skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Other technologies to watch:

1. GraphLab2. Unlike Pregel's Bulk Synchronous Parallel Model, GraphLab2 it allows non-synchronous updates, which is more efficient for approximate quantities. For instance, for AltaVista's web graph, most nodes only need to be updated couple of times, while some nodes need more than 60 updates.

2. Flume: it's an abstraction on top of MapReduce, you program as if your data is contained in Java-like containers, and it turns your program into series of regular MapReduces

3. ScalOps (http://cs.markusweimer.com/pub/2012-DataEng.pdf): that's a higher level abstraction prototyped in Yahoo Research, might get resurrected in Microsoft.

4. AllReduce
Are these things the compass to success? That's rather depressing.

I can relate a little. I dropped out in grade 11. Built N. America's first fully graphical ecommmerce site (1992), Canada's first Windows IIS webserver (sorry), country's first 56K internet access, $10M IPO in 1998, client list includes Eckhart Tolle and Oprah.

So what.

I recommend you learn success from those that who mastered it over the eons, and they don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley.

Here's one example;

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -- Jesus Christ
How exactly is where I went to school relevant? Where did you go to school? Did they teach logic?
Block websites in windows 7
> It's got nothing to do with the fractional reserve system, by the way - a 100% reserve bank still borrows short and lends long and still is subject to bank runs.

How is this possible? If the bank has to keep 100% of its deposits in reserve, how can it lend at any longer term than the deposits are borrowed for?
Down votes just show the hypocrisy of anti-incest yet LGBT supporting bigots we still have in this world.

http://socyberty.com/crime/gay-marriage-incest-and-hypocrisy...
That's not a campaign though. It's just an explanation why some search results are displaying offensive things - which is completely alright, but not what I was talking about, not even close.
I've always called the negative feedback loops "vicious cycles"
There's a tendency to overrate the talent at these well known companies. Remember, LinkedIn didn't salt its passwords...
The only serious API that isn't a corporate API is the Web. (There are of course some pre-Web Internet APIs that are still around but they're a lot less relevant.)

Write for the Web. Don't write for a platform that belongs to a single vendor. Look what just happened to that cool Face.com API. Yep, even "good guys" can get bought and their third-party developers get screwed.

The Web is the platform.
Yeah, I have a 'nice' desk with a good finish and slide out keyboard tray, which I got from my family for my birthday.

Haven't had the heart to tell them I'd prefer a door.
"We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it."
> suppose my kid has to go to the ER. I go to the bank to withdraw funds early because of unforeseen circumstances. Does the bank have to give them to me?

This sort of situation is what insurance is for.
Wake-up Apple, the iPhone is a yawn
I recently did some copyediting for a chinese econ PhD student in the US. She isn't a student at my university, or even a research assistant. She's just a guest, who is being partially supervised by professors in our econ department.

Why is she here? In order to graduate from china with a PhD, you have to publish a paper in a specific list of journals. If you're unable to do so in a certain time period, you either aren't awarded a PhD, or you have to find a university in the US which will take you for 2 years. After those two years, you have to have your dissertation completed, and the US professors have to vouch for you in lieu of publication.

This is just an example of some of the problems you're talking about. Each PhD student (as far as she's described to me) who gets their degree without going abroad MUST have their dissertation published. This is totally contrary to how it occurs in the US where you simply have to come up with a thesis and defend it--there are rarely requirements about publishing.

Whats more is, if you asked a US professor to talk about the problems with academic publishing in the US, or with tenure, or whatever, its that all these incentives line up for people to publish publish publish. Its not about substance--its publish publish publish. Throw enough papers at the wall and you hope to god one sticks long enough for you to get tenure.

If this is a major complaint in the US, you can just imagine how bad it must be in Asia, where theres an (at least this is my understanding) real problem with 'faking it until you make it', with the hope that you'll learn enough to keep up with the Jones', while doing the bare minimum of substance or risk taking to meet expectations.
Yeah... only idiots "sudo aptitude install" without reading and building from source first!
why would you start insulting random people because they happen to hold a different view from the mainstream? it's sound like dictature to me. Have you ever considered that you can be against gay mariage without wanting to harm gay people or resent any kind of hate toward them?
I keep meaning to figure it out, but it would be nice to know if the average hours (years) gained by not sleeping as much are more or less than the average hours (years) lost by the health issues.
> Perhaps this alludes to all copies of DNA in a human body, which is much larger than 851MB.

I think you're being overly generous -- the OP clearly says "human DNA", and that fits the context of the rest of the post, which is talking about a single human. DNA that isn't human isn't human DNA.

