skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The study multiplies the information density by the rate of speech, and you are correct, the Japanese rate of speech is the highest, but it did not compensate for the low information density. This is likely a result of the small number of syllables present in the language (~400 compared to ~7,900 in english).

Of course, as many people here are saying, the analysis is based on written text and reading out loud, not spoken conversations, which would probably require a different analysis.
Darn. You beat me to it.
He said Microsoft's software worked nicely with PCs and allowed you "to do tons of cool things" but few customers knew this.

Isn't this what the sales reps are supposed to do? Help the customer make an informed decision? Or are they just paid to be hand the customer a phone?

Why wouldn't the conversation go like this:

Do you own a Mac or a PC?
Mac: buy an iPhone, unless you care about...
PC: Do you like to listen to a lot of music/are you active on Xbox Live/etc... do you use iTunes/have a lot of friends playing iPhone games... do you like (whatever mainstream aspect Android has over the competition)...

Fill in the blanks with what sales reps are paid to do. Find what your customer wants and needs, show them the phone that covers that aspect, show them the competition, make a recommendation, then let them choose. If the customer doesn't go into the store knowing 100% what they want, it's the reps place to help them understand. Not to sell them an iPhone or a Galaxy.
It can be done. In the UK, most people don't even do a tax return. And let's say you're self employed.. if your tax affairs are reasonably straight forward, you fill out a handful of numbers and dates on a Web site, get an estimated tax bill within minutes, and you're done. You then get sent a proper statement later. In a system with flat taxes, it'd be even easier.

I think the author touches on the real problems in the last couple of paragraphs. The American government isn't particularly good at spearheading initiatives that benefit voters without allowing "lobbyists" or commercial interests to take over. It also doesn't help that you have the federal and state structure (as good as it may be for other things) since the decisions can't be taken by one central place given all the local tax laws.
Wait, is this supposed to be good performance? This is terrible performance. Those query times are just awful, unless it's a completely cold index.

I've seen a variety of tools (mysql, postgresql, solr, sqlite) load data and query data far far faster than this, on my laptop even. 100x faster than this on harder data sets for the query time, using basically out of the box solr or postgresql full text search. The load times are also not really impressive at all. (I just searched for "nintendo wii" sans quotes on my development solr instance, 35GB index, I didn't prime this query, 44ms. Follow that up for a query for nintendo: 1ms, nintendo wii: 1ms. On a laptop.).
I guess i am the only one who can't Login and i see the database error only when i am logged in..

Can you check it out, It's on line number 150 (/ap...../..ls../facebook_member.php)
To update what you've said with insider info, ad-hoc SQL performance is currently a big focus at VoltDB. We fully support ad-hoc access in auto-commit mode through our native clients or through JDBC. Currently, we can do hundreds or thousands of statements/sec, and we expect performance to increase dramatically in the next few months.

Here's the Epic in JIRA: https://issues.voltdb.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=t...

Typically, applications are not 100% ad-hoc on VoltDB, but we're starting to see more hybrid use cases. Stored procedures can be used for extreme throughput or for transactional requirements, but other parts of the app can be more flexible.
I'm not well-versed in Mongo, but it seems like the comment was saying that he didn't trust Mongo to handle any writes. Your response seems to say that since there aren't many writes to lose, it's okay. Does that concede that Mongo will lose data? (I didn't know that about Mongo.)
I think they partition the data then serialize access in the partition. Makes things very fast assuming you only need to modify stuff atomically in one partition.
توسيع المزرعة السعيدة
The intent of the test was to measure throughput. Since the API is asynchronous that means the client was submitting as much work as would fit in the queues at both client and server and any latency measurement would be a measurement of how long it takes to execute all queued requests in the pipeline and the pipeline is always kept full.

I am able to get sub-millisecond offsets (as reported by ntpq -p) with m1.large instances, but I have never left them running long. I am not sure what Henning got when he ran. I pointed him to my blog post on the topic http://www.afewmoreamps.com/2011/07/configuring-ntp-for-volt...

