skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll share my data. My max was 6.5 hours of coding. Since January, I've had 7 days where I spent more than 5 hours coding. My average (as given by the trendline) is about 3 hours/day.

Coding is my top (computer) activity on average. I spend about 45 minutes each on Reddit and news.YC; there's also a big long tail of time spent on untagged apps (often only 20 minutes or so each over the past half-year, but the total is nearly as much as Reddit + news.YC).
You didn't provide a definition of better.
New generation of adverts for Sony’s PS3
One of year’s best entrepreneurial social events
Craigslist challenged by Wal-Mart.
Michael Mace wrote about this here: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/02/mobile-applica...

Summary: The business of making native apps for mobile
devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and
restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad
that the mobile web, despite its many technical
drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new
functionality to mobiles. I think this will drive a rapid
rise in mobile web development, largely replacing the
mobile app business.

If we project this forward it will be either HTML5 or Flash/AIR/Silevrlight which will displace the still-born mobile application platform.
You can't write code for redistribution like that though as most PHP installations have that option disabled since ti inteferes with XML processing instructions.
The Keyboard Is Facing Competition
Everything old...
Thanks for taking the time to share. I don't really want to give up ownership of any code either, and hadn't considered some of your other ideas.
Agreed. A couple of weeks as a bare minimum, to give engineers a chance to make fixes and test thoroughly.
Scaling Fast
Reflective route to success.
Location Technologies Primer
Resource Management: A Critical Look at RAII
I was thinking the same thing.

Guy 1: "Hey man, whatif I knew what everyone was doing right now?"

Guy 2: "Yeah man, like God"

Guy 1: "No, I mean EVERYONE like RIGHT NOW".

Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp.
Mobile phones demystify commuter rat race
Will your next meeting pass the "blizzard goggles" test?
That's not really an alternative. It's equivalent to SVNx for Subversion, which has a horrendous UI.

The appeal of Versions is that it adds polite, beautiful interaction to something as mundane as version control.

I'd rather use the command line than GitNub or SVNx.
Bray's conclusion, as I understand it, is that there is no "Web OS". I think he's wrong, because he's not looking in the right place.

"OS"es started as collections of low-level utility code that helped apps run on particular pieces of hardware. Code that loaded programs, provided low-level I/O services (Bray bags on the primitiveness of OS services, but they're much better than talking to h/w devices directly), helped with memory management, and so on.

The web doesn't really have hardware, but it definitely needs abstractions and utility code. So I'd say the "Web OS" is something like Mochikit, or Dojo, or Prototype, or any other big honking JS framework that abstracts away client-side nastiness.

At any rate, that seems the part of the "Web" that's most analogous to a traditional OS, and something usefully modeled as such.
omg! those pics are amazing!

i wonder where sam could go to a) stay online and b) have access to stuff like that...
But if you're going to do that in the winter, make sure you take the right road.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim#The_Kims_become_snowb...
Couldn't Attend RailsConf? Watch the Movie, and Read the PDFs
It might also just be a running joke, like "what kind of crack are you smoking?"
If you have data, please share it. The only bits of info I found were that busing students from one neighborhood to the next didn't have much effect either way.

The problem of selection bias is of course going to be very present as always. One of the toughest issues with public policy is that there's rarely data up to a scientific standard of proof. It's possible that the amount of money spent on an education has nil effect. One simple counterargument is this: you can't learn about computers if you don't have them.

1)"Giving up"
You're using a slippery slope argument. I think a minimum wage job with essentially no opportunity for advancement at 14, is too early to "give up." That's the example that I responded to.

This is a place where we have to set a number -- it's currently at 16. This is a fairly subjective call, as there are a thousand different concerns that could reasonably move it one way or the other.

2)Value of an education
A decently educated populace has great value, to me. I'm willing to pay for it. On the contrary, a bad education is not worth all that much. I believe the solution to bad education is to make it better, not to get rid of it forever.

