skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't have any feedback on online programs or working while getting a degree, but I do have some thoughts on pursuing a math degree with your goals in mind:

1. Although there is a lot of math in computer science, a typical math curriculum will take you well outside of what might be applicable to your goals in computer science. This might not be important to you, but it's something you should keep in mind as you think about why you want this degree.

2. I looked at the curriculum you linked, and, with your goals in mind, it actually looks pretty reasonable in terms of rigor and relevance. Based on your goals, regression analysis will be a critical subject. But, and I don't want to paint this in too negative a color, most undergrad curriculums I know go further that this program does.

3. Unless your heart's already set on this program, or there are other considerations besides what you've listed, I'd actually suggest looking at other programs first. If what you want is a math degree, than this might be a good fit. But if what you want is a degree that will be most helpful in statistics/data analysis and machine learning (which you listed as important to you) I'd suggest looking at either an Applied Math program or a CS degree. I don't know your background, but there are Masters programs in CS that don't require an undergrad degree. You would still need the equivalent working knowledge of a BS in CS, though.
Anywhere that would hire CS degrees over a maths advanced degree is not somewhere that you want to work.

Mostly because next year they are going to outsource it all to a cheaper 3rd would country as soon as some "management-science" consultant claims that it's cheaper
Basing a system on people’s voluntarily saving for 40 years and evaluating the relevant information for sound investment choices is like asking the family pet to dance on two legs.

What other skills along with "saving for retirement" are we all apparently hapless victims of our own incompetence for lacking?

I'm not going to argue that "people" haven't been shafted by changing times and a variety of cultural and economic forces, but I take offense at the comparison to a dancing pet, as I think any self-respecting reader should. Or are we supposed to chuckle with recognition at the absurdity of being trusted with our own finances? A similar discussion of the unemployment problem would run along the lines of: "Who really knows how to apply for a job, right? Or calculate what your salary needs to be to afford rent after taxes... we're not freaking accountants!"

We are all going to get old one day, stop working, and still need a private source of money (personal savings, inheritance, pension, etc.). I don't think most people stop and truly reflect on this responsibility. They should drill it into us in school, really, along with the multiplication tables and long division. I don't remember a single lesson on what a stock is or how to balance a checkbook. Or, for that matter, how to make a friend, find a mate, or display leadership. As an adult you eventually realize what's really important in life. Financial solvency is not the pinnacle but it's a big one.
"If you want any sort of public assistance you have to live in a big concrete dorm with rows of bunk beds and do menial labor."

I like that thinking. I had a similar thought. People convicted of white collar crimes should be forced to clean public bathrooms (like on the NJ Turnpike - but you can pick your favorite wherever you live) not comfortable community service. The displaced janitor can do the community service while the felon is taking his place.
No, they are all forced to render using Apple's Webkit, there might be a different skin on top, but the underlying technology is STRICTLY no-touchy. Its a monopoly of the worst kind.
I think he's just defined functions called $ and _ which implement the thunking and forcing. No need for another compilation round.
True, but bear in mind that third-party apps still have limitations such as no JIT compilation, that hurt the JS performance of third-party browsers. Safari does not have this limitation which gives it an unfair advantage.
T400 here with same results - with Ubuntu (12.04) it is hotter than with W7, switchable graphics does not work (works in Intel X4500 mode).
There were policemen on patrol near the theater at the time. Otherwise that response time would have been more like 5-10 min (at the least).
Here's my problem with the American system- we laugh at European tax rates as being "too high." But let's take a look at what the European gets for his hypothetical 50% tax rate and what I get for my 30%: he gets healthcare, pension, low cost education, good public transport. Me? Um... all of a sudden my "low tax rate" (vs Europe) doesn't seem that low.
> There is no need for 'withdrawal rate' parameter, because it really depends on how long you expect to live after you retire.

