skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article does seem familiar, and I think I've even seen it on HN before.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48006

Yep. (There seems to be a slight change in the base URL for the submitted article, but this has been discussed here before.)

Still this is well worth discussing again. It's amazing how much most college-educated people think they know about statistics that they really don't. Two of my favorite quick overview articles about statistics, both by Ph.D. professors of statistics, are "Advice to Mathematics Teachers on Evaluating Introductory Statistics Textbooks"

http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF

(the link is dead because of site maintenance now, but should be fixed soon)

and

"The Introductory Statistics Course: A
Ptolemaic Curriculum?"

http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...

Both are thought-provoking articles about what usually isn't taught to undergraduates about statistics.
His favorite blog posts are being reposted as essays.
I was a Cave Specialist/Physical Science Tech for the National Park Service for several years. I built GIS models, led cave surveys, mapped surface hydrology, and hiked up high ridges at night with night vision gear and a computer to ID bat echolocation calls. I could spend a day skiing to a backcountry air resource station to measure ambient air quality or stay in the office and draft a map. It was a perfect mix of outdoors and geek.

You can find jobs like that at http://www.usajobs.gov/.
I envy people like this.
That said, when things did go wrong it was a major PIA to correct them. When their fraud detection kicked in because of my traveling, the hoops to get the account reactivated were enormous.

I'm a platinum card holder of a major credit card and I had exactly the same issues (except my card was deactivated for 2 weeks). I don't think this is a PayPal problem per se but one of a general lack of customer service standards in the finance industry.
The fact that this is considered a "clever hack" as opposed to "duh, totally obvious" befuddles me.

Who in hell would actually spend hours stirring milk for hours a day?

Saying that this is a clever hack is like saying "I know a guy who heats his water for a shower using a hot water heater, instead of jumping into cold water and thrashing his arms around for four hours - what a genius!"
So after Ruby and Ruby on Rails, Zed has learnt some R and statistics. Because after reading almost all the article, he basically talks about: average, median, standard deviation.

He should learn a little bit of complexity and calculability by the way, best case, worst case, Big O notation, etc.
Android Full Screen on Ubuntu
Clojure is a great, powerful language. I would start with that-- it's a Lisp that runs on the JVM, so it has access to all the Java libraries. It can become semi-fast if you drop down to Java, but by the time you care about performance down to orders of binary magnitude, you should probably switch to Ocaml and use Lacaml for numerical stuff.
Steady, predictable employment is the opiate of the masses in a way that religion will never be. That's why there's so much political will to keep those big companies going: they keep, or kept, a lot of people steadily employed, and those employees vote.

I think it's entirely possible that an economy consisting of fewer giants and more startups would have less overall unemployment and produce more real wealth, but it would also require workers to give up any remaining idea of lifetime employment and instead embrace careers as people in the IT field are frequently used to them: a string of engagements with different companies, hopefully helping you to develop personally and professionally.

It's not necessarily an easy sell; to a lot of people, it looks a lot more risky and less certain than the jobs their fathers had at the steel mill or the auto plant. To the extent that such jobs exist anymore, there's going to be a lot of political pressure to keep them around at any cost.
"You are inventing absurd definitions of gambling to support your incorrect, defeated argument."

Are you a politician or something? That is an incredibly dishonest phrase to use and you should be downvoted for that alone. (Though I note with some pleasure it hasn't seemed to have worked.)

I'm pretty comfortable with this definition of gambling. You are not in control. Part of the scam is that you think you are. But you are not. Your comprehension is being successfully hacked.

Try it. Since you apparently won't understand until you do, try it. Then get back to me. See just how much control you have.
I'm a little disappointed by the reception this news item is getting here on HN, isn't this a great opportunity for developers? I know HN is heavily Apple orientated site and filled with Flash haters - but Nokia has millions of phones out there and by supporting Flash - gives the Ovi app store a good chance of success.
Wow that looks ugly.
He's the new PG, with most of the wisdom replaced by machismo.
It depends. If her interests are highly focused, there's a few problem domains where niche languages (R, Matlab, Haskell, Fortran) really shine. However, if she wants more general purpose tools, I've got a few strong recommendations:

Ruby - I'd start here. Ruby is an amazingly flexible language, with a gigantic "feature set". Learning Ruby will get her up to speed on imperative programming, functions, objects, libraries, DSLs, regexps, and some functional programming (via closures). The community is friendly, the docs are plentiful, and the available libraries (gems) are pretty comprehensive. Best of all, the learning curve is gentle and it gets you writing productive programs quickly. However, unlike many "beginner's languages", it's not particularly limiting. If you really need to, you can always call out to C or Java (via JRuby). Possible alternative: Python. Never worked with it, but I understand it offers a lot of the same benefits.

