skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Without concrete details about the experiment setup and dataset on which it was run (and ideally the source code,so we can be sure there aren't any bugs) this is essentially meaningless.

Anyone can run "simulations" to prove anything. Providing just a summary table is of little use. I am not saying that the Wingify folks are trying to mislead people - just that this article doesn't have sufficient rigor to justify its conclusions.

OTOH, many CS papers, even published ones, don't provide source code or datasets so people can replicate the results, so perhaps this is the 'new normal' ;) .
My take on bandit algorithms vs A/B testing:

If you have a question where the answer can be used to inform other decisions (e.g. Which is more important for our customers, price or support level?) then an A/B test will give you a clear answer that you can apply elsewhere.

If you don't really care what the answer is and just want the best option (e.g. should the hero shot be looking up or down) then a bandit is the way to go.
SpellTower Word Game: Find & Eliminate Words - The Industry
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The community has discussed the idea of adding a feature to specify a minimum streaming replication delay

This is a feature of Oracle, the redo logs are replicated to the standbys as normal, so you have an up to date copy of them on the standby, but only applied after an x hour delay. You can roll the standby forward to any intervening point in time and open it read-only to copy data out.

Less need of it these days with Flashback, of course, but it saved a lot of bacon.
Why not stop making enemies instead of creating and building ones end then trying to kill them again?
Woning: kies de juiste stofzuiger voor perfecte schoonmaak
The same is true for the left side:

http://imgur.com/fwOMy
MTV's The Real World: Mars?
I didn't down vote you and I'll show you hard evidence when you show me hard evidence Iran is in violation of the NPT. We don't want any sort of hypocrisy going on around here, right? What the hell, here's some evidence just for kicks:

http://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/iran-and-...

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2619
Hang on, you're being a little unfair about this. I believe in what I said. I think FP is a great step forwards and I think it's going to win out. I'm biased because I think this.

But Google is worth billions of dollars and is succeeding wildly at innovating and changing the world, and I'm a lone developer. I can't very well stand here and tell Google, "hey you billionaire company, you're doing it all wrong; I've got the magic bullet right here."

Part of the dichotomy is whether to define success as financial wealth or as some kind of more abstract software quality. And I think that's a legitimate variable; if Google is wealthy but has lower-quality software for it, then they and I just have different priorities.

I stand for my opinion by investing all of my spare time into FP language development and research, but until I see a billion-dollar company using it, I'm not going to call anyone a loser for choosing Java.
=== is a syntax error in python
Microsoft's TouchDevelop is pretty good for that. There's a surprising amount of cool things being made with it. WP7 exclusive at this point, though.
It looks neat, but I'm not sure it would help her find work, if that was the purpose of it. People seem to be more likely to find and hire you when you're easily classifiable—say, “JavaScript front-end developer”, or “Mixing engineer”.

I'm sure many people are good (or could be good) at many unrelated activities. I had an idea of personal portfolio that would encompass all of my interests and work, too. But in the end I chose to market myself as “just” a programmer. Knowing about my proficiency in Logic or InDesign or playing piano won't help anyone looking for a programmer, and if by chance I rate my Python skill lower than InDesign or, say, OS X skill, I'm pretty sure it will turn away many paying clients.

I decided to go with discrete “brands” for various activities. Failing at that currently, though (hard to manage).
Since the scale is only 1-5, saying that only a few people in the world qualify as a 5 or even 4 wastes 20% or even 40% of the expressiveness of the scale, which makes it pretty useless. It's better to round in the other direction, and think of the scale as logarithmic. If most people in the world won't have any ratings in the 4-5 range, that makes it pretty useless for comparing your own proficiency in the languages you do know, which is the entire point of the exercise, not comparing yourself to the people who designed the language. The interesting thing she's trying to express is how much better she knows JavaScript than Ruby, not how good she is compared to Brendan Eich or Matz.
Here's the code (quick-and-dirty): http://pastie.org/4007859

I had double-checked the code, but it is quite possible that I made an oversight somewhere.
You wonder if the use of open-source software is pushed by consulting companies as an opportunity to increase their share of spend.

