skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would use it in productivity software.

The users would input their to do list and the AI would suggest the best next task for them to complete. You could have the user input some information about their lifestyle - married? family? when do they work? etc - and the AI would take into consideration these factors when determining the next best task.
What's your score on the Netflix Prize quiz?
> Technical analysis is just silly.

That was also my first reaction, but maybe the commodities market (which he's targeting) is more inefficient than equities.
Ticketmaster launches an affiliate program
I'd like to see the result of your algorithm on the Netflix challenge as well.
Unfortunately "Web 2.0" might be more of a marketing term ... but I think we all have a good feel of what it is,

VentureOne says Web 2.0 companies are the following:

a business model that revolves around a dynamic interface facilitating participation through such methods as user-created content, networking, and collaboration. Applications used include podcasting, tagging, blogs, social networking, mashups, and wikis. Technologies used in these applications include: AJAX, RSS, SOA, CSS, XHTML, Atom, and rich Internet applications.

but if you haven't read this yet, regardless of if you know what Web 2.0 is or not you must take a look at it:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/...
Huh, I hadn't seen Songkick before, it looks great! I had the same frustration with finding shows from bands I like, and wanted to make something similar. I'm sure it'll be a hit if you get the data and some half-decent recommendations.
Maybe not fulfilling all of the requirements for a degree per se, but Phillip Greenspun finds a university a great source of entertainment.

"Taking advantage of my location in Cambridge, I have sat in on some classes at MIT in Atmospheric Physics, Biology, and Geology. I also teach a software engineering lab course at MIT every three or four semesters (textbook). But for me, the university has mostly been a source of entertainment; I have never looked to it as a source of income."

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science (Appendix E)

So the compelling reason might not be that getting a degree will impress other people, but that learning is a fun and enriching experience. Yes, there are dead trees in libraries, but lectures, being able to ask questions to someone who is an expert in what you want to learn, and collaborating with peers who also want to learn are difficult to duplicate with only dead trees.
"I think that what sets me apart from the masses isn't in hardware (a better brain), but software (beliefs and an outlook more conducive to learning)."

From your list of accomplishments, I suspect one of the skills that sets you apart is your time management capabilities. Otherwise commonly known as self-discipline.
Can anyone recommend good books, articles or essays that introduce machine learning?
I intend to find out for myself but I'm curious to know how steep a learning curve you've found it to be.
Lessons From a Turnaround: Fixing a $150 Million Flaw
>...people are making way too much money to talk about it openly.

Or maybe people are _wasting_ way too much money to talk about it openly.
"I like to think that I'm on the billionaire path."

It's not clear that there is any billionaire path.

Multi-millionaire, sure. There are lots of ways to achieve that through skill and hard work. But the billionaire path is being on the multi-millionaire path, having an extremely rare opportunity serendipitously present itself to you, recognizing it, and then making a long series of good decisions without any major missteps. There is a lot on that path you have not control over. Talent, effort, and even wisdom are probably not enough to keep you on it by themselves.
The Secret to Success: Developers, Users, or Hype?
I think if you are early in the game then go for the users, you are new and different, they will like you (and don't have too many choices either), and if you like you can get the developers after, if you have users they'll be interested in you.

But if you are late in the game, then you probably need to go after the developers (much harder but if possible, you need to get creative like Google and their prize!), so you can offer new and more exciting products (features) than the competition, create a hype and that way get users to come to you.

The article says FB is an example of going after the developers. "Yes" and "No". "No" because, they were the first one to open up so that was exciting for the developers, but they also had millions of users at that point. After iLike got around 3 million users only in one week, I think everyone wanted to develop for FB now. But "Yes", because they were somewhat late in the game, specially compared to Myspace, so they had to open up and get the developers into it.

Google, is late in the game for phones so they are going for the developers.

