skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First: great post! Don't let my comments deter you--I'm only sharing what I think is some constructive criticism.

I think this should be titled "why use kernels," as the gain here comes from using an RBF kernel (and not just a SVM). Kernel-based L2/Tikhonov regression (or kernel ridge regression) could perform just as well (although it might require more memory to train).

Other thoughts:

* your training set is 66% of the entire set, not 80%

* you use "degree=0.5" when creating the sklearn.svm.SVC, but since you don't specify the kernel type it defaults to RBF, which doesn't accept a degree arg. See [0] for more.

* you should motivate the kernel transformation more thoroughly; by mapping the data into a higher-dimension space, you hope to find a separating boundary that isn't present in the natural space. The mapping is performed such that we only need the inner product of each vector, which lets us map to ANY space (even those of infinite dimension!!) as long as we can compute inner products.

(There are some properties of the higher-dimension spaces, such as the fact they're Hilbert spaces, that make the above possible, but it's late and I can't remember details off the cuff).

[0] http://scikit-learn.org/dev/modules/generated/sklearn.svm.SV...
ECT - Fastest JavaScript Template Engine With CoffeeScript Syntax
I cannot upvote this enough. When I was getting started on rails years ago, I found it hard to make headway just making headway on a project I got dropped in the middle of.

It wasn't until I decided to migrate a personal project of mine from php to rails, and had to set it all up on a VPS with Phusion Passenger, all by myself, that I made that order of magnitude jump in skill level from novice to intermediate dev. Having that side project has also let me try out so many different things I could never be able to try out at work without know if it would work or not.

Those countless hours you spend off the clock screwing around with something just because you want to is simply invaluable to your progress as a developer, this is why to this day, I keep an eye out for developers that find time to hack on side projects.
There is one interesting observation from my experience - the less developed (or even banana) the country is, the more (or exclusive, for banana countries) demand is for PHP/ASP.NET/J2EE etc Web/CRUD stuff.

On the other hand, in more developed countries, the demand is quite big for C++/Desktop/3D/Compilers etc "good stuff".

Web + large scale JavaScript stuff also falls in the latter case, although I don't consider it as "good" ;)
On my 1366x768 laptop in chrome, the dodecahedron covers some text. I had to zoom out to read it.
via: http://www.functionn.in/2012/12/ect-fastest-javascript-templ...

[Check out www.functionn.in for more web resources to keep you functionn.in']

ECT is a JavaScript template engine which has a focus on performance. It claims to be the fastest JavaScript template engine among these engines: Dust, Hogan.js, Fest, Handlebars.js, EJS without `with`, doT, Swig, Eco, EJS, Jade without `with`, CoffeeKup and Jade.

It also has a plethora of features like template caching, auto-reload of modified templates, inline CoffeeScript code within the templates, multi-line expressions support, and more. You can use ECT on both the client-side or on the server-side with Node.js.
The problem is the word "fact". Somehow this is now perceived as an eternal truth, rather than a statement which is true right now, but might change soon.

Some of the examples point this out nicely, let's take the 10 biggest cities in the US. Isn't it obvious that this "fact" only works with a timestamp attached to it? The 10 biggest cities in 1990?

Maybe this is more about the language in science, textbooks and science journalism. A little more precision would make the real facts stand out better.
From my photography experience which i also apply to graphic design the Rule on thirds and the Golden ratio are the best ways to locate / create interesting parts of an image. This can be achieved by clever cropping too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Aesthetics
Ask HN: Favorite talks on 2012?
Since most of us have some spare time now, could be interested to watch a few. Any recommendations for online-accessible talks?

Mine is: JavaScript is the New Punk Rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN8Eg1K9xjE
clickable: JavaScript is the New Punk Rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN8Eg1K9xjE
You're being an ass and for some reason basing all your comments on a non-rooted version of iOS, when one of the first things a hacker will do is get root.

Why in the world has anyone upvoted your baseless attempt at discrediting. Stop being such an insufferable fanboy.
Reddit's thumbnailing script works nice as well, https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/scrap...

edit: I even think you are using a similar method.
May be its not fair to call it an isolated incident since similar events have occurred in the past, but its generally better to follow common safety guidelines whenever you're travelling. Such events can happen anywhere, but it always helps to be extra careful.
> you must accept a deep and abiding peacefulness in not knowing very much at all about most of the stuff you actually work with in your day-to-day life

That's how 90% percent of the people think (the ones I only care about using and manipulating to achieve my purposes - not necessarily egotistical purposes, mind it, I might actually ask charity donation from them), but not how I and the 10% I care to hang around with do. For example, you don't kneed to know the details of how a car works, but knowing what an internal combustion engine is and that most breaks work by rubbing two things together and basic stuff like this is what everyone should know - my grandma knows this and she can reason heuristically about this even if she has never been to school and can't read or write. Same about computers - if you are an IT manager or even a sales or marketing guy in something computer related, if, for example, you don't know the difference between compiled and interpreted code and what this has to do with portability and, in consequence, cost of multi-platform development, then you're a mindless tool (probably a bad "tool") and I'll have no respect for you and your rights.