Proprietary companies also want to increase their share of spend. Unless open source companies charge more, what does it matter?
Agreed. There are multiple blockbuster AAA level games in this pack.

This offer is just absolutely absurd.

Amnesia - one of the most frightening and atmospheric games in a while. This is the kind of game where you will just decide its time to turn all the lights on and go to sleep.

Bastion - great fluid gameplay, beautiful visuals, a great soundtrack, an amazing voice over which never gets old. I bought this game, and I bought the sound track, independently. I've listened to the songs on loop for days.

Sword and sorcery - Never did finish it, but the art, sound, personality and game play really made it stand out.

For the rest of the games too, I've only heard good things. This is absurd. They could have bundled each of those games in a separate bundle and stretched this out. Instead you are getting them all at one go.
I hate it when Schneier talks about things he knows very little about, because he tends to be listened to and treated as an expert when he might not really know much. This is one of those cases. A lot of what he describes are clearly assumptions and it's hard to get facts, but because he hasn't described them as so, many people will accept them as a primary source because of who he is. I don't blame Schneier for this, but it's important to remember he's just a guy with a blog writing an article about his thoughts. He doesn't sell vulnerabilities, he's not active in the marketplace.
That's not why I did it. I felt bad because my family and friends know me as being unreasonable, idealistic, etc. But HN doesn't know anything about me and might assume I'm an otherwise reasonable person. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't badmouthing Google here. They really are an awesome company and the point was never to make them look bad. More just to explain about where the incompatibility was.
Yes, we have been discussing this internally. Providing both options is great, but that assumes customers have a complete understanding of when to use which method.
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From a statistics perspective, a few things are missing. Most importantly, a discussion of statistical power and a discussion of why exactly it is that they test until statistical difference is found. Every scientist knows that if you test a big enough sample, you are more than likely going to find a statistical difference, regardless of whether it actually exists. Hence, using only that as your heuristic for what makes one algorithm better than another is not very useful.
Obama Ordered Use of Stuxnet, Acceleration of Cyber Attacks Against Iran
A backup has not much value when stored in the same physical location with the original data. Any fire/flood/robbery will destroy all the data.
(From reading the post quickly, I'm not left with the impression that the author understands the research they are 'refuting'. (Which I also only read quickly and cannot help understand.) This is just my impression.)
Convergence to statistical signifcance is a bad metric (just like how early stopping is such an issue) but you can map it to the rigorous parameter of statistical power, perhaps. From this, it's well proven that t-tests are statistically most powerful--there exists nothing better--given that you're simulating disjoint normals.

In reality, however, tests like the Wilcoxin test are 99% as powerful and more robust to misspecification in models.

I bring this up because while statistical power and signficance is a very important metric in the theory of picking good tests, it's actually a pretty terrible one in practice. Comparing MAB, which optimizes an entirely different loss parameter, to t/z-tests on power is sort of meaningless.

MAB can produce a cleaner workflow for many kinds of websites. Underperforming classes will be underrepresented and eventually pruned. The increased power of a batch test isn't necessarily so important in this context. I'm not even actually advocating MAB over other tests, just that you shouldn't spend too much time worry about power comparisons unless you're genuinely comparing apples to apples.
Joke answer

$h = "549d9635795ef37857e0b3dc02e52e53";
$v = 0;
while( $v == 0 ){
$n = "";
for( $i=0; $i<1943; $i++ ){
$n .= chr(rand(0, 127));
}
if( md5($n) == $h ){
echo $n;
$v = 42;
}
}

By the time we have our answer (or a collision), we forgot what the question was.
It's interesting that the author of this article regards this as, somehow, evidence that Feynman was "scientific till the end". What I read here is an article about a man who so deeply felt love for another human being that he abandoned any rationality on the topic and loved her even long after she was dead, to the exclusion of others.

What's the science in that?

To me, this story illustrates that Feynman was a man of deeper beliefs than most religious people, and what the story illustrates, really, is that there is absolutely no contradiction between having a highly rational, scientific mindset and yet having very deep beliefs that transcend the reductionist scientific mindset that some hardcore atheist propose is "the way forward".

