skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It depends on what you want to get out of them.

If all you do is build a library, you'll never get anything out of it, since you actually need to study the books for that. :P

If you want a reference, then by all means take aston and Hexayurt's excellent suggestions. Especially CLRS.

If you don't know much about algorithms right now, then you'll find Cormen et al. very challenging to start with.

If you're like me, you want to be able to use algorithms as a tool to solve real problems.

To practice that, I have a few suggestions, if I may be so bold.

Pick up a copy of the Algorithm Design Manual and Programming Challenges, by Steven Skiena. Programming Challenges will introduce you to the ACM-ICPC repository of programming problems, which is a great low-pressure area to build some top-notch skill in algorithms. You'll want to get into TopCoder as well.

For a slightly different taste, pick up Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, also known as AIMA or the Green Book. Its discussion of search algorithms is unrivaled.

Good luck!
Yes. One of the nice things about a smart hosted gmail system is that when spam happens, they will see a corresponding flood of spam reports coming in over a certain amount of time, so that would make it much easier to stem the flood of spam. I am sure there is quite a lot to it which we will never know, but it does seem to be the best out there.
As a former mathematician, I can understand what he writes. Mathematically, it is basically a lot of ranting and raving over nothing. Set theory provides a foundation for mathematics. It is not the only foundation. Category theory is another. Pedagogically, his argument makes more sense. I think he is mostly arguing against using set theory in the teaching of math. True most mathematicians do not use set theory and mathematicians studied math for years without the concept of a set. Set theory is more used as a language and for that reason it is taught. In this sense, set theory is like turing machines and turing equivalence. Important concept, yes. Good to know, yes. Used by most in comp sci, no. Necessary, no.
I'd recommend "Algorithm Design" by Jon Kleinberg, Eva Tardos (http://tinyurl.com/232nfh). Covers most of the topics found on the Cormen book but in a much easier to digest language. The exercises and examples are also much more updated.
You know that is a good attitude for society. It is only during financial bubble times that people develop the flip-it mindset.

I am a PG fan, but the only thing I am not a fan of is his built-to-flip mindset. The coming downturn will cure it - most companies aren't going to find sugar-daddies, so would actually have to figure out a way to make it on their own ...
Xen is great for many things, especially for performance. With help from newer processors it can essentially run a virtualized OS at close to native speeds. You could do the same with commercial offerings from VMWare but as far as free solutions go it doesn't get much better than this. Having separate VMs for each service does indeed make it easy to scale but you don't need to go through this overhead from the start. Instead try to focus on building share nothing architectures that can scale horizontally and then you can worry about VMs at a later point.
Natural language does not have to be ambiguous. Numerous scholastic movements from Plato's Academy to the Confucians have attempted to enable us to speak with greater precision.
I'm not sure if this applies to tech startups, unless you are a big corporation. In that case it might very well be easier to buy a startup than develop a new product in house. Just look at most software offered by Microsoft or IBM today.
'Making serious long-term money is rare enough among pros.'

Data sources?
I read a sci fi book where ads were effectively a micropayment mechanism. You built up credit by watching ads, and you couldn't do certain things online when your ad credit was too low. So you could have a screen with lots of ads open in your loungeroom for an evening and top it up.
Somehow the self-aggrandizement spoof on high school yearbooks manages to be both brilliant and hilarious at the same time:

http://www.self-aggrandizement.com/archives/111004_gotham_hi...

http://www.self-aggrandizement.com/archives/111104_gotham_hi...

http://www.self-aggrandizement.com/archives/111404_gotham_hi...

http://www.self-aggrandizement.com/archives/111604_gotham_hi...
That looks alot like the idea behind my site scrapages. Although I built that in about 2 weeks.
What do you think of Yahoo Mash so far?
I just set up a profile on Mash, so far I dont see any reason for facebook users to migrate to mash. Anybody think this is going to do anything for Yahoo?
Young Entrepreneurs Face Higher Hurdles
I actually thought that was PG's comment. If it's not then that was a really messed up thing for someone to do.
A must read for people at Sun working on Solaris. Particularly:

"Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea. If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of ``open source,'' and have everything magically work out. Software is hard. The issues aren't that simple."

Although Solaris does work. Their problems are others, and yet, the situation is not at all that different from the browser wars.
I defy you to show me a math book that makes no use of the written word or alternative forms of communication. Clearly linguistics is the most important subject and mathematicians are just a bunch of derivative hacks. :-)
Er, what's arrogant or critical about correcting a misconception (that The Fountainhead was based on Lloyd Wright's life) with a reference?