3)Democracy
How about basics like what the supreme court is and how to locate Iraq on a map? If you want to tell people about the founders, it helps if they know who the founders were and what the constitution is. No one is going to vote for your viewpoint if they don't even know what it is you're talking about.

We seem to disagree about some basic matters, so trying to argue about a high-level issue like education funding and the drop-out age is probably fairly futile.
37signals Launches Affiliate Program (Pays Residuals)
They'll pay 50% of the signup fee and 5% of all future recurring payments for each customer you refer for Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack.
the solution is simple, give access to your database only to people you trust and don´t access to your super important database from a public location using phpMyAdmin!
I always thought popup ads on the internet were obtrusive enough, but these new flash ones that cover all the content you're trying to read, and hide a tiny 'x' or 'close' button somewhere take the biscuit!

Any site that features those should feel ashamed.
much good advice here. i don't know if i'd recommend mondrian/skybar that strongly but it's definitely cool. cuba cuba, the restaurant in the mondrian, is amazing (asian fusion).

for my dollar, the best restaurant in L.A. is A.O.C. on 3rd in WeHo. Chic and very unpretentious, a rare combo in LA.

Also go to Milk at Beverly and Poinsettia for insane milkshakes and homemade ice cream sandwiches, Insane.

There are also many many awesome hikes right in the Hollywood hills, including Runyon Canyon (ZOMG girl watching) and Bronson Canyon.

Finally, arguably the coolest spot in LA is the Edison downtown:

edisondowntown.com

Also the little temple bar (in silver lake) is cool, also 4100 bar.

if you're a coffee junkie, there is a [coveted] intelligentsia coffee house on sunset in silver lake as well

http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/retail/silverlake

Get to both of those places before 9:30pm or you'll be standing in line forever.

That's the key to going out in LA; go early (or pay $600 for bottle/table service)

Just email me when you're working your way down here, ref YC in all caps in the subject line so I get it ;-)
Interestingly, it doesn't seem like these sites do anything beyond that. How about a semi-private forum for potential investors? How about a feature request video forum for young companies that aren't locked into legacy interaction design?
Does this mean that implementations of the algorithms in PCI won't work as well as something one would write if they first learned all the deep math those techniques are built on? If so, then sure this is a problem. Otherwise, then the 'deep math' is perhaps a bit superfluous to the problem of programming applications that make use of AI techniques?
That's not a solution. You can read more about XSRF and how to protect against it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery
Ask YC: Software for simulating I/O, memory use, processor (Windows)
We just got a couple of servers with Windows Server 2003 Standard. I was asked to do some stress testing on them for a couple of days, testing mainly how the server works under heavy load.

Anyone know of a program that would let me test some of the server capabilities and give a simple result afterwards?
I have to disagree, because if you don't allow yourself a break than you end up wearing yourself out, which, in the end, sucks. On weekends I would say you should at least take 1 of the days off to relax. It will really help you during the week to peak on performance.
what would you recommend then?
It was a small enough group that I won't share data, but I'll tell you mine (which is pretty similar to my co-founders, except Joe, who is an ANIMAL of productivity).

I have a "webdev" tag (which includes design and coding) that peaked at 7 hours, but typically is 3-4.5.

I have a "work" tag (which includes all webdev stuff AND work email-- customer support and fundraising mostly), which peaked at 10h 40m, but typically was more like 5-7.

About 10% of my time is untagged, which is probably split between 1-visit goofy sites and obscure CSS documentation, so you can round up the above numbers a touch.

Oh, and 27% of my time is spent on SOME Google App (gmail for domains, search, analytics, docs, reader). Google owns my ass. :-)
Wow, such an awesome question!

* The road in Iowa that hugs the Mississippi is quite a nice relaxing drive relative to the Interstates. A good break.

* In the SD/WY area I90 is a much nicer road than I80.

