produced.
It's a spammy sounding title (in fact the article's a bit dodgy too) but it does have what is claimed to be the comments of the app developer Jackeey Wu who created the apps whose data collecting behavior has been challenged.
I'm not sure you're quite familiar with Clojure - Java interop is pretty easy. There are problems, as with any lisp-dialect interacting with C/Java. My scheme-based 3d game engine has, at its lowest level, what essentially looks procedural opengl. But you build layers around these (quite quickly) in the lisp of your choice.

That said, I spoke with this team a bit ago, and they seem like they definitely know that they're doing. The fact that they're writing in Clojure would make me think that 1) They're a team of capable hackers, and 2) They're a team of practical hackers.

Really the only concern w.r.t language is readability/ compatibility with existing systems and low dev. time

Did you just describe the main benefits of clojure to a T there? :)
Monitoring and the new Stashboard - JGate Blog
By The Numbers: Chevy Volt vs Nissan Leaf
When the Internet Flips a Coin
There's a similar service, myus.com , which accomplishes this for non-US residents.
I think of mine primarily as "notes to myself", for things I'm likely to want to read again in the future.

E.g. what to do if apt-get upgrade fubars lilo (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=295), or how to setup mercurial on shared hosting (http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=82), etc.

They're much easier to find again on the blog, versus in some random config or readme file, lost in my myriad archive folders.

Also, if any of those posts are helpful to other people with the same problem(s), I'm happy to be able to help anyone who finds them.
The most interesting part of this Forbes article, is that it mentions Serge Aleynikov. Erlang hacker contributing to many open source Erlang projects.
Isn't Iran (of all places) still flying the F-14?
This scratches an itch I've had for some time now. I've been off and on with a blog of my own. The problem is, I change my answers to the following questions all the time, so I've been trapped in a cycle for some time now, put it online, take it down again, put it back up, take it down,... Here are some of the negative ones, how do you guys answer these (or do they never even come up for you)?

- "I know writing is good for me. But why write for other people, why open myself up like this? If it's all in the process, why post or publish it, after all, when I'm done writing, I'm done."

- "If I write something, expose myself, and nobody reads it, will I not look ridiculous?"

- "There is so much noise out there, why would I think I'm not just adding to it? Let's all be quiet for a time."

- "If I have a good insight, why put it out there and take the risk that someone will come and 'steal' it or adapt it and win big?"

- "Will I not be easily manipulable if I put my thoughts and preferences out there? Someone could take me for a ride by using this material to their advantage or fun"

- "Ok, blogging/writing/publishing stuff can make you known and perhaps even popular. Now, shouldn't you optimize for 'what people want'? Or leave out unpopular things?" (but where is the fun in writing if you can't say what you just want to say anymore?)

Also, I sometimes read what I wrote years back and cringe at the stupidity or attitude. How embarrassing if all this was online and somehow remained available even after I took it down. But by definition, you don't know that what you are writing is stupid or full of shit while you are writing it.
I've to second that, although I haven't watched Toy Story 3 yet, how to Train Your Dragon was really good. I've actually the feeling that this year is better than last year. I really liked Kick Ass and I'm eager to watch despicable me.
But yes, Grown Ups was absolutely terrible.
I think `nonlocal` is a prime example of a leaky abstraction. Can anyone explain the advantages of using references for normally primitive variables?
And here's Greg's response to Mark's response: http://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/its-not-about-...
> This is real proof, real benefit no matter how much you want to deny it and it's way bigger than all of Gates billions put together because once spent they won't be there unlike Gnu/Linux and Free Software which will benefit the world for many many generations to come.

The Gates Foundation vaccination programs are expected to save 7.6 million children's lives over the next 10 years. You don't think 7.6 million children living who would have otherwise died isn't a benefit that will last for many generations?
Will recognition motivate you?

If so maybe focus on just one free software project that can give you recognition and where you can make a big difference.
This is good advice. HN is plagued with people posting when instead they should be speaking to attorneys.
750words.com makes it really easy for me to get the words out. I think I'll start transforming those into posts.
Lol, try doing that on a US nonimmigrant visa...
It is real work, it just provides no real net value.
That's pretty obtuse. You should certainly take their position into consideration, and even more certainly should be talking to a competent attorney with M&A experience about this.
While I'm certainly not a fan of this like most commenters here, am I the only one that is of the opinion that instead of hating Apple, we should hate the broken US Patent system?

