skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Programming shouldn't contain 'neat tricks'. (Incidentally, one of Python's guiding principles is "explicit is better than implicit": http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/)

Every single instance of "reversed_string = orig_string[::-1]" should be preceded with a comment saying "reverse the string", because it's not immediately obvious what [::-1] does. You can learn what it does, but it's not obvious, the same way a cryptic regex isn't obvious. So why not write reversed_string = orig_string.reverse()? (Or reverse( orig_string ) if that's more Pythonic.)
Sensationalism. It also infects the media. interesting essay on the same by Crichton: Why Speculate? : http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-whyspeculate.html
The term "startup" has come to mean something special in a small community. I have doubts if it holds true everywhere.
Google Ends Program to Sell Radio Ads
I think addresses and pass-by-reference drive people crazy when they start
It would be a little faster. The first part of copy.copy looks like

def copy(x):
"""Shallow copy operation on arbitrary Python objects.

See the module's __doc__ string for more info.
"""

cls = type(x)

copier = _copy_dispatch.get(cls)
if copier:
return copier(x)

# more after this point but it's not relevant for lists

So calling copy.copy on a list over using list() will check for the type, look up the type in a dictionary after which it will proceed as if you called list() yourself.
absolutely...
His remarks got that credibility because of the rush and secrecy used to bail out the institutions last year. Kanjorski isn't the only legislator that was told "the economy will crash if you don't pass this RIGHT NOW!" Like the urgency to invade Iraq in 2003, there won't be any direct quotes by administration people claiming "DOOM!" while at the same time, every utterance, every speech, and every interview was carefully crafted to give the message of "DOOM!"

And since the stories of why such drastic measures had to be taken immediately made little to no sense to the public, people had to fill in the gaps with pieces of stories that indeed made sense to them.
I'm not sure either... A hand-written .clone() method would always beat the generic solution of course, but it seems like the tradeoff is that you spend less time coding, which is a win.
"...in the 1930s the economies outside the US were unaffected"

Perhaps you should read the Wikipedia article on the great depression paying careful attention to the section on effects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_great_depression#Effects.

"...and exports to those economies dragged the US out of depression"

If by "exports" you mean all the bullets and bombs and tanks and so forth that the US sent out to blow up everybody else's stuff, then I agree with this statement. You also need to include all the stuff that was then sent over to rebuild that blown up stuff to account for why the depression didn't continue after the war was over.

On the other hand, I heartily agree with your statement that today's problems are vast and that it may take years to heal. It's going to be painful to reduce production now that people will not be able to continue to borrow to fund lifestyles that are beyond their means. It will be even more painful when everybody figures out that the government can't do the same.
Replaced front rotors, calipers, pads, master brake cylinder. Currently contemplating replacing rear brake drums and shoes. Probably need to replace some suspension components soon. My car has developed a troubling squeak and click in the front left.

So I do only basic things. I draw the line at anything engine related. I have too much fear that I could screw something up. If I had old beater project car (like a VW bug), I might consider trying more difficult stuff.
Just a note - gray text with black links is very confusing to read.
This is why you stay away from these countries. You don't have the same rights and can't expect sane legal proceedings like you can in America.
Drat, the only one I don't know is [0:10:2]. I guess it's back to The Python Tutorial for me. http://docs.python.org/tutorial/

Followup: The tutorial didn't seem to mention what [x:y:z] does, so I checked:

>>> range(15)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]

>>> range(15)[0:10]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

>>> range(15)[0:10:2]
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

>>> range(15)[0:10:3]
[0, 3, 6, 9]

So the third argument is the number of elements to skip (minus one) between each item in the new sequence. Neat.
Another crazy non-secular society.
It's risky -- can they survive with a 3% conversion rate (free to paid)?
A few other things (sorry, not to snipe too much! :) )

-I'm skeptical of the idea of a single "standard text" in such a fast-moving field. New machine learning techniques appear constantly and are often documented online years before they appear in books. Some computer scientists say they prefer conference proceedings over academic journals because the latter take so long.

-Further, I'm not sure that the goal of any text should be to cover topics X, Y and Z in any case, which doesn't seem possible for a book to do. What does seem feasible is to set up a framework for analyzing the performance of different techniques. So I'd like to hear a comparison of how Bishop does that vs. HTF.

-You're of course correct that HTF takes a statistician's POV on the field - the authors are all professors of statistics at Stanford. They are also accomplished - Friedman was a co-author on CART, for example. I would instead ask the question: what can you get out of the book and the framework it offers?

-I think that part of the framework in machine learning is to think about bias AND variance, and how to trade them off successfully. This is an important part of model selection, for example.
Yep, totally, and I'm trying to say that too. I totally understand they are different things. And maybe that's still the best strategies for them respectively.

