skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These sorts of problems will occur in any distributed system which runs at a high rate without humans in the loop.

This implies that humans are actually better than machines at making data-driven decisions at high rates. They're not. They're astoundingly not once you compute the cost of humans versus the cost of machines on a per-decision basis.

Liquidity in the market used to be provided by large groups of sweaty, overpaid alpha males yelling at each other. We replaced them with dueling robots. The robots can provide liquidity for a fraction of the price. The alpha males really, really hate competing with robots, because the alpha males invariably lose, so they complain that robots are stealing the money that the alpha males used to extract from their customers by right of being the one with a license to be shouting and sweaty at a particular physical location.

Occasionally a robot blows up. Not a problem -- robots are easy to replace. Besides, humans blow up all the time. We only ignore their ridiculous strictly-inferior-in-every-way-at-this-task nature because they look more like us than the robots do, and because these particular humans being displaced used to be rich, whereas e.g. telephone operators tasked with manually doing call routing (also clearly inferior to highly reliable distributed algorithms) were poor.
Most people have never heard of Instagram, Square, Dropbox, AirBnB.

Most people don't follow the stock performance of Zynga/Facebook and pepper their daily conversations with who has raised what, or how much startup X was acquired for.

Impossible!
Does seem that way sometimes.
Near Misses - Habit Behavior Engineering Toolbox
I think they should labeled those 83 million as "SPAM" users.
Then again, while it is common for us 'computer folk' to have more than 1 computer, a lot of households have just 1 shared by many people. My sister's family has 1 shared computer with 3 Facebook users (soon to be 4 in a year or two).
It seems that Knight Capital's ended up buying at the offer and selling at the bid. In order words, Knight Capital essentially collected the opposite of a rebate by paying someone for no reason aside from attempting to create liquidity in the market which resulted in these losses.

As a result, they were pushing stocks higher and higher which causes a huge incentive for a system like Knight Capital have. Again, this explains not only some volume surge which was seen on the market but also massive moves in certain stocks like China Cord Blood Corporation (CO) [1] who rose several hundred percent, until someone finally stepped in & the important thing here to note that there isn't a reason under the current SEC order cancellation methodology to bail out Knight Capital and its algorithm.

Similarly, they were trading Exelon Corporation (EXC) [2] and were losing $0.15 on every single trade and when its being done 2.4k times per minute, its very easy to lose money.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=co&ql=1

[2] http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EXC&ql=0
I noticed the same when I was in Kuwait several years ago. I remember going to a mall on day during Ramonda. Most everything was closed as we were on the way and most of the shops were just opening around 6 with sunset being around 7. After 7, the place was alive with activity.
Being in a startup in Chicago and not working in River North, you tend to feel like an endangered species in a way...
Functional programming Books Review/Reading List
Yep.

They're calling it a "glitch" to suggest something unavoidable, a problem that could have happened to anyone.

It's same vein of bullshit we heard in 2008 "We couldn't possibly have known!" and more recently with the string of "rogue traders".

In every case, its just a bunch of folks who don't want to take responsibility for their gambles when they lose.
I've been estimating my time as a designer in the AEC industry since my first job more than 20 years ago.

The only reason I did was because Greg, the VP of Engineering, said doing so was the only way I would get better at it. And the only reason I got better at it was because I've tracked my actual time against my estimates on many occasions over the years and been burned by bad assumptions from time to time.

At this point I have a process which produces a fairly accurate range of "billable time" based upon an important recognition: a list of tasks with assigned times doesn't account for flow nor does it account for the efficiency experience brings when dealing with "known unknowns." My first estimates tend to be wildly pessimistic (the opposite of what the author observes in the estimates of others).

On the other hand, one of the ways I evaluate my initial task list with assigned time estimates is by chunking the work into half days, because I've found half-days to be highly accurate across a variety of project sizes...at one point all my proposals were written as $xxx.xx/half day.

One of the useful features of the half day is that it is vague. Maybe it's three hours and I can go for a walk, maybe it's five and I'm at the computer a little longer. Either way, it doesn't have much impact on my day or productivity.