You can't separate how it works type of knowledge from how to use it one, no matter how good the abstractions and UIs are. If it's something you're working with, then you should know the principles of how it works!
Scalajobz – community driven job portal for Scala jobs
Someone has already mentioned side projects, my other suggestion is to look at parts of your app where you can break out of the CRUD cycle.

Could you use threading to speed up bulk processing of documents?

Can you use some new package or gem to improve your day to day development flow? (for example, i just found a rails gem that helps speed up start up time for rails tasks, totally using that at work)

How about your Version control, are you using the latest techniques or type of software?

What about learning more about dev ops, how to manage the server and do little things here and there without bothering the server guy?

What about search, are you writing contorted sql queries to hit the databases for your search, or are you using elasticsearch, solr, sphinx or lucene which are better suited for those things?

Is your logging app writing to file logs, or (worse your RDBMS database) or could you use mongodb to speed that up?

Are you analyzing data you collect in an insightful way or is it time to read up on some analytics tutorials, to come up with smarter ways to inspect your data?

how fast is your software? Could it be faster? How can you make it faster?

etc etc etc

In the end it comes down to your curiosity to learn and try new things. That will help you keep abreast of new ideas and help you spot opportunities to apply them sensibly. It should get you from where you are until the point where you feel that opportunities like these are exhausted, at which point, its time to move on.

Never let yourself stop growing as a developer.
If the corporation purchases or licenses the goods, the corporation continues to be the owner or licensee of the purchased goods despite a change in the make-up of the corporate shareholders. Keep in mind that you are not "transferring" the corporation to another person, there is no such thing. What you are doing is selling your ownership or shareholding in the company to another person. The corporation's identity as a juristic person is not affected.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4961966
USA Leading Indicators
Not to sound cynical, but this is what happens when the majority of the electorate votes on the basis of meaningless things like caste, religion and dynasties.
These "features" clearly spell out the author's priorities:

- free software

- multiple languages and keyboard layouts

- interpreted language for lessons

There is no mention of teaching methods, kid-friendliness, or any other feature that one would use to compare against Mavis Beacon.
Advice for US entrepreneurs who move to Europe
I wanted to try it out in my browser, but couldn't, so I hit the back button. (This comment is intended as friendly, constructive feedback on your process for getting new users, and definitely not as an insult.)
Don't blame subpoenas for the problem of spineless admins that will actively hack their clients because the government asked them to. Backdoors can't be mandated by a subpoena, only the recording of server-side data (unless I am grossly misinformed).
Seems neat, I'd love to try it out.

Am I the only one having a tough time installing this on osx though?
No fink package available for osx >10.6.
Installing from sources complains about ncursesw lib missing.
Actually that a great thing. Shows to hackers that even with billions of dollars, you can still make one stupid mistake that ruins your website and reputation.

Someone that will look on this on the business side could say: if VW isn't meticulous on their website, where else do they make mistakes?
This really sucks and I'm sorry this happened to your friend.

I suggest your friend writes a blog post about it (with images of any evidence) and submit the link to HN. Who knows, maybe we'll upvote it to the front page. I'll vote it up, that's for sure.

By writing a blog post about it, your friend is giving people a chance to link to it and share this story. Maybe then some justice can be served.
Another difference on Windows - Mutex objects can only be released by the thread which acquired them, whereas a semaphore object with a count of one could be acquired on one thread and then released on another.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685066(v=vs.85).as...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685129(v=vs.85).as...
Dan, I was looking into anonymous sending options recently.

Two quick questions:
- "don't mind having to pay"; what might you be willing to spend? $5/month? $50? 2c per email?
- "they have to work very hard to get my real identity"; get-a-court-order hard? Or harder than that?
C++11 (Presentation by Alex Sinyakov about new C++ standard)
Have you actually compiled anything on it? It's impressively slow. Ten-line C programs take 2-3 seconds with both GCC and Clang.
Every time I hear the word SoLoMo they give me the impression they have no idea what they're talking about.
I think by "web," he meant Applets. Which was the big thing. Servlets were much less part of their marketing, as I recall.
There's (almost) nothing worse than stumbling across a project written by a bored developer and then having to support it. Instead of a perl script and some SQL, it will use some smattering of the techs that you mention above. Often not for any real reason, but just because their job isn't demanding enough so they make it as interesting as possible. But it's better for everyone if you do this on your side projects - when you leave your CRUD job someone else is going to have to maintain the wobbling stack of technologies that you used to pad out your resume.
Seek out opportunities in other industries/segments of computing.