The remarkable thing about DNA is that even though we have brain cells and nerve cells and liver cells and so on, they all have exactly the same DNA inside their cells, so there's no extra information there either.
Private vows don't work so well when your bigoted inlaws decide you can't see your lover at the hospital. People have compiled lists of hundreds of privileges granted through marriage that are difficult-to-impossible to arrange any other enforceable way. We'd have to rewrite family law from scratch.

That said, I don't know that they are better at lobbying than anyone else their stockholders could give the money to, which would be the only reason they ought to involve the corporation.
Chilean scientists discover molecule that kills bacteria that cause cavities
Facebook may launch job posting service
So, there are a few options here. I would suggest as your first step to get in touch with a really good contracting firm. I personally have worked with Robert Half Technology many times, and they really try to pair folks with positions they love. Plus, in my experience, they have the best selection of positions to choose from.

Besides this, IRC, Twitter, GitHub, and LinkedIn are your friends. If you can't find a company that peaks your interest, start your own project. Pay the nominal fee to register a DBA (if in the US) and work the project through that company. In this manner you can write off losses in your taxes, and it lends more credibility to the project.

The companies that are looking for shakers want to see you shaking long before you walk in the door. Build the small version of your dream, then sell the idea to anyone who listens.
There's a global Great Recession, and the arguments that its due to a mismatch between available jobs and worker skills are just smoke to rationalize the growing inequality. Peter Thiel argues that its due to the cost of energy.[1] A recent article about the price to import coal to India supports his argument.[2] The Superbubble has popped, and every sector is cutting back for private equity to make inroads.

1. The Prospects for Technology and Econimic Growth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrLyckg8Nc

2. Grinding Energy Shortage Takes Toll on India's Growth http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230433120457735...
I was with you when I read the title, I was with you upto the point you mentioned that you weren't ready for the consistency & hardwork college requires, and then you went from "someone like me" to "someone who hasn't done as well as the people around him".
Homosexual sex was illegal in some states as recently as 2003. Consodering the transformation in the USA since then, I don't think it's premature to start campaigning for marriage rights.
Marriage in general is a lifestyle choice.
I think you should take a close look at the ML family. Well, I'm not sure how good their concurrency support is; I doubt it's as good as Go's. But they have very good compilers, and a reputation for being good for numeric work. They are strongly typed and garbage-collected, but differ from Haskell in giving you the option of writing imperative code when you want, and in generally having a more familiar programming model (they are strict, like most languages, rather than lazy).

OCaml has a small but strong following in the financial services world -- it's used by algorithmic traders, who are known to be performance-sensitive, to put it mildly. And Standard ML has the MLton whole-program optimizing compiler.

I have to qualify this by adding that I haven't used either of these tools myself, but for certain kinds of problems, I would definitely give them a closer look.
What about the Google Summer of Code? [1] Google invests millions of dollars every year, both in direct money and in man-hours + infrastructure in random OSS projects. Many of the invested projects are even direct competitors to Google products, most are completely unrelated to Google. But they invest in them anyway and don't make a huge PR deal about it. What about their Solar energy investments? [2] Google Lunar X Prize? [3]

Both are just examples off of the top of my head, of investments that are not directly obvious help to Google. They don't make huge PR fuss about them. (Which I suppose is why you didn't hear about them) But instead they are indirect longer term benefits to Google, in the same way that fighting for gay rights is. So this is certainly not a first time thing. They've been doing this kind of thing for years. Unfortunately you cannot help everything in the world at the same time. So you cannot rule out what they done before just because they're not helping solve specific problems.

[1] http://code.google.com/soc/

[2] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/12/google-in...

[3] http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
> So why do people pay for 'free' information? (and yes some don't, this isn't a piracy discussion). Given these sorts of questions I've been working on what it is that gives information value. What are the economics of information?

Of course it might be interesting to ask how digital goods are different from tangible objects in economics. But this particular question is made on a wrong assumption. Digital goods can be scarce and hence not "free" by definition.

> But back to the Parse discussion, one of the factors that appears to influence information value is its rarity, or difficulty in obtaining.

Yes, but that's no different from the classical concept of scarcity.

> My claim is that classic economic supply and demand models don't apply to digital goods because the supply of the goods can be infinite and the classic model suggests prices would go to zero in that scenario.

No, no, it doesn't suggest that. That's the problem with your argument. The theory might say that that happens in a world of "perfect competition", which is a very strong assumption. As long as someone has the publishing rights for a digital good, its low marginal cost doesn't imply higher supply and lower price.

This is not really limited to digital goods. Take a hardcover textbook or a cancer-treatment drug: its marginal cost might be a few dollars but given limited supply it can still sell for over $100.
> (Disclaimer: I work at Kaggle.)

So modest.