While it disgusts me that they are able to patent these things, they are operating within the current rules of the patent system, and one could argue that if they didn't do so, someone else may come along and patent the same things. The phrase "don't hate the player, hate the game" comes to mind. In fact, they could be running afoul of their duty to their shareholders if they did not make their best effort within the law to protect their intellectual property. They could be altruistic and morally correct as many people here seem to wish they would, but someone else could come along, file the same silly patent, and succeed then bring a suit against Apple for infringement. We should all be sending letters to the USPTO or Congress, not Apple for this atrocity.

Further, it is important to keep in mind that these are patent applications that have been FILED, but are not patents that have been ISSUED. There is a big difference there. I could file an application for a patent on a pencil, but it will not become an issued patent because that's bogus. Likewise for these, they may well get rejected for being unpatentable subject matter.
"Using an unproven second class language like clojure shows that the team behind this project has a little experience in statistical modeling and related fields."

Flamebait like this detract from any points you intended to make. I am hardly the greatest fan of Clojure here, but the "second class" label is hardly justified.
What's your net worth?

(For many, someone else has decided, and quantified it.)
The idea is sound. There are a bunch of people in the same area; I'm not sure how Runa differentiate themselves.
Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
I was part of the Powerset acquisition which was largely for tech/talent. The transition has been a long slow death march to try and reach our bonus payouts.
RIM plans to counter Apple's iPad with 'Blackpad' in November
They need someone to optimise their landing page. In particular put the call to action -- i.e. the apply now link -- on the front page.
Product Is The New Marketing
You're right, donating your money is not a solution. But this gave me an idea: What about trying to earn more money so you can donate this extra money or do something philanthropic with it? Maybe something for your community?
Yes, they are still using it. In fact, Iran remains the only country that the US exported F-14s to.
I use irssi-proxy, so I can both log in from SSH and write as well as connect via a local IRC client to it.
see this is my exact problem,no one outside HN gives a fuck about grammar in real world or about which programming language ideals you love in real life.

Flight Caster or the other company which google bought use huge data but with that they also use huge amount of rules.
They are developing rule systems and engines and not Not a data mining system.

The company in the post has a machine learning problem, what they require is fast matrix multiplication and great mathematical models and not some weird ass FP language ideals.

Go to mloss.org and look for projects that use FP languages.

in real life no one gives a fuck about lisp and other FP idiocacy, that why AI book by norvig has now code written in Python, thats why Google being one of the most leading AI companies uses C++ Python and Java.

Thats why you wont find any one in any data mining/ mahcine learning department in any US university MIT/CMU/Stanford using some shit FP lanuages.

Beacuse thats not their core business!

nor spelling correctly is mine.
These come across as ridiculously elitist- of course those are useful tips, but if i have a client who's going to say those code words, he's going to sound like a chump.

Definitely lean toward that side of the fence, but honestly, for any designer/developer, the most important thing you can have as a client is a clear idea of the direction you want to take. Have your idea prepared, write notes, know your competition - write it down. do your research!!

once that's done, it's easy then to go ahead and deliver. before then, you are stuck in the loop of domain discovery which is just a time sink with no easy-way-out.
How would that interact with a manual transmission?
I had completely the opposite experience - our service with USAA was terrible. My wife's father was in the military so she had USAA for everything when we got married. We got a cheaper quote from another company for auto insurance, and when we tried to cancel for USAA they refused to do it and got belligerent on the phone, claiming that "we are the best" and "why would you want to use anyone else" and that our other quote "must be a mistake." It took half a dozen phone calls before we were able to cancel the service.

Their credit card (which she still has) isn't much better. Huge delays posting payments, and the customer service has a huge chip on their shoulder whenever she needs to call them.
Anyone who's reached that point with Haskell is comfortable with the idea of immutable state.

Anyone who's reached that point with Python is very comfortable with the idea of mutable state... everywhere else.
Wow. I've never really read much about Stallman in the past, but he really comes across as an arrogant jackass in most of those answers.
Given he uses "one thirtieth of a second" faster I'd say he doesn't know what he's talking about. HFT for equities is an order of magnitude faster than that, at that speed you're just executing a normal algo trade.

But yeh basically the counter argument is liquidity. There's nothing stopping an exchange restricting speed of trades, the reason most of the major ones don't is companies don't want to be listed on a non-liquid exchange.