Science and beliefs can coexist perfectly well, as they did in Feynman, Einstein, and many other of our greatest scientists.
Selene - A Stunning & Sleek jQuery UI Theme
Round-Up of 5 Cool API’s for Developers
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I strongly suggest you learn Objective C. It's not that hard and when compared with the trash you get using Titanium or PhoneGap it'll put you in a different league professionally.

At the very least learn another language, whether it's Python, Ruby or C#. Polyglot >>>>>> Monoglot
Agreed that statistical power wasn't used to calculate how long test should have been run. I know statistical significance can be found earlier if you are "looking" for it, that is why I ran the simulations until it was found at least 10 times. (I know it is not the most scientific way, but I used it as a heuristic; I don't know how to use statistical power in case of MAB. Probably 'statistical power' concept is not valid at all for MAB. Need to study more.)
Handsontable - An Excel-Like Table Editor In HTML & jQuery
A Look at Facebook PPC Ads
Should Ecommerce Sites Delete Old Facebook Posts?
Wicked Problems Worth Solving
Customized Calculator using JavaScript, HTML and CSS
The thing I find interesting is this simple task highlights a constant problem with programming: clarification. Looking at the utf8 example, who wins, the fewest bytes or the fewest characters? It's always those little details that tend to cause the biggest issues.
Iran and Israel have probably the largest militaries in the region, so if Iran responded to Israel's attack things could escalate into a shooting war quickly.
I wonder how long the program would be if written in Malbolge. http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-malbolge-995.html
Of course, I don't claim to understand intricacies of MAB completely. This is on my understanding of this algorithm in last couple of days, but I'd like to be illuminated by someone more knowledgable if there's anything wrong with my understanding. In fact, that would be quite helpful for our customers as well.
Of course it has value; fast recovery of data after hardware failure.

You still want off-site backups as well of course, in case of something more extreme, but they're usually going to be slower to recover from than nearby backups.
Iran (and a few other countries we know) is historically known for fighting war by proxy. Suicide bomber here, assassination there, dollars flowing to multiple heavily armed anti-Israel groups.

Also on top of this what would be Russia + China's reaction be to a physical attack on one of their allies. Heck what would be the price of oil? $150 a barrel?
Did you read the NYT article? I found it to be pretty convincing. Who do you suggest as an alternate culprit?
I think it's great work - but why does the developer need to be introduced as 'my GF'.

She's clearly very technically capable - why not introduce the site on it's own merits?
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Another MLM wonder. Check out the totally egregious 'contest' designed to spam the tweet-o-sphere.

Perfect use for a time machine, check-out these know-it-alls later in life, when life has thrown them a few curve balls, and their bodies are falling apart in their 80s.
and the javascript is unminified

hacked!
No one has said how they fully downed that supposed Stealth Drone.
Apple Nano-SIM Design Wins ETSI Approval
Obnam 1.0 (backup software); a story in many words
In almost every case I agree with the slogan 'use the best tool for the job.'

But governments are a special case because they are using involuntarily-given public money and have a mandate to represent all citizens' interests and contribute to the public good.

Funneling public money to corporations in the form of contracts is a great nexus of corruption. The duty of a government is to the people, not to prop up (say) Microsoft, which provides services but also manipulates the market.

Any government which can build billions of dollars of military hardware annually can fix up or devise open source software. And then there is publicly usable software rather than JUST the perpetuation of a private company's strategy for claiming public money.
Just like the TSA it's our government that is far more terrifying than any imaginary threat they are supposedly protecting us against.

And don't underestimate the Iranian government, they are not a third-world country like some people imagine out of ignorance - I really feel sorry for the Iranian people getting caught up in this mess.
When being awesome means being at the top of one's game and being best in one's field, it's a positional good, a zero-sum game. We can't all be number one.