* The camping/hiking in the Black Hills of SD is awesome. Be sure to drive Needles highway. Be aware of the timing of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally if you head toward the Black Hills.

* I recommend camping at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. There is something special about that place.

* Stop in Red Lodge Montana and then cross the continental divide on Beartooth Highway-- amazing drive and it will take you into Yellowstone.

* There is lift accessible skiing year-round (minus two weeks of maintenance time) at Mt. Hood in Oregon.

* There is some awesome camping at Pt. Reyes in Marin county north of SF. You'll need backcountry camping gear though as the sites are a mile or two away from the parking.

* Eat at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. This is where Alice Waters originated California Cuisine. It is special and delicious.

* Santa Cruz, Monterrey and Big Sur are all worth your time. I'd say much more deserving of your time than Sacramento is. Eat at Nepenthe in Big Sur.

* If you are out by Yosemite/Mammoth research hot springs in which you can soak.

* Despite the anti-Boulder sentiment I sometimes perceive here I think it's a great town and worth spending some time.

* If you take I80 and pass by Laramie let me know I can tell you a lot of cool things about Laramie and the surrounding countryside.

Good luck and have fun!
Yup, here's me disagreeing.

I do interviews on occasion and I usually ask for some source on the whiteboard. Generally I only do that with people interviewing for junior positions, though.

I usually ask for a quick implementation of the fibonacci algo in their favorite language. I also tell them that sloppy is OK - so brace placements, etc are not relevant.

I hardly think it's too much to ask for a candidate to implement a simple, standard algo in their language of choice on paper/whiteboard.

PHP programmers tend to do very poorly in this area, unless they are programmers who also do PHP. The problem to me seems to be that the PHP environment doesn't encourage experimentation with algorithms, data structures and low-level optimization. Add to that the more-or-less haphazard manner in which most PHP code is organized and you've got a scripter who'll freeze when asked to do a piece of mathematics on paper in their language. Also, most PHP programmers tend to be framework-users. And while using frameworks is good, using frameworks without automating elements of your problem domain (by creating your own little framework-on-a-framework) is generally bad because you end up repeating yourself a lot.

PHP is not a bad language, but it's a very, very bad language to have as your sole programming experience.
[Playing armchair psychiatrist]

Why? He has been victimized:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95161

Although he states that race has not permeated his thought process, a casual glance over the books he wants to buy share a decided slant towards race issues:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/SA583Y3SWBA8/ref=...

Bear in mind that I am black, and I am empathetic to him. Put yourself in his shoes, a young guy with a new gig just trying to make it in the Big Apple, and you aren't getting paid much so you have to settle in a seedier part of the city. People attack you and rob you just because of your color. You are trying to do something generative with your life. You were not part of this: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.liu.edu/cw...

Or this: http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/2000/lynch_1.jpg

The folks that committed those crimes are long dead. But that is part of the ugliness of racism/tribalism: It's propagated like a tumor to non actors and good people. I've been called an epithet or ten in my day, but I've never been under physical attack like him. I would hope that I would have came to his aid in some way if I saw it happening. I would also hope that I would come away from it without negative racial views of the perpetrators, but am I that noble? I'm not so sure. I was good friends with a Jewish guy in college who got chased after school every day calling him "white boy". He overcame that and saved my ass on many an occassion, but I digress... The human mind evolved friend or foe circuitry tuned to statistics, so the conclusion his mind has come to is somewhat rational.

So what does a man do? If you're of low intelligence and have a proclivity for violence, you become a skinhead. If you're Byrne, you have an above average intelligence, as he seems to, you get your ass out of dodge and read a few books to better inform yourself as to why what happened to you happened.

Again, as a black person I can't agree with his conclusions, but I empathize with him and he would have been within his rights as a human being to fire a pistol at his attackers.