That calculator intentionally assumes "forever", which gives you a safe margin for error; that doesn't actually change the amount you need to save by very much. Also, as the URL suggests, that calculator aims particularly at people trying to save heavily and retire early, and given that, the difference between "save enough for 50-60 years of retirement" and "save enough for an indefinite retirement" doesn't add up to very much.

> Also, with the defaults it has (5% above-inflation profit and 4% withdrawal rate), it results in the savings that never end but continue growing at about 1% per year

Again, margin for error. If you count on withdrawing exactly what you can get from your investments, then whenever those investments don't do so well in a particular year, you'd get significantly less income than you planned on.
I have half-a-mind to hack LuaJIT into Webkit

I've been thinking for a while that Lua and especially LuaJIT are so good that there might exist a strategy to do an end run around vendors and get LuaJIT into browsers as (initially) a plug-in. It's possible that there's a killer app waiting to be written that could run well in LuaJIT (but not JS) and that this could drive installation of such a plug-in.
If you make the lines long enough, and take it literally as connecting dots as opposed to points, you can do it with three: Connect the three top (or whichever side) and extend that line out far enough that you can then draw a diagonal line that slopes slowly enough to be able to connect the dots in the next row, and repeat for the last row.

But I spent far longer than I "should" have, because I wrongfully just assumed no crossing lines - another common convention that was never stated but that just was too hard to ignore. I did try various diagonals trying to get to something similar to the linked solution before the "three long lines" approach, but didn't get there because of getting stuck on that.

I think a lot of the time the bigger problem than getting "creative" is to clear your head of all the unstated assumptions that are very easy to cling to without even realizing. A useful method can be to try solve a problem with fewer restrictions, and then add restrictions back in and see what solutions can be adapted - that makes it harder to get stuck considering rules that don't actually exist.
> When giving people advice around data I would like to train myself around many of the biases we are all so prone to.

A math degree is not the best way to go about this. (I just got one myself.) It will teach you to think clearly about groups, graphs, metric spaces and all that, but it won't teach you to think clearly in real life. That's something you'll need to learn elsewhere; although it might be true that a math degree will help you to learn.
No I think you were perfectly reasonable. I was just afraid that my statement of "BAs aren't as technical as BSes" could be misinterpreted as "For a given technical subject, a BS is superior to a BA," when in reality there are often more important considerations than technical rigor.
I own a patent and I do feel bad. The idea was ridiculous, but I had our corporate lawyer swarming around me like a swarm of bees. I tried to explain to them that the idea is obvious. I even tried to get my name off the patent. Wasn't possible.
Software patents are bad. period. An idea does not cost anything and it's not like you won't have an idea if you could not patent it.
Patents should protect r&d cost, things that would not happen otherwise
Consider what might have happened if an individual as wealthy and as determined as this could not have gained access to guns. He spent thousands of dollars on the equipment he used for this killing. With that amount of money he would have been able to acquire guns easily on the black market, but even if that wasn't an option he could have instead resorted to bombs. And in that case he would have easily killed just as many if not more people.

As an example, look at the 2009 Chengu bus fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Chengdu_bus_fire. No guns were involved, only gasoline, but 27 people died and 76 more were injured or maimed in this murder suicide. Or, look at this event from 1988 where 31 people were killed using dynamite: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7EJYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3...
Yeah to a great degree it is coincidental I believe. My point being that it happened in a state with lax gun laws as opposed to a state like NY. But yeah I would like to know more about what else is amiss with that area.
You have to be pretty good to pick individual stocks which will perform well on a 70 year timeline. Are there even more then 20 companies that have been publicly traded in the US for that long?
The silly part is that finance courses used to be common. My parents took a basic finance course in grade school, where they learned how to balance a checkbook. Those all got cut for whatever reason (budget, not applicable to college entrance exams, etc).