Another useful feature is that it allows chunking multiple small tasks together intuitively.

> (equal half-day (add-hours .25 1.0 .25 .5 .75))
T
> (equal half-day (add-hours 1.25 1.0 .25 1.5 .75))
T

But the half day doesn't try to force the unrealistic optimism of large time spans downward - what does it mean to estimate something will take a week? Billable time does not translate directly into calendar time because of flow and the productive use of procrastination.

In other words, a forty hour project doesn't mean I will be done in a week (unless the work is entirely rote, and in that case I am probably going to be too expensive anyway). From start to end, a forty hour project probably takes at least two months - which is about the same amount of calendar time an 80 or 120 hour project might take - because a 40 hour project tends to have a higher proportion of creative time (in my case design) than a relatively larger project.
why is this different from canv.as ?
London 2012 Has WiFi Police to Shut Down WiFi Hotspots
Ask HN: Best approach for adding an API to an existing rails app
Hey, built this prototype game http://www.vvx.io/ - think it could be fun to allow API access so people could create bots that trade on the exchange. (e.g. scrape reddit for youtube videos, seed and buy/sell them onto the exchange.)

VVX.IO was my first full end-to-end just-me programming experiment. I was up until this a front-end and product guy (don't even code in my day job - the game is a part time labour of love) - so approaches to an API are new to me - there seem to be a lot of options and guidelines out there for offering APIs - from 3rd party services (mashape) to best-practice on auth etc. - what would you guys recommend as a good place to start?

Thanks a lot!
Developers: help me improve the documentation you use (link to survey)
Congrats, Thomas!
Someone (on another forum) said to the tune of "Software development estimation is just simple math." My reply?

Software development estimation is simple math in the same way that rocket science is just simple physics.
Show HN: Need feedback on new website/concept
Hi,

I spent the last couple of months developing OurClubFundraiser(http://www.ourclubfundraiser.com) and launched it about two weeks ago.I would love to get some feedback from the HN community on how I could improve the site and tweak the concept.

Since launching I have found that:
1) I am not getting enough visits(Average around 5 a day)
2) Any of the visits I do get are not converting.

I am working on 1) and will hopefully be able to dramatically increase the number of visits over the next few weeks.

I could really do with some third party perspectives on point 2.

1)Is the concept not explained well enough?
2)Have I got the pricing wrong?
3)Is there a problem with the concept that I am missing?

Any advice given would be greatly appreciated.
Is Power Nap on? (The switch is in the Energy Saver pane)
Processing tasks as they complete: .NET Parallel Programming
“Cyber-security” legislation killed by Senate filibuster
Okay, agreed that it can be done with some margin of error. I think 5% is fair.

But if 1 out of 20 "fake" accounts that are active are closed down by mistake, that's millions of pissed off customers and customer support emails. In other words, a massive headache.

That's a problem.
On a new rMBP with 8GB RAM, running eclipse, iTunes, weka (ML software), kindle reader, open office, safari, preview with a half dozen pdfs open, terminal. 5.5 GB used, 0 pages out:)
Is this real? I'm not trying to be mean, but 12Second.tv tried this (although 12x as long) and didn't do so well...

Times change I guess. And maybe 12x as short is 12x as cool.
No, they saw that hunger is bad and nobody would want to go hungry voluntarily. Suffering for your faith, mortification of the flesh, self-flagellation, etc.

Certainly not a "Diet secret of the ancients", some beneficial side-effects are mostly accidental. (And to be honest, going hungry wasn't exactly hard throughout most history.)

But, well, we've got pretty deent beer out of it.
I think my above comment may have come across as unnecessarily harsh against Objective-C. I like Obj-C and I was actually trying to make a broader point: you can often learn a lot about a language's weaknesses and quirks by digging into its standard library.
Clean install is always recommended no matter which OS you're coming from.
Bugs in trading software cost Knight Capital $440M
Right now you have short descriptions about the sites in the alt text. Consider adding an expandable section for each link that has: the short description from the alt text, maybe a "for people who like..." (or "for people who don't like...") pointer for users to understand the philosophy of a resource.