If I mischaracterized him my apologies in advance.
I have my phpMyAdmin installed only on my secure site, behind HTTP authentication as well.
lol, liking your analogy :)
That's fairly conclusive because there is the asymmetry of tumours and there is a control group.
In case this gets buried in the noise:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=209502
Not real likely to be attacked, since they would not only need to know the database name, but the address of the PHPMyAdmin install. But hopefully it's addressed quickly.
We like to complain about Techcrunch around here, but every once in a while, a real gem comes along...

This is a great idea! Even if you never produce or distribute your video, imagine the progress you'll make anyway.

<Plans night in front of medicine cabinet with stop watch.>
Holodeck 1.0? Star Trek-style 3-D displays make their debut
Bikini-clad women make men impatient
Yeah, I don't seem to mind either, but typically my development tools (Notepad++, MS SQL Server Mgmt Console) don't require a bunch of memory either.

When I noticed FF having issues with JS heavy sites, I just restart. Perhaps I've gotten conditioned for such behavior with Windows....
The intent isn't to crown an American Idol, the big show's at TC50, but just to have a clearinghouse of the rejects on video.

How about some actual partnership with some VC firms? Mike's got the pull and the firms can spare interns to view the videos. The people that submit these crave legitimacy.
Is human indexed search scalable?
My $0.02 of going to SV...

+ Networking

+ Networking some more!

+ More chance of random meetings with people who can/will help you.

+ Vibrant community

+ Continuous critique / constructive criticism from learned
others (esp in startup community)

+ Motivation through environment

+ Sunshine (and good weather almost all year round)

+ Parties held by other startups and tech companies

+ "Cool" factor of being in SV

+ Change of scene from where you spent most/lots of your life (its good to travel and work in various places)

+ Lots of tech events more accessible in USA

- Losing focus from product development to relocation issues

- Losing time getting to market

- Time & effort to move (find accommodation, offices, visas)

- Initial costs & expenditure (Can spend on product instead)

- Leaving friends & family

- Shifting equipment (servers, printers, monitors, etc) unless hosted online or cheaper to (re)buy/replicate in SV.

...so basically I would say if you are able to go, then go. Also I have never met antone who regretted going but have met several people who have regretted not going.
Yes, but it's also a good thing that open source software is becoming mainstream. If companies are able to present someone else's open source work as their own, without even giving any credit, it destroys a huge part of the incentive for writing open source software in the first place (recognition).

I wasn't saying that the author should try to get the content taken down. I was just saying that he deserves either:

(1) a clarification from Google saying that they liked the interface and did an interface-based rewrite without consulting the his source code

-or-

(2) a release of the modified source code (as the GPL requires)

I'm not trying to stop photo VR from becoming mainstream. Since when does open-sourcing something prevent it from becoming mainstream?
You are my A-List hacker :-p So, extra thanks for the data.
Thats very helpful. Thanks a lot Tony. (off topic: pic with pipe was way better than what you have now)
CSRF attacks are weak. You'd have to know my website's phpMyAdmin location (if I used phpMyAdmin) and my table names in order to do this. CSRF attacks are only scary when they effect major websites.
Science is not more dangerous then a stick. It can be used to get a banana or to kill a man.

Correctness of a theory != good-natured usage of that theory.

Example: It does not matter whether one man could or could not be genetically inferior than another one. It is wrong to kill a man in both cases regardless.
Wow Lucas, you put our scaling story to shame.

When are you guys coming by and visiting dude?
One example, simply because I opened the book to this page after reading your comment and happen to know a bit about the subject (p49):

"[t]he algorithm takes the difference between every pair of items and tries to make a chart in which the distances between the items match those differences"

This is referring to multidimensional scaling which is a large family of techniques, some of which attempt to achieve this goal (delta ~= d), but not necessarily. Granted, in this case the algorithm presented DOES attempt to do this. BUT, the algorithm presented is not "multidimensional scaling". It is an implementation (not even a good one) attempting to minimize one of many possible objective functions.

