skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Weak signal given the size of the companies and their volatilities.

Let's observe the quoted, albeit stale, Google market capitalisation of $249.2 billion with a current vega-weighted mean implied volatility (market's opinion of what Google's volatility will be) of 31.12% and the quoted Microsoft market cap of $248.7 billion with an IV index of 22.51%. The question is, assuming these two Gaussian random variables vary independently [1], what is the probability that GOOG is still bigger than MSFT in one year? The answer is a hair above 50%. Plugging in $249.65 billion for Google and $248.02 billion for Microsoft (closer to present values) this probability rises closer to 51%.

Conclusion: insufficient evidence that this is more than random market jittering just yet.

[1] If this were more than a quick, stylised analysis I'd construct a covariance matrix or copula to describe the dependency structure. Given the razor thin odds, however, it is unlikely that correlation will help the OP's case too much.
Angel Round Sizes Head to Earth
They're high compared to historic US prices: http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Gasoline_I...
Knowing yourself
How two men knocked Angry Birds off the top of the charts with a pensioner
I don't understand how instant underwriting works. I thought the the reason it normally takes a while to get set up to take credit cards is because your merchant account provider is liable to the credit card providers for chargebacks, even if they can no longer collect that money from you because you went under months before.

Who assumes the risk for chargebacks in the instant underwriting scenario? How does that party control their risk?
What if you are on embedded hardware and/or can't use floats for some reason?
Twilio should simply add "send_date_time" or "call_date_time" param. I wonder why they have not?
As an "IT Guy" this deeply interests me. I outsource some things, and many others I run in-house. Typically I'll outsource something when I don't have the time to do it myself, and the cost to have someone else do it is reasonable (or, if I can take the time saved and work on something more important).

The thing with outsourcing IT stuff is that when something goes wrong, it can go disastrously wrong. Think about it - you could find a freebsd guy and pay him a retainer to keep him 'on call' whenever you need him. But, what happens if you need him desperately right now, and his car won't start (or he gets hit by a bus, or misses your call)?

To answer your question specifically, take a look at NASA. They have to build hardware that doesn't fail. They use old, tested technology, and they build multiple redundancies. Are you willing to pay double (at least) for old technology? Would you be happy with a 486, if you knew it was never going to crash?

I suspect that this is why many of us pay the "Apple tax".

This is a _hard_ problem to solve. That's why it's on PG's list
Norway, $9.23 on a good day. $9.80 on a bad day.
Epic Space Game Release 2.0 (11 Changes)
SocialChorus - San Francisco, CA
Full-time, full-stack Ruby On Rails Developers

SocialChorus is a social marketing and SaaS technology company. Until recently, word-of-mouth marketing did not have the scale, efficiency and ROI that global brands demanded. Our platform enables direct and enduring relationships between brands and thousands of their best advocates and fans. Equipped with a real-time performance dashboard, our clients take the guesswork out of their social marketing ROI. With over 25 Fortune 500 brands already using our software, our team is defining how brands leverage social influence to build sustained earned media. Backed by Kohlberg Ventures, SocialChorus has offices in New York City and San Francisco. http://socialchorus.com @SocialChorus

On to our development practices. We are on Rails 3.2.5 with deployment on Heroku and test driving EVERYTHING with Rspec, Jasmine, and Selenium. Every Monday we have an internal planning meeting that includes the dev team along with our project manager to go over upcoming features, stories that need discussion, and story estimation (Pivotal Tracker). Mornings start with stand-ups to go over the previous day's work, work for the current day, or any blockers anybody might have. Pair programming and green tests make the day fly by with the gratification of clean code without broken windows. Our analytics module runs in EC2, hitting nginx, aggregating all data into our sharded MongoDB database. Like to map/reduce over extremely large data sets? Sweet.

Great startup environment with a kegerator, ping pong table, Ruby Meetups every 3rd Thursday, Settlers of Catan, Bang!, Dominion, and poker tournaments! Food trucks every wednesday and friday too. Come join our team at: http://www.socialchorus.com/company/jobs or email jobs@socialchorus.com
IMHO that's either the navigator not knowing any better, or wishing he was the driver, or just being a jerk. The navigator's job isn't to focus on the nitty-gritty, that's what the driver is doing. The navigator should instead, since he's free to think more and look around, keep his eyes on the bigger picture. If the navigator is more skilled or experienced than the driver, then the navigator should be that much more patient and respectful.
How does it compare to Dart & Harmony (even coffeescript)?

