skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On another random note, was anyone else dissapointed when they found out that a neural net is a fancy way of drawing a line through some points. i.e. regression.
The "cures" are frightfully expensive. The mitigations and costs are less so. (The "cures" do get less expensive as technology develops, but Stern didn't include that factor.)

Read the Stern report. Notice the discount rate. (Stern does argue that it's appropriate to spend $100 now to avoid spending $95 in the future.)

Or, maybe you want to argue that Stern is wrong about the economics.

I think that he is, but not in a way that strengthens his conclusion that we should apply the cures now. (Yup - he's an AGW advocate and a commonly cited source for the economic argument.)
Agreed. The issue isn't so much the language, it's what they plan to use to replace SICP. I can't see ditching the purple book as an improvement.
Both the National Academy of Sciences and the IPCC are essentially political organizations (in the sense that their purpose is to inform policy, I don't mean to suggest that they are partisan) and what they say should not be conflated with the scientific literature on climate change.

Scientists are working very hard to understand past and future climate change, but it is an incredibly complex problem. (For analogy, can political scientists predict who will be elected president in 2012?...it's possible to make some good guesses but there are a lot of factors and it's hard to know what will happen.)

Sure, there is general agreement on some points and organizations such as the IPCC are doing a noble job of trying to synthesize the mountains of complex science into a few simple statements, but I think you are drastically oversiplifying the case when you say that

"99.99% of the world's scientists, based on careful interpretation of many thousands of peer-reviewed studies, agree that global warming is real, and is caused by human activity. A vanishingly small handful of scientists happen to disagree with this assessment, based mostly upon their opinion and politics."
generally they come from your head.
Is a "Green" Bubble Brewing?
Copy an existing market leader, then as you're developing your software, create new features that distinguish you from the competition.
Peer-reviewed studies come to concrete conclusions such as "Ice volume in antarctica has decreased an estimated X% in the last X years." or "CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased X ppm in the atmosphere at Mauna Loa observatory." rather than sweeping statements such as "global warming is real".

There are admittedly some real cranks among the global warming skeptics, but I thought the arguments discussed in this article were intelligent, rational, and well-spoken.
I don't know much about working at Google.

But using Adwords and dealing with some of the folks at Google was really a pleasant experience. They really went out of their way to accommodate me. I was really surprised!!
We did something trivial along those lines and added a Facebook icon to our product pages. If you like a product, you can click the Facebook icon and the product name, image, price and store will show up in your "Posted Items". Yes, nothing spectacular, but we like it :)

-John
Good point. (And, as your signature indicates, this is more likely to be a static utility method.)

If I were defensively programming against unanswerable input, I'd tend towards failing fast with a single early check:

static int roundUpToPowerOfTwo(int i) {
if(i>(1<<30)) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Answer overflows int");
int rounded = 1;
while(rounded<i) rounded <<= 1;
return rounded;
}

If we needed to give answers for any size integer (or at least up to 2^(2^31-1)), we could use BigInteger, whose #bitLength method is useful:

static BigInteger roundUpToPowerOfTwo(BigInteger i) {
return BigInteger.ONE.shiftLeft(i.subtract(BigInteger.ONE).bitLength());
}

And if we weren't being literal-minded about the original request, it might make sense to just return the exponent rather than the power-of-2 itself, and let the caller worry about overflows:

static int ceilLog2(long val) {
return BigInteger.valueOf(val-1).bitLength();
}

Of course we are ignoring negative exponents, in the integer spirit of the original question.

There, is it done to death yet? :)
Yesterday I was pitched this idea: "it's like simplified pandora + evite + yelp for people who can't decide where to eat."

Today: "it's like twitter/pownce/dogster ... but for newborns."

What's next?
I'd recommend to build something YOU need: it's always the best way to make sure you're building something useful.
Find something you love to do but is being done in a bad way...
then, fix it.

Good Luck
Bach's inventions aren't really that hard.
What do you expect? He hangs out with John Markoff, who I consider one of the stupidest humans alive. Check out "Freedom Downtime" sometime for a good example of the light in which he paints his subjects.
I recently met a very smart guy who has worked at Google for nearly a year, and he had almost nothing positive to say about it. In his whole large division, there seemed to be hardly anybody who actually got anything done. And, worse, there was no method for firing people who didn't do anything.
Because it's Dave Winer.
CL has logand, logior, logxor, lognot, etc.
It also has a parameterized version, boole
http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/Body/fun_boole.html
Who else is using Scheme for the intro course? Is it just Berkeley now? BTW, anyone know what Stanford uses for the intro sequence? Just kinda curious.
Scientists Decode Most of Mo. Cat's DNA
The Road to Launch: The Sawce Widget
A little peek at what we're rolling out at Sawce
Me too. why is this article number one? we need down vote.
upvote everything else - kinda works(ish)?
If they're taking your money, they're going to be helpful ;)
But agreed. Far better customer service than microsoft or yahoo.
No offense...

