skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
NO. why don't you READ before you reply

a program compiled for a multicore CPU will RUN. the question is how OPTIMALLY does it run. a program with no potential for parallelism will not get any parallelism. it will run, but run slow compared to programs designed for parallelism.

programs written to exploit parallelism will be programs that bring new approaches to data and state. functional languages provide this today, which is why lots of people think they will be the way forward for multicore.

honestly i think you are just bordering on being a troll. why don't you do some reading on this topic before writing more uninformed replies
seems VCs were riding a bubble of their own and forgot that funding poor ideas loses money.

were good ideas ever in such short supply that funding bad ones was NECESSARY? you know what might be a good idea? putting together a crack team of top-notch technologists and using them as a sort of VC counsel. like a carfax for startups. aspiring entrepreneurs can register their startups to the site and have them analyzed and rated by these "professionals" and the ratings would be published for venture capitalists and angels to review so they can make educated decisions on where to invest.
You need to edit what you wrote, because I couldn't understand it (although I sort of got the idea).

But my point was the loop quantum gravity says that spacetime is basically a matrix of pixels. Which is what I would expect if the world was a simulation.

It's not proof of course - there can't be proof, but if the world was continuous then it's less likely it's a simulation (but not impossible of course).
One idea I heard on C-SPAN this morning was to chop them up and take the bailout money to instead build something like 12 hardcore engineering outfits to build cars of the future, then get startup people to pitch for an opportunity to run those outfits and/or commercialize them down the road.

I don't have any capacity for analyzing the pros and cons to this, but the idea of focusing on starting from innovation rather than trying to steer a big, unwieldy ship towards innovation sounds attractive.
Mysterious glowing aurora over Saturn confounds scientists
Agreed. I think it's unrealistic to hope that level of traffic from the first 2 days of being on slashdot and digg would continue. And it's clearly a good thing that our new company blog got lots of exposure. So I'd greatly prefer a sharkfin to a flatline. Especially since, as swombat suggested, we have been getting residual traffic as well.
Since when does a decent database lock tables for concurrent transactions?
I'm going to say the unthinkable here:

In my Information Retrieval class, I got numpy/scipy set up and went about implementing homework assignments with it.

However, no matter how much I tried to push as much as possible down into the matrix libraries implemented in C/C++, the surrounding Python code slowed everything down. I was having trouble getting everything to finish in time to hand in my homework by the deadline.

I talked to a classmate who was using Java, and not having any speed problems at all. The night before it was due, I rewrote the whole thing in Java and got it to finish running (I handed in a day late, but at least I had something to hand in.)

I'm sure there are tricks to make things faster in Python. (For example, I later figured out a method I was calling was running all Python code, and if I had called a different method, it would have dropped directly into the fast C code.) But with Java, I didn't have to think about performance. It was just fast.

Java almost certainly has a library for anything you might possibly want to do. "But," I hear you say, "that means I have to write my program in...Java! shudder"

And I empathize with you. Which is why now I'm doing a lot of experimenting with Clojure. Fast as Java, because it compiles to the JVM (as long as you follow as few guidelines.) Access to any Java library with no extra effort on your part. (One of my favorite moments on one of Rich Hickey's Clojure video is where he shows a macro that makes Java calls requiring FEWER parentheses than Java. He was pretty excited about that.) I found a Java open source matrix library that, while not nearly as pretty as Python, got the job done.

So, that's my totally radical recommendation. Clojure + whatever Java libraries you need to get your work done.
A black hole is a singularity.

But we don't have empirical evidence of black holes - we have circumstantial evidence of very dense blobs - they could be neutron stars or other things.

The reason they assume they are black holes is that if a neutron star was that big it would be a black hole - but if loop quantum gravity is right, then it would become a degenerate star instead and not a black hole.