But, you still can't help notice that Yahoo has and is still disintegrating going with "portal", and Google doing search as their primary entrance to all things Google has won so much from Yahoo: Search,advertising,maps,etc

Maybe things could have been slightly different for Yahoo if portal had been moved as a second priority to a clean desk search.
reversed_list = list(reversed(orig_list))

This works too, and IS more readable. But this doesn't work for a string for example.

I didn't stay to replace ALL slices with list(). Of course this wont work all the time. For instance [:] has nice properties like conserving the sequence type:

>>> (1, 2, 3)[:]
(1, 2, 3)

>>> [1, 2, 3][:]
[1, 2, 3]

This is not possible if you call list(), or tuple() directly.

Slice is a feature that requires more "cleverness" from the programmer and more brain power from the guy reading the code.

To cite Dijkstra:
"[The competent programmer] avoids clever tricks like the plague."

If list() make your code clearer, use it. The goal is to write a working program with clear and readable code, not to show off with you mastery of slices.
Scientists Discover Material Harder Than Diamond
People in glass houses... (We ARE at HN, where #ccc is king.)
Thanks for the link to Google's browsersec page, that's really useful. http://code.google.com/p/browsersec/wiki/Main
TweeterGetter - A Great Way to Get More Twitter Followers
I am always skeptical about these Twitter tools claiming they can add tons of followers to your twitter network. Well today I randomly found this new tool and decided to play around with it..and since then I have been getting many many new followers!
That's a module in the standard library.

What I'm saying is, there's no copy or clone or dup method built into Python's base object, as there is in Ruby. And Python programmers are not instructed to define a clone method for a class, as in Java. A __copy__ or __deepcopy__, okay, but not copy or deepcopy.

Hence, in Python you just don't see foo.clone() or foo.dup() or foo.copy() or foo.deepcopy(). Instead, you see copy.copy(foo) or copy.deepcopy(foo). Pythonic code often looks different than Ruby or Java, looks more stand-alone function-y than instance method-y.
Hmm.. so you've never seen a real professional journalist sensationalize and oversimplify a story?

And you've never seen a blogger fact check a story?

It seems to me the majority of bloggers AND journalists are crap and the exceptions are good.
By putting it in a module, you avoid having to add the method to every single class.
> Portland has astounding things happening, but no one ever hears of them or the people doing the work.

Examples?
I've clearly missed something. Other than being a baroque way to generate an approximation that doesn't really mean much, I guess I don't see what makes it so funny?
An example of Android's wonderful documentation (/sarcasm)
I thought this was going to be a talk on performance issues. I think most python people dealing with production code would understand either.
Well, the contest approach(controversy?) seems to have garnered a healthy amount of interest(scrutiny?) for the project. All of your clarifications and justifications have been on point, but I'm still uneasy about the underlying premise.

One thing is certain: whether or not I decide to get involved I will definitely be following along.
-Josh
It looks like everything after dynamic programming in 2007 is missing the video, including the lecture where he builds a proof of NP-hardness from a randomly selected problem in class.

/That/ is something I'd like to watch!
Redeye VC: Medical Research 2.0
Television projectors
There are two important things to consider when looking for a home theater system. The budget-performance ratio is one of the most essential things to see for your system.
Twitter Shorty Awards Bonus - Short Speeches
This might not be the place to ask, but I'm curious and I've never quite understood: why/how do you use version control systems like GitHub? I've never worked with it in a project, and I've never quite seen the point: I keep all of my files backed up, my partner does the same, and so if we need to go back and look at something it's not hard. We edit directly from the server, so there's no need to sync information. So: why would I use something like Git or Mercury?

I'm not attempting to troll: I'm just curious. Since Github is YCombinator (I think, right?), I'm sure a lot of people use it. So: as somebody who works as part of a two-man group, who keeps his files all stored and backed-up offline, what does Git get me?
Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in 30 Minutes
More. Always more. Anything that's been around for a while and still gets media attention is a fad, especially if it's a site that encourages so much pointless time-wasting if used incorrectly.
But [:] and [::-1] are not neat tricks, they're basic features of the language, and are immediately understandable once you've learnt about slices. Practically the opposite of a cryptic regex.

The purpose of comments should not be teaching the reader the language, that just makes the code noisy.
Wait.. if this were true it would mean that politicians embellish facts to promote an agenda. Can it be?
Twitter's secret: the law of unintended consequences
Wow. I've never seen that page before. Thanks a ton!
Hmm, no. You have to add __copy__ and/or __deepcopy__ to every class.
Facebook is the biggest in the world with 200 million unique visitors per month, but Myspace is the biggest in the US with 50 million unique visitors per month.
this might be a way around it in IE

http://code.google.com/p/browsersec/wiki/Part3#Microsoft_Int...
'That market is itself made up of people who are trying to beat each other, and statistically, most will fail and disappear. That doesn't mean that the market is a failure or that it's "pseudoscience".'

