skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maxtor had horrible reputation

Right... that's my point. I had a bad experience with WD once upon a time (multiple drives, all different batches). And when I had to build a ~1TB RAID in 2001, all of my research pointed to Maxtor. Side note: That actually turned out to be a good choice. The drives lasted 5+ years and didn't die until a fan gave out in the drive cage. Poor little guys got too hot and seized up. After all of that, I was still able to pull 99.5% of the data off of them.

What I was trying to get at is that looking at any specific case and making any blanket statements about quality of drives. Ask 5 people what are the best and worst drives and you'll get 5 different answers. We all have horror stories. The only way to know for sure is to have actual population-level data on reliability. Unfortunately, that data is somewhat hard to come by, so we all just rely on anecdotal stories.

It also depends on if we are talking consumer drives, enterprise drives, etc... I doubt that the return rate for drives would actually cover serious data errors which occurred after the return timeframe.

Honestly, the only people who could offer any insight are the large companies with huge datacenters: Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Rackspace, etc... and I doubt you'll hear them talking. If you could, I suspect the answer would be that it really doesn't matter which manufacturer you choose. All of them fail. All of them have bad batches. The best that you can do is try to minimize the MTBF and try to gracefully replace failed drives as soon as possible.
Aren't the JavaScript engines free to optimize the numbers and treat them as integers as long as they are integers?
In Memoriam: John Larmouth
OCR and Neural Nets in JavaScript
This is nonsense, analog also has a resolution. The stated resolution for the best audio cassettes i seen were 70us, correspondent (according to Niquist formula) to 28kHz digitalization, 1.5 worse than CDs. Most were worse, and it was just the resolution of the tape itself, telling nothing about ability of the recorder head to write them or read.

Same goes to photo film: image consists not of molecules, but of silver granules on film which are about a micron size, and either black or white. Actual resolution (which depends on contrast) is indicated on a film roll (for quality films), as a chart lp/mm vs contrast. While high resolution (and low-sensitive) film beats CCDs in this regard, reaching and somewhat exceeding 100 lp/mm which is equivalent to 2.5 microns per pixel, remember about Bayer pattern on chips to make color photos, vs about 5 microns per pixel in CCDs on DSLRs, this only comes with low sensitivity and other issues. General purpose photo films in most common shooting conditions are normally about same resolution as a good DSLR (full-frame because otherwise you have to apply a crop factor), and even than is an overshoot because most lenses does not provide that resolution, see MTF chart for most of them, the 'resolution' line is typically drawn measured at 30 lp/mm equivalent!

I am not even talking about such a fundamental effect as diffraction. It will block any further increase in image quality, whatever the lens and film is, long before you get down to 'molecules' (in fact, diffraction is in fact a limiting factor for resolution in many shooting conditions).

How important is the diffraction? Let's take practical best and worst case.

Best case: Full frame 20mpix DSLR, 6.5u pixels. Canon EF 50mm F/1.2L fixed focal length lens, resulting in about 41.6mm aperture. Resolution at peak sensitivity of 0.55 microns for this lens means that diffraction disk diameter will be 1.22 * 0.55/41666=1.61E-05 rad, which will be seen from 50mm distance (focal length, i.e. distance to film) as having 0.8u diameter - 8 times less than the pixel. So diffraction has no meaning here.

But, it is easy to see that there is a direct relationship between focal ratio and Airy disk diameter, so when diaphragm closes to 1.2*6.5/0.8 = ~f/9.7, Airy disk becomes as big as the pixel - making smaller pixel useless. This is not an extreme value - doing outdoor shooting in all-auto mode normally results in images done at f/8 or f/11 diaphragm. So, making pixels much smaller than they are now is all but useless even in a perfect optical system (which does not exist). Of course, same equally applies to film.
Sure, that's why I said might, the specifics matter a whole lot.
I believe(?) this was heavily inspired by TheCodePlayer [1], but I don't see any mention of him around here. He has lots of really nice videos like this.