Getting rid of black holes would help a lot BTW because they contradict a lot of well established theories, plus they can not be reconciled with relativity.
Google's Chrome: The Danish Magic Inside
My understanding is that Python is their go-to scripting language, for tying together all their low level tools that run in C++ and Java.
"Under the current mandate that includes adult material, which would mean most material that could be rated R and, in some circumstances, material rated MA15+."

Yeah, good luck with that. So, if I drop the F-word in this thread, it has to be filtered? I'm sure that will work. No one ever swears on the internet. While I'm not silly enough to claim that half the internet is porn or something, there's plenty of R-level content. Especially with comment systems, that system would get useless fast.

Well, if there's one person who will win out of this, it's Senator Ted Stevens. His series of pneumatic tubes looks pretty good right now, doesn't it? ;-)
I'm on a Mac right now, and this is absolutely correct. QuickTime handles nearly everything once you have Perian installed. It means that suddenly you have a capable mini-player for watching nearly anything. And it's very smooth, too: it has a bunch of nifty little features that I'm sure the Windows version doesn't have.
Well... matplotlib (and scipy to a lesser extent) have atrocious design and documentation from a programming perspective. On the other hand, Matlab is worse in that regard and Python is an excellent general purpose programming language. Unless you plan on using one of the more obscure libraries that come with Matlab, I would advise the python combo.
If you're affiliated with a university, it's very likely that a Matlab license is already available to you. I do research in graphics, and I find it extremely productive to test ideas in Matlab. you can hardly find a better time-saving procedure than testing an idea in Matlab and knowing in 10 minutes that it doesn't work, instead of spending a week implementing it in C++. Once you find what works, re-implementation in C++ is a breeze.
An opt-in mailing list system such as GNU mailman would reach the people who want to be reached and give them plenty of options (e.g. individual mails versus digest form, the ability to turn it off temporarily for vacation, etc.).

I would strongly recommend you not automatically E-mail your users on a weekly frequency! If you must do this, make it infrequent (monthly, no sooner) and make sure you include genuinely useful information. A good example is LinkedIn, which includes information that I can definitely use (new developments among my directly connected peers), and they only send it if I haven't visited the site in about a month.
Yeah, but isn't that a good thing? iTunes doesn't waste time on unnecessary features. It's extremely focused and it does what it ought to - store songs - extremely well.

Most users really only need to store songs, make playlists, and - possibly - sync to an iPod. Apple does that all quite well, and keeps adding new ways to sort music. They're doing a pretty good job so far.
I agree with what you're saying, but realize that the same thing can be good on one level but bad on another level. For example, reading social news sites might be bad for my personal productivity. But at the same time, an almost limitless amount of waste could be eliminated from society if only people spent more time reading (non-fiction) books and discussing current events.

Similarly, I realize that Obama has only a limited amount of political capital and it's easy to waste it by backing controversial issues that ultimately amount to nothing anyway. But at the same time, how many of our problems in society come from the lack of intellectual integrity? Maybe bringing intellectual integrity to Washington isn't enough to fix everything from the economy to health care, but it would sure as hell ameliorate the problems.

Now it's perfectly reasonable to say this isn't the appropriate time to reform sex ed. But to say anyone who has ever even thought about the issue is unfit to serve the country, that might save political capital on one level but I do worry that we're digging ourselves into an even deeper hole in the long run.
One of GM's largest problems is the unions. Going through bankruptcy would provide them with a much needed chance to re-negotiate the labor contracts. I vote for bankruptcy all the way.
Perhaps we need some sort of document that states, and that people in elected office would swear an oath to support, that no matter where you fall in the bell curve, that only you have the right to pursue your own path when deciding what is best for yourself. I just can't think of what to call such a thing.
I'm surprised they didn't mention arabic with mandarin and russian at the end.
http://www.aweber.com/ (not that I've used it)
"I don't have any capacity for analyzing the pros and cons to this".

