skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I started taking an interest in machine learning and AI about a year and a half ago. I don't consider myself any kind of genius (although I'm reasonably intelligent), and I was terrible at math in school--to the point where I'd come to the conclusion that I simply "wasn't good at math".

After a good deal of reading, trial and error, and banging my head against the wall, I've managed to get myself to pretty much the cutting edge of ML research as it applies to neural networks. There's quite a bit of math involved, and it would have been easy for me to write it off as "too hard" in the beginning. However, I'm glad I stuck with it because I'm actually using it for some pretty neat applications.

My point being, if you have an interest in something that seems like you have to be a genius to be good at it, don't let that stop you because it probably isn't true.
Why is an exception like Croll, who is literally one out of thousands (how many scientists make their breakthrough in their late 30s/40s, while working at menial labor? now, how many cranks do that...) of any interest?

Exceptions are exceptional, hence the name.
To be Chinese is to be 'jing' - to put it negatively, it means to be calculating, materialistic and ruthlessly advancing one's agenda; to put it positively, it means that you are constantly trying to improve yourself and be resourceful.

As 1.5 generation American-Chinese, I used to hate Chinese culture for its 'jing'-ness and rebelled it by going to a liberal arts college and reading Jack Kerouac, subscribing to the hippie culture etc. What I realized is that American culture, beneath its veil of "creativity" and "open society" is nothing but a cover for human selfishness universal in every society.

Most of my friends from college gone to Teach for America or PeaceCorps have done it for social currency - as much as my Chinese friends have gunned for Goldman Sachs/Microsoft for Chinese social currency. Of course, predictably, five years ago, these TfA and PeaceCorps grads are now enrolled dutifully in medical school or law school. European colonialism's "holier-than-thou" attitude is now baked subtly in that you may have the technical/economical prowess, but you yet don't have the renaissance quality. It's just as bad as the Chinese mindset of being judgmental by asking what school you went to and how much money you make.

Personally I've embraced the 'Chinese jing'. I don't think I'm better than any Chinese mainlander, I'm a shameless Chinese guy who's trying to make the biggest buck, get the hottest chick in the club, get the most prestige/respect in my field, destroy my enemies and don't give a fk about who gets hurt in my path. My only one redeeming quality is honesty (to myself) - which is why Westerners will never be Chinese.
At my last job there was a database table in out project that represented the markets our site was operating in. One row for Spain, one row for Brail, one for USA. At the time we only were in three markets so there were only three rows. The class that handled the markets had a function called `get_market()`. It didn't just d a SQL SELECT, it had a cache layer placed on top of it. The next call to that function would get the results from memcache. Anyways, when I say this I removed the cache and measured the time it took for the SQL. It took like 2ms (since selects from tables with three rows are super quick). I then measured the function call with the cache enabled and it took something like 25ms. In this case, the 'optimization' actually took longer. The lead developer had this belief that any time you hit a relational store, its 'going to take too long', so just about every single SQL query was wrapped around memcached.

I don't work there any more.

All optimizations are premature optimizations.
One thing. Currently you only basically have web programming talks in the system. Your site name implies that there would be every talk, not just programming talks.

I would also like to see the talks categorized little bit more better than just Featured, popular, recent, events.

One good thing would be to let users to submit talks into the system, which would free your time from finding talks which actually do not interest you personally.

Terrific idea. Beautiful web design. Awfully executed, because I think you built this for yourself and not for others.
First off, I'm sure that with the (recent?) surge in "check out my super efficient setup" posts, a write up of your config would be fairly well received.

The real reason I'm responding is to throw in my $0.02 that for those that want an easy and efficient tiling window manager setup, but don't want to go through the relative pain of xmonad, `awesome` is a great substitute. I've used it for years now, and although my office hardware changed from an old-ish ArchLinux box to a Macbook Pro, I'm still an avid fan of tiling WM's. Even on OS X, the first app I install is always 'DoublePane' to mimic the functionality. [1]

As efficient as vim shortcuts can make you while banging out code, I am a firm believer that most window managers are absolutely and completely inefficient. Most people whom I convince to give a tiling, scriptable WM a try never look back.

It's vim efficiency for everything you do!

[1] I'm not affiliated with DoublePane in any way, and there are alternatives out there. That said, for $1.99 (last I checked), it does an incredible job of increasing my efficiency on my Mac.
I would add:

- Distinctive

- Easy to spell

- Easy to pronounce

- Fairly unique on Google

- Abstract is better than meaningful

I love the suggestion that the domain name doesn't matter. A big mental shift for me, but the examples are compelling. Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. Easy to spell and pronounce are really important. If people aren't comfortable talking about your company, they wont talk about it. We named my first company Voila! Software, and that was a really dumb name. People were afraid to say or even type it.