The trouble is, you can come up with a pretty good approximation of a portfolio that reflects the "wisdom" of the broad market on your own. Pick one or a few diversified index funds, follow some guidelines to split up your portfolio between fixed income and equities (maybe add some real estate or commodities if you want to get fancy), and you're done. You might get some suggestions on the particulars of which index fund, or exact allocation percentages, from a money manager but that's not really adding much value. Maybe just a one time consultation.

But what if you want to beat the market? Is there someone you can go to and be confident he or she has a good chance to succeed?

Well, if such a person exists, you probably will not be able to identify him or her, except maybe if you know as much about money management as they do. Bernie Madoff is the perfect example here. The people who invested with him were not able to distinguish his pyramid scheme scam from a good investing scheme until it was too late. Some of his investors were supposedly pretty sophisticated in financial matters, too.

So, you can get the average market return on your own, and you probably can't tell a good money manager from a bad one. That eliminates most of the reasons for employing a money manager, even if good ones exist.
I'm not an expert on Catholicism. The Pope knows more about Catholic doctrine than I do. But I know something important about Catholicism that the Pope doesn't know.

Mainstream macroeconomists are starting to look a lot like the Pope.
Getting lucky is hard work
This happened 2 years ago.

Considering they stopped updating their blog around the same time, it's safe to say the free -> paid only change killed their business.
Three Loops that all do the Same Thing
Paper books are to ebooks like the theatre is to cinema. Cinema is more storable, purer, more controllable. It's more permanent in the sense that it lasts in different form. That said, there's an art to theatre that can't be replicated on-screen, and because of those arts, and because of the incredible history of theatre, it won't ever go away. It might not be constantly in the spotlight, but it'll always be there.

Similarly, paper books won't disappear. I'll be able to hold on to my Little Nemo and Krazy Kat and Series of Unfortunate Events and my kids will be able to have that same thrill of opening a new book for the first time. Maybe they'll read more ebooks than they'll read books, but the books will always be there.
Shorter Mary Lou Jepsen: My company's magic vaporware will solve every single display problem by 2010.
A 30hp generator would be sufficient to give a car essentially unlimited range, but it adds a few grand in cost, 4-500 lb's of weight and a host of mechanical issues. If you don't need it 95% of the time what's the value in dragging it around? If you can rent it for less than the cost of ownership what's the value in renting it?
NZTE launches new Export Awards
FTC Gives its Final Warning to Ad Industry
I think it's a little early to call them 'killed' just yet. We went through much the same, though we always kept a free basic service and I don't think I could count the number of times we'd been declared 'dead' when we rolled out our premium service.

Money needs to come in, zoto has probably tried to get acquired or to get funding, and failing those two avenues they now have three options:

- close the doors

- roll out a premium offering on top of their free offering

- roll out a premium offering and shut down the freebies

Since their costs are probably very much bandwidth related they chose to do the latter, their conversion rates must have indicated that it is better to have a smaller number of users, a smaller bandwidth bill and be profitable than to be much larger and to be running at a possibly massive loss.

The biggest factor is how many people have already converted to the new paying model, and how much of their revenue they are going to reinvest in marketing, which is another option if you don't have a free service. Their 60 day free trial is a smart alternative to free users, it will pull in enoughpeople to give it a shot if the can keep some traffic going.

Time will tell if it worked for them, it will certainly be interesting to watch.

At least now it is a business, instead of a money pit.
Mash-ups + open goverment, troubling or triumphant?
Very useful. Thank you for writing/posting it.
Yep, my bad. Great example and I forgot. Before I saw your comment I actually just posted this today:

http://n8.tumblr.com/post/77817247/forgot-about-probably-the...
NOOP.NL: Code Reviews and Sex Orgies
I have an idea. A public - private (government - investor) fund to buy toxic assets from banks was proposed as a way to get banks stable again. Why not have something like that but entirely private? No tax dollars involved. In a sense the investors buying into that would sort of be "taking one for the team". But it is like with high-risk jobs like fixing a telephone wire or something one can get hazard pay, incentives should be structured for those investors willing to take one for the team. Like FDIC insured "coupons" or something. So if I am an investor buying into the "toxic asset rescue fund" I can buy say a 1 million dollar "coupon", redeemable after some reasonable number of years at some reasonable but attractive interest rate (say 3%). And it is FDIC insured. So I am others like me buy a bunch of "coupons" in this toxic asset rescue fund. The money goes into the banks to help them stabilize. The assets bought are worthless and may not even be tangible, but the fund managers for this rescue fund can try and sell off or profit from the assets as best they can, but even so, they will probably be in the red still, but that doesn't matter so much. In 10 years when the coupons are redeemable, the banks will have money again, and the FDIC can insure the redeeming of the coupons. The fund can be managed basically by bank managers for the banks who are benefiting from it. All the government has to do is insure the coupons being bought to get enough investors to be confident enough to join the fund. But in 10 years hopefully the banks can pay back the coupons and the Feds won't have to pay any insurance out anyway. The toxic assets are the cancer eating the banks, which is eating the economy so it is imperative this be taken care of, in order to increase liquidity. The rescue fund proposed is a good idea. I'm saying why not make it all private. Keeps the burden off the tax payers, and still provides a way for banks to cover their asses.
I don't recall advocating protectionism or shutting off immigration. I favor it, and I said so in my previous comment. I just think we need to actively manage it to avoid unpleasant side effects.