I have no idea why the first time people encounter personal finance is either a college course or when they realize they have bills to pay as an adult

And, for what it's worth, I taught my dog "close the door" last night. I've seen plenty of dogs do "stand up" on two legs as a trick. Honestly, the OP didn't even use a good analogy. If it's as "hard" as teaching a dog to stand on two legs...well, that isn't really very hard...
This guide: http://www.amazon.com/Bears-Earning-Degrees-Distance-Learnin...

goes a long way towards helping you figure out whats legit and what's not.

Generally speaking though, you want a program that's "regionally" accredited. Here's a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation

Just an FYI: I've heard that some schools that were non-profit and independent have been purchased by for-profit entities mainly for their accreditation. Caveat emptor.

FWIW, most "pure" degrees from liberal-arts or engineering schools are probably OK. If your candidate school has a sports program, it's probably OK. Go visit the university. Meet the administrative officials and check out the student body. See if they have a library. There are lots of "tells" that will alert you to the possibility that your program is more about collecting money than offering a valuable educational experience.

Just do your checking beforehand. You dont want to find out halfway through that your degree isn't worth the time or money. Dont forget that all programs within a school aren't created equally. I spent six months doing due diligence on my program and the school is VERY well known.
I've trademarked vowels, I intend to sue J.K. Rowling, and all major authors for every AEIOU and occasional Y used. I figure it could be worth millions per novel.
Does anyone here use Postbox? I'd love to hear Pros/Cons from a savvy user's perspective.

Edit: Aaaand there's a trial. I'd still like to hear thoughts though!
A Judge’s Plea for Pot
I can't offer any specific advice about the place but I can say - go for it.

Apart from the personal satisfaction of being a mathematician you go straight to the top of my interview list. Anyone with the dedication and commitment to do a maths degree on their own is the sort of person I want to talk to

My (admittedly personal and biased) guide is maths/physics and pref. advanced degrees first.

Followed by CS degrees from really top notch schools and then I ask why, if they are so smart they didn't do maths/physics at MIT? Acceptable answer is a complete overarching love of computer science.

Followed by no formal qualification devs - with some evidence that they have read/learned more than simply the SDK they were using.

And last on the list are CS grads from some no-name, anyone can get in, CS school. People who did a CS degree because their school counselor said it would get them a well paid job.
Agreed. However, betting that over the course of your lifetime, the entire market (as represented by an index fund) will trend upwards seems like one of the safest bets around. And conversely, sticking your money in a savings account entails risk as well: you risk having your money decrease in value as inflation occurs, since you get paid much less interest than the rate of inflation. The question then becomes "which investment has the best combination of risk and reward?".
I think the best way to associate your involvement in the development of software is not to take out patents but to publish your work -- and in that way your name is firmly associated with the work ... patents for software are just plain stupid.

What matters, and carries more kudos, is having a published record with peer review.
Alternatives were available to IE as well (netscape).
First, there is no way you should have the same level of spending after retirement as before. It does cost a fair amount of money to work. To name one item, traveling to and from work is not normally cheap.

I do believe we need a safety net, but company pensions are no longer a reality and the "company man" is long gone. I wonder about some public / private partnership for a "public pension plan". I think with us all living longer, the prediction problem is going to be more acute.

Really, it is much like the health care uncertainty of that "major event". I really think if there is a role for government, traumatic event insurance and an actual pension would probably be it.
Facebook Ethic That You Need to Know
A great example of this, and I believe the best, is OS X. It's not subscription based, but it's affordable and recurring.
how do you thing ?
Yeah I was just thinking... is this guy new?
Good idea; I'm going to buy one with next money I can spare.
OK. I did my own estimates in an Excel spreadsheet with some VBA in it, using S&P 500 data (growth, dividends) in a monte carlo-like pattern. That got me to about 15% savings rate guaranteeing 95%+ chance that my money will outlive me. Something i am quite happy with.

And yes, i didn't use 'inflation' at all. Prosperity and 'good living standards' is relative. If an old guy started saving in 1960 when he was 25 and he's now 77, what was good living standard then is now poverty. I used nominal GDP per capita to 'deflate' my net worth over years, data from www.measuringworth.com.