But I think if you can get the developers in it, you win. It would be very hard for other companies to compete with you, you will always have a lot more exciting products ... and once network effects kick in, its almost impossible to compete. Maybe a lesson from Microsoft...
Interpreter for AsYetUnnamedProgrammingLanguage by

MichaelSpeer v0.-1

>

> declare

. Products

. :name PHRASE

. :price MONEY'USD

. ;

> create Products [ :name , :price ] =

. [ "DVD Player" , 20'USD ] ,

. [ "VCR" , 15.5'USD ] ,

. [ "DVD" , 7'USD ] ,

. [ "VCR Tape" , 4'USD ]

. ;

> Products ;

[ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]

> Products:id ;

[ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]

> Products[ :id , :name ] ;

[ 1 , "DVD Player" ]

[ 2 , "VCR" ]

[ 3 , "DVD" ]

[ 4 , "VCR Tape" ]

> Products( :price < 5'USD )[ :name ];

[ "VCR Tape" ]

> Products( :price > 10'USD ):name ;

[ "DVD Player" , "VCR" ]

> Products( :price > 10'USD )[ :name ] ;

[ "DVD Player" ]

[ "VCR" ]

> Products( asc :name ):name ;

[ "DVD" , "DVD Player" , "VCR" , "VCR Tape" ]

> declare

. Categories

. :name PHRASE

. :sub-products -> Products:category single

. ;

> create Categories [ :name , :sub-products ] =

. [ "Video Players" , Products( :name in [ "DVD Player" ,
"VCR" ] ) ]

. ;

> Products:category:name ;

[ "Video Players" ]

> Products[ :category:name ] ;

[]

[ "Video Players" ]

[]

[ "Video Players" ]

> Products( :category ):name ; -- returns products that
have a category

[ "DVD Player" , "VCR" ]

> Products( not :category ):name ; -- returns products
lacking a category

[ "DVD" , "VCR Tape" ]

> Products( :id != 3 && :id != 4 )[ :name ] ;

[ "DVD Player" ]

[ "VCR" ]

> create Categories [ :name , :sub-products ] =

. [ "Blank Media" , Products( not :category ) ]

. ;

> Products( :category( :sub-products( :name == "DVD" ) )
):name ;

[ "DVD" , "VCR Tape" ]

> alter Products( :category( :name == "Media" ) )[ :price ]
= [ :price += 1'USD ] ;

> declare Categories:recommended ->
:sub-products:recommended-by ;

> alter Categories( :name == "Media" )[ :recommended ] = [
:sub-products( :name == "DVD" ) ] ;
Wal-Mart's Ultra-Efficient Linux PC Sells Out
I think if you are early in the game then go for the users, you are new and different, they will like you (and don't have too many choices either), and if you like you can get the developers after, if you have users they'll be interested in you.

But if you are late in the game, then you probably need to go after the developers (much harder but if possible, you need to get creative like Google and their prize!), so you can offer new and more exciting products (features) than the competition, create a hype and that way get users to come to you.

The article says FB is an example of going after the developers. "Yes" and "No". "No" because, they were the first one to open up so that was exciting for the developers, but they also had millions of users at that point. After iLike got around 3 million users only in one week, I think everyone wanted to develop for FB now. But "Yes", because they were somewhat late in the game, specially compared to Myspace, so they had to open up and get the developers into it.

Google, is late in the game for phones so they are going for the developers.

But I think if you can get the developers in it, you win. It would be very hard for other companies to compete with you, you will always have a lot more exciting products ... and once network effects kick in, its almost impossible to compete. Maybe a lesson from Microsoft...
did you keep your comment short to make your point?
This is cross-posted from reddit.

Answers: no, but still probably a lot. The site is not affiliated with a charity, so who knows if they actually give rice or not.