I know that is a long answer, but I'd love a bullet point list of how if compares to the other javascript++ languages that have been coming out over the last couple of years.
Wholeheartedly support this thinking softie has no daggers hidden. The changes do make the language more readable and maintaninable compared to the mess called JavaScript. If the IDE is support is also there, this will be a no-brainer.
I think a major factor in conversions isn't that people are seeing offers and booking it themselves. The problem is that people sign up and fill out a form (and register) expecting to see prices right then, and instead have to wait at least an hour to see prices.

It may be better UX to show some hotels immediately via a hotel booking API and have very prominent messaging that they will receive lower offers within 24 hours. I'm already assuming you're emailing them with new offers (with tracking pixels) to determine if they're even opening, if they click through, and then what they do.

You should accept payments on your site... for several reasons.

1: Increase conversions - Not only because it's a quick and logical flow through the site, but also because you may be deal with people that don't want to talk to hotel agents on the phone and would rather get everything done online.

2: Know exactly how your business is doing - If you're just relying on the hotel to pay you the correct amount, you're leaving so much information about your business on the table. You can gather some, but informally. It'd be useful to know at what step people aren't converting, what is triggering changes, etc.

3: Shift responsibilities - Make the hotels invoice you.

4: Influx of capital. Paying hotels every month still makes it look like you have a lot of activity on the books. I dont know what your goal with the site is, but activity like this would be good to show to investors, interested buyers, etc.
I will protect Augusta's right to have just male members (not true anymore), just as I will protect the rights of every female-only gym. I will further bet that the female-only gyms have larger benefits than Augusta opening up to female members.

It is an unfair comparison between a profession and a club. They do not hold even close to the same place in society.
Very neat: naive attempts to memorize Pi with rational-number shortcuts (i.e., fractions with integers in the nominator and denominator, such as 22/7 and 355/113) seem pointless, because getting more decimal digits of Pi right requires that one memorize a correspondingly larger number of digits in the numerator and/or denominator, defeating the purpose of these native attempts.

--

PS. The author is offering a prize to the reader who finds the rational number which gets the most decimals of Pi right for every digit of such rational number that has to be memorized. (Note that only rational numbers are allowed -- that is, fractions with integers in the numerator and denominator. Using formulas or numbers that are not rational is not allowed in the competition.)
Maybe VC funding is not the best way to fund technology.. just throwing that out there. Maybe France should figure out a different way to fund technology than VC.

If France cannot figure out an alternative, I would say that killing existing funding is bad...
>When you get to the last laptop buy three new ones

You'd have to do this on the second laptop. If you do it on the last one, then you don't have a spare machine and have downtime while setting up your new machine(s).
READER BEWARE!

>>our versions got rejected because they perform slower on CPython (while being faster on PyPy)<<

Maciej Fijalkowski knows that I asked him to contribute a PyPy version of n-body because the written-for-CPython version failed with PyPy.

Maciej Fijalkowski knows that his own PyPy version of n-body "performed slower on CPython (while being faster on PyPy)" -- AND WAS NOT REJECTED.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pypy-dev/2011-April/007177....

Justify your accusation or take it back!

>> you can use gmp library for C, CPython, but not PyPy via ctypes <<

Joe La Fata's pi-digits code worked first time on x86 and x64, on PyPy and CPython and Python3; and used ctypes to get to GMP -- AND WAS NOT REJECTED

http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/shootout/shootout/bench/pid...

Justify your accusation or take it back!

>> C can use a bad random (that's fast, but also gives a really bad distribution), while PyPy not because Python comes with a random in stdlib <<

The fasta task uses random numbers, and every fasta program (including C and Python) implements the same random function.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/program.php?test=fasta...

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/program.php?test=fasta...

Justify your accusation or take it back!

----

Tell Maciej Fijalkowski to justify his accusations!
Roughly the same story here. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I feel that while most tech BigCos (e.g. Google, Apple) have become more evil over time, MS has actually become less evil, to the point that using their tech (and some major tech at that) is relatively free of any lock-in risk.

TypeScript seems very much in line with this trend, and I love it. This is exactly what I wanted - JavaScript but with decent safety and IDE support. And no more than that. I really hope that non-MS-geeks will embrace it and that Eclipse plugins and JetBrains tools and the likes will follow.

That said, ASP.NET MVC is a misguided and overrated Rails ripoff, IMHO. Where's all that great refactoring support if everything is made `dynamic` and stringly typed? What's up with matching parameters to method argument names? (I mean, change an argument name and your code breaks? wtf?) Since when does Microsoft tech favour magic over clarity?
Appversal AMA – #appdevchat October 4th at 10am PST
This week on #appdevchat we're going to mix things up. We're going to have an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Appversal.
If this ever becomes popular, I can imagine law enforcement agencies will want to link e-mail address to people even more, and mail vendors such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will become a much more popular target for subpoenas and such.