I think the problem with users coming once or twice is that taking the time to understand and try a resource is a lot of work. With only the bare links, they have no way to use their previous experience to judge the other resources without another significant investment.

You could also ask users to vote "works for me" and "doesn't work for me" and then display those votes when a user registers theirs. You could also use those votes to track the utility of each link to users.
bnegreve: X.org-like network transparency falls outside the scope of Wayland, so it was never really dropped as a feature.

Moreover, as I understand it, you will be able to run X.org as a Wayland client, so you're not losing anything compared to today's setup. (IOW, you will be able to run remote X11 apps transparently over the network on a Wayland server.) Not only that, but Wayland clients can use any other network protocol -- VNC, RDP, etc.

IMO Wayland too is a big win for the Linux desktop.
Kind of surprised that the first comment isn't about automatically occluding these with google glass (yes, I know you can't fully paint over it http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...)
I believe it actually is a separate WebKit process per widget.

Could you quantify the Dashboard memory usage? I'm using the Weather and Delivery Status widgets, and they're only using 16.7 MB and 28.9 MB. This is on Mountain Lion.

edit: most of that memory is shared, so the real memory usage is even lower.
It is definitely better overall with ML in that it is no longer ridiculously slow but memory consumption for typical set of tasks still is way higher than either of Linux and Windows.

For instance I have KDE4 running on Linux with Firefox, Amarok, Kopete, Konsole and all other default services (ssh etc). Used memory is 1.1GB.

I've ML running with Firefox, Terminal.app, Activity Monitor in addition to the defaults. Any my used memory is 3.92GB. Wired is 1.75GB and Swap used is 11MB!

My experience with Windows 7 is also lot better than ML - it tends to be bit more than Linux but in the same ballpark.

Edit: To put this in perspective - I just realized that my work laptop (that I RDP into and never reboot) with all possible bloatware loaded and running - Word, Outlook, RDP, Lync 2010, Java Backup process, Enterprisey stuff, Firefox with couple tabs etc. is taking up only 2.83 GB! Apple really has a memory usage problem with OS X.
Debugging running server applications
wasn't the C spectrum as part of this fine from the FCC based on 4g networks? IE how does this impact iPhone users?
I think this talk is relevant:
https://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/61
check out mikekus.com hes incredibly talented and works with a bunch of YC Co's. Pricey but if you've got the money to spend....
easy come, easy go.
All things being equal, on 32-bit systems, pointers are 32 bits wide, and on 64-bit systems, pointers are 64 bits wide. So if your program previously used X bytes of memory for storing pointers, it would now use 2X bytes. Depending on how pointer-heavy your memory usage is, the impact of this change could be anywhere from negligible to significant.

This is part of the reason why games remain 32-bit on Windows as well (that, and compatibility with 32-bit versions of the OS).

However, there are, on x86 at least, other reasons to go 64-bit, perhaps the most prominent of which being the availability of additional general-purpose registers (8 more, to be precise).

An ABI for Linux has been proposed called x32 that would run 64-bit code but use only 32 bits for pointers. This would re-impose the 4GB per-process memory limitation but still allow the use of other 64-bit-only features. AFAIK, x32 programs are not compatible with x64 libraries, and vice versa, though.
Oh yes, this is real. And yes, OneSec is 12x cool as TwelveSec. And dare I say it's going to be better executed? :)
Humans are funny creatures. To believe on the one hand a god laid down these rules, and then in the same thought think "Well I bet he didn't think of this loophole"
You can get the best of both worlds, with opensource drivers though.

They imply well documented hardware and the potential to access it directly. But you can also use, and/or help improve the the higher levels of abstraction.
Which Database Should I Use?
Do you mean Ryan Gordon?
Fasting helps me stay focused. I wake up at 8:30 am and have my first meal at around 4pm-5pm, and I just don't get hungry, and the lack of blood sugar level spikes doesn't get in my way.
Fasting is actually very healthy. Not drinking any fluids, not so much.
> Seems to me like a huger win would be if the open-source graphics drivers would get improved.