[1]: http://thecodeplayer.com/
Wow, great discussion on risk. The only thing I would add to the discussion is that before you try to model risk, you should read 'The Flaw of Averages', by Sam Savage - http://flawofaverages.com/

Put simply, any real risk model should probably avoid being a 'single number', but a range of probabilities. This models the distribution of possibilities much better and helps you make better decisions.
That's roughly where my mind was going too.

You'd still need a safe way to stop the vehicle in the event of an earthquake and rupturing of the path down which the vehicle flies.
How everyone in the world is probably descended from Nefertiti and Confucius
Yeah, that makes sense. Which is why it could also be problematic, if taken out of a QM context and applied classically.
فيلم Thale 2012 مترجم | YallaMovie
In deep with Tesla CEO Elon Musk
This is awesome. I had a friend who partied … way too hard and begged not to be given academic suspension. When he came back a year later he saw to it to maintain a 4.0 and mail reports of his grades to all the professors who had booted him each semester.
فيلم Juan Of The Dead 2011 مترجم | YallaMovie
You might be my favorite reader! Thanks!
these photos are from 100 years ago.

This is the work of 21st century photoshop.[1,2,3]

_____________

Notes:

[1] "Each photograph takes days of painstaking Photoshop work, adjusting the color levels, removing the blemishes, adding contrast, etc."

[2] A psd has 3 RGB monochrome channels, that are blended together to create a full colour image. The analogues of which were created here using RGB filters to create meta-images on glass plate. Digitized, they become colour separations. The "contemporary look" is a result of the final post-processing.

[3] http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs129/asgn/proj1/
Why Rebol was never open-sourced I will never know. I guess Carl came from a different time and the non-Unix/non-academic world where software tools were sold at a high price.

Rebol has so many interesting ideas in it that it really could have carved a respectable niche in the world of networked programming languages. Just having sensible pragmatic built-in types for email and money was enough to bring it to my attention.

It's is a very odd but amazingly powerful little language worthy of study by anyone interested in language design. It has been a big influence on me even if I have never used it for anything 'real'.
Well, flash doesn't behave like non-volatile memory, but it is like random access memory. You don't have to wait for a spinning disk to come around in order to read a sector. And, SSDs can read any block at the same speed. HDs read sequential blocks faster. The mechanics of writing/erasing doesn't change the fact that it is much closer to slow memory than fast disk. You can leave the implementation details (wear leveling, etc) to the controllers.

It actually reminds me a lot of old core memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory). In order to read core memory, you had to actually try to write to it. If the voltage changed, you guessed wrong, so you then knew the correct value.
Very brave considering Apple is very trigger happy with the lawsuit gun whenever they see anyone using rounded corners not to mention a full on iPhone image... :)
I'm not comfortable keeping all my passwords in a single companies database. They are good products, it's just a personal preference.
I did not go to MIT; heck I haven't been to the States. But, this post does really warm my heart!

I am about to graduate from an elite Indian university and I can only gasp at the vast difference. Restrictions on what courses you can take up as electives, exams that many a times test only on memory, the end goal to academics is to land a decent job, subpar internet access, etc.

But, I have benefitted greatly from MIT's OCW. I haven't signed up for any course on edX but have religiously completed a couple of courses on Udacity and eagerly waiting for NLP to commence on Coursera.
How long do you want to live? Pondering the possibilities of living to 164
>There has to be more ways to make money with all these users and all these likes. What can I do?

Likes is not a currency. Get a job.
Everyone out there who wants to learn to code, stop reading these comments and use the time to just go learn!
At least one reason that smiling didn't persist for people of a certain time was that dental care wasn't the greatest, and people were reluctant to be captured with their poor teeth showing. Having had the opportunity to sort through thousands of studio photographs spanning most of the 20th century, I could almost date the age of the subject independent of the time the photograph was taken by seeing whether they were smiling or not.
yes, i understand what you are saying.

if i'm clear, you are saying, "the backend dev won't build the right thing if they don't don't a good UI person to guide WHAT to build".