(Sigh. The point of my joking remark is not to dump on Anthony Goldbloom, it's that he's slightly more involved than "working there". He founded Kaggle).
The videos aren’t loading because Dropbox, where they’re valiantly attempting to host them, is 509’ing them.
WTF. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being unfairly prejudiced by not learning PHP myself and making my own decision about it but things like this make me change my mind.
Let me know what you think. It's in beta mode now so you can't actually buy and sell things. But you can help design the offerings.
At the very least I think anyone responsible will argue that if you shouldn't own a gun (suicidal, unable to keep it secure, just don't want to, etc.), you shouldn't own one.

But the overall debate is probably not going to get decided on hn in any useful way.
I think in order to prove PHP's worth we'll need to collectively redevelop a modern PHP webapp cookbook. I'd like to see something like that myself. I still enjoy writing PHP (partly due to nostalgia) despite it's wealth of flaws.
22 year old here. I fall asleep instantly around 11-12, and up until recently, I couldn't nap during the day. A few weeks ago I took a nap after coming home from work at 4pm, woke up at 5pm and was amazed at how good I felt. So now I try to make that a daily thing. It not only gives me more energy for the rest of the day, but it also boosts my mood an incredible amount.
Hey, as one of those people who do actually sleep on buses and can somehow wake up at the right time, I take offence. ;)

(Admittedly, it's an hour-long trip twice a day.)
I don't see what the perverse incentives are here (you are paying to interrupt someone), but setting a way to donate 0-100% to charity transparently would be a great extension.

If it's an iterated game, there don't seem to be bad incentives. If it's one-off, sure, but very little gets accomplished in a single message and reply.
You can make "top journals" quantitative with metrics like impact factor. And even though that's not a perfect system, having a difference of three orders of magnitude (.05% to 50+%) means that there really is a meaningful difference in the quality of papers.
I second the recommendation for Thinking, Fast and Slow.

> that experts are worse forecasters than monkeys randomly picking options

For a more nuanced study on this, see Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by Phillip Tetlock.

If you aggregate expert opinions then yes, they barely beat monkeys. Happily they outperform aggregated non-expert opinions.

However you can classify how experts reach conclusions and find that some categories of thinkers (foxes) will consistently outperform other categories (hedgehogs).

Mind you -- humans and monkeys both are absolutely trounced by statistical models.
Is it OK for me to be irked that they reserved the /explanation URL only for the Judaism thing, apparently precluding it from being used in similar warning in the future?
It tried to grow too fast. That's the main reason behind all the emptiness. When the hype reached its peak, they couldn't sell enough virtual land, but now that the hype has died down they have an overabundance of land and not enough interest to fill it.
You have to get used to the idea that Google is the kind of company that has a different sense of priorities than most public companies. For starters, they prioritize employees over shareholders, which is why the food over there is still free despite costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars every day in food alone.

But more than that, Google is philanthropic, humanist and a scientific activist. Don't invest in them if you are not comfortable with these ideals.
North of Washington, across the border, we have 2 big name schools: UBC and SFU. Both schools require prospective students to spend 1 to 2 years (SFU 1-year, UBC 2-years) taking "required courses" (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, CS courses, and a few GEs) before they can apply to the CS program.

Both UBC and SFU have solid track records (beating UW consistently) when it comes to ACM CS competition:

https://sites.google.com/site/ubcprogrammingteam/history

Yes, gotta start some sort of pride-war between schools no? :)
Consumption has less external benefit than investment. Due to scale effects and diminishing marginal utility, consumption by the poor wins over consumption by the rich, and investment by the poor (i.e. a founder investing $10k into his own company) is more useful than investment by the rich (taking Apple's market cap from $500b to $500000010000). There are sound economic arguments for each.

I don't know if there's an economic argument for consumption by the poor being more economically efficient than investment by the rich, or for consumption > investment in general.
Are you really going to trot out that old link? I read that and have seen it linked a thousand times here. Go love or hate whatever you want but i've had enough with this php snobbery around here. The submission had absolutely positively nothing to do with php's merit or lack thereof but all the fuckin cool kids always seem to want to come troll any time they see php anywhere and remind us how dumb others are for using it, how bad it is, or how awesome they're hipster language choice is.

E-fuckin-nough! It's beyond irrelevant. It's trolling. No one has anything more to add on the discussion of php as a language. I know this because in the past 3 weeks there have been literally thousands of comments about it and at this point its all a bunch of repeats. You have to be living under a rock if you haven't seen this same "php suck. No it doesn't, it's awesome" discussion a billion times before. Get off it already.

Phptherightway.com is the topic at hand. It's awesome. I wish I had something like it when I learned php. Oh, and I use php. All the time. I'm not ashamed because I don't feel like I need to get into a dick measuring contest over my l337 skillz or whatever it is that gets people acting so snobby about php.
> I thought the mainstream opinion is that choice has quite little to do with it.