Another reason why i don't recommend using 'inflation' is that everyone has different consumer bundle so his inflation is different from the CPI. And the measurement of inflation is overally broken, i don't trust it, and believe it is meaningless. As long as you don't face risk of starvation, there is little importance on how much stuff you can buy, how you do vs others is important.
Mac OSX Hacker News Y Combinator Menu Tab
Great Mac OSX Menu tab app to read Hacker News
Just came across this article on three vanguard index funds to own for a 'diversified' portfolio

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thebogleheadsview/2011/01/28/thr...
http://recenteats.blogspot.com/p/complete-list-of-american-w...
If they wanted to be an aristocracy they would pull strings so the children are given power and make their own money. I don't see how an estate tax helps here.
Sum up the premiums on your insurance, as well as the maximum out-of-pocket expenses on that insurance, and you have a good estimate for your maximum medical expenses in a year; you should get a number that comfortably fits in a 31k budget. Insurance exists to make medical costs predictable and budgetable.
According to the police chief, they had a lot of extra officers out on the streets as part of a summer initiative. Aurora is a typical strip mall suburb so it is feasible that a unit even a mile or two away could get there in 90 seconds, especially at that time of night with no traffic.
IE won because:

(a) It was sincerely better than Netscape at the time
(b) It came bundled in with the system
(c) It came bundled in with the system because Microsoft chose not to charge ISPs to do.
Very cool project!

I know that this is somewhat off topic, but I'm thinking about this from the perspective of the ClojureScript compiler. The translation snippets in the Lua.js README make me really thankful for the design of Clojure. It's highly amenable to compilation. As a result ClojureScript is able to produce extremely well optimized output. For simple cases, the translation is no more unreadable than CoffeeScript. But even for complex cases, the performance is excellent because most forms compile to relatively plain & boring javascript.

Lua init(1, 2, 3)
Lua.js lua_call(lua_tableget(lua_script, "init"), [1, 2, 3]);
CLJ (init 1 2 3)
CLJS cljs.user.init.call(null, 1, 2, 3)

Note that cljs.user is the default namespace in the ClojureScript REPL.

Lua local numActive = activeChars.count
Lua.js var numActive = lua_tableget(lua_tableget(lua_script, "activeChars"), "count")[0];
CLJ (let [num-active (.-count active-chars)])
CLJS var num_active__10317 = cljs.user.active_chars.count;

Lua local distFromCenter = get_distance({x=1, y=2})
Lua.js var distFromCenter = lua_call(lua_tableget(lua_script, "get_distance"), [lua_newtable(null, "x", 1, "y", 2)])[0];
CLJ (let [distance-from-center (get-distance {:x 1 :y 2})])
CLJS var distance_from_center__10322 = cljs.user.get_distance.call(null, cljs.core.ObjMap.fromObject(["\ufdd0'x", "\ufdd0'y"], {"\ufdd0'x":1, "\ufdd0'y":2}));

Lua.js wins on that last example, but if you need more speed, you can get it. All of the JavaScript primitives are exposed with highly performant macros:

CLJ (aget (js-obj "x" 1 "y" 2) "x")
CLJS ({"x":1, "y":2}["x"])
There's a surprising number of cynical replies to this letter. I have two considerations in response:

1. Did the JD lawyer expect the letter to be publicly displayed when he wrote it? I think it's unreasonable to expect this.

2. Even if it is some sort of PR stunt, why is this a bad thing? Is it even possible to have a mutualistic relationship between consumers and companies any more?
Making the free tier more restrictive for current users is probably a bad idea. The generally accepted thing to do is grandfather free users in.

How important are free users to your app? Is it a network-effect, where those free users make your service better? If not, you may toy with removing free entirely. You'll remove a lot of support time/costs, and only keep around paying customers.