Exactly ZERO startups that require _A_ backend to be built have succeeded with the right idea of what to build but no backend.

MORE THAN ZERO startups have succeeded by buildilng backends without consulting, often building the wrong thing first, or getting lucky, or with users that accept a SUBOPTIMAL (but better than status quo) experience.

In a perfect world you get infinite resources.

Obviously I'm painting this a clear either-or dichotomy, which its not, but the point is that sometimes, due to other constraints, an entrepreneur might have to make the call.

It doesn't make him a crappy entereprenur. Please understand that when you think "I won't work with him because he doesn't prioritize UX".
Non open source language and no huge company shoving it down people's throats (like MS/VB): people won't care. At best it will be a niche like Rebol.
depends on definition of rock star , by my definition there is handful of those , but judging by hiring companies there is a lot. I is all about perspective.
You're totally correct. And honestly, when you're doing numerical simulation like I am in the article, your error stems from the fact that you're only simulating 40 steps a second with only a first-degree solver.

Simulating physics for realsies takes a lot more than that.

The solver algorithm I used is called Euler's method, or ODE1 for short. It's the least accurate numerical ODE solver there is! When people do real physics simulations they use the Runge-Kutta (ODE45) or Adams-Bashforth-Moutlon (ODE113) solves, and they'll have 100,000 steps per second.

So while it's important to be cognizant of these things, it's also best not to stress to much about what's going on in the first of a series of educational articles :)
Carl Sassenrath is the designer of the original AmigaOS. Respect!
It's a tutorial, I think the point here is in the means, not the end result.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
These articles are not about developing video games or getting performance. They're about learning physics through a common language that most developers know: Javascript. It's ok that it won't beat flash or native client. It never intended to.

If you can read an article, understand what's going on and immediately open up Firebug and start playing with the equations, then Javascript has cut out 10 unnecessary steps (buying Flash, installing, learning actionscript, etc) or your path to playing with physics and numerical models!
I really, really don't understand why tabs should not be used for indentations.

People argue that with tabs, you can't get a consistent style between computers, but that's kind of the point isn't it? It gives you a certain flexibility. For smaller screens you can set a tab to represent 2 spaces; in larger screens, 8 spaces. OTOH if the person uses 8 spaces to represent an indent, then there's not much you can do to change that. And having to tap 2,4 or 8 spaces every time just doesn't make sense to me.

(I know you can set the editor to expand tabs to 4 spaces, but if you're going to do that, why not just stick with tabs?)

Am I missing something here?
Without tests at first glance I might be having false asssumptions on modern JS optimisations:
NaCl (C)
http://juliamap.googlelabs.com...
VS
http://www.atopon.org/mandel/#
does not strikes me as JS being an order of magnitude slower than NaCl.

It looks like I might be very wrong.

I will make my opinion later by calculating decimal of PI or something like that in C and in JS to benchmark.

I think I need to update my knowledge. :)
The bigger units like dragoons and goliaths were notorious for stupid behavior in groups.. so it was never really resolved, and became a feature that progamers had to deal with.
Q&A With Nine Great Programmers
Remote-control tech turns cockroaches into beasts of burden
I guess we just need to get widespread enough ;) We're working on that.
Nate,

I personally think the problem isn't with HN but us Developers.

We tend to be analytical by nature and hence whenever you show one of us something, our brains are always go into "Yes, but..." mode.

It's that "but" that says we are always looking for flaws. Looking to show others we can find a problem with their plan.

Example:
The biz guy tell the devs"we need to get this done for the client"? The devs immediately look for flaws in the plan such as "what about this...", "not sure if it will work because...", "yes, but what about...".

Some of us have seen this too many times.

The minute a Dev starts on the "Yes, but..." path they remain defensive and on the look-out to be smarter than everyone else. Looking for problems. Looking to show we know best.

We do this all the time. In my company I have barred my Devs from "Yes, but..." conversations.