I just don't like the idea of all the passwords being centralized in one place and being so very easy to obtain by the US Government.
That honestly does happen at first, until you get used to the other person a bit more, then the real speed happens.

Once you really are switching every few minutes, and you learn to trust the other guy to figure that crap out himself, then you can stop watching his semi-colons and start watching ahead for what you are going to do when you get your turn to drive. I have worked with someone like that, and the effect was profound, we would get done sometimes 4-5 days of low bug count, high quality work each day. You have to learn to disengage just a bit and start actually thinking about how his work fits in the big picture, and what you are going to do next, not his spelling errata.
I joined CEA as a Web Dev about a month ago. Awesome people, great team environment, a lot of interesting projects coming down the pipe. Check us out.
One unmentioned deterrent to using NFC on Android (for cases where security is not important) is requiring the user to unlock the phone first. In ICS or later, NFC is no longer enabled at the lockscreen, presumably to address security concerns with the payments use cases.

In some cases, it can be just as easy to unlock your phone and execute an action manually rather than through NFC.

I also wonder if Square's "magical" Starbucks payments system will be future - using environmental cues in the background instead of requiring manual swipes of a phone to a terminal.
What are the problems with Javascript you speak of? The libraries hiding you from terrible bits, at least the ones I use, have to do with the DOM and not with Javascript.
The relevance of the link was 'world's largest' in relation to Apple specifically and hedge funds generally.

Why is this relevant? Visibility, the same reason why the nyt article was.

When you have a fund the size that has been mentioned, you are much more than just a technology company, this needs to be recognized and understood, that Apple is the leader in also opaque financial markets.
Cognizant Technology Solutions. All around the world.

If you are a Java/Javascript person in the Bay area, reply back to this comment with a link to your profile or portfolio.

North America
https://cognizant.taleo.net/careersection/1nacorp/moresearch...

Europe:
http://tas-cognizant.taleo.net/careersection/emea_external_c...

Latin America
https://cognizant.taleo.net/careersection/1lacorp/moresearch...
There are limits to the amount of due diligence companies should have to do to ensure that people know they are clicking on ads. Anyone who is interested in avoiding clicking on ads will easily identify Google's, or not see them at all via a software solution. For the rest, there's not much short of an acknowledgement overlay that will get the message across reliably (for text ads -- image ads are easier, but google doesn't have them).
The only thing that I find "exciting" in the land of compiled-to-javascript languages is LiveScript (http://gkz.github.com/LiveScript/)...
The interest in the link was its simplicity:
Apple - Largest - hedge fund
I love reading stories by people getting started. On software dev, and other things too. Keep on hacking !
Wozniak is actually answering questions in real time, and appears to take his time to get back later today!
We should be happy that it has gotten this far, but also sad that this is still an ongoing problem.
Blinded by technology
>If your requirements are “The best hacker on the planet, must have at least 83 PhD’s from Harvard”, you’ve just alienated a majority of the workforce.

The above sentence appears twice.
Microsoft TypeScript : A quick introduction and a Love Affair Begins
I haven't used Scala for application development (I'm talking about apps with a UI here). I really like it on the server -- easy to refactor, self documenting, great implicit typing so it feels like a "safer, faster" ruby or python.

I'm just really happy with Scala. Highly recommended, and the Akka library (Erlang for Scala, essentially) is fantastic.
Now I'm curious - what kind of premium would you pay for this? 10%? 25% 100%? (keeping in mind the premium people pay for apple hardware ~%100%)
Agreed, it's a terrible language. Among other things, it makes it way too easy to write code which many people will read as being correct, but will actually be subtly incorrect.

A few of the weakest parts:

- for (var x in y) when used for array iteration or even dict iteration; hasOwnProperty? Really?

- x[obj] = y; seriously, did i really want '[Object object]' as my key?

- the choice of function level scope over block level scope
It's still a rather remarkable milestone. In a relatively short amount of time, the #1 "unstoppable" company in tech was passed by both it's smaller competitor (Apple) and an entirely new company (Google).
May the market offer you exactly what you ask for.
SEEKING WORK -- Boulder, CO or remote

Seeking a shift to (probably entry level) linux system administration.

Looking to transition away from web development. 3+ years wearing several hats,
and would like to really focus on the administration side of
systems and networks. Currently I do mostly web development related activities
involving javascript apps, restful web services, automated builds and
deployments, with some cross-over into the admin domain.