Free plans are effectively a type of marketing. The cost to support those free users adds to the acquisition cost per user, which means you need a higher lifetime value from each paying user.

As an alternative to slashing Free, you could make your Paid tiers better. And aggressively try to convert free users. Send drip campaigns, show them screencasts about your Paid tiers, etc etc.

Free users can be converted. You need to find out why they are staying free. Price may be the reason, or maybe not. Do some customer outreach to both free and paid and find out why the two populations are in their current tier.
Do you own it, or are you listed as an author on it?

There is a very significant difference.
Be aware, however, that if you're black you can get killed in Berlin. Lots of Neo-Nazis in the city.
The Text Triumvirate - zsh, vim and tmux
This is a crappy attitude. If anything, you should be motivating MORE people to vote.

Let's take Florida in 2008 as an example. In 2008, the voter turnout among the voting age population was just 58.5% of a voting population of 14.353 million people[1]. In the 2008 election, Obama received 51% of the vote, and McCain received 48%, with Obama beating McCain by roughly 240,000 votes[2]. That amounts to only 1.6% of the voter population. If turnout was higher by just 2%, and Republican voters formed most of that increase, then McCain would've won Florida. Granted, that wouldn't have given McCain the election, but it would've changed the results in Florida.

Of course, increasing voter turnout is something we're always trying to achieve, but the trend in the past decade is of increasing voter turnout each election. Who knows, maybe 200,000 extra votes will make Florida go Republican in 2012 instead of voting Obama again. But telling people not to vote because one vote won't make a difference is not going to help increase turnout.

[1] http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0398.p...

[2] http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=12=2002=0=...
There is something useful in the pragmatist view.

How, then, do we change policy? If public funded retirement doesn't work, and private funded doesn't work, and individual funded doesn't work... what are we left with?

Should we go back to the 19th century sort of, "family funded" model?

Should we simply let all of the little old ladies sink or swim?

I don't know... I'm left with more questions than answers here.
We could do more to screen for mental health issues, but you are right.

Fundamentally some humanoids just malfunction.
Why math and not computer science?
What's the % between FTE and contractors?
So you're quite ready to admit that any moral consideration is moot for you when business is involved?

It's a shame this seems to be the case in much of the world of business. My stance would be that if I find software patents to be detrimental to society, worthless as anything other than legal weapons to stifle competition, then it would morally suspect to engage in taking them out.
Fresh Diagnose: Get complete information about your computer.
The tablet market didn't exist few years ago and the govt is slow to notice things. They do not dominate the smart phone market, android has a larger market share.
10x... I don't think so. US population is 311m, uk is 63m.
So what you're saying is, you'd like to talk like you have a virtuous outlook on life, but you don't actually want to own up to the consequences of said virtue. I can understand this outlook. It is easier to pander to people and act in your best interests than actually suffer the consequences of your ideals.

However, I might note that this approach is easy because it seldom accomplishes disruptive change. If you want to really disrupt a market or community, you will often face difficulty, incredulity, ridicule, and unfair play. So it may actually be in your long term best-interests not to play this way.

As a capitalist-friendly example, I'd like to point to the iPhone. Apple took a huge risk (especially financially); faced extreme difficulty in developing and sourcing the device; faced ridicule on all sides at the merest rumor of the iPhone; and had to fight very hard to not have a carrier completely destroy the product with their (still present) status quo of "differentiating" every product. However, the end result completely disrupted the phone industry. It's also fascinating to note that the "lawyer-driven behavior" has appeared from Apple as other parties have started working furiously to catch up, and finally begun to succeed.

I have worked hard throughout my career to make sure that my name has not ended up on a single software patent. When I was at Microsoft, several were proposed around work I did for Powerset (and 1 was proposed from work I did at Lockheed Martin). I did everything I could to shoot them down and stop them, because I believe they are wrong. Maybe I've hurt my career with this approach, maybe all I've done is piss into the wind, I don't know.