skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"C is faster" is a tired argument. The ability of this compiler or that to produce the most efficient possible code is almost never relevant outside of a few niche cases.

What niches? ML is exactly one of the niches where highly optimized code helps tremendously. We use ML, amongst other things, for parse disambiguation and fluency ranking. Making a modification in, say the grammar, often results in training and retraining various components that have a mutual influence (e.g. parse disambiguation, auxiliary distributions for subcategorization frames, the part of speech tagger). Evaluation is also performed using ten-fold cross validation.

Since a modification can also result in regressions, the effect of modifications are usually checked individually. Being able to validate changes in one hour rather than one day, helps the development of such a system tremendously.

We developed some software first in other languages (Java, Scala, Python), usually to make a prototype for getting grip on a problem. But reimplementing it in C or C++ paid of tremendously on each occasion. Even though there is enough CPU time available (we have a 3280 core cluster).

Another thing to note is that most machine learning techniques are fairly generic. So, usually there is already a perfectly fine C/C++ implementation available. Sometimes with bindings and all.

In this case, you're also guilty of putting optimization before the algorithm.

How do you know? Most data is actually preprocessed using Prolog or Perl. But the actual machine software is written in C or C++.

Speed is the last step, and often the only one which can be improved by throwing money at it.

Again, there are niches where it is worth it. And machine learning is often that niche, because people use huge data sets, complex problems, or both.

Besides which, if you want to have a pissing contest about speed, C is still going to lose to FPGAs.

Yes, but FPGAs are not readily available to our users :). But we are very much interested in GPU computing.

---

Apart from all of this, it's funny that you pointing to the price of implementing in ML software in C. It's not as if there are large amounts of Haskell programmers available. Writing such software in Haskell has about the same economic risk as using COBOL ;).
I never said it was impossible, but it is impractical. The reason why
it's impractical is side channel attacks are not easy, in spite of the
claims of the article. If you have the knowledge and skill required to
correctly preform a successful side channel attack (passive or induced),
a free bus pass, or even an illicit business of selling fake/dupe bus
passes, is certainly not worth your time. You can easily make a small
fortune working legitimately with skills like that.
Many have regarded Earth to be center of the universe. Many still do.

What do people's beliefs and perceptions have to do with reality?
The article is from 2009.
Kind of ironic that Backify's slogan is 'Data loss can happen to anyone. Even you!'

If anyone is looking for an alternative, I highly recommend Crashplan. It's been my offsite solution for a while now, and I couldn't be happier.
Ah yes, and AT&T miraculously improved their network when the iPhone 4S came out.
I think John missed one.

The other thing I've seen happen is that the more productive programmers are asked to do the more complicated things. So they'd be the ones creating a javascript drag-drop widgets framework while the less capable were stitching together CRUD apps with a bit of business logic in the backend.

This then looks like they're both delivering products, the CRUD app may even earn a lot more money for the business in the short term too.

I've even seen this kind of skill discrepancy in call centres when I temped as a student, this isn't restricted to the programming field. There's always a couple of people who knew how to fix actual problems rather than just enter payment details, they'd always be handed the troublesome clients but rarely got paid more.

I ended up as one of these myself, but none of us ever complained about being paid the same as Bob the lazy call avoider because it made our jobs far more interesting and satisfying.

In the end I guess part of being a high performer is that you know you're going to get the jobs that interest you and that in truth would just frustrate and demoralize your colleagues. It's not always about the pay.
But, still a good article.
Barack Obama in Australia: Military ties on agenda ~ Daily World News
Social Bookmarking y Su Importancia en la Generaci�n de Tr�fico Web
I guess it's Backblaze or Mozy for me then.
I'm not sure of the technical details, but the data on LiveDrive may only be decrypted with a key that Backify has, and thus LiveDrive couldn't give you your data in a useable format.

From what others have said, I'm inclined to agree with LiveDrive. We'll see what ultimately happens though.
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It's even been on here before. This happens all the time, but be positive about it. It's obviously getting a new audience who are enjoying it.

It can be polite to add a [2009] tag, but the subject's not really time sensitive like programming or business analysis articles.
The $200,000-a-Year Mine Worker
[HD-Rip] Raavanan (2010) Ayn~Upscaled~2CDRip~6 Channels~E-Subs~.mp4
Exhaust For Diesel and Exhaust Performance
Ask HN: Stock option strategy?
I have been offered a job from a start-up and with it a big pile of stock options. I would be the first employee. Company has only acquired some seed and bridge funding.

Together with founders have we have a clear agreement for my commitment which will be only for three years and have agreed vesting schedule etc. along those lines, but the reality for this kind of venture is that the exit would happen probably around near year 4-5.