The site looks horrible, graphics aren't pleasing. I don't like the background picture, nor do I like anything else design wise. I simply won't use a website that looks like that.

It requires plug-ins to be installed (and I don't trust your site enough to have it install the plug-ins).

I think that idea is pretty bad. Instead, maybe have a facebook app that sends wake-up reminders (with permission from the receiver) via SMS or something similar.

How are you going to make money off this idea, I'm pretty sure no company is going to want to buy you out.

Also, don't put a TM symbol in your logo unless you actually have a trademark on that logo (which I highly doubt that you do).

What are those scrolling images on the front page? What has that got to do with anything?
DevHouse Pittsburgh - November 8th
Analysis: Leopard's Importance to Apple
A Visual Guide to Subnetting a Network
Microsoft's primary product is unacceptably poor. Apple is innovative.

Hence your 'double standard'.
Interesting. All my friends at MIT absolutely hated Scheme after taking that class; I don't know what the general sentiment there is.
Going west, as a young man
Classful addressing? Fail.

No Hilbert curves? Fail. :-)
Good luck!

And if you're hanging at the dinner tables, don't sit on the end of the benches without someone countering on the other end.
privacy nuts won't like it, but this is actually really clever and is about aggregating our life on the web into once place, ala friendfeed, readr, plaxo pulse, etc.

Incentivizes third-party integration via news-feed ads!
Just like the wireless spectrum bid...
Be sure to watch the Ali G video at the end. How he keeps a straight face I'll never know - hilarious!
"Audio Alert System" is impressive and it can be used to represent the various ideas you want to integrate in your website.
:-) I liked the background picture since it is perfect night setup and goes along with the utility - alarm clock.
What are your goals?

If your goals are to gain experience and make money going the startup route, you don't HAVE to be the one with the idea if you're capable of implementing the ideas of others.
For best results, you just need to be able to RECOGNIZE a good idea that is presented to you and generate enough passion about said idea that you can make it the focus of your life for awhile.

There are people that have the opposite problem that you have...they have tons of good ideas (and maybe contacts and money), but lack the skills to implement them. Find those people. Start a company with them. Rinse. Repeat. Eventually, you'll tend to rub off on each other and you will gain skills in generating good business ideas on your own...
but don't you think Marc has his own elevator pitch, that he states on his blog:
"We at Ning are on a mission to build the ultimate platform for people to create their own social networks and social experiences on the Internet for anything -- to unlock all of the great ideas of people all over the world for using this amazing medium in their lives."
all of a sudden I feel like I can't hear your pitch anymore breck, but it was nice meeting you :)
Would you mind sharing what was more attractive about Vista over OSX? I understand using Windows for playing games or using some of the software not available for Mac but I'm curious what specifically you found better about Vista.
I just think Mr. Winer is not considering at what level you are at, meaning what kind of a position you'll be able to hold in these companies...I guess the experience will be quite different, so will the opportunities that will open up to you
Indeed, it's in Microsoft's interest to limit the power of JavaScript so they can keep pushing their desktop programming frameworks and SilverLight.
You don't need a double standard to account for the difference in stock prices. In what market where they compete is Apple not growing at Microsoft's expense?
In Rare Attack, Malware Targets Macs
How so? It seems to me that the YouPorn folks are at far higher risk of being sued out of existence...yes, all of the traditional pay-for-content sites, and buy-our-DVDs companies, are in serious trouble, because of sites like YouPorn. But, taking YouPorn out of the picture through acquisition wouldn't solve that problem--though I guess I can begin to see the extortion angle if we follow that through to one possible conclusion: Every 20-something nerd in the world will suddenly think, "Hey, I can build a killer porn video site, and some poor schmucks at a billion dollar porn company will have to buy it to prevent competition!"

Hard to say how the targeted buyers view things. But they're (currently) in the position of power. They have hundreds of millions in revenues, versus a few million for YouPorn. And, now that YouPorn is known to have revenue, and has forced itself onto the radar of lots of people, it's going to attract lawsuits...
Indiana Univ Bloomington still appears to (C211).
The only thing that Microsoft does much better than apple in my opinion is the home theater segment. Media Center is actually a great system, especially compared to the crap dvr you get with comcast or fios. The Apple TV doesn't compare. It would have been a great opportunity for Apple to dominate in a segment where most agree Microsoft stands out but they didn't take advantage of it.