The reason a lot of work is CRUD work is because most web applications and business applications are just data/information management systems targeted toward a certain use. My unscientific guess would be that 95% of at least minimally complex web and business applications boil down to being CRUD with a UI and a lot of marketing spin. This means that if you work in this segment you are going to be mostly working in CRUD. There are many other segments of computing where your work will be incredibly different.

Examples:

- Computer graphics/gaming

- Embedded systems

- Networking

Caveat - after working in a new segment you most likely will find that they have their own 95% core competency skill set (like CRUD is for web/business apps)
What, are we not allowed to be depressed that 10 years later we are still tied down by physics?
regarding rapes , yes it does happen everywhere , but there is a cultural problem in India too. My girlfriend spent time both in Bangladesh and India. In Bangladesh, which is not the safest place on earth for women and not an exemple for women's rights, she never had a problem, most people were kind and respectfull. In India people in the street were trying to grop her all the time and she clearly felt like she was not welcome there. And she was dressed in a decent fashion ...
What country was your/your exit IP in?
I recently started a review 'blog':

http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.com/

Of that list, "Information wants to be shared", and "The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick" stick out as being pretty good. "Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation" was also very interesting, and a clever use of statistics to look at how one specific sector works. I also loved "The Oregon Desert", although it's probably not very interesting to most people out there.
Projector - easy mockup presentation engine
Ever needed a quick & easy way to share your projects / mockups and progress with your clients? Tired of using heavy and overblown PM tools or even generic directory listing for just that? Search no more. Thanks to Projector now you can simply upload your mockups, set priority for each page and you're done. It also doesn't discriminate whether you're using PHP, ROR or anything else server-side, it just works. It's that easy.
Figure out how to make "fiber" that transmits light closer to c, perhaps? This of course would bring other challenges- the refractive index is part of why light stays "inside" fiber in the first place.
Scikit-learn: machine learning in Python
What? Dropbox literally advertises themselves as a backup solution.
That was fun - possibly the seed of a great video game :) .

Probably the easiest fix for the controls would be to limit which mouse movements move the shape: moving down would spin it up, but moving up would do nothing. Moving left would spin it right, but moving back across it would do nothing. That way you could move it into place and then come back to click on where you want.

Also, it would be lovely if the most centered face, the one that is changeable, became outlined when it comes into focus.
How can I get out of my own head as the only developer on a project?
I don't think your question really has to do with programming. I think it has to do with the feedback loop of being pigeon holed, age and job history. There is a Robert Greene book that just came out called "Mastery" which I haven't read, but I listened to some of the promotional interviews he's done. He talks about this a lot and part of the book is about breaking out the cycle. I'm in that state right now with my current "job" predicament.
If you liked that, what's fascinating is that the first book was more or less lifted from the life of an actual person:

Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00422LERA/?tag=dedasys-20

I only read the first of the O'Brian books, but Cochrane's life was full of fascinating episodes, and I highly recommend that biography of him.
> They don't forward your credit card as security. They forward it for the hotel to charge you for the entirety of your booking.

Security, as in, the hotel will charge me with the passed-on information if I don't turn up. I still have to swipe my card if I turn up.

I don't like increasing the number of variables. When I pay directly to booking.com, I am dealing with a PCI compliant company. When you pass my credit card info to a hotel clerk, I am dealing with a hotel clerk who has my info who is free to pass it to his friends, or dump it in a trash can(knowingly or unknowingly) from where someone else picks it up.
This list is unfortunately missing the O'Reilly-published "Practical C++ Programming" by Steve Oualline, which is a truly terrible text, and the only O'Reilly book I actively tell people to burn. It's filled with errors, code samples riddled with syntax errors, and non-idiomatic style.
I recently came across these two interesting reads about how Eisenhower was an expert bridge player and during WWII, he required officers on his staff to be good card players as well:

http://home.comcast.net/~dist8adv/jun09/ike.htm

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1...
> I believe it's then up to the receiver of the fax to physically secure it.