Outside the USA, yes. Sadly, a majority of Americans thinks that being gay is a choice while being obese is genetic.
Didn't he also attack 20 under 20 or anyone leaving the formalized educational system?
Southern Europe’s Small-Business Problem: Too Many Workers at Small Firms
Stanford studies monks' meditation, compassion
For the longest time the installation instructions for NPM were almost exactly the same. But its worse when PHP does it :)
It's easy to say all this in hindsight, but humans are actually not very good at extracting valid patterns from large masses of data. Yet we more and more need to do so.

Kaggle has taken an important niche and created a market for buyers and sellers. I was skeptical when I first saw it mentioned but then, I'm usually amazed when anything succeeds. :D
TDD or not TDD that is the question
I think its because SL is not growing wildly. Yeah, they generate $700M from the virtual economy, but what do they do with it? Without a focus on growing, there isn't as much of a focus on innovation. Plus, as the article states, they've tried a lot of things to get past the 1M active players number and haven't cracked it yet. This discourages them from trying anything expensive to stimulate growth, like improving building or implementing a more realistic physics engine to draw people into a virtual world that looks real and immersive.

Simply put, it looks like they're unwilling to take any risks to make significant changes to SL.
Are we Blub programmers? [2006]
I wonder if US 'conservatives', will erect an alternative, conservative search engine, like they have for wikipedia (http://www.conservapedia.com)?
Long term isn't the only kind that exists. Short and mid terms are fine as well, as long as you find a way to monetize fast and early. Just be aware that the party may be over at any moment and, when it is, exit gracefully and before the crowd starts yelling for the already absent DJ to play just one more song. Use that time to find a different party to join to, one that's just starting.
I heard a report on NPR once that mentioned that the increase in "administrators" has been the major driving force in the increase in tuition. The system, hiring its own graduates in order to fudge the employment rate while increasing the cost of tuition to pay for those administrators, seems like a clear Ponzi scheme.
Ask HN: What's the best way to learn Ruby/Rails?
After coding web apps in PHP/CodeIgniter and Python/Django/Flask, I now want to give Ruby/Rails a try(just for sake of learning as I'm quite happy with django for most of my projects).

So I would like to know what is the best way to get started with both ruby and rails? Which books, tutorials, sites you would suggest for learning ROR?
Status Siaga I Sampai 7 Hari OPM Papua
"I hope if anyone is getting started here, in bootstrapping an open alternative to Twitter, that they will be compatible with these two pieces of software." He's talking about his software (that nobody uses), and that's the agenda behind the piece. Just in case the "open Twitter" takes off, while he has no intention of working on it, he wants to inject the idea that developers have some kind of moral responsibility to make it compatible with his stuff. Oh, and because he forgot it this time, I'll put this in: he thinks he invented RSS.
Then of course use OpenCV. Their face detector is very good.
Copper was much cheaper, though!
I've posted this before and will post it again: any discussion like this should include a link to Philip Greenspun's "Women in Science": http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science . Ignore the borderline sexist stuff about women and pay attention to the institutional structure of science and the opportunity costs of potential scientists.

Stuff like this: "Although the overall unemployment rate of chemists and other scientists is much lower than the national average, those figures mask an open secret: Many scientists work outside their chosen field" should demonstrate why the smartest or most economically aware people who are interested in science might want to think about ancillary fields (like hacking).

I've also co-written a longish guide for undergrads interested in science: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about-... , since many of them don't fully understand how science really works in an institutional setting.
Tourism promotion to foreign markets speeded up | Vietnam Travel News
Well, it can get really expensive if you really get into it. Owning land in SL is not cheap, and I've heard of some people who spend thousands every year owning land for a nightclub or retail space. I do wonder what the top tier of spenders actually spend per year on SL, though.
Exactly.

As I have been doing a lot more financial planning I have started to second-guess whether I want to look for funding in the Valley or bootstrap with a partner.

Yes, I think we can be a billion dollar company in 20 years or less with a couple million in investment. Yes, I think we could bring open source ERP into the mainstream.

However we aren't in the hot areas of the day. We are entering a market which is dominated by an increasingly small number of vendors (which we see as an opportunity). And according to my model, if we are willing to make a lot less on the first three years, we may be able to reach the billion dollar mark at most 10 years later, and we could do this without losing the freedom of operation--- without pressure to be acquired or go public.

So the delimma here is pitching ERP to VC's for money we might not really need that badly, in the hopes that taking money will get us there faster and build new connections, or going on our own.

We aren't going to be the next Facebook. We do however expect to become as big as RedHat, perhaps significantly bigger.

I don't know what we will do. It will depend on discussions with others on the team yet.

I do know though that the decision has become harder than it was before.
The problem is not Java, but some types of architects that flourish in corporations, usually doing designs with endless numbers of abstractions, layer upon layer.

I've seen this happening in C, followed by C++, and now Java and C#.

They will do it regardless of the language being used.