As to Lloyd Wright's skills as an architect (if that's what "superficial, critical statements about highly creative people" was referring to) - I do not dispute that he was highly creative, nor that he was the first great American architect. But his roofs habitually leaked, and there were other technical problems with his creations. Since buildings, whilst unquestionably being creative endeavours, are not purely expressive in purpose, technical failings are not trivialities; they'd have curtailed the career of a lesser architect.

Oddly enough, the same is true in software; there's lots of uninspired but technically competent software, there's rather less beautiful but technically unsound software; and very little code which is both beautiful and sound - but competence can keep a coder in the game even if they have no artistic flair.
Spam trap
Yes, I have a problem with the source. I thought that might be your source based on your phrasing and the fact that there are so few that criticize Campbell's research.

I won't go out of my way to criticize the Weston A. Price Foundation, though. People can make up their own minds. I just find it funny that you question Campbell's motives, but not the motives of his critics.

Campbell has spent 50+ years as a scientist, largely funded by research grants from the National Institute of Health, and has arrived at the conclusion that diets low in animal products are healthier. Since a responsible nutrition researcher is likely to share and promote news that he believes to be both lifesaving and actionable, it is only natural that he would ally himself with other physicians that have also come to the same conclusion (Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine) to spread that message. PCRM is a great organization, in my opinion, and their membership is composed of some of the leading physicians in the area of nutrition, including the physicians that are the only ones to have successfully reversed advanced heart disease without medication.

The Weston A. Price Foundation claims it is 'unbiased', in contrast to the PCRM. That is bullshit. Follow the money to smell the bias. The Weston A. Price Foundation's membership is largely composed of family farmers, including ranchers and dairy farmers. Do you think they might be a bit biased on the subject? You will notice that the foundation's homepage at http://www.westonaprice.org/ currently has logos from eight companies that sponsor their conferences. What do we see? A meat company, a seafood company, a supplement company, a publishing company, etc. Yep, no bias there.

By the way, the link you give is for a review of the book "The China Study" by Campbell and his son, which is not the ACTUAL published China research study I was citing. Only a chapter of that book is devoted to the China research study.
Campbell wrote a rebuttal to the review you cite, which is reproduced at:

http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/campbell_china_response.h...

Masterjohn then wrote a rebuttal to that rebuttal...and then Campbell wrote a response to that. It's all very tiring, actually, because anyone can just look at the research studies in the aggregate and see who is right based on the science.
Go to any investment bank. Take a look at every other desk except currency traders. You'll notice the average age is around 30. Take a look at the currency desk, and you'll realize the average age is around 50. Why?

Bonds, stocks, exotics -- that stuff is all teachable. Give someone two years and they can learn to work the markets. Currency has basically zero theory surrounding it. The guys who are really good have no idea why they're good at it. It's basically all just trapped in their heads and they can't get it out. That's why the guys who are good at it tend to stick around forever and they end up being much older than the other guys on average.
jQuery UI 1.0 launched! - Widgets, Components, and Interactions
I would like to second the recommendation of The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena - it is really a fantastic presentation.
Estimating Google's number of servers using the WWII tank method
Anyone that is using EC2 is using a customized version of zen. We have started the process to move our services over to ec2.

first, vmware, and then we plan to make AMIs for ec2.
Smultron.
I once considered taking an $899 course on currency trading from FXCM.com, so there must be at least some people who think they can teach it and others willing to pay to learn.

Also, with other i-banking specialties you need a larger supply train, including data gathering, analysis, packaging (as a fund) and marketing. With technical trading all you need is your computer and you. Why would a young person who is skilled at technical trading work inside an investment bank? How can you be sure that there aren't thousands of skilled traders making a killing from home? Isn't this sort of like hackers?
The Definition of Insanity - ISO, Microsoft and OOXML
Startup founders: what are the most difficult technical challenges you've faced?
I suspect the most difficult challenges with most startups are not technical; I'm asking because I find technical problems interesting. Please include information about the type of application you're building, the tools you're using and the like, as appropriate.
Common Lisp vs. Scheme macros
Anyone know a good Xen configuration tool? There doesn't seem to be a good equivalent of say, VMware Server for Linux.

Don't care whether it's Open source or proprietary, just want something that makes the image creation, starting / stopping, networking and reconfig simple.
Wow. I definitely did not expect to see this link here.
> I once considered taking an $899 course on currency trading

Why would someone who knew how to trade bother selling an $899 course? They'd be making 10-10000 times that, trading.
I also wondered this. Perhaps they like teaching?
:) I clicked through to your homepage and thought this was really funny.
Source code: http://dfranke.us/spamtrap.rb.txt
Because there is no risk in selling an $899 course, just profit.
Why Private Messages Suck
Virtualmin, Inc. has just released a product called VM2 (Virtualmin Machine Manager) into private beta. It manages Xen, Solaris Zones, Linux vzervers, and Amazon EC2 virtualized systems, as well as physical systems, from a central management interface. It's pretty nifty.