Quantcast is the best company name I've used, and that was actually suggested by Godaddy. Imagine that.
"too many better alternatives already exist"

This is utterly false. In academia you will find numerous peer-reviewed journals which have high percentages of non-native English speaking authors. You'd probably find many articles in such journals to contain "bad English". But they're often doing totally original research and so, no, better alternatives don't exist.

We live in an era where English is the de-facto language of the internet and some of the most brilliant people aren't native speakers of English and so might be considered to have "bad English". Not reading their work seems like a perfect way to miss out on learning things you might not otherwise learn.
Minor typo:

> "[object Object]" with {}+[]

I believe it should be []+{}
Everyone seems to be ignoring the real reason why the petition didn't get 25,000 signatures, which is that it's hard to find 25,000 Americans who really give a rat's ass one way or the other.

Spend some time in the TSA queue at any US airport, and see if you hear anything but "Baaaaa" from your neighbors in line. That's why the petition didn't reach the required threshold. Occam's Razor in action.
No. (blows raspberry)

Besides, the adjective 'patent troll' has very little to do with the veracity of individual patents. Patents can be perfectly sound, but still be subject to trolling. Trolling is generally the activity of treating patents as a stock portfolio of licensable monopolies, without an intention of undertaking the risk of actual production, and this seems to describe the majority (but not all) of the behavior of I.V. rather well.
I can't help feeling that this story would have gotten more media attention if only the photo had been posted to Twitter or Instagram
Whatever he wants it to mean, apparently. I would reckon any Disney movies would fall under this, but not the Linux kernel.

Unless we want to go really old school, before copyrights were filed. But "traditional" may not take that long to apply, I guess?
Most of this is due to a relatively new phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabgrass_Frontier:_The_Suburba...

The concept of a 'front lawn', or even of easy access to nature in general, has not always been as popular as it is today. As Jackson notes, a front lawn is rather useless except as a status symbol (unlike a back lawn, people rarely use the front lawn for barbecues, etc.), and they can cut the amount of available space in a neighborhood by 50% or more, making them a truly luxury expense.

But this popularity wasn't always so widespread - and n fact, it isn't even so commonplace in some parts of the world today (though the Westernization of global cultures has changed this somewhat).

For those who are interested, the most expensive zip codes in New York are 10014 (by real estate) and 10128 (by income). The poorest would probably be 10451 (South Bronx).

Contrast those both to 10025 and 10027, the border of Harlem (poor, but rapidly gentrifying, historically black) and the Upper West Side (historically well-off for several decades, also a large Jewish community).
Arstechnica should be banned for submitting these spammy articles. The content is clearly ripped off from

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152392/is-it-...
Youtube videos can be taken down relatively easily with report or direct takedowns. Compared to those search takedowns are a last resort and mostly used on very pirate-oriented sites. This article makes it seem like google's doing something really tricky when they're not.
Drone delivery service
Of course I'm OK with having unregulated private video recording systems. I have 6 of them around me right now - my Macbook Pro, my iPad, iPhone, two digital cameras and home security system. Why would I want the government to tell me how to use these? Because you're afraid of the government? Fine, it is prudent, but why your fear of the government turns you to regulation which is government? Maybe you mean government should report on information it collects and not collect it without a good reason? But then sensationalist description of the technology has nothing do do with the topic, does it? Then the reporting should be - which information is collected, why and why I should be concerned about it. I would certainly welcome such article. But RT does nothing of the sort.

But you have taken much efforts trying to ridicule OP's use of words "digital", "encrypted, "instantaneously", "undisclosed" etc. How is this discussion tactics called?

I'm ridiculing them not because they use these words, but because their narrative is non-existant without these words and spooky style of their arrangement. If you strip them, you are left with "Some company has video recording security system, that involves recording data, storing it on the server and then running some algorithms on it. Some law enforcement agencies use it, and the management of the company has worked for the government in the past and now is probably using their past contacts to get government contracts". I do not see anything spooky here, and it's definitely not as sensationalist as the article is, and not nearly as interesting. That's what I am ridiculing them for - for sensationalizing a mundane piece of uninteresting information into a full-blown conspiracy theory.
Most Google employees are not Larry or Sergey.
Yes, your referenced link WAS a general comment regarding mobi and epub, which has evolved a lot in the last two years.