Yes, I get it. Once you fax it to the hotel, it's not your problem. But how does it make things any better for me? You are still PCI compliant, but the customer now has his info passed to a random hotel clerk.
It also wasn't what it is today. The current fox news functions because of fear. Remember, in the last decade, MSNBC went from trying to beat fox by supporting Iraq more than them to what they are now, I wouldn't make a whole lot of conclusions of MSNBC programming today based on them circa 2000
Ahhhh gotcha, now I feel dumb. Thanks for the explanation! (:
It's a long game, but building what you're interested in, even if it's the boring parts of what you're interested in, can get you noticed. Due to writing drivers and tools for people to use different hardware, I've now worked in/with:

- Robotics (via working on open source educational robotics stuff)

- Virtual Worlds (via making hardware to interact with them)

- Health Devices (via reverse engineering health devices)

- Neuroscience (via reverse engineering eegs)

- Haptics (via reverse engineering haptics controllers. Noticing a trend here?)

- Digital/Interactive Art (via writing Max/Puredata/OpenFrameworks/Processing plugins for aforementioned projects)

- Teledildonics (via [censored])

(My github is at http://github.com/qdot, where you can witness the ADHD firsthand)

And the list grows every time I start working with a new library or device. Most of my dayjobs tagentially relate to something I've worked on in my spare time, though I try to keep from taking a job that'd completely subsume any one interest, as that tends to be a permanent mood killer (I'm looking at you, popular virtual world company that crushed my VW dreams).

So yeah, just find what you're interested in, do something in it, try to be part of a community around it, and let things work naturally.

Then comes the hard part: Tying all of this back together via /you/. You can make neat stuff all day long but if you can't tie it together with your own personality, then you're just a person who aimlessly cranks out neat stuff, which is something that will worry employers. Presenting a complete and coherent package of all the stuff you're interested in and why you're interested in it, with proof that you can do (more importantly: finish) it and show how that can benefit others is really the key. But damn, is it ever hard to get there.

PS stay the hell out of teledildonics. That is MY TURF.
It looks like the book is not finished?
Haha I'm not the website author. Agree with you though, I would just use reds for call to actions.
Can someone explain the argument for ethanol-based fuels?

I can't explain everything, but I do know that in winter ethanol percentages in regular gasoline are increased, as I understand to increase vapor pressure which prevents a host of problems.
Wow that's a good tip, will make sure to read it thanks.
> "On the other hand, in more developed countries, the demand is quite big for C++/Desktop/3D/Compilers etc "good stuff"."

I don't think this relationship really holds. It's really more like: in every non-US country the overwhelming demand is for CRUD stuff. The demand for non-CRUD software is almost exclusively an American phenomenon.

This is, of course, somewhat of a generalization, but I do believe the trend holds true.

I grew up in Canada, where the software scene is very heavily CRUD. The main CS employers in town are such exciting names as SAP, IBM, TD Bank, Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, and Scotia Bank. I spy a pattern. The demand for "higher level" programmers is tiny (there's a Mozilla outpost, and a small smattering of startups few people even know about).

From talking with friends internationally, it seems like this is the case in the UK and France also - all highly developed countries.

The only place where I've seen any substantial opportunities for C++, 3D, compilers, and other non-CRUD code is in the US.
Protip - if you start talking about Art of War at a party, you will not get laid. Save that for the morning after.
I'm curious to see how things change when you use an engine designed specifically for E85. I'm told ethanol behaves a lot like high-octane gasoline, which means an engine built for ethanol could have greatly increase compression, which can improve economy. Alternatively, you can run much higher boost, which I believe can directly improve efficiency, or can simply be combined with a very small engine.
I have trouble finding a CRUD job to work in. At least the expectations from employers are not that high.
I agree. Its a shame since things were not like that a few decades ago. Its getting worse, but I guess the entire country is in a cultural transition, so I hope these issues go away in the coming generations.
qdot is on hackernews? hoo-ray.
I work with the English language every day, and so I have no respect for the rights of people who can't even spell the word "need" correctly. Is that what you're saying? :-)
You can get some motivating stuff done even without changing the field. Specializing in something cool and strange is fine, but as someone mentioned - there will probably be a 95% repetitive task there as well. While staying at your current industry segment, you can still do interesting stuff: I've discussed that here http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=1063
Background for those who're not aware of what's happening in India:

A week back, a twenty-one year old woman was gang raped by six other men in a private bus in New Delhi. The rape involved the use of an iron rod, which totally messed up with her digestive system. Her guy friend, who tried to protect her, was hit on the head, and both of them were thrown out of the bus in the middle of the night. Though they're in terrible condition in a hospital now, they've survived. The perpetrators have been arrested.

This harrowing incident led to nationwide anti-rape protests in India. In particular, against the evidently rampant men-are-superior and short-clothes-cause-rape classes of beliefs in India. The government has been totally mum on the issue and has not issued any concrete steps to prevent such incidents in the future. Peaceful protests in Delhi were met with merciless beatings and water cannons and tear gas.

India is indeed in a sad state of gender inequality, lack of freedom of speech and a never ending vicious cycle of illiteracy->demagoguery->poverty->corruption