Other than that, I completely agree that overall, apple has a better user experience than MS.
georgia tech switched from scheme to python too since I was there in the past 2-3 yrs
Lisp success story in Hungarian government
That's because people in The Valley have no concept of what the other 99.9% of the population wants. They see a novel concept where most Americans will get woken up once when they didn't want to and be nothing but annoyed.

Also your video at http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=5DA53674478211DCAE95000423CF3... should be the moment of zen on the daily show.
7 Quick Fixes To Gear Up For Holiday Shoppers
Well, I have a couple of ideas I would like to see implemented and little time to work on all of them. I'm not promising they're great ideas but it's software that I would use if it were available. If you're interested send me an email.
The 'Winners' of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest (post your workplace in this thread)
Absolutely. MS knows that better, less quirky, JS is a powerful weapon.
Well, if Google ended up the winner people would say the same thing about Microsoft bluffing Google. The real bluffer here is Facebook.
Startups: Are you the gazelle or the lion?
This is an oft quoted African proverb, famously mentioned in Thomas Friedman's "World is Flat" book. While it applies to all facets of life, its especially pertinent to the life of a startup.
That's quite a lot of hardware for that kind of 7000 to 10000 logins per day. I'm guessing it's there because they're expecting growth not because it's needed to handle the current load. Other than that this is great news.
It is not a bad idea, here are my suggestions:

-Put a FAQ
-Get a Designer to do the graphics, more white

Good Luck
TinyMCE 3.0 Alpha released: 33% smaller, 75% less files, so it loads a lot faster
Well, I got a job offer at Google and decided to turn it down. Sure, the food is great and you have everything you need but I think it's counter productive to starting a startup. You need to dislike your current job enough to want to do something else.

I also agree with the author that humility is a scarce resource at Google.
A Crash Course in Ruby
You can always encode symbols as numbers, and otherwise. That's what computers do, that's what you do when you do a sum by yourself, and that's what such a neural network should do too. (You should encode the symbols to a binary input, then decode the neural network output to symbols).
Yes, it's a complicated problem, but there's a heck of a lot more than just "general agreement."

When it comes to the two central questions (is global warming real? is it caused by human activity?) the situation is just overwhelming: very nearly all of the published literature is in agreement that the answer to both questions is "yes".

There is certainly less unity on other questions related to climate change, but it's misleading to suggest that there's any significant scientific disagreement on the issue.
Myspace founder lied about his age (-5 years) to make site seem cooler
The shortest domain name. Ever.
Worrying title, but then you read "We've been made aware that a small number of Web sites attempt to trick Mac OS X users to install malicious software on their Macs,"

So not a security hole, but a website with a .png of the software update box or something?

A larger number of websites/phishing emails try to trick you into entering personal details... just one of those things.
Having grown up here in Silicon Valley, I find it extremely boring. So boring in fact that I'm making my move out east.
MIT is unusual in that it combines EE and CS into one department. While SICP may be the best intro to CS ever written, that does not mean it is the best possible choice for a combined CS/EE program.
Intelligent and rational? Really? He makes three coherent arguments:

1) Overzealous people have exaggerated/confused global warming with recent local weather phenomena, and this is wrong.

2) Predicting climate change is hard and our climate models are inaccurate.

3) Given the choice between reducing carbon emissions, and feeding starving children, we should favor feeding starving children.

Arguments 1 is a straw man -- true, but irrelevant to the question of whether global warming is real and caused by humans.

Argument 2 is also true, but is a red herring -- it fails to address the volumes of science that would suggest that, despite the difficulty of the problem, we have good reason to believe that there is a problem.

Argument 3 relies on a false dichotomy -- there isn't a clear and necessary relationship between increased spending on climate change, and decreased spending on (say) HIV vaccines or mosquito nets or starving children.
The following Google search returns 320 results:

site:*.edu "How to design programs" OR "structure and interpretation of computer programs" syllabus
it sounds like there is some personal experience there lol :)
After online advertising start growing rapidly and more importantly Google introduced Adsense a lot of sites were now able to generate a lot more money by simply offering their sites for free, and in return have higher traffics, (therefore, more money from advertisement). I believe also one of the very reasons why blogging grew out of a simple diary into a very profitable business, and a full time job for many people.