I imagine this book, since it's from CUP, will be available as a Kindle purchase if not now then very soon. I've been purchasing textbooks for the Kindle for awhile now. My only complaint is typically the equations are included as images, so they can be very small.

How I wish MathML were a standard for academic publishing.
Zed Shaw's own course hosting service
There's a second half of the article? All I see are the top 3 answers copy & pasted into a blog post.
If you like DoublePane you might like size-up better. I use that and cinch but I am considering a switch to Moom. It has even more interesting features and combines the size-up features with cinch.
Short term life insurance is far less than risky than lifetime pension.
A middleware proposal for App.net
I'm pretty sure I don't want tail recursive toilet paper. That may just be me.
Okay, here's my question:

Regardless of whether "the Administration" cut this petition short or not, what is the benefit of keeping the TSA around?

No, no, I don't mean because they're ineffective or violating our rights or anything like that (although those points are valid as well) -- my question is what is the political motivation for keeping the TSA intact?

Sure, you could argue that some conservatives (that hate everything Obama does anyway) would get more riled up about "helping the terrorists," but those people will never vote democrat anyway.

In fact, you could even argue that some die-hard conservatives would applaud Obama for ending the violation of citizens' rights.

If the government knows how ineffective the TSA is (and always has been), and how much most people dislike the organization, does it make sense to hold out on the TSA until it gets closer an election, then dissolve it? Is the TSA still active as an ace-up-the-sleeve of political clout?

If not, what is the political reason for keeping them around? I really can't figure it out.
I don't understand where the hate is coming from. What are people disputing here? That the picture was found on Flickr? That the scientists didn't really see the picture?

What is it, exactly, that's getting in your craw?

It's a trivial little story. The thing that got me to comment here was the fact that it (the new species) wasn't named after the photographer; that's all. But I am really surprised to see people questioning the veracity of the story which is so insignificant (there are 100s of new species being discovered all the time; it's not like they found Sasquatch or something), and the baffling assertion that it's got something to do with the management at Flickr.... really?!?!?
DuckDuckGo must be loving this change.

Google definitely seems to be on the path of "Big Brother" and I don't like it.
Show HN: remote access to your Android phone with Shynk
Poison Ivy/Oak: DOS of the TP world.
Everything I had in my mouth is now on my screen. Thanks for a great laugh.
The most crucial point is to not obsess over names.

Obsess over product, not name. Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping. Would you care if Google renamed itself to Moogle? Probably not. Google's search engine is the best, independent of name. To paraphrase billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, brands are nothing more than proxies. Meaning, great names cannot hide poor products -- especially in the information age.

There are many examples of ordinary names representing extraordinary businesses. Apple. Four Seasons. Amazon. These names evoke excellence because the underlying services are excellent. Strong brands today will fade tomorrow once quality suffers. Think GM, Dell, and Sears. In short, search for a cool domain, but remember a name is nothing more than a proxy. Build something people value, and value will flow to the name.
How is your app better than a train, which I could also afford? All kidding aside: I'd prefer to read a post about how and/or you wrote your app than you to kick out a link directly to the App Store.
I'll check those out now -- thanks! :)
Moving to Octopress From Wordpress
Just curious - how is it that you have claim data? In fact, how is it that you (if I'm not misunderstanding) are storing any actual live data whatsoever?

Just to clarify...you have some data with patient identifiers already "removed"...or are you stripping it yourselves before sharing?

If the latter (which I hope is not true), how would a third-party like you obtain identifiable data? Why would a third-party providing an eligibility API end up storing data (particularly claim data) of any kind to offer to share?
Name-Reaction: Chemical Reactions, Explained Beautifully
The letter was written in response to this request for comments: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/06/25/help-us-shape-our-...

If you (like briandear) believe that including anti-tax arguments in a response would increase the efficacy of the response, I'd strongly suggest that you avoid a career in marketing or sales. Not trying to be snarky, but I can't think of a polite way of expressing how ineffective the inclusion of general anti-tax sentiment would be when attempting to persuade the target audience.
Isn't this essentially the same basic principle as rotating yourself in an office-chair without touching anything[1]? I'm not sure how the friction of the seat bearing or air resistance contributes, but my understanding is it's negligible.

[1] Usually by making sudden lateral movements with outstretched limbs whilst bringing them inward, much the same as the cat.
This is particularly ironic since it is Google - owner of YouTube. YouTube is by far the site with the largest amount of infringing content, and the largest amount of takedown requests.