While we might find personal fulfillment, we are still just a bunch of animals around the watering hole, suspiciously eyeing the beast next to us while we take a sip.
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It depends on how much traffic you have. If you have enough for 10% to quickly provide statistically significant amounts of data, then there is no need to provide more traffic to that variation to determine whether it is worthwhile or not - you can split 90% to the already well performing version.
Both methods can supply statistically significant results, there is no reason that A/B testing is fundamentally superior in getting a statistically significant result, although arguably A/B testing is more straight forward.
PDF files on the Apple iPad are appearing blank How to fix this?
Apple has developed a built-in support for documents in PDF file format to benefit the users and enable them to open PDF files easily. This feature allows a number of programs to run and Apple Safari is one of them. You can open PDF files by just clicking them without having to load any plug-ins or any other software
I might have read you wrong, but in case you meant China doesn't have nuclear power, you are mistaken.
Microsoft's Got A Big Problem With Windows 8
I personally do not understand the need to compare bandit with A/B.

The goal of A/B is to decide as quickly as possible for the best one.

The goal of bandit is to optimize given content.

I wouldn't use bandit to "decide" the button color but as a simple recommendation system. This seems by far more natural to me as it reacts better with changing optima.

Example: Let's say I run a larger "fun content" media webpage. I have "awesome videos", "funny images" and "goofy articles". On the bottom and right side of each content page i show follow up content. I would use bandit here to optimize the mix of images,videos,text i recommend.

To spice it up: I would create cohorts for my typical behaviour of users (e.g. registered male user) and only consider interactions of the last two weeks into my bandit calculations.
Sure. When I'm in hiring mode and see a resume like that, a few things come to mind.

First is the cost of hiring. Filling an open position is a lot of work. Sifting at resumes, initial phone screens, three kinds of interview, hiring paperwork, equity paperwork. The longer someone stays, the bigger the denominator on the cost/benefit ratio.

Second is the cost of bringing somebody up to speed. We work in a very specific way (continuous deployment, test-driven development, collective code ownership, pair programming) and learning it takes time. Even if you know all that stuff, the new person still has a ton to learn about the product, the history of the product, and our plans for the future. Again, the cost/benefit ratio improves the longer somebody stays. Especially so if we take a risk on people by, say, hiring somebody who doesn't know our language or our toolset.

Third is the social disruption. When somebody leaves a small company, it has a noticeable effect. That cost is hard to quantify, but it's definitely noticeable.

The fourth thing that comes to mind is something subtler. I think there's at least some correlation between how long people stay and other personality characteristics. For example, if somebody has never held a job very long, I don't have any reason to believe they have the capacity to stick through difficult circumstances.

And the last item is a suspicion of subtle flaws. I'm sure that some people have had a lot of jobs for reasons that are unrelated to them. But then there are the people who are better in the interview than in practice, so they eventually get pushed out. Or the sort who are on their best behavior at the start, but eventually let their personal issues all hang out. Or the sort who are a little grating to start, and end up a lot grating after you've worked closely with them.

So whenever I see a resume like yours, it definitely loses points. It doesn't disqualify somebody outright, but all else equal I'll always take somebody who has demonstrated they can stay at a job.
I still think Windows 8 is the base foundation for Windows 9, much like Windows NT was the base foundation of Windows 2000 and then XP.
I'm going to take the contrarian view here. If Iran had gotten to the point of enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels and Israel had done a pre-emptive strike, that would have gotten messy real fast. More messy than this. Disabling their centrifuges in a way where presumably no one died doesn't sound so bad to me considering the alternative. Again, just the contrarian viewpoint.
Anything that makes people more aware of security issues, what's involved in exploiting vulnerabilities, and how the other side things about these things, is a very good thing.

The vast majority of programmers don't know a thing about security. Anything that can be done to improve that, even in the slightest, is a great thing for this world.
The centrifuges could have been destroyed, and with loss of human life. The system itself was damaged. I wouldn't call this a "cold" war. It is a very real, very physical war(albeit precisely targeted, for now).
Making your Android App known
Google "MIT NZ", Manukau Institute of Technology is almost exclusively referred to as "MIT" here. I don't think this is as much of a regional interpretation error as it is dishonesty. Also, this is petty.
That is the sort of thinking that gave us the X Windows configuration file.

Nobody wants to make that call for most things in their life. Nobody has time. There is definitely a minority of people who do want to carefully size each browser window for optimal reading, but it is a pretty small minority.
Techcrunch just couldn't resist putting out this image:

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/screen-s...