If HFT damaged the companies being traded than the companies could move to exchanges that didn't allow it.
It just hit me that there's a rational explanation.

Being a good soldier and being a responsible drinker are two very different things. Just because you make a good soldier does not immediately imply you will make a responsible drinker.

Quite frankly, 18 is a pretty darn good age to start soldiering, but I know a TON of < 21yo who are not responsible, so my idea doesn't seem completely baseless.
Anyone want to argue why you should NOT blog? I'm debating starting to blog, but as a startup founder I'd rather put every minute into improving my company - or is writing a blog going to improve my company? Thoughts?
Check out PersonalBrain [1] for a great way to keep all your notes organized and connected. It's like a mindmap, but every node can become a root node.

As an example, if you're reading a dystopian novel you could create a node for "Dystopias" under æTypes of Literature" that has "Brave New World" and "1984: as sub-nodes with notes for each book in their node. Those could link to nodes for the authors with maybe writing advice from Orwell and/or Huxley. Then you could link from them to a node about a current event or article that seems to fulfill their somber predictions... etc.

The same "Brain" could also have notes on topics as disparate as programming languages, biology or travel, all in one searchable, non-siloed place. You can create connections between nodes at will.

I've used it for several years now and can't recommend it highly enough. I wouldn't, however, mind seeing competition in the area as they seem to be the only company that makes software like this.

[1] http://www.thebrain.com/

Shameless plug for my blog post from several years ago about the software:
http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/archives/2007/09/04/personal...
In the end it's maybe 25% about having good ideas and helping people and 75% about putting on a show.

This is very unfortunate, but also true when it comes to pure popularity on the web. However, one would hope that people starting blogs are not doing it just for the sake of popularity. The grandparent's case is a great example of how writing with the intention of creating value with original content can be very rewarding in a way that would be impossible by just "putting on a show".
There have been many, many times where I was struggling with some technical issue and I found a solution to the same (or similar) problem on someone's blog.

Even if you don't get a lot of traffic or comments, you may be able to help someone in the future.

That alone is a good reason to do it.
Moscow Metro map redesign (took almost 4 years)
I have an E71. It's the best phone I've ever owned. The hardware is superb, and the OS is pretty solid, but Nokia's apps department has repeatedly shown that it can't code its way out of a wet paper bag, so the preinstalled apps are indeed pretty crappy. I use a third-party mail client (ProfiMail) and browser (Opera Mobile 10).

The majority of my interaction with the E71 is via third-party apps, and I'm fine with that, because they're far better than anything I've seen on iPhone or Android (and yes, I have tried both at length). I was using most of those same apps before the iPhone was released (also, get off my lawn, you darn kids).
Study finds 14% of free iPhone apps can snoop contacts
I write "real code" in Common Lisp, and I used something like what he dismissed as "useless in practice" twice today to make my code more readable and maintainable. I do not consider myself a Lisp advocate when I bemoan the lack of sane scoping semantics most similar languages just get right; I just want to write better code.
I'm just guessing that you haven't yet worked in a large corporation yet, or else you'd have met the "programmer that can't program", or the "network engineer that can't network", or the "system administrator that can't sysadmin", or any number of IT professionals that are completely, and totally incapable of doing any meaningful work.

Large corporations are so risk-averse that they are usually afraid to fire people, even when they can't do their jobs. Also, the ones that stick around have gotten so good at working the political system and getting others to do their work that they can't fire them, because they will just say "you didn't ask me to do it in writing", or any number of other excuses why they didn't do their job.

Not to mention, let's say you do want to fire a programmer who can't program - you can't just fire them, they have to be given a verbal warning first, then a written warning, it needs to be documented with HR, then they are put on a 90 day probationary period, or "improvement plan." They claim they don't have enough training for the job, so then they need to be retrained, at additional expense.

The other factor is that some managers like to keep 10-20% dead weight around because it pads their department. Everyone is fighting for more direct reports; apparently whoever has the most employees wins some kind of management contest. So, they keep 10-20% slackers on staff, knowing that if layoffs come around, they can cut the dead weight and keep the good programmers.

It's frankly amazing that anything gets done at all in a large corporation.
> That apps on Apple's devices are more secure is an illusion.

You're 100% on the money, but it's an illusion that the users believe in.

It's a war of public opinion, and Apple is winning.