Nor does anyone else - especially if they claim to do so.
I don't agree Matlab is a horror - and I am a CS person, not an "engineer" as you say. It is an excellent domain-specific language. It might not be a good general-purpose language, but it was never intended to be that. True, some of the "bolt-on" parts of Matlab feel inconsistent, but the matrix/vector/tensor core is very elegant and powerful.
If two founders can't agree on a critical decision, is the situation any better if they're 70/30 rather than 50/50? The person who "loses" will not feel good about it, and I think that feeling is compounded by the inequality in ownership. 50/50 drives you engage your partner in hard decisions and get to a solution you can both live with.
Short answer is "yes, let GM fail". For more details, I appreciate Daniel Ikenson's insights on this:

http://www.cato.org/dailypodcast/podcast-archive.php?podcast...
All this paper says is that if your framework includes unsigned MSIL binaries, you can (given an exploit that allows you to overwrite arbitrary files) backdoor the binaries. Amazing! Did you know that if you can write access to Python scripts, you can backdoor Django apps too?
Let them die, but don't let them die now, because now things are bad enough as it is.

Think of it as a bail out of everybody else.

We're going to spend 3,4, maybe 5% of annual GDP to get through this mess. Might as well use some of that to kick the GM can down the road a bit.
The fact that someone in Google wrote an application in lisp does not mean that lisp is now an approved language at Google. Wonder why the author came to such a conclusion.
I too would like to suspend thermodynamics, because I have some awesome ideas for perpetual motion machines. I would also like my grilled cheese sandwiches to fly. But you started this discussion by implying Obama was a hypocrite for wanting to vet cabinet-level nominees, and you should concede that you were wrong to do so.
They have a good point, but seriously beating iTunes isn't exactly hard. QuickTime has been the most pain in the ass media player on the PC for a long time, it was even worse than Real for a long time. I mean Real is full of crap that slows down your computer, but QuickTime used to be outright slow.

But iTunes isn't about just the software. You can't forget the Music Store, which is the largest music retailer in the country. iPods, the best-selling brand of MP3 player, and arguably the best, require it to run. To beat Apple, you need to compete on all 3 fronts at once, and chances are you have to be breakthrough in all three fields.

Apple has certainly improved, but I don't see iTunes as much more than a well written library program with an MP3 player tacked on.

If I had the money I could easily build and design a better, sleeker MP3 player than Apple. It's just the fact that all the companies who are coming to compete in the MP3 player market don't have a history in it.

Because Apple did have history in MP3 players? And, theoretically speaking, say you have a ton of money. Who exactly are you going to make design it? Because you're competing against Jony Ive and his team, which is regarded as the finest industrial design team on the planet. No, they don't have the battery, but they have better-looking hardware and they have better-looking software, things don't break, and not only do they have a set of gorgeous products (for the record, most Apple products win Red Dot awards in every iteration, which is unheard of in consumer products), but they have an incredible ad firm working to promote their products. You're competing against all that, and all of the best minds are at Apple right now.

I could easily use the iPod's example and build a better MP3 player. It's quite simple; use a slightly wider LCD screen and display in widescreen, which should all blend together in a deep black so that you can't see the difference between the LCD and plain black when it's off

So... the iPhone? Or the iPod touch?

The front plate should be a single piece of unbroken electrically conductive glass so that you can operate the controls (similar to how the iPod works) but without it ever, ever being able to get dirt stuck between the cracks. The back plate should obviously be scratch resistant aluminum.

iPhone/touch? It sounds like you're just parroting what Apple's already had out in the market for a year and a half.

You seem to think that Microsoft and Sony aren't already launching the absolute finest minds they can at this. Make no mistake: Microsoft and Sony have some brilliant people working on this problem. And they're throwing money like Apple couldn't have afforded to do. And yet, Apple's still wiping the floor with the competition. Now every cell phone company is losing market share to the iPhone, and it's the same thing over again. A lot of big, smart companies are trying to beat Apple, and they're all failing. And you think you could do better by throwing money at it?
Right conversation, wrong fragment. Here's the comment I was remembering: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257203
I love it, mainly because it has the two things I really like.