It'll be public in a couple of weeks, tops.
gah, they hard-coded styling. I tried to get rid of the awful, readability-hurting css in firebug but that did little.
I really need to get around to updating that site. It still says I'm a student.
1 day update : http://redrory.com/2007/09/16/my-very-first-web-app/
View -> Page Style -> No Style

I believe that's it, no access to firefox right now.
Because it's an elevated version of the good ol' SCAM. Akin to the "Learn how to sell on eBay" or "How to buy and flip a house" pitches that you see often. How good of an education can you buy for $899?
Without reading the article I'll say: 1) snocap, which does decent business with myspace and other social networks to sell music, 2) rupture.com, a WoW gaming social network
Probably not a very good one - but what do I know I didn't take the course. Btw, I've heard from folks that flip houses that at least some of the workshops are legit.
Now that I've read the article, it appears snocap is trying to tag and secure music sales online and no one uses it.
do you have email? i would like to get in touch
XenSource released a product called XenCenter that looked similar to the VMWare Server Console. Can watch a demo after signing up to receive their spam: http://www.xensource.com/Pages/XenEnterprise_Demo.aspx

Note that it's written on .NET and is Windows only.
In my experience, the combination of the "Algorithms" by Rivest et al and Skiena's "Algorithm Design Manual" provides a very complete exposition of algorithms. Just make sure you work through as many of the exercises in "Algorithms" as you can.
Yes it works...
Replace frustrations with confessions and you get http://grouphug.us/ -- but, none the less, cool idea.
Congrats to the job!
Infoviz porn: the Tokyo subway system (GIF)
Unfortunately, according to that malware presentation that was linked to here the other day, getting confirmed email addresses is still cheap. :/
My eyes are bleeding.
I don't know much about the German tank method but it seems interesting that given 62 unique addresses with a maximum of 103 it would give a total number of 104. This doesn't seem to make sense to me. Can someone explain why this works this way?
Of course, big money is only to be made in volatile markets. In a stable, efficient market, people buy value stocks and make money from the dividends. So, you might think that "Well, I predict bad times, so I should short the market..." But that's not the case in inflationary times:

http://www.mises.org/story/2532

The best strategy seems to be:

1) Go where the money will flow, and go where the future is young. This means Asia for the most part. Europe is almost as effed up as the United States, but with smaller defense expenditures.

2) Guard against inflation. You can do this by buying other currencies, gold, or by buying futures on margin, etc.
Pmarca: The three kinds of platform you meet on the Internet
I'd say the reason private messages are used (and the reason everyone wants to reinvent the wheel for their social networking site) is that it is more convenient to send a message to someone directly from the site you are using when you see their name or profile than to switch over to your mail client and fire up an email. Also keep in mind that a lot of the target audience of sites like Facebook are on university run email servers which generally have a less than pretty user interface.

I would like to see more systems however allow you to view the message in the email and allow you to respond by hitting reply.
You're right. I mostly was intrigued by his stance regarding business models. Consumers often find ways of using products in an unintended manner, and if your business model does not recognize and account for that, you are likely missing out on a valuable resource. Consumers blocking ads is just another example of an unexpected usage of a product, and if you are not prepared for that, you are trying to ignore the nature of smart web users who just want to get at the information or service without all the distractions. There must be some other way to cater to these individuals without the use of ads, while still managing to get some benefit from their traffic.

One example, which requires no work on the part of the site owner, is realizing that the fraction of people who are blocking ads probably has a large overlap with the fraction of people who use Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, and other social news/bookmarking sites. So on one hand, ad-blocking individuals are detracting slightly from the revenue stream, while on the other hand, they may be doing valuable work to promote your site to others.
Solaris is a great OS with a lot of great stuff crammed into it. Unfortunately, it no longer has the momentum. All the junior administrators and developers got their start with Linux nowadays. There are all sorts of shoddy bits within Linux, but at the end of the day, why try to jump from a moving train if you don't have to?

RIP Solaris... hopefully all of the wonderful parts will end up in Linux anyways.
that looks sweet, i've been playing around with jQuery recently and it makes javascript much less painful to deal with.
As a university student who regular communicates using facebook messages instead of email, I can say that in the current culture email is seen as overly former. I use it when I'm communicating about classwork, but for anything social, email is almost inappropriate.