On bare metal ntpdate reports offsets that are sub microsecond.

I find that nodes sync up quickly if only one of them polls the public pool.
Ask HN: Gmail is down. Or is just me?
Can't access Gmail from Belgium. This is the message I get:

Temporary Error (500)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily
unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and
suggest trying again in a few minutes.

If the issue persists, please visit the
[Gmail Help Center »]

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[Show Detailed Technical Info]
Numeric Code: 93

Any news about it?
While were at it, why not roll all the taxes into one rate and have the IRS with their accountants divvy it up?
Facebook breaks mean happier, more productive employees?
(not a trader but I've researched it a bit) Yes, often per share traded. A lot of traders use Interactive Brokers which has a few different pricing structures[1].

[1]: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/p.php?f=commission
That is definitely sweet.

Java has AOP and extensively use Annotations (Attributes in .NET) and the approach there is definitely heavier than what you wrote above.
I cannot wait for the day when developing for mobile will mean a decent/optimized/design-once-play-on-every-platform's browser mobile site rather than a native app. It seems a no brainer, but the current state of mobile browsers forces native development efforts for every platform.
Crowd computing taps artificial intelligence to revolutionize...
The Best Forex Trading System
I thought around 10% get interviews and 3% gets into the program?
That'd just be terrible, wouldn't it?
NASDAQ got caught in a price-fixing scandal in the mid 1990's. Part of the fall-out from that was Reg ATS, an SEC regulation that permitted "alternative trading systems" who eventually became ARCA (bought by NYSE Euronext), INET (bought by NASDAQ OMX), BATS, and Direct Edge. These four venues have spawned an enormous amount of innovation in the market space that NYSE and NASDAQ simply wouldn't have done without competition. Electronic order matching, market-maker rebate schedules, and equal opportunity for displaying liquidity all came from the ATS's.

Without the market fragmentation, we'd still have "specialists" controlling stock prices physically from the floor of the stock exchange.
Early Higgs data fits Standard Model except for electro-weak boson ratios
> Because no one who's putting in 50 or 60+ hours because they're afraid not to
> is going to stick out their neck and demand their lives back from the tech
> jobs that consume them or the venture capitalists who get wealthy on the backs
> of overworked and stressed-out technology employees.

Well, okay, this guy has quite an ax to grind.

I've spent lots of time in the start-up world. The people I've seen who rise the quickest and achieve the greatest financial heights put in long, hard hours. They put in long, hard hours as interns, as junior programmers, as mid-level programmers, and on up to CTOs or CEOs. Yes, they work "smart" too. But we're talking here about putting in the hours.

It is very true that you don't want to work so hard that you're burning yourself out. It's also very true that everyone has a different number of hours at a given type of work beyond which your returns gradually (or even rapidly) diminish. But don't be deluded by the use of Sheryl Sandberg's CEO's prerogative to create her own schedule.

Hard work tends to pay off. I'm not saying everyone can or should put in 80 hour work weeks, but when you're young and starting out -- figure out what your limits are. Push yourself. See how your body and your mind respond to throwing yourself into your work. Learn your craft.

You're reading YCombinator. You're probably here because you want to be an entrepreneur. Ignore sour grapes articles like the one from that itworld author. That guy would have you start off with an attitude that (here come the down votes) is for losers and people who would prefer to spend their time railing at those dirty Haves rather than doing their best to avoid being a Have Not. That kind of class warfare rhetoric never gets you anywhere unless you're in entertainment, the media, or politics.
Estonia could be a good model for this - supposedly over 90% of people file online within 5 minutes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/estonia-uss...
As a developer who's married to a CPA, here are my thoughts:

1. Taxes are a hard problem. Besides basic W2s, There are a lot of deductions to know about, and it's hard to keep track of all of them.

2. Depreciation schedules. They vary from item to item, and there's a bit of a grey area on what you can use, and what you can't. What can have bonus depreciation?