But somehow I doubt YouTube will be "demoted" as apparently other sites will be. In fact YouTube has a special position in the top bar of Google products, even better than a search result. Does anyone think Google will be removing it from there? If not, it's clearly unfair to demote any other site that competes with YouTube (or doesn't, for that matter - what's fair should be fair).
Does anyone want to speculate on the evolutionary reason behind that interesting pattern on its back?

It's odd because it makes an insect that otherwise is very camouflaged much more noticeable. This makes me wonder if it's biomimicry of another dangerous/poisonous/distasteful local insect.
I have to agree. Being a genius is very important
if you want to be a mathematician.

How do you know? What makes you say this? I know many research mathematicians who are not geniuses (and a few who are) so I'm keen to know exactly how you have come to this conclusion.
Two things, first account creation is fairly difficult to game. Theres ways to do it, but it requires either quite a bit of manual interaction or some above average technical skills at this point, correct?

Second, those users are the easiest to detect. A previous report the team put out identified high friend/follow ratios as a tip off, but any decent bot is going to work the follow-> hope for follow back -> unfollow if not churn to build up their numbers, look more legitimate, etc.

Disclaimer: the post was written by a member of my team, and I've done some work on our social network monitoring previously and continue to.
Most people believe the TSA is effective and is keeping us safe from terrorists. You'd need a way to convince everyone that it's not true to avoid the backlash.
Appendix F - Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle
Unique on Google I would see as sufficient, but not necessary. But, as was commented earlier, don't name & spell your project after something extremely common (e.g. Rastafarian).

Given that, Python seems to have done remarkably well given these constraints. Having a superior project speaks volumes, apparently.
Have fund reading your blog on Internet Explorer (7 and 8, I suppose 9 works) ...
No shoutout yet for Project Noah?

http://www.projectnoah.org/

"Backed by National Geographic, Project Noah is mobilizing a new generation of nature explorers and helping people from around the world appreciate their local wildlife. Our community is harnessing the power and popularity of new mobile technologies to collect important ecological data and help preserve global biodiversity."
If you do happen to watch the sample episode, the main interview portion (2:00 on wards) is subtitled in English. The episode is about the caste system.
> Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping.

While true, I would hesitate investing with a group called "Bernie Madoff Groupies" or purchasing a DVD from an Ebay company called "KnockOff".
Ultimate Cosmic Power in an Itty-Bitty Thinking Space
I'm usually a fan of Google, but I would love for them to get into real anti-trust trouble over not demoting Youtube, too, and getting forced to demote it because of the stupid decision they took themselves about downgrading sites based on DMCA notices. It would be something very satisfying about seeing this backfire against them.
"Third Hand" Languages
I've made a library on top of D3 at an internship with a startup (Goalbook) to help visualize their student data, goals and performance.
Github: https://github.com/JainLabs/charts
Sample implementation: http://jainlabs.github.com/charts/goalbook.html
Docs: http://jainlabs.github.com/charts/

It's meant to be easy to extend and wrap. To make it easier to represent (for example) the reading level of a student, you can use the DRA (a common reading metric) wrapper. Rather than describe the _chart_ (x, y coordinates), you describe the _data_ (timestamp, score).

We also invented a new chart - grouped line - to represent complex goals for students. The grouped line chart shows multiple trials in a day/period, rather than boiling data down into a single point. The sample implementation demos a use case.

I would love feedback on the project!
I've had a front-paged node.js app behind nginx. It was running on the smallest Linode instance. There were no issues managing the traffic.
It depends on what takedowns they mean - if it's those to the site itself or those targeted at Google Search. I don't see how could they detect the former in other sites, and Youtube probably doesn't get much of the latter.
> Abstract is better than meaningful

I think this point is lost on a lot of first-time founders.

Finding an abstract name that flows well and is unique is so much better than looking for random synonyms of a word you wanted (or even worse, mis-spellings of said word).

> Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway.

As a technical person, it always throws me for a loop to see so many people open a web browser and type either domain names or the full URL into a search bar. I think that as browsers like Chrome continue to gain popularity, the line between the "address bar" and the "search engine" will continue to blur, until there's no difference at all.

In the startup world, a name isn't everything -- you can't succeed just because you managed to snag `awesome.com`.

That said, if you think "cinerjie.com" will ever work out, you're sadly mistaken. [1]

[1] It's supposed to sound like "synergy." I'm lame, and I apologize :)