I noticed several more when I flipped through it initially, but this is the type of thing I'm referring to.
Blogging on Wall Street
"Does this mean that implementations of the algorithms in PCI won't work as well as something one would write if they first learned all the deep math those techniques are built on? "

That is exactly what it means. "Deep math" is not learned because people have nothing else to do with their time. The moment you try to apply or extend the techniques in PCI beyond the toy examples in the book you will see the need for the "deep math".

Just one example. BackPropogation Neural Networks are covered very superficially PCI. To get a real understanding of BPNNs, read Chris Bishop's Neural Networks for Patttern Recognition. That's a whole book on one type of neural network.

I quote Peter Norvig's Amazon Review of Bishop's book. (emphasis mine)

"To the reviewer who said "I was looking forward to a detailed insight into neural networks in this book. Instead, almost every page is plastered up with sigma notation", that's like saying about a book on music theory "Instead, almost every page is palstered with black-and-white ovals (some with sticks on the edge)." Or to the reviewer who complains this book is limited to the mathematical side of neural nets, that's like complaining about a cookbook on beef being limited to the carnivore side. If you want a non-technical overview, you can get that elsewhere, but if you want understanding of the techniques, you have to understand the math. Otherwise, there's no beef."

"If you want understanding of the techniques, you have to understand the math".
Without understanding you can't (a) judge the appropriateness of a particular algorithm to a data set (b) know which variant of the algorithm to apply (c) understand the results, especially when they don't make sense (d) debug the implementation if required. In short at best you are making calls into a black box library and praying the results make sense.

PCI skips the "understanding" part of AI aIgorithms (which does need math as Norvig points out. Most AI is applied math)and provides a superficial outline and many blackboxes. E.g: the "use libSVM for Support Vector Machines" idea PCI propagates (after a very superficial overview of SVMs) .

LibSVM is a great library,but trying to use it to "SVM ize" your code without understanding exactly how exactly SVMs work (which does need "deep math" ;-) ) , will give you ... ummm.. suboptimal ... results.

One of my friends tried to use algorithms from PCI to add "intelligence" to some code for his startup (he first ported the PCI code to Ruby) and ended up getting nonsensical results. Eventually I looked at the data, threw away his code and replaced it with a different algorithm which was appropriate. But, hey, I got some equity in return for the AI code so that turned out all right :-P

All that said, I have no problems with folks using/liking PCI. I was just reacting to the "deep tech" phrase in the original post.
"Word Association" with Calacanis.

Digg.com
"Brilliant."

Google.com
"Brilliant and unstoppable and good."

Valleywag
"Liar. Evil. Idiot. Stupid."

Interesting :-)
I agree about #2. I have Russell and Norvig and agree that it is an excellent book, but I am not sure how much overlap there truly is here.

I also do not have PRML, but Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition by Bishop is excellent (and includes many non-NN related items).

ESL is excellent and, to me, the best modern text in machine learning. It covers many of the topics in PCI both at a reasonable level and in much more depth and provides MANY references (100s?) to dig deeper.
I am not the 'parent', but as I said elsewhere I would recommend The Elements of Statistical Learning. It gets quite a bit deeper than PCI, but I'm fairly confident you could learn almost everything in PCI from ESL.

It doesn't come with pre-canned python, but honestly almost everything (in terms of code) in PCI is available somewhere on the web and/or already built into python libraries, matlab, and/or R.
Location Awareness: Scientist Admits to Secretly Tracking 100K+ Peoples' Phones
Pandora Puts Streaming Music on the Desktop
I was about to post the same.. WTF isn't Los Angeles in the intinerary? I prefer it to SF personally.
I am also in the very early stages of my startup and after considering the advantages and disadvantages of developing in Europe/India/Latin America/SV I have chosen SV.
I know it will not be cheaper than most of the other places but I think the greatest advantage of SV is its the huge number of very talented people with the "startup culture"...