Instead get you mindset into "Let's explore".

It just changes the whole tone of the conversation when we Devs start with a "explore..." mindset and not a "but...".

Try it. Go back and read the top 10 HN posts and keep thinking "let's explore" when you read a post. What kind of post comment can you then come up with then? Much more helpful I would say.
You should think more. You should think less. You should be constantly thinking. You should never think at all.

It’s not that simple yo.

Maybe the author of this article has a particular person and a particular task in mind when he says you should think less but, if you take him literally (as if he is saying all people should think less, all the time), he is definitely wrong. We didn’t evolve awkwardly large brains because they look nice or because god likes women to die giving birth.

Here’s are my two most important points: how much you should think depends on task at hand and whether you should modify the amount you think depends on your current habits. Any person who tells you how much to think and hasn’t considered these points is talking to the clouds.

Examples:

Yesterday I was transferring computer components between two different cases. While trying to install the optical drive, without thinking I kept putting the mounting brackets on the wrong way. Once I was sufficiently frustrated I actually thought about what I was doing. I realized that there were 8 possible ways to mount the brackets; only one way was correct; and then, after about 20 seconds of thinking, I learned the correct way and why it was correct. Had I used those 20 seconds of thinking at the start I could have saved myself 20 minutes of fumbling around. Moral of the story: thinking is good?

Second example. When I come home from the store I have to unpack my shopping into an inadequately sized fridge. When this problem was novel to me I used to pontificate about the best packing configuration and create a detailed plan. When unpacking I would find some things wouldn’t fit and others would have too much space so the plan needed to be revised. I would also worry about how difficult it was to retrieve things from the fridge once I’d packed them so I could find myself standing in front of the fridge for quite some time trying to make the best possible decisions.

Needless to say, I don’t do this any more. Instead I just start packing the shopping away and I just try things until its all packed and I don’t worry too much. I suppose I’m still thinking as I’m doing it but I’m also in a state of flow. Moral of the story: thinking is bad?

I think the point here has less to do with thinking and everything to do with control. We are naturally wired to find situations where we are out of control stressful and so we conclude that more control is always better when actually getting control of some things is more work than it’s worth.

Perhaps this is a lesson programmers need to learn more than other people. I used to program for a living and now I work with people a lot more than computers. I’m still having difficulty getting used to the fact that some of the people I work with aren’t that bright, or don’t care about doing a good job, or are used to always getting their own way. If you try to control that, you go insane.

As a corollary, maybe if you limit your attempts to control to a reasonable degree and you are able to keep your thinking focused, you should think as much as possible.

Please criticize what I’ve said here.
Ask HN: How to get into TC Disrupt Hackathon today - or where else to have fun?
We are two technical founders from berlin and came to SF to attend TC Disrupt.

Does anybody know how we could get into the hackathon today?

Alternatively, is somebody interested in having our own hackathon?
Thanks! By all means I understand this is my decision. Just wondered if anyone could see some other things that I don't see.

Yeah, as a developer for a consulting company, you use your one skill and the company is pretty much satisfied with that. Try to encourage the use of another technology, and you're met with "ask Joe about it" who will tell you, "Ask Jim" and so on. I have a lot of surface knowledge (in addition to an area or two of reasonable depth) that I'd love to be able to leverage in a work place.

Those are good starting point questions. The overall concept itself is not something I'm overly passionate about, I'll admit. The work - technologies used, day to day tasks, environment - sounds like what I'd like though. Gotcha. Yeah, I figured funding was a good start but wasn't sure that meant they'd "made it."
I never did understand why True and False are capitalized.

[EDIT: Turns out it's because all built-in constants are capitalized: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/521476/why-true-false-is-... . Learn something new every day. Still don't like it though.]