But the interesting thing here is that the porn sites can't really take advantage of this fact, since google and many other people avoid advertising on porn sites. Therefore, a site like YouPorn will have problems generating profits although it has such huge traffics. I guess the people in the online porn industry really need to get creative and come up with a new model for their business.
But whats more interesting and ironic is that free porn sites like YouPorn are becoming more and more popular, and are killing the old media businesses (exact same thing that happened to the music and movie industry, and as mentioned in the article) but are not able to make money themselves either. Clearly the users are the real winner here, LOL
Social Media Starfish
Top Facebook app developer sizes up OpenSocial - Q&A
Why is this downvoted?

If you copy something that works and then add features or put a spin on it you can end up with something new and cool. Its a good way to start thinking about ideas imo.

Isn't Digg just google news or nytimes with new innovative features?
Google is learning too well from the master
BREAKING NEWS: Older person attempts to seem younger!

UP NEXT: Blogdogs.com not actually written by dogs! Rumored human involvement!
No, I'm saying that a neural network can learn addition.

See, a bayesian cannot really understand that there are relations between two numbers (like "is bigger than" or "is the following number of"), but a neural network can, since addition is part of a NN.

My personal recommendation on machine learning is 'Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning' by Chris Bishop. But you definately do need a solid mathematical background for that.
Why don't they just query their engine, using natural language? I'm sure their algorithm can handle it.
Now we know why so many successful startups seem to be founded by people under thirty.
More signs that "Web 2.0" is the new "Dot Com." This particular company is way crazier than Pets.com and the like. Does anyone seriously think that parents of newborns -- some of the busiest people around -- will really have the time to post updates? And who would read besides a couple of family members and friends?
I do agree with you. Except SF, and maybe Berkeley, the rest of California has been very very disapointing.

Coming from the Northeast, I found the car culture and suburbia life very boring in CA.

Also, for some really wierd reason, I find california girls boring, and much much less intellectual than what you find on the east coast.

There are lots of pluses of living in here also, but lots of negatives also. The cool and awesome "California" image that is perpetuated in the media, is just a illusion.

Cali has the climate and posibilities to be more like the Italy/France of the USA, but unfortunately the people squandered that place by building high-way monsters everywhere.
On the other hand, for a student or young couple in a small apartment, a 20" or 24" iMac is all they really need for their entertainment needs, it handles that situation really well.
hhm is right. You would end up with a network with connection weights of 1. As long as your sigmoidal transfer functions are biased such that they have no multiplying effect your output would be an addition of the inputs.
So given a function with f('1','1')='2', the computer will figure out that f('1','2')='3', right?
Yeah but I think the theory is that we're talking ten or twenty thousand bucks instead of forty million bucks.

So no more sock-puppet super bowl commercials :(
What if the machine does not know that it is dealing with numbers? It's all symbolic: '1'+'1'='2', etc.
Where would the idea of "is bigger than" or "is the following number of" come from if not from the person who creates the network?
Again, it's a trust thing. Communities are based entirely upon trust, and no one wants to trust an old geezer.

Plus, it probably helped him pick up the ladies.
The neural network doesn't "know" that it is dealing with anything, just as you don't "know" the function your body uses to expand and contract your heart. You could be feeding it stock quotes, rgb pixel values, your daily weight, anything. If the information can reduced to numeric values (it can) the network will determine the relationship in the form of a function.
What you are talking about is more along the lines of inductive logic programming, where the goal is to induce general symbolic rules from specific examples. Even with ILP I'm not sure how exactly you could phrase things so that the machine could learn "addition" though. An ILP system could probably learn something like a + b = c implies b + a = c (i.e. commutativity) and other properties of addition from examples.
And what's with the tiny hash symbols at the end of every paragraph. I also found the article unpleasant.
I think the most important thing Blake mentions here is the amount of customization required per network. Obviously, each system is not the same: they have different features, conventions, permissions, etc. But it'll be interesting to see whether or not developers can keep one application in its own branch in source or will they literally have to have multiple instances, one for each network.

If development feels like doing one app 14 times instead of one app once, that'll suck, but at least things will be familiar when you are duplicating code. Interesting to see how well this works. Roll, Google.
If it can learn these properties, it may be even better! Then it can do all computations. So, can it learn commutativity, and other properties? Would it be smart enough to look for them in the first place?
i think this rose to the top because we all want validations of our dislike for google and its overwhelming self-righteousness
His parents must have been clairvoyant when they passed on the family name. If the shoe fits...