Some bullet points -
Programming languages: Python, Java, Javascript, C
Web Development: Full stack from Backbone.js + Bootstrap driven webapps to web
services and server configuration/management/application deployments.
Largely Python focused, but also have experience with PHP and Java.
Installation and configuration of httpd, nginx, tomcat, varnish, uwsgi, svn,
Jenkins/Hudson, postgres/postgis and more.
Familiar with e.g.: iptables, openvpn, postfix, and Bash scripting.

Aside from the usual bullet points I have set up PKI's, written a static
website generator (for personal use), and have some experience with GIS
technologies from a previous position.

Contact: kevin.r.maris at gmail dot com
I have the RSS feed in Netvibes that I check during the day/evening. I don't read everything, just skim through the titles trying to find what seems interesting to me. And from this I mark as "to read later" every article that I like but is too long to read now or to be sure to come back for comments later.

Then I also skim through the Ask HN/newest posts depending on the workload.

You don't have to follow everything, read everything, just skim through the topic that interest you. Overtime you'll instinctively dismiss a lot of articles just by their title.

And anyway, just go to the "frontpage" of HN to see which threads are really popular at a given moment.
Something difficult to set up and/or configure can still be worth the suffering. Sure, it'd be great if it was easy to configure to boot, but sometimes pain now can reap greater payback down the line...
FreedomPop’s Freemium 4G Data Service Goes Live
This is the Internet. Who's to blame and who gets blamed are two distinctly different entities.
I find it funny that the underlying assumption in all the arguments against the 60% exit rate is that VC funding is the only way technology is funded.

Maybe the French as a society should figure out how to fund technology in a different way.

It appears to me that Silicon Valley, which is supposed to be innovative, is really only producing one kind of technology. Even in the USA, technology used to be funded primarily in other ways. At some point the US government decided to give all the technology funded by the public away to private interests.

Notice that we went from distributed systems like email, IRC, etc to centralized systems like facebook, twitter.

This is no accident and it is because the funding system changed.
Redbull startos
I've actually heard the same thing. It kinda makes sense, no?
Creating a Direct2D game for WinRT
This seems slightly silly if one is allowed to use, as Ed Pegg suggested, log and square root.

If log and square root are allowed, then the obvious solution is log(-1)/(sqrt(-1)*log(e)) which is accurate to an infinite number of digits.
You can use the slider at the top of the comments to expand all comments. That's at least a partial solution.
I'll second that. I use it yet avoid it when possible. It's downright clunky compared to many scripting languages. Not completely broken, but broken enough.
I might be different, but 355/113 is very easy to remember and is not 7 unique segments of information. I just think "double the odds"

113355

We know we want a fraction, not a single number, so split down the middle:

113/355

And we know pi won't be less than 1, so flip it: 355/113. Knowing that the digits sequences are doubled lets you do some cheap, mental run length encoding. In a case where you need a hand calculation, spending 3 seconds to re-derive the sequence seems tolerable.
Toodledo.com - San Diego, CA - full time
http://www.toodledo.com/info/jobs.php
Javascript developer who wants to work on a large HTML5 app.
til conscientize: to make somebody/yourself aware of important social or political issues
> good libraries that hide the shittiness of the language from you.

Ah, the "only the libraries make the language tolerable" argument.

My experience has pretty much been that most of the devs who thinks the libraries are hiding problems with the language are confused on one or both of the following points:

1) the distinction between the DOM and JavaScript (for those who don't know: jQuery and the like address problems with the former)

2) the idea that a language is terrible if it doesn't have a specific class-based OO model

Hard to say in your case, though, given that you didn't mention any specific problems or solutions presented by specific libraries.
Converting JavaScript to CFG and back to JS
It's not the act of doing the remapping. It's accepting that I'll have to retrain my brain.
We'd love to hear more... IronWorker acts as "cron in the cloud" so you're right it's not overly complicated.
What suggests they would be any worse than gas powered water tankers?

My reasoning is that they would respond more rapidly to changes in atmospheric conditions. They have the advantage as well that if you lose one you don't lose multiple thousands of gallons of water/retardant capacity.
I guess search is a business after all :)
The static typing is optional. You can be all "loose and freeform" when hacking stuff out, and later add types in to solidify your code and check for errors.

It's the best of both worlds, IMHO.
I love mutt! Unfortunately, I often write emails while looking at another one, which I couldn't make work with mutt. Any ideas?
North Dakota's surge in production over the last couple of years is one part, but Texas just found the same type of reserve and will start fracking.

Gasoline prices are high because of speculators, lack of refineries, and having multiple gas formulas for different regions of the US.
He's comparing apples to apples.
Kolmogorov complexity for different ways to approximate п is more or less flat at bang for the buck.
Computing Infrastructure for Large-Scale Genomics (or other fancy things)
Is that not generalizing as well? I'm one that doesn't. But then, you probably don't know me.