I want immigration policies which promote this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari

I want the policies also to discourage this: http://www.laweekly.com/2006-07-27/news/they-wanted-all-blac...

Similarly (on a topic which avoids knee-jerk responses), I support increased bike usage, while I oppose bike use on sidewalks.
Google Now Scraps Radio...
It really surprises me how many companies seek VC funding. I can't imagine giving away part of my business.

I understand that for some businesses to work they need to start off big, but IMHO loads of YC and other VC backed businesses just aren't in that boat.

Maybe I'm a different kind of business person though. My goal is to build a small business that will sustain me and my family and get me out of the office grind - seems like a much more realistic and attainable goal than the "go big and exit with millions" strategy :)
It's not garbage reporting, it's a badly written sentence that makes it read as if the "lurid rumors" part only applies to the first part (sinking), not the second (cockroaches).
I'm simply pointing out that the existence of successful investors doesn't itself carry any information about why they might be successful.

As for the rest, well, yes, it is apples and oranges. What hypotheses does entrepreneurship make about way the world works? Is the purpose of doing so to explain or enlighten? Even religion is more scientific in its goal.

It's like calling pottery or engineering or writing a (pseudo-)science. (Ceramic chemistry, physics, or linguistics would all count.... see?)
In the case of Amazon, perhaps the Associates Web Service APIs could allow the creation of tool allowing user-defined sorting functions. I've never used these APIs, but I found some details on them that lead me to think it would be possible. See http://aws.amazon.com/associates/#details

That said, asking honestly, are you entirely convinced of the mass appeal of user-defined (or user-selected) sorting algorithms? I find that the current algorithm usually gives fairly sane results.

(Edit: rewrote last sentence for clarity)
Computing in the Clouds
Perhaps because he's on the Financial Services Committee and Capital Markets Subcommittee and gets personally briefed by Paulson. That's a lot closer to the source than a Portfolio.com blogger.
No amount of money would lure me to a foreign country with debtor's prisons, where people go to jail for having a tiny speck of marijuana leaf found on the bottom of their shoe:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/...

I do wonder what people were thinking.
"Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip"

http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

(sorry, couldn't resist)
Some reasons you might want to use it:

1) can you roll back a certain feature easily if there is a bug with them?
2) can you and your partner edit the same files at the same time without clobbering your changes?
3) do you have a record of all of the features added and bugs you have fixed by datetime
4) are you and your partner always in sync?
5) if you really just edit files while on server do you ever want to develop software while disconnected from the web?
6) copying to backup folders is really cumbersome
7) can you easily create branches of your software if you want to try out something new and experimental?

The usefulness of version control increases exponentially with the number of developers you have but I even use it as a solo developer due to many of the reasons above.
Well, now I feel totally left out. They won't let me start an account there. I have no idea why. I sign up, but I can't get in. They say I have to have cookies enabled, and so I enable cookies. But no joy.

I sent them an email last Saturday and have not received a reply yet (it's Thursday).

Hmmmph.
Is this the mysterious new iPhone? (Pics)
There are probably a dozen easier Java answers to that problem... e.g. Java has a String.split method.
I'm firmly in the camp of index fund investing over picking individual stocks or money managers. Statistics will tell you that you're far better off just picking an index fund. But that doesn't make money management an invalid field or a pseudoscience. It just means that it's hard to differentiate between those with true skill and those who just got lucky.

It seems like the same can be said for venture investing. How do you know which entrepreneurs will be successful? You don't, so you go off of their past performance, the market environment, the strength of their idea and their team, etc, etc. But you also go one step further and try to spread the risk across a portfolio of investments. Perhaps you should do the same with money managers? Pick the 10-20 at the top of the field and let them all manage a piece of your portfolio? Obvious problems here as well.

On a related note, does this mean that venture funding is fundamentally flawed? That venture funds would be better off just putting their money in index funds? I have a hard time seeing that.
This new article is also very misleading with it's inclusion of 'stem cells'. They did a bone marrow transplant, not a stem cell transplant. While there are stem cells (not embryonic stem cells) in bone marrow, calling it a stem cell transplant is incorrect.
Yeah but playing on the floor of the mall is a fookin' blast!