Java - If she wants to do a variety of scientific or industrial programming, she's eventually going to have to learn Java. Java has largely replaced C++ as the academic language of choice, and most industries have migrated to either Java or C# for general development. While some people scream about the "yuckiness" of Java, it's actually not that bad, especially for a beginner. It's highly object oriented and strongly typed, teaching a lot about those concepts. The verbosity is often helped by access to a lot of kick-ass dev tools. Best of all, though, is the libraries. The amount of open-source code that you can tap is HUGE, especially in the scientific and industrial arenas. Oh, and Java 6 is wicked fast, at least in comparison to Ruby and Python. :)

C - I would recommend C for two reasons. First, it teaches you a lot about how the underlying machine works. If your friend is doing scientific computations on large datasets, she's eventually going to run into some weirdness with memory. Knowing C helps (forces?) you to understand what's happening "behind the scenes" in these VM-based memory managed environments. If you dig far enough down, you're almost always going to find some C code, and it's helpful to know how that works. Secondly, there's some problem domains where still C reigns supreme, namely anything that demands extreme performance. The combination of Ruby and C can give you the best of both worlds, using Ruby for most of the "glue code" and C for stuff that needs rocketship speed.

NOT RECOMMENDED - C++. Almost everything done in C++ is better done in either C or Java. C++ is super-complex, verbose, error-prone, and you still have to manage your own memory. Unless she needs to work with legacy code, your friend's time is best spent learning more modern tools.
Ditto. I just put up a variation on this response at the blog itself:

This is a great response and encapsulates many of the issues I have with PayPal. I would add to it that enough people have been burned by PayPal to give it a lousy reputation; you can't write a post about the company without people chiming in with horror stories. My family's business -- see www.seliger.com -- is the kind of company Paypal would presumably want to use their service, but after I had a bad experience with them, I never would.

The first comment on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626518 Hacker News answers, "Because they appear, from many people's perspectives, to be nothing but scam artists?" With this kind of reputation, why _would_ people use Paypal.
If it's RSI, I may be able to offer some advice!
If the guy refused delivery, wouldn't the motherboard have been returned to you?
I don't know how true this is. I am in Canada, so I understand it likely isn't exactly the same.

PayPal says it should take 6-8 days for a money transfer. In my experience, I have found it takes 6-8 days before I see it withdrawn from my bank account. After that, it can be up to another 6-8 days to see it ever show up in my PayPal account.
Working with online documentation while coding, for example, is much more efficient for me with conkeror. Or looking up some piece of information while I am typing a reply to a HN comment :)

Fair enough :)
The motherboard was returned to me. That's why I refunded him his money.

But then, after he refused delivery, he claimed I'd never even sent the motherboard, and filed a claim with Paypal -- despite the fact that I had a tracking number, proof of it getting to his location, and then online indication that "recipient refused delivery" or whatever it said (don't recall exactly -- this was five years ago).

After that, he never responded to my emails, and just disappeared completely. He was obviously in it to scam someone -- likely many people -- and it worked quite nicely. Quite clever, actually.
Tired of Erlang Innards
Too bad you're not willing to consider PostgreSQL. I would have suggested http://www.commandprompt.com
How To Use Twitter and Not Be a Douchebag
But in the context of "why don't people use PayPal" it still looks like PayPal has a problem to the customer.
You threw me off with asking about a "persistent in-memory" database... kinda like an "invisible multi-color" car...

I get what you are saying, seems like you want a write-through cache. Sure seems that you are in the right ball park for a solution, but may have to write a bit of application code layered to do what you want with those parts.

It would probably be helpful if you broke up the read/writes estimates. Also, are those writes mostly inserts or updates? There are different types of solutions depending one what you expect your profile to be like.

Also are you reads just a key look up or are you doing some sort of aggregation/searching across all records?

Seems like you may be prematurely optimizing your solution and underestimating the capabilities of database engines. Most of them can probably handle the load you are thinking with correct usage and sufficient tuning and hardware. For example, I believe twitter uses MySQL:

http://highscalability.com/scaling-twitter-making-twitter-10...
NO. The poster is an idiot, but there is no excuse for using that thoughtless form letter.
1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
You completely missed the point; this thread is about people who say "starting a business is risky". If you measure risk in terms of ROI in dollars: purchasing a deprecating asset vs. starting a business is a no-brainer, yet most "average joes" that tell you "starting a business is risky" won't think twice about blowing lots of money on a brand new car.
I don't know that they are successful, if you use actual profit as a criterion. I think eBay only bought them to keep them from going out of business; they're really helpful for eBay, but I don't think they make money.
I strongly agree that email should be taxed. However... 3c per email is a bit steep! The price should be just enough to upset the spammers' ROI calculation. If, on average, 1 in 100,000 spam messages results in an average $50 sale, the email tax needn't exceed $50 per 100,000 messages sent. That comes out to 0.0005c per message, which leaves plenty of change for that large caramel macchiato.
Actually, the slashdot article is about LISP, all uppercased. It is the clueless variety of the language, not unlike PERL.
We've heard it all before, but I think the real value of Facebook is the "Social Graph." Most services are more interesting when made relevant to your social connections (e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Yelp, Games). Facebook Connect does this pretty well, especially considering how many people are on Facebook. Facebook.com is a bit of a headache at times with status updates, unnecessary app notifications, and a generally increasing noise level (aside-- anyone else notice this lately? the 'home' feed is much less customizable or interesting than before.). Also the monocultured look and feel of Facebook.com is dull at times. But importing Facebook friends into Yelp, fantasy sports, Netflix, Xbox Live and other services would be really useful and convenient for me, I think, in the long term.
Honda India Launches CBF Stunner PGM-FI in India
Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft
Have you looked at Project Voldemort? http://project-voldemort.com/

Voldemort combines in memory caching with the storage system so that a separete caching tier is not required (instead the storage system itself is just fast.)
> So after Ruby and Ruby on Rails, Zed has learnt some R and statistics.

From the article it sounds like he learned stats first.

> studied statistics in grad school,
I share this characteristic (although I'm not yet sure how close I am to these folks on the continuum, as I've never been tested), along with another person I went to high school with.

My friends joke that I’m a stalker — I used to remember so many details about everyone," she said. “People get weirded out. I'd love to see research performed that tested the relationship between this ability and others linked to memory.

Also, here's the study: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~rrussell/Super-Recognizer...
http://vimeo.com/3195079

this looks really promising. the heatmap idea at the 12 minute mark is amazing.
It would probably be helpful if you broke up the read/writes estimates. Also, are those writes mostly inserts or updates? There are different types of solutions depending one what you expect your profile to be like.

Also are you reads just a key look up or are you doing some sort of aggregation/searching across all records?

Please also estimate your overall size demands. Manipulating 2GB of data is different than 200GB. :)
Ask HN: Proper way to report an error in a paper
I have found an error in a peer-reviewed paper by a well known author. At a certain point in his algorithm, the author gives a lower bound for allocating storage. He does not provide a proof for that bound and it turns out that the bound is too low.

I have found a correct bound and spent several hours proving it. I am mainly a programmer and not well versed in the ways of academia. My natural instinct is a) to send my proof to the author directly. Another option is b) to put a small paper on my website that corrects the flaw.

Option a) has the downside that you don't know if you'll get proper credit. Many people seem to use option b), but is that an accepted practice?

What would you do?
Tom French Construction of Overland Park
For over 30 years, Tom French has been designing and building outstanding custom homes in the Kansas City area.
Why you don't like Redit? It's doing exactly what [I think] you want - in-memory cache with periodically background saving.
Using Git with Vim
Spellcheck your HTML with Aspell, Rake, and CI
As venture capitalist Paul Graham put it, "It turns out the rule 'large and disciplined organizations win' needs to have a qualification appended: 'at games that change slowly.' No one knew till change reached a sufficient speed.

An interesting article, and no doubt a prediction that many of us in the startup world would like to see come true, but the above quote was one of the few pieces of actual support for its thesis. And it seems like most of the economy does not change quickly, and so for the most part, the claims appear baseless.

Side musing: I wonder how Paul feels being referred to as a "venture capitalist".
Though it's probably not a good first language, if she is going to be writing code for any astrophysical applications she will have to learn IDL at some point. It's a language that's rarely used in any other field, but in astrophysics it's the language of choice.
Scientists identify genes behind ageing process
That article was very useful. I wish we had more attorneys writing such entries for the rest of us. There are a striking number of legal misperceptions out there among businesspeople.
Scan Uncovers Thousands of Copycat Scientific Articles
A growing number of professors use Turnitin.com to catch students submitting plagiarized papers.

Now the professors themselves are being scrutinized for plagiarism when submitting papers to scientific journals:

From "Science":
Déjà vu, an online database that bills itself as "a study of scientific publication ethics," has prompted discussions with journal editors and at least 48 retractions of suspicious papers. Some journals now run accepted papers through eTBLAST, the freely available software behind the database, to hunt for duplications prior to publication.

links:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/324/5930/1004

http://invention.swmed.edu/etblast/etblast.shtml
Twitter Gossip Girl Mashup
Mis-titled article: talk mostly covers real-time and streaming search vs "web