Their work with Intel is on the open source drivers.
How does he account for the fact that generations do not proceed in lock-step across families? Some parents have children earlier than others - siblings can be spread across ~15 year periods, etc.

I'd hope he'd pretty easily be able to generate graphs like this for every society where the data is available - should be at least a dozen or so over the last 150-200 years. Though I'd imagine if his theory is correct, the time spans would vary slightly from society to society based on average age of parents at the time of childbirth.
Jens Axboe, Chris Mason help Fusion-io invent Software Defined Storage
That's interesting about tetrachromats. I knew a lady when I was a kid who claimed she couldn't 'see' an image on TV, that it was all just garbage to her. I'd always just assumed she was either crazy or making some weird kind of statement. Maybe not!
Pretty much only Angular and KnockOut and maybe 1 other js framework can do real unit test
That's the first time I've heard an explanation of the benefits of HFT that actually adds up. Maybe that's because it's appealing to my prejudices, but thanks.
I definitely see where he's going with some of this stuff, but I strongly disagree with this part, and I find it really off the mark:

You know that pile of books that you'll never read that sitting
next to the computer you are reading this blog post on? That pile
is too tall. You'll never read all those. That pile of books is a
monolith of guilt. It's a monument of sadness and failure. Pick
the book or two that you can read this week and put the rest
away.

"A monolith of guilt... a monument of sadness and failure"?! How pessimistic! No, no, it's a pile of treasure! I love having a huge stack of books on my desk, or overflowing from my bookshelves. Maybe he's talking about a different kind of book, but almost none of the books I'm currently reading I'll be able to finish in a week, not even if I devoted all my free time to a single one. Here's my current stack:

Modern Compiler Impl in ML,
Real World Haskell,
Programming Haskell,
Types and Programming Languages,
Software Foundations,
chapters on parsing in EOPL1,
chapters on types in EOPL3,
chapters on types in PLAI,

And that doesn't include some papers I've got printed out for the subway. I just got a new book delivered today, bought practically on a whim (the Coq'Art book), just because why not? Maybe I have some kind of attention deficit problem, but I really find it valuable to read multiple takes on the same topic (in this case, as you might infer, compilers and types), which means working through a bunch of books concurrently.

I find it thrilling and exciting to have so much more to read, so much more to learn. The stack of books is a monument to wonder and knowledge, it's a deep well to draw on and to be immersed in.
> If I were an employer, after reading this...

There isn't much you can do; at least you can't make religious fasting the reason for your actions unless you are interested in lawsuits and tons of negative publicity.

What does it take to start a new religion? What if I start a new religion which says working more than 4 hours a day is against my gods? Can employers deny me jobs? Or if they don't deny it, are they bound to pay me full salary even though I work half the hours? If not, why am I being discriminated against when you are accommodating others(prayers 5 times a day, month long fasts, pregnancy etc).
Dang, now you've made me look up the definition! Apparently, one should only disclaim when one wants to distance oneself from a previous claim.
" I have two one and a half to two hour slots of real productivity per day. Sometimes I get to three."

I'm relieved I'm not the only one who only really gets 3-4 hours of productive work on an average day.
No you would have not, lockup for employee is in November. Might be below $5 a share by then.
No matter how skilled you are, trading on the market is a bit like playing with fire. Not a big fire, but still a fire.

Technology is turning that fire into a flamethrower. A lot of companies are going to get burned in next five years, but many others are going to vastly succeed.
London 2012 Shot Put
London 2012 Shot Put http://www.psdmate.com/2012/08/02/london-2012-shot-put/
London 2012 Shot Put http://www.psdmate.com/2012/08/02/london-2012-shot-put/
London 2012 Shot Put http://www.psdmate.com/2012/08/02/london-2012-shot-put/
when you turn on vsync, the frame rate is at most 60. When you turn it off, you certainly can have 300fps.
You're reading way too far into that comment. A "windows fan" is the kind of person that says windows is 'better' because 'it has games'. It's not an insinuation of being a crazy fanboy. It's not something that applies to anyone that uses windows for any reason.