I realize it's kind of ridiculous, but it's how it is and everyone I know checks their facebook account just as much if not more than their their email inbox anyways. As you said, it doesn't help that Pitt has a terrible web-based email UI.
This is a very interesting point. I've always used email or IM as the primary form of communication but I think I got in this habit from work, not school. I am wondering if more students used something like GMail and Google Talk if email would become a more appropriate means of communication.
Where and how to announce the launch of a website?
Me and my friends have been working on developing a social marketplace called Onista.
We are 4 to 6 weeks away from launching it.

We want to find out about where and how we should announce the launch event so people know about it.

we are thinking of following,
1. Press Release
2. Announce on YC news
3. Announce on Reddit
4. Announce on Digg
5. Send emails to TechCrunch, GigaOM, and Mashable. (Not sure if they will care in first instance)
6. Send emails to all of our friends and family

Are there any other ways to announce the initial release?

You can track our progress at our blog http://onista.wordpress.com

The site will be live at http://www.onista.com within next 4 to 6 weeks.

Please let us know if you know other ways to announce the availability of new website.

Thanks in advance,
Yes, I think it would. The people that I talk to using Facebook messages are generally less technically proficient than those that forward their Pitt email to Gmail. Our school lets you set up email forwarding really nicely.

Anyone that I already communicate with on Google Talk (my preferred means on internet communication) I would email over sending a Facebook message.
Oh no! No more cheap plastic crap from china!!! What are we going to do??? OMG we'll have to make it ourselves!!!!!!!!
Iranians are not terrorists.
If they've completely rewritten the source code, do you think they would be willing to let you have the rights back to the original version again if/when they decide to shut it down?
1) Won't a U.S. crash take everything down with it?
2) Thanks.

Shorting is scary for me due to potentially infinite risk. Is there some other way of doing pretty much the same thing (making money off of declining stocks) without losing more money than you lay on the table?
Silent Seizures May Cause Alzheimer's Dementia
Social influence by reducing resistance
reminded me of a favorite Michael Jordan quote of mine....

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Press releases and public announcements on these aggregator websites really aren't good. You need to find some more creative way to generate publicity for your launch. Since you're working on a marketplace, what is some high-profile good or service you could offer that would draw people in? Were you to release next week, a couple hundred copies of Halo 3 might just do the trick (though at $60 a pop that could get expensive). There are too many online social sites for a simple announcement that it's up and running to draw in participants.
Dynamic Languages Jobs Barometer
We're running ESer.org (http://www.eser.org/usa) on over 120 different virtualized linux servers.

Moving a virtual machine from one server to another involves a simple rsync operation and takes just a few minutes over gigabit ethernet. Same goes for cloning virtual machines.
> You know that is a good attitude for society

Why is that? It's good for the economy for people to invest in the market.
Getting this sort of thing right doesn't seem to translate to winning in the market, at least not in the short term. Doesn't Livejournal do this? Of course, I suspect Livejournal will still be around in ten years, while Myspace won't. I'm not sure about Facebook, as it still seems to be evolving pretty fast.
The point of yours I was responding to is: "I know exactly what people need and my ideas are all rational and brilliant while other's are stupid and irrational" So given that, as opposed to the familiarity issue (which I wasn't talking about - but is another intersting topic), I don't see any false dichotomoy in my response.

I think for art you can look at a work in 2 ways: the subject and the style. The subject can and usually is highly influenced by the buyer, but the style of the artist, which I argue should be a manifestation of the artist's core values, should not be influenced. If it were, the artist would lack core values and consistency - which is never the case (that I know of) for meaningful artists. So again, the buyer chooses the artist for their style, and then goes from there on possibly suggesting a subject (such as a portrait), not the other way around.

You can easily argue that Apple is taking this same approach to technology. They present a distinct style of products - usually highly designed/integrated and simple to use (some would argue almost inspiring to use) in their many different products, but the type of product they make is highly influenced by what people want. For many, Apple products might be too simple or too expensive, but there is a growing group of people willing to pay extra for Apple's style of technology.

Now, if Apple were to change their style based on market research for every product, that would be the death of the apple brand as we know it, and they would morph into yet another cloning company. The familiarity idea you were talking about also breaks down with the Apple example, as who knew they wanted a Mac before it existed? It certainly wasn't familiar, nor was the Iphone, etc. But that issue is another topic. My point was that to be a successful artist adherence to a core set of values is key (in the case of business you could call it branding). This issue shows up alot in music, where people will find that a band has "sold out" by changing their unique sound to appeal more to a mass audience thus losing those original fans.