3. Calculating cost basis is too damn hard for most of us. Not just stocks, but partnerships as well.

4. When can you take a distribution from a business? How many times is that money taxed?

5. Add another 50 use cases, one for each state.

6. How do the states interact for individuals with diverse activity? Easily 2^50 cases here, and my gut say more like 50!

7. Foreign activity. Good luck with that.

The bottom line is there still is enough complexity that this needs to be done manually. Not to mention there are a lot of things that are legitimate judgement calls, and vary from accountant to accountant (or auditor to auditor when dealing with the IRS).

So, that's why robot's aren't doing my taxes any time soon.
People who describe themselves as 'Visionary'
They just put in a new system over the Xmas break and it is even worse from a customer service perspective than before (almost impossible to talk to a human).

Although the fonts on the letters they send you are nicer :)
We are processing the connections so we can show you friends of friends on the site. The thought being that it's much easier to start chatting with someone if you know you have friends in common. If you do signup you can sort everyone on the site by how many mutual friends you have, which is pretty amazing.

Using Facebook also allows us to protect against spammers, recruiters, etc., and we can make filling out your profile easier (though we still have work to do there).

What alternative site would you want to be able to sign up with? Github? Twitter?

Thanks for the feedback.
Subby here. For a demo of how the purchase process works see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVBxvnQEy9o&hd=1

In the first couple weeks we have added 40 suppliers and 100 downloadable items. We take a competitive 20% of sales and pay in 48-72 hours. We're looking for feedback on who to approach for supplier relationships, startup mentoring, and funding.
Why Jakob Nielsen Is Wrong About Mobile Websites
I wouldn't rush that claim until Windows 8 is released. Despite the prejudice thrown at it by the Internet community (despite the product not actually being out), people will buy it. New computers will come with it. Developers will make software for it. And that software will be able to run on Windows Phone with only slight modifications.

So unless you're predicting imminent death for the company with the overwhelming majority of marketshare, people will be developing apps for Windows, which puts them 90% of the way towards having an app for Windows Phone.
So Cray used to make unique, iconic supercomputers and now their secret sauce has been reduced to some interconnect for gluing together mass-market bits like the next ODM?

Who drove them out of the supercomputer market? I know IBM still sells a bunch of mainframes running operating systems you and I have never heard of or used.
agreed. to conclude "more slowly" there needs to be more than just syllable counting.

For example, would not "strengths" be considered one syllable?

I don't know about Japanese, but Mandarin has a linguistic syllabic structure that would not allow for such long syllables.
Beware answered prayers.

Over in my corner, we have a State provided income tax simulator and filer. Not too pretty, but correct and useful; it's done in Java and runs under Windows, MacOS and Linux.

It's been so successful that most tax returns are nowadays filed with it, and quite a few public offices where people used to queue up to file their (paper) returns have been closed. There was never much of a setup/tradition of filing by mail like in the U.S.

Over the last couple of years, they've improved data cross-referencing to the point where I can get most of my form pre-filled from the government.
Doesn't it make more sense to make a firm argument for "why not liquidity"?

Sure. Why not strip clubs? And blackjack? I acknowledged that liquidity has value it's not an end -- it only has value in as much as it provides value.

I don't fully understand who's funding it, but I know the money comes from trade volume, and a big chunk if not the majority of the money on the market is there from institutional funds, 401ks, pensions, etc. Those that are actively managed get nibbled away at. Those that hold for longer (index funds do rebalance) get nibbled away at less frequently.

What's your hypothesis for where the trade volume that they make money from originates? They're just taking money from the rest of the financial industry?
Great App! I favorite tweets for reading them later, but with the tagging, seems like I can expand on that.

Suggestion -- I can now only see 3 tweets on the screen (1920x1080), because of all extra buttons/text/tags. Is there a way to collapse ?
This is certainly useful, but I wish there was a way to edit posts that have been shared with me.