Also object-oriented programming in Python is very awkward. Then again, if I wanted OOP, I'd use C#.
Here's what Elon Musk has said about the book:

The only negativity in recent years was due to a book called The PayPal Wars, written by a sycophantic jackass called Eric Jackson. This guy was one notch above an intern at PayPal in the first few years of the company, but gives the impression he was a key player and privy to all the high level discussions. Eric couldn't find a real publisher, so Peter funded Eric to self-publish the book. Since Eric worships Peter, the outcome was obvious - Peter sounds like Mel Gibson in Braveheart and my role is somewhere between negligible and a bad seed. However, to his credit, Peter didn't realize the book would be as bad as it was and apologized to me personally at a Room 9 board meeting at David Sacks's home in LA.

http://m.gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to...
Can't say I'm looking for a ton of acceptance before making the switch. Just looking to get some general advice. Figured this community would be able to provide some interesting insight.
Poster ID's. A hash that's created based on your IP address and a seed that changes daily and per thread.

It stops people from claiming to be someone they're not, but I see your point about knowing who you're talking to.
Try Topaz (Rebol inspired language)
Very good article and very good explained. I have a hard time really getting physics but if my teachers would have explained it this way I might actually have had fun with it :)
Unless you have a sensitivity to the initial conditions, hence you have a chaotic system. Which happens as fast as n body interactions in a gravitational field (but how many bodies/iterations do you need, which initial conditions makes the error a problem?)

But as I stated earlier, I think I have to check first because I am not that convinced any more on the performance point of view that JS has a problem, and float representation is not a JS problem, but a problem global to all CPUs.

Well it can be more than 10^-12 sometimes and the problem is not in physics but in trading when errors stack up. That's why I prefer when e-commerce solutions are based on fixed point arithmetic.

Even though canvases are still not homogeneous in terms of performance from browsers to browsers, some works fairly well.
Here's the github[1], it compiles to javascript and runs on node.js.

Edit: Here's a presentation on the language[2].

[1] https://github.com/giesse/Project-SnowBall
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBJHMkN9qJ4
Married loser looking for female friend to Not cheat on with
Nobody has mentioned the inconsistent naming conventions in the standard library, which always drove me nuts.
Space, the Final Frontier, for a Price
" I plan to write more about path-finding in StarCraft because there are lots interesting technical and design bits."

Please, please do so. I find these articles so interesting.. I'm a Warcraft/Starcraft/Starcraft2 fan and love to see the engineering part of them. Thanks for writing these articles.
Thanks! That's what this series is all about. Physics and math really are fun, you just need to figure out an application that excites you and also have someone teach it to you in a manner that keeps you engaged. That's what I'm trying to do here, so if you're interested you can sign up for the mailing list and I'll send you emails when new articles are posted!
How do you find OOP in python awkward? Out of curiosity.
That's the main reason why I learned REBOL back in the day. I could build something on my Amiga and it would work the same no matter what platform.
I’d like little avatar pictures next to poster’s names. They are much easier to recognize quickly and introduce an extra level of accountability and identity to posting. I wonder if the reason this hasn’t been done is because PG is too busy or it would significantly increase server load.
We also avoid a lot of misery for that one person who'd need surgery.
Did anyone mention the Gil? I'm hearing more and more complaints about that.
All those self statements.
It's not a tutorial, but you can see the code for a single-element MacBook Pro here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4384954
- Multithreaded development; multiprocess is being favored (as well as event-driven) and there are some helpful modules for it

- Unicode (at least for Python 2)

- Debugging is a little behind other languages (pdb works)

- removal of map/filter in place of list comprehensions (they are certainly better but not faster)
So I think you are suggesting imposing a ban on cameras like here in UK bans guns. That is one approach and maybe effective however I feel that there are public good to be derived from surveillance tech, that if the govt has cameras to enable those benefits we still need to manage that and the difficulties of enforcing such a ban for civilian usesuggest to me that mitigating the
existence of cameras through open access is simplest approach
Most Entrepreneurs Fail to Delegate Productively
Having worked with multi-threaded applications in other languages, I'm starting to think that the GIL is more a good thing than a bad thing.

Seriously, threads are evil.