You're the only one here treating it as a serious and solemn issue.
What A 3D Printed Assault Rifle Means For Safety, Copyright
Sneaker Entrepreneur Challenges Peter Thiel To Million-Dollar Chess Match
There are definitly modern (non religious) proponents that argue fasting <=20 hours has it's health benefits. Even buff fitness gurus.

But abstaining from water as well is not recommended. At least not in any material I've seen.
Is that memory consumption or i/o contention?

If your VM image is being backed up that could be a problem. I keep my VM images on an external drive mainly for overall i/o performance reasons. They're not backed up but then all the data I care about is still on my main drive and safe. If you can tolerate the risk, you could try excluding the VM image directory from time machine and see if that makes a difference.
Any feedback would be awesome.
I'm curious what the accomplishment would be?

I use a bunch of plugins, they help me be more productive...
Why isn't join.app.net catching on?
You are in a twisty set of deeply-nested directories.
Bad estimates are bad because they don't meet the requirements, not because they are inaccurate.

In some corporate cultures, a bad estimate is one that says that The Plan is unrealistic.

Other times, management wants a best case estimate (which will be modified based on historical inefficiency) and bad estimates would include ones in which the estimator accounted for normal pessimism.

On the other hand, if one is seeking an accurate estimate and A and C are part of the critical path, then they must be accounted for by the estimator. "Shit happens" isn't an excuse for an inaccurate estimate, a good estimator accounts for it.
Mixpanel Post-mortem: API Downtime
You are completely wrong. Try looking into the circumstances before you make some unfounded accusation about what caused this. Comparing a 45 minute isolated incident at a firm with an otherwise-excellent reputation to the housing crisis or rogue traders is moronic.
There's no analyst involved in these trades. Knight is operating as a dealer providing liquidity. They provided a bit more liquidity than they intended today.
99% of the time, I'm bad at estimating time because my boss or manager decides to keep changing the requirements.
It's canv.as without the stickers, looks like.
This is exactly why software estimating is bullshit.

If the software has to be out the door by a specific date or the company dies - you DON'T NEED AN ESTIMATE.

Are you going to cancel the project based on the estimate? Dead Company

If the project is really too big to complete in time: Dead company, and optimistic estimates won't help.

If you could build a subset of the project and survive, then you still don't need an estimate - you just do the important stuff first.

If you were being chased by a lion, would an estimate of the time necessary to outrun it be of any use whatsoever? Of course not. You start running, and you either make it or you don't.

If there is other stuff happening in parallel, like marketing, then it is happening in parallel, and has no dependency on the software. That's what parallel means.

If you have a critical path dependency, then you're back to the situation above where you are going to make it or not, and the estimate won't really affect your ability to deliver.

Even estimating for cost is bullshit - if you practice lean development, you watch your metrics and if something doesn't work, just scrap it for the minimum amount of money lost. You can't do much better than that, except for not starting, and in that case you don't need an estimate.

I prefer the approach that saya "we're going to deliver feature X, and if it takes longer than Y or costs more than Z, we abort." You know exactly how much you stand to lose under this plan. The problem is, this means that management has to be involved on a day-to-day level with monitoring progress and making go/no-go decisions, when most managers I've met would prefer to have a single 3 hour planning meeting and then disappear for 4 months to raise money or play golf or go to tradeshows in Vegas or whatever.
I remember reading that some people who are color blind have an exceptional sense of contrast such that camouflage which fools normal sighted people is immediately obvious to some color blind people:

http://www.colblindor.com/2012/03/16/camouflage-test-for-non...

With that in mind, are there any simulations of color blindness that take this into account, actually capturing the source image differently using a modified sensor? Most simulations are essentially taking a photoshop filter to an image that was captured on an RGB sensor.