History would be nice too, IMHO.
I'm sorry, I didn't intend to put words in your mouth. I read your piece thinking it was going to present some justification for HFT. In your first paragraph you state that the point of this post is "merely an intellectual justification of a field which is often misunderstood." But then you don't directly justify HFT in the post, instead explaining the mechanics of HFT and market making. This is great; you explain it well.

However, I was still looking for the justification promised in the opening sentences. So I look for the subtext in your technical explanation that would justify this oft misunderstood field. I clearly misunderstood your justification for HFT. What is your justification for HFT?
The 44Con BSides Survival Guide
> accounting firms operate more like law firms in that they help you figure out how to meet the bare minimum to legally qualify for various returns

My wife is a CPA, and many dinner conversations sound just like this.
I'd say a large proportion of the carrier sales boycott of WP is simply fallout of the MS acquisition of Skype. The carriers are scared shitless about being reduced to dumb pipes, and purchasing Skype was pretty much an open declaration of war from MS.

Nice rock you tied yourself to, Nokia.
Larry and Jobs were close friends - Larry threatened a hostile takeover of Apple back in the day if they did not bring Jobs back. Perhaps that is one reason - to make Android less attractive in the marketplace.
Really? Is that so? Umm, erm, well, how do I put it, English... ya know what I mean.

We had an exercise once in Japanese class for who could go longest on hesitation noises without including substantial content. I remember losing at only 46 seconds. This is not a Japanese exercise, this is a fluency exercise. All languages have a right way to say nothing because nothing is often the right thing to say.

P.S. There are very fluent and fluid ways to say absolutely nothing of substance in both English and Japanese. Try playing the improv game "Talk like a politician": given an accusation of a true statement ("You had a banana for lunch"), dispute the charge without actually saying that you did not have a banana for lunch. You can use arbitrarily sophisticated English (or Japanese) for this.
Google revamps network via OpenFlow
This seems like a startup opportunity. Take photos of your standardized forms, upload them to a server, server calculates your taxes, only asking questions when the pertinent data is missing from the forms.

IMHO this service should be offered by the government(s) themselves (and if it was, it would mean even less data needed to be entered; after all, they have copies of all your forms already), but fat chance on that.
Show HN: A new search engine, Kligl
The sub-millisecond timeframe is part of a race to be at the top of the book or a race to pull orders. Very few HFT's literally trade a single security repeatedly on a sub-millisecond timeframe.

The general strategy is "our signal changed - move fast, get to the top of the book in milliseconds". Then you wait, and seconds to minutes later someone will fill your order sitting at the top of the book. Then you play the same game on the opposite side to unload your position.

The game of shaving milliseconds is solely about beating other HFT's to the punch, it's not about actual market movements.
>> Why wouldn't the conversation go like this:

Because then it's a discussion and sales process. If the rep simply hands the customer the iPhone (or top Android), he's out the door happy and the rep can sell the next phone. Apple and Google have taken care of education and creating customer desire by the time the customer arrives at the store; Microsoft is failing at this.
If you have installed before gcc from sources on Ubuntu you will notice that this time you need to do some extra steps.

A typical build should be as simple as:

./configure --prefix=where_you_want_this_installed
make -j number_of_processors
sudo make install

this is not the case if you read the various "bugs" reported on Ubuntu mailing lists.
The comparison, sadly, is totally different. The UK system is relatively simple (I never even had to do a tax return when living there), the US system is a byzantine labyrinth.
As a developer/designer looking for a marketing/business person I feel left out.
Normal humans can do their own taxes in a few minutes if they qualify for the 1040EZ. Intuit has a mobile app called SnapTax where you take a photo of your W2 and answer a few questions. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_17101221
Make More Money with Avon in May
About 60% of tax payers submit a 1040A or 1040ez return. This is a dead simple return. The IRS already has all of the information needed to process these returns. The IRS could trivially set up a website that has two pages: 1. Verify this information is correct. 2. Where should we mail the check.