First off, I can quickly make playlists that work well together, thanks to Genius.

Second, I can use a keyboard shortcut to get to the search bar, to quickly find music.

iTunes has the fastest search of any music player I've ever used. I love it for that alone. And what else should a music player do? I've used Amarok. It has too many features. It's a beast. iTunes is a background application, absolutely, but it's easy to use. And if you really need it, they've got the best visualizer I've ever seen.
stay away from the TC aura of rationality nullification. too many stupid ideas are touted on TC for it to be of any use. ever.
> you're getting beaten over the head by chip designers telling you that your future cpu is going to consist of a (possibly large) array of processing cores with a high-capacity bus connecting them. they are telling you this is the only way they can give you higher performance. you had better start believing them because these systems are starting to get delivered now.

If your chip designers are telling you that they're building a large array of procesing cores connected with a high-capacity bus, you need to get some new chip designers.

If you've got a bus that can actually support a modest number of cores, your cores are too wimpy and should be built with whatever was used for the bus.

More likely, you actually have a saturated bus that is the system bottleneck, so your cores are spending most of their time waiting for access.

There is no silver bullet. Many problems are bound by bisection bandwidth. The more cores, the worse the problem. You end up devoting proportionally more space and power to communication as you increase the number of processors.
Clojure comes close to answering almost all of my complaints with other languages.

- The mature libraries and deployment environment of the JVM. So your code runs fast, runs almost anywhere, and a lot of work is already done for you.

- Data literals for arrays and maps. One of the shortcomings of Common Lisp. And catches up with (surpasses?) Python/Ruby/Javascript in this regard.

- ISeq interface means that a single set of functions works across all collection types. (Common Lisp has an amazing array of functions for working on lists, but hit and miss for other collection types.)

- Lisp 1. I know this is an aesthetic thing, but I much prefer how the code looks than Lisp 2's.

- Steals a lot of arc's good ideas, like abbreviated syntax for function literals and semantics for arrays/maps in function position.

- Common Lisp style macros. Just more intuitive, for me, than the hygienic type.

- Interesting place in the space of computer programming languages. Dynamic typing, with an emphasis on programming to interfaces, macros, first class functions, immutable data structures, and built in mechanisms to support parallel programming. I don't know of any other language that chooses this set of tradeoffs.
But if you try to undercut Apple, and they're making a ridiculous margin, then if you've actually got a good player worth buying they can just drop prices. Look at the iPhone situation. They killed nearly all their competition with the price drop. Nobody can touch it right now.
Basically CS curriculums are woefully under-preparing students.
you need to stop fighting the future
Valleywag was good entertainment. Tabloids for geeks. Gonna miss it.
I just took an informal survey amongst my teammates (including Arabic in the list), and "three out of four" developers said: Mandarin.

The interesting thing is that on my team, two are from Russia, one from China, one from Lebanon, one from the UK, and one from India. The other two are Americans.
How much lower will this take prices? 10%? 20%? 30%?
You know, you've got a good point! The Kindle is an excellent product: Amazon's proven that they have a good design team. The only problem is that its screen can't support video, ever. (It already has an MP3 player built in.)

It would be lower on the market, but Amazon is actually in a prime position to be making hardware. Don't know how much they'd make by entering competitive territory, though. I don't know if it would be worth it for them.
Yeah... I read somewhere that the GM bailout should come with the requirement of replacing their current vehicles with a hybrid/electric/whatever lineup in X number of years.

I would be happier about a bailout with those sort of strings, but in general, reading that Executives at these car co's have been deriding climate change evidence and the need for hybrids/alternative fuels, makes me skeptical that refunding these companies is the best way to fix the car problem.

On another note, this stuff sucks. Everyone loses if we bail out poorly run companies, but there's a very high cost to letting them go under. Good luck, Mr President-Elect.
Firefox 3.0.4 Released to address multiple security flaws
Regardless, PG has a big smile on his face right now :).
I follow your point, but I think you need to qualify it better.

I would argue that a platform can make money if structured properly–most notably if it allows platform developers/users to make money and takes a cut (a la iPhone apps or iTunes music).

If his widget platform allowed widget developers to sell widgets and/or process transactions, then it most definitely could be a business.

Maybe our definition of "platform" is different.
Is it really that GM has failed to innovate? Let's look at the numbers:

GM======================================Toyota
$1,525 in healthcare per vehicle $201 in healcare per vehicle
$73.73 avg cost of a labor hour $48 avg cost of a labor hour
34.3 hours to build a vehicle 27.9 hours to build a vehicle
Loses $2,331 per vehicle Makes $1,488 per vehicle

So, let's just alter GM's healthcare and labor costs to Toyota's levels. Lowering labor costs would save GM $882.54 per vehicle. Add to that the difference in healthcare costs and GM would save $2206.54 per vehicle - nearly making them profitable right there! Yes, they're still not profitable, but it would be a huge difference.

The other things they need to do is use less labor hours to build a vehicle, increase plant utilization (which is only at 85% right now), and get idle workers off their payroll - yes GM is contractually obligated to pay people not to work.

GM should innovate. They do need to come up with better models. They do need more reliable cars. They do need to be more fuel efficient. However, none of those are really their big problem. GM is still selling nearly as many cars as Toyota. They don't have problems creating popular cars. That's a misconception with many people who happen to dislike GM cars (heck, I think they're complete crap).

The big question is, can GM reduce those labor and healthcare costs? If not, they will NEVER, EVER be profitable. You can't compete with a $2,200 handicap per vehicle. In fact, it's a testament to GM that they have been able to compete for so long with such a huge disadvantage. If those costs can be lowered, GM just needs a small loan (like $25bn) and a few years time. If those costs can't be lowered, we'll be talking about giving them another $50bn in a year and another $100bn in two years.

EDIT: Figures provided by NPR (http://www.npr.org/news/specials/gmvstoyota/)
But he's also looking for "more deals and equal treatment".

It looks like YC was way ahead of him (Adeo) on this one.
Exactly. And I think that's what the article is saying: nobody IS making anything new.

I wonder, though: what else is there to do? After you can fit your entire music library onto an iPod, and navigate it incredibly easy, what's left to add on? Beyond new features, like the iPhone's doing, and - eventually, once there's enough space - lossless audio formats.
So? The 'average' IQ could be 200, which would make a lot of 'below-average' people still really smart. :)
Haskell instead of anything else. And then some Factor.

Mandarin is a nice touch. I'll try that. Indians, however, speak English pretty well -- even if their accent might take some getting used to.
Microsoft is accused of offering money to contractors to abandon Linux
Halo Developers Start Company To Develop Games For iPhone
I think it's the ambiguity and uncertainty that bugs people.

I think of founders as the people who decide to do the startup. If they decide and then bring people on before they have gotten very far, I would consider those cofounders. There's a little bit of seniority difference but each person would be just as critical.

For instance, I've got a one-man startup GeekStack (http://geekstack.com). I'm the founder. I don't have much done, just organizing, planning, and a marketing website. I'm talking to some of my college friends about joining me, and at this point, they would be cofounders. If they outwork me or turn the project in a direction I hadn't thought of, I'd probably consider them equal founders. If they join me in 4 months when I have printed my first set of cards, they would be early employees. Does that help?

BTW, anyone with graphic design skills interested in making trading cards of CS heroes, my email's in my profile :)
Nokia 6300 white US Version Unlocked
Slim is in with Nokia’s no nonsense all in one phone. Offered at a budget price but packed full with all the features that you’ll find in higher end phones, this is new in the series 40 3rd edition line of mobiles. On staples of this line is the incredibly easy to use interface.