Do you see any kind of arrangement where I can walk out with options that don't expire (as probably don't have the cash to exercise when exiting) and someday make money out of those options ?

Also what are the key points one should have in the agreement (their proposal is rather short and only contains mention of the amount, vesting period and rapid vesting on liquidation event) ?
Oh yes. I am perfectly aware of the impossibility of static analysis of Perl. You do have to execute Perl in order to be able to say definitely what any Perl construct will mean.

I'm just confused how this precludes inclusion of Perl5 in Perl6.
Oh, why did you do it? Real estate developers in Bangalore have already started quoting higher prices by labeling the NY address to local properties :(
The Great Manual Repository
Coincidentally, "Sopa" in Greek means "Silence!" [or "shut up!"]
This is ridiculous, are you really implying the apple ecosystem is equivalent to the web?
Backups are naturally incredibly sensitive data. It's entirely possible that even if LiveDrive can decrypt the data, that they don't have the full set of authorization tokens that Backify was using. I for one would not want all of my backups to be available just based on an email match.
Have you had any issues related to Play's:

- Class reloading magic?

- Hibernate wrapping/hacking?

Some other specific issues you workarounded but feel should be fixed in the framework?
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+1 for CrashPlan, although I've recently switched to JungleDisk so I have more control over my data. Both are fantastic services.
Square reminds me of the Netbook in 2009. They were very successful in the short time but they weren't moving forward and everyone knew the tablet would eventually rule.

NFC will eventually take over and they'll either fade out or have to rethink.
So writing a JavaScript drag-and-drop widget framework counts as complicated?
Ok, nice fancy IDE. I use vim, how is this different to me compared to flask/django? If it is repetition of code in the templates you want to avoid, what about noir+hiccup?

I don't know, am I missing something?
HTC Zeta Quad-Core 2.5GHz Fastest Smartphone?
For some definitions of real-time.
> What the hell? Why not give people some time to get their data out?

This is speculation on my part, but it is probably because "No contract exists between [Backify's users] and Livedrive". If Backify's relationship with Livedrive ended badly, then Livedrive has no obligation to give people time to backup their already-backed-up data. Livedrive should do the right thing, but maybe they just don't care.
Latest List of Fastest Cars In The World in year 2011
It is interesting that this article brings only very successful companies to mind. What it doesn't mention is the number of companies that have failed as a result of not taking the money in fear of giving up equity. Ultimately, if you don't have the money to keep your company afloat, everyone fails. If your company will fail without it, does giving up a little extra equity in order to make it succeed seem so bad?
You would have thought LiveDrive could have used this as a big opportunity, Backify let you down, but we are here to save the day!
Also livedrive just exposed themselves to a colossal litigation risk there if they're not telling the truth, they didn't have to send that email.
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Someone has recently mentioned that this framework is soon going to be "released". Was it meant as in "free to use"? The pricing is quite steep, but otherwise it looks amazing.
Airport full-body X-ray scanners banned across Europe as unsafe
Good point. When reading the TC post this is clarified. I used "Skype Founder" as synonym for Atomico in the title for reasons of understandability -- most don't know Atomico from first glance. More precise would be "Skype Founder's Fund invests in ...". But anyway, Niklas has the highest influence regarding investment decisions and HE is the face of Atomico, so it's fair to talk about his investment in the title. Finally, we have a trend that most big investors typically invest through own venture funds.
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hi all,
as a chinese, let me explain what's the situation in China. maybe you already know we have a similar censorship system called GFW(the Great FireWall of China).

when the government don't want we to see the truth of something, or something may be a threat to them，they will ban it incruely, sometimes they even do it in the name of "for the children" or "for the harmony society" or give their version of totally-bullshit “truth”.

besides the baning of website, they also have some people take salaries from government and speak for the government in every forum when scandals of government officials burn out.and when scandals burns out government also send orders to every website, every press to stop talk and publishing on the scandals, the reason they give is "for the harmony of society" or "don't be mislead by the media in US and Euro" :D

what's more almost every big website/application in china has employees either hired by government or hired by website/software-company to censor the users' activities, including QQ(biggest IM in china, just like MSN), Youku & Tudou(biggest two video site, like youtube), renren(biggest SNS in china, like facebook), baidu(biggest search engine in china, like google).if you said something bad to the government, your words must be deleted, what was worse, there used to be 2 men chatting using QQ, and the owner of QQ--Tencent Compang--give their chats record to the police ACTIVELY, and the result is the 2 men was sent to prison.

so if you allow your congress to pass SOPA, you know what would happen to you all.
I think we have reached the depth of discussion threads on HN, so i'd like to thank you and tzs for your comments and this (imo) good discussion.

The use of map is nice, BUT it shows partially what is wrong:

1. there are too many non-obvious ways to do simple things (this means that out of 10 programmers you will typically see 10 different solutions to a simple problem)

2. i have a problem with using functions for "different" usecases as what their name implies.. in my world eval simply evaluates code and map is short for "apply function to every item" not "filter out an item"

- i hate doing "go over every item in a list and execute a function that returns the item if it is not 'dogfood' and return that new list, overwriting the original one" when all i want is "delete 'dogfood' from my list"

As good as your answers were, you've shown me some good points and that your community indeed is very helpful, i am not convinced of this language. Both of you said yourself that there are quirks in the language. "still try to decide what exceptions look like" after how many years of perl? That was my thought ;)

At the end of the day i will still try to find and fix bugs in other peoples perl code, curse frequently and hope that people move on to the next language..
Tor launches do-it-yourself privacy bridge in Amazon cloud
From the author's (Michael Idov) Twitter:

Heh. Khrzhanovsky claims to be shooting Dau's "last scene" on Nov 8, announces wrap party with DJ Spooky and Peaches.

https://twitter.com/michaelidov/status/133186128684658688

Am I the only one who feels bad about its end despite being the first time I've heard of the project?
I don't think you get bored, I think you just aren't that into it. And that is ok. You may think that you love what you are doing in the first two weeks because it is new and exciting, but reality is if you find something you are truly passionate about and love to do you will stick with it. It is just a matter of finding it. And there is nothing wrong with trying different things until you find what you love to do most.
Eric Schmidt on SOPA Bill: “Censorship,” “Draconian”, Google would not comply
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/eric-schmidt-doubles-down-on-sopa-bill-describing-it-as-censorship-draconian/
What about those of us who don't particularly enjoy single player FPS, and adore multiplayer?

I'm loving BF3! I'm hesitant to call it the best multiplayer FPS ever, as that's rather subjective. But certainly it's my favourite so far.
A good manager in a software company should have a decent grasp of project complexity and output quality of his subordinates.

The examples listed seem to appear at companies that have in-house developers, but don't really think of IT as an area they should focus on. Similarly, I often found my ex ad-agency co-workers have trouble understanding why I have to browse blogs/manuals, take time to think things through, sketch graphs and sometimes just start over instead of refactoring.

Really, software managers should have no trouble noticing a 10:1 skill difference between devs.
Not at all.

Am I the only person who feels that social media is a lot of work with little reward?
Seems like they are using a derivative of PyCharm for the IDE-part?
MagLev 1.0 Released
I think this looks horrible on LiveDrive. LiveDrive should have initiated a plan to get the data from the users of Backifys back to them even if Backify was being discontinued.

LiveDrive could have gotten massive goodwill if they did this, even if they offered to transition the data to another service.

This complete loss of information is brutal and I would stay away from LiveDrive as they don't know how to properly handle important relationships.

The situation should be explained in detail and an open letter by LiveDrive stating what is going wrong with Backify. This would have informed users of the situation and of Backify's actions. I believe that the data loss could have been avoided even if Backify's owners were acting fraudulently.
I've been a sysadmin for a few years in a Linux environment. I had never touched Linux prior to that. I would like to say that the quickest way is to break things. When you break it and have to fix it, you learn the subject better. Obviously don't try this on the production box :)

Everyone's environment is radically different. At my last job we had LDAP & Active Directory. At my current job we have Active Directory + NIS. There are a few constants like DNS, DHCP that you should probably learn, but beyond that you've got chef, cfengine, puppet and spacewalk, and that's just for package management. There's so many different permutations of setting the environment up that you can't learn it unless you learn as you go.

Some constants:

- vi - always installed

- (ba)sh - It's the default shell in most places, though I have seen csh

- perl - also always installed

- DNS - Most groups with a sysadmin have DNS rather than NetBIOS type resolution of names

- SMB - Because you have your Windows users

- NFS - Linux file sharing

- DHCP - Some people use AD for DHCP and then just static the Linux boxes as it's easier, and you get autoregistration in DNS. For folks with more Linux boxes you might have a Linux DHCP server.

- AD - You'd be hard pressed to find a pure *Nix shop

- LDAP - Depending on the situation, AD could be primary or these could be 2 standalone authentication systems with matching accounts.
once upon a time a start-up was a company with no employees...

When? (serious question). I've been working in what most people would deem "startups" of various sorts for about 17 years now. But save for one case (a company I started) there was always "employees" and "investments". Just curious when the time was when startup meant only founders and no investors.

Reading through your larger question, I think you are being overly strict in your definition of "startup", especially as it has been used over the last decade.

I've never seen a clear and concise definition pinned on the word, but it is generally taken to mean a company where while their may be some cashflow, they are generally not cashflow positive and the overall risk of failure is still quite high.
Love this example for two reasons, the first being the one you mentioned, and the other being the fact that the troublesome/interesting call probably isn't generating more revenue for your employer than the simple/boring call.
he doesn't sound like he would given a damn about PageRank

He wouldn't have. If probably wouldn't have -- if they pitched the idea but the site wasn't working. But the first time I used Google I said, "Wow! This is vastly superior to anything else."

If I understand him correctly, he's not saying, "Don't launch until it's perfect." He's saying, "Differentiate yourself." He can't see that if your site doesn't work or it's just Existing Site X with a couple more features. An MVP works. An MVP shows how it is Significantly Different. In fact, that's exactly the purpose of an MVP -- not to show that you could build and publish.
What happened to me - You lost me at "Pretty crazy, huh?". I scrolled down a bit more, but didn't read or pay attention. Pretty crazy, huh ;)
Not sure what to think about this. Seems very well documented and thought out, and the developer tools seem great. However, the price is very steep. It's a bit unusual to see Python frameworks with this kind of pricing. Perhaps I'm too used to open source, though.
The best part of the article:

The romantic image of an über-programmer is someone who fires up Emacs, types like a machine gun, and delivers a flawless final product from scratch. A more accurate image would be someone who stares quietly into space for a few minutes and then says “Hmm. I think I’ve seen something like this before.”
There are some great PEG parsers in Ruby:

* Parslet: http://kschiess.github.com/parslet/

* Treetop: http://kschiess.github.com/parslet/
Well, one coud argue that developing one web app for a selected browsers is faster than developing a few native apps, each for different OS. Especially when you consider the fact that on mobile devices Webkit is a de facto standard and that issues like Android fragmentation doesn't make developing native apps any easier.

In my opinion, the real issues about web apps are: performance, lack of the Device API and a lack of matured tools. Solving first two is, luckily, a question of "when", not "if". The latest phones are already fast enough to handle even the heaviest jQuery monsters; LTE and 4G are getting traction and Device API is a work in progress (eventually, there's a PhoneGap).
Lack of tools is harder to solve though. JavaScript grew big lately, yet in this field it's still very far from being mature. If you are doing anything non-standard in JS (like Backbone.js classes) the best you can get from IDEs, etc. is syntax highlighting. Hopefully, with more and more big players (like Adobe) hopping onto HTML5 bandwagon things in this matter will soon improve too.
This Intel chip has a theoretical max performance of 1TF/s actual benchmarks are clearly going to be lower than that. The only thing slightly interesting about this is x86 but considering the large vector unit and anemic cache your not going to be able to port high performance code to this without massive changes anyway. And while comparing new chips vs existing chips is always a tradeoff, looking at the Radeon HD 6970 released in Dec 15, 2010 which had 2.7 TFLOPs Single Precision and 683 GFLOPs Double Precision this is a relatively minor jump in single chip double precision performance and unless there releasing it next week it would probably still be far slower than it's competitors.

That's also raw performance, considering this is a brand new architecture it's likely to have some significant bottlenecks limiting it's performance for the next 2-3 product cycles.

PS: Considering so few details where provided it's hard to look at this as anything but Intel saying "Please don't port your code we will have competitive x86 chips out at some point in time."
I wasn't aware of the rift Bungie cause with Halo 3—a game which they changed in quite drastic ways with Halo Reach, causing similar uproar (which now 343 Studios, the company now taking on the Halo mantle, is half-reverting with an upcoming update to Halo Reach).

The big question is, of course—are people willing to pay FULL_GAME_PRICE for small updates, like you describe?

MW3 has garnered quite a lot of flack for being entirely derivative and little more than an iterative annual EA sports title-style update.
Except it doesn't even work because you still can't search for source code since punctuation like + or $ so it's not even a semi-replacement for Google Code Search (not that that's what it was intended for).
I recommend Backblaze, both because I use it, and because I can't even get Mozy's site to load right now.
Indeed, I wonder if they have a deal with Jetbrains for that.
I had a similar problem.

* Figure out what do you want achieve in the long run (eg individual freedom, another interesting idea that requires much more capital, fly to space, save pandas etc). Does switching/quiting really help you towards that goal? No matter what idea you choose there will be always some less interesting aspects about it. So you need more than "interesting".

* Are your goals/ideas too unrealistic (=loss of interest)?

* start long distance running (helped a lot!)

* be open about what you do (friends, family)! Social pressure is not that bad in your case :)
Hibernate. I learned JPA months after I wrote most of the apps. What can I say, growing pains. But it's understandable given the size of our project.