The _only_ reason they don't is that there is a HUGE industry that exists solely to fill out these trivial forms for intimidated people. HR block, et al will never allow the tax system to be simple.
Thanks! That’s a great question, we need to ponder that because faavorites do take up a lot of space because of all the other data they carry. Perhaps a toggle between all open and all closed…?
I started using Clojure roughly around the same time as the OP and have mostly abandoned Python as my general programming language in favor of Clojure. Here's why:

1. Simplicity. No more thinking about objects and their weird/complex interactions. Although even in Python I was used to writing functions instead of classes, every once in a while I was forced to think about classes. I think objects are the wrong kind of abstraction for 99% of what I do. In clojure you just define a map and write functions that operate on it.

2. Incremental development. Yes, you can somewhat do that in iPython, but it's limited. In Clojure, I can start development at the repl, move code to the file/namespace when it is good enough, run the program, go back to the repl and insert myself into that namespace and modify live code, on the fly.

3. Immutability. I was already sold on immutability from Erlang.

4. Functional programming. Same as above.

5. One language, multiple runtimes. Clojure was designed to be a hosted language. This means it is not endemic to the JVM as noted elsewhere in this thread. You can already use clojure to target the JVM, CLR, Javascript and Python. No more encode/decoce Json/Xml/Yaml whatever between runtimes.

Now, one of the reasons it took me so long to "discover" clojure is the JVM. Most books assume you are a Java programmer and are familiar with Java and the JVM, which was not my case at all. In fact, besides not knowing anything about the JVM, I also hated Java the language. But you eventually learn to like the JVM and everything that comes with it.
Yep. One daily cross would be in some ways more fair. But it would also wound price discovery significantly.
Factorialboy - it looks interesting although I can't get it to work on our office browser which is a bit outdated (FF6.1). It works well in Chrome.
Online Cloud Services Rely on Coal or Nuclear Power, Report Says
I'd like to chime in by saying I'm interested in using the service, but recently quit Facebook like a bad habit and have no intentions of ever going back.

By making registration as Facebook only, you may be excluding some of the best people.
The transaction fees large players pay are negotiated to nothing. The exchanges want liquidity, especially in the derivatives markets. HFT does provide a ton of that, so they can negotiate away the transaction fees (in exchange to agreeing to maintain some minimum volume.
Communicating from anywhere with a SPOT Connect
I've also looked at this before, and with transaction fees of 3% of the total traded, I can't see how they make money. Unless they have a deal with brokers for lower transaction fees or something.
OK, but it seems like robots could at least make this a lot easier. Why can't the IRS send me forms with information pre-filled in based on the best of its knowledge? Doesn't CA do something like that with state taxes?
> I'm asking for an explanation that goes beyond "they make money, and I don't understand how, they must be ripping people off!"

I didn't say that anyone was ripped off. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a middle-man in a transaction. I just don't see that HFTs are adding any real value.

> What's missing from your explanation is time.

You're pretending that Alice and Bob placed their orders 20 minutes apart. That's not the game HFTs play. HFTs are playing games of milliseconds. It's not 12:20 and 12:40. It's 12:20:00.200 and 12:20:00.450. If Eve had taken the day off, Alice would have traded with Bob, and it would have looked just as immediate to both of them. And if there were a high risk that the market would tank immediately after Alice's sell order were placed, then Eve wouldn't have left her buy order on the book anyway.

If your 20-minute wait scenario were realistic, then sure, HFT would be adding meaningful liquidity. But then, it wouldn't be called high-frequency trading, and you wouldn't have written about how "speed matters".
Above obfuscated link is spam to some social news website.

Actual link is http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/12/popular-marijuana-compan...
yep, same here. Error:93

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!c...
NumPy on PyPy progress report
Thanks, haven't tested in FF6 to be honest. It uses Socket.io that may have browser / firewall specific issues as well.

Anyway, tech issues aside, what do you think of the product itself?