Anyway, everyone knows that solving hunger is not about quantity of food (there is plenty to be had) but rather about distribution--the places where people are starving are that way because their government is corrupt. It doesn't matter how much food is sent.
After reading I wouldn't quite call it plagiarism, but it definitely has a lot of the same ideas.
Murdoch (NWS): "Expect to Take WSJ Online Free"
This is good news indeed. I hope the trend picks up and more folks end up buying machines running Linux.
i think it has to do with alot of things

the iPhones data plan is pretty competitive in the US

People don't usually buy non-contract phones here so it isn't as much of a deterrent to have to get one.

also what i think is the mom factor. My mother who has never ever shown interest in getting a smart phone of any sort can't wait for her iPhone because she can check her email and surf the web while she's away from her desk. It's not that this technology hasn't existed, she just never knew it did. I don't think that "mom factor" is as prevalent in the UK because it seems like people use their phones differently there because of all the non-contract competition. She has a palm but doesn't really completely understand how to use it all, She see's the iPhone as something she'll actually use as opposed to the palm that her office got her that collects dust.
I agree, although there's nothing wrong with using 'comment length' as an input to some learning system. In POPFile we use quite a lot of 'meta' information about email including length to make a decision.

John.
"and then this easy class to finish off my minor), I slept on most of it, yet I managed to show up in tests and (to my suprise) got a B."

The classes I think are easy are the ones that scare me. I've had a couple experiences where I thought a class was not going to be challenging and ended up with a worse grade than classes where the material was harder.
The New Start-Up Recipe
interesting Q&A
They're using Java because of its sandbox, IMO, and because it's a widely used language.
Indeed, by winning the Netflix prize you've proven your approach is worth at least 1 million. And by beating some very, very good teams you've shown you know something they don't. That's very valuable evidence. That's IF you can hack it :)
You can tell us your results with KDD data sets: http://kdd.ics.uci.edu/
Actually, I think Google is minimally invested in both. Just enough to be present, but not nearly enough to change the playing field.
Ad targeting.
Can't really get you a score that you'll be able to trust without submitting a result set, can't submit a result set without agreeing to publicize my algorithm...
Pick a different test. One where you can do the verification without a 3rd party that requires me to relinquish my trade secret.
They forgot the all important: "Getting it to work in IE"
Very interesting idea, do you have any idea where I can get a dataset for it? I'd rather test it before I start pouring time & money to building an ad network first
"As a side note, a little known fact is that when I was at Friendster, I found a small company out of Harvard that we came very close to acquiring, a startup no one had heard of that time, a company named The Facebook."
License it to game dev companies to provide better opponent AI.
even if its in the milliseconds range?
SpamBayes for Youtube (DIY Stupidity Filter)
Wow. This was a long time coming.
What is String Theory?
Advice for the Young Scientist, by John Baez
Dalvik: How Google routed around Sun's IP-based licensing restrictions on Java ME
> Can I participate if I live outside the US?

>Yes, however, at this time only US-based events are available through the Ticketmaster Affiliate Program.

I'm sick of seeing things like this. Americans need to become more globally aware in their approach to the marketplace, there are many more people outside of the US than there are in it.

Oh well.
A nice read early on would be "Elephants don't play chess" but Rodney Brooks.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/elephants.pdf
I know it was a joke (I think?), but for clarification, I was trying to distinguish unnecessary time sinks, whereas IE is annoying, but necessary.

But if anyone has any other suggestions for big ones, please comment.
"PS: I am of the opinion that anyone completing a four-year degree with a 4.0 grade point average did not get their money's worth out of college."

I am reminded that Bill Gates would find ways to take graduate courses that interested him that he did not have the prerequisites for and argue with the professor from the first day of class.

Not the most efficient path to getting a high GPA, but likely a good way to learn a lot in a short period of time.
Most of the random pointless overhead is something you can turn into something useful, and the constant stream of it forces you out of your current mode and area of comfort and into something new -- often in a dumb assignment there's a kernel of brilliance.

It also helps immensely to have deadlines from outside you: given a schedule I found myself able to complete many times more than I would otherwise schedule for myself, with no exhaustion and less stress than I would otherwise have.

I don't think it's a great mode to be in permanently, but for four years? It was definitely worth my time. I know that college isn't needed to learn any specific thing, but I know that it would take uncanny discipline to approach the breadth of what I had learned without the framework of the university to guide me. I needed to harness that framework, and parts of it did get in the way, but I certainly think that for me it conferred net benefit.
I wasn't talking about training time -- I was talking about data set size. Frequently uploading a few GB of data over the public Net to do effective training is going to be an annoyance. You may also need to perform the training multiple times, especially if your algorithm takes any parameters.
That's not true. You can submit your results and then refuse to release your algorithm, disqualifying you from the competition.

"Upon qualifying, as described above, the Participant is required to submit within one (1) week for judging a description of their algorithm along with all source code. The Participant warrants that the source code is either fully or substantially developed and functions or will function as represented by the description. Failure to deliver both the description and source code within one (1) week will disqualify that entry and additional qualifying entries will be considered."
RANDU - How ill-conceived random number gen. cast suspicion on statistical results from the 1970s
What's the best DNS service you can recommend?
I've several forums online, and i've noted that the hosting industry it's always changing, so the prices change, so i change hosting twice a year.

The main problems are DNS.

What's the best DNS service that u can recommend?
You need a billion dollars to "knock off AIDS"?

Here comes the bargain of the century...

How to Knock Off AIDS (for free):

Whether or not you're already infected with HIV:

- eat only healthy foods (limit animal protein, refined carbohydrates, and saturated fat)

- exercise every day

- have a bright outlook

- have meaningful work

- don't smoke or take drugs

- treat others the way you'd like to be treated

- make all your variable names meaningful

And, just in case, if you're not already infected with HIV:

- keep your zipper up (unless you're with your other half)
It does take a few parameters but there is no reason why the same dataset would have to be uploaded every time you tweak a parameter, I can just store it and let you play with it until you are satisfied with the results.
And again training isn't done that frequently usually.
It's the power efficiency that appeals to me.

I want a home server that I can leave on 24/7 without putting a dent in my power bill.
Does Your Business Have a Facebook Page Yet? (Post Facebook Pages Here)
Active Record vs Objects
Can the child prodigy work out if he should go to university aged 7?
Achieving the Impossible: on genius, chess and more
Me three. Drop me a line -- patrick#collison#ie.
Dalvik: how Google routed around Sun's IP-based licensing restrictions on Java ME
I remember hearing somewhere that the amount Friendster offered Facebook then was something like $10 million.

I'm sure a lot of people told Zuckerberg he was crazy not to take the money and run.
Who are you? Maybe you can't speak a lot about your discovering, but you can at least tell what your name is and how you got to this?
Fed responsibility matters - but what matters more to the average consumer is the actual dollar price of goods in relation to their incomes.
Ok missed that part in the contract... it was a bit long and in legalese.
I'll tinker with it to fit it to the problem (different algorithm category, mine is best fitted for classification problems and the test is a clustering problem. The dataset needs to be manipulated a bit first for it to work )
He says in some other comment:

"I've tested it on the data from the KDD 2006 cup a contest in the KDD conference whose goal was to identify Pulmonary Embolism based on data generated from CT scans and it out scored the cup winners by a 50% margin."
Borrrr-ing.

Also, this will get you NOWHERE:

"You can abuse artists on touring contracts as badly as you do on recording. You graduated from Harvard, they dropped out junior year of high school in Detroit. You can do this."

What an asshole!

Nearly all talented musicians are WICKEDLY INTELLECTUAL. Music ain't easy, jack.

Also:

Lefsetz.com/wordpress

particularly:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/11/11/3...

and

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/11/12/g...

Mike Masnick at Techdirt has been saying all this for nearly a decade.

Blah blah.
Kleiner Perkins hiring to invest in consumer Internet
gOS PC Sells Out: People Like A Google Focused PC
I have no idea how game AIs work, I thought most of it was totally scripted to just appear intelligent. I'll need to research the field a bit.
The Amazing Rise of WebKit Mobile
Do you have any information at all to base your comment on?
The average consumer couldn't tell you why productivity matters. Productivity happens to be the single greatest indicator of long term changes in wealth and standard of living. The lesson learned: don't pay attention to meaningless indicators just because the average consumer thinks they are important.
Commission rate is up to 5 bucks a ticket (that particular ticket must be greater than $500). The max percentage I could find was 1.25%. That's atrocious for an affiliate program. However, if it works for you and it works well, then go for it.
Some is scripted. They do a variety of other things too. For example, path finding gets its own algorithm. And they have algorithms for getting multiple guys to move around in formation. Sometimes there is some type of system with goals (get 1000 wood, get an 80 food army, kill X base, etc) and then it picks things to achieve those goals (build more wood harvesters, build more units, attack). sometimes they use "learning" algorithms where they tweak parameters by running the AI repeatedly and seeing which does better, and they can use games with a human player to do that too (if it wins too badly, have it aim less precisely). And lots of other one-off things.
My name is Avi Marcus, I am a 29 year old, semi retired (sold my previous startup ) hacker from Israel.
Started programming at 8, started CS in college when I was 13. Flunked out because I was bored at 15.
Always been interested in artificial intelligence, but a year and a half ago I read a book on the way the human brain works and suddenly I had a vision of something programmers missed in all of the machine learning algorithms they built, which is a basic part of the human cognitive process, and I suddenly understood how to add it to existing algorithms.

Anything else?
Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms by David MacKay is excellent, and freely available online.

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/book.html
Where's Symbian in all this?
Is formal education important? (not for 37signnals)
Focusing Light on Silicon Beads
My algorithm won't replace A* as a path finding algorithm, and it wasn't designed to do swarming ( although maybe I can adapt it to swarming ). And as far as I know most of the rest is totally scripted... Again not exactly my field so I need to read up on it before I can rule it out.
> it looks disturbingly like the 8-bit computer market from the early 1980s

No, handhelds is mature market with more than 10 years history. There is already known winner processor - ARM (of different vendors but compatible). Others (MIPS, SH3 and Motorola are gone).

Android is competitor for the Windows CE and Symbian. But WindowsCE still looks stronger. Android's one (and only one for now) strong feature - it's open license. Java - ... - hope they will replace it soon with something scriptable. Or just add something, if they want all this J2ME.
Yahoo settles lawsuit with jailed Chinese journalists
yeah been looking for this for while, but still, 1.25%?
Thanks man! Hope to meet you in person soon.

What do you think of our recommendations right now? We're taking a different approach to the 2 most popular paradigms: collaborative filtering on your userbase (e.g. Last.fm) or expert hand labeling (e.g. Pandora).

Instead we consider any implicit or explicit relationship between two artists expressed on the web as a data point for our recommendation engine to analyse. This could for example be that Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem were mentioned in the same review. We also incorporate data from our users' listening histories. You can see the recommendations at work on artist pages and on our Band Manager.

Our goal is to generate recommendations that harness the wisdom of the biggest crowd possible: all music lovers anywhere on the web. We're not there yet but would love to hear what you think of the first results.
Can you give any specific examples (references to academic papers) you've already tested it on and shown an improvement - no need to give details if you don't feel you can, but it would be interesting to know which tests you've done and against which existing algorithms.
Joyent offers free Accelerator hosting for Facebook applications
Free basic Accelerator, with direct peering to Facebook's datacenter, for a year. Guess they're planning to make their money on upgrades for the apps that hit home runs?
Hack Attack: Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800
Wait wait wait... who actually did think this was in response to iPhone?
Answer: No. The writer doesn't understand how web advertising works and based it on ludicrous assumptions. The $150k is also sensationalized.
Hari Seldon Move Over: Pentagon Plans Social Unrest Prediction System
My issues with computer science go a bit beyond that! I think there's a general misunderstanding about what is important.
I'm mostly talking about the first two years: exact repeat of the first two years of highschool. Of course, I don't think I went to the academically best college.
> Of course, if you're not interested in learning, you'll find college/university to be a waste

That's the problem, I was, but that was not the focus of my school. Most everything I learned, I learned on my own time. After school I learned much more on my own time. Had I been able to skip the first two years, I probably would have learned more on my own.
No. Not $150k. Not $15k. Not 1k.
Nigerian scamming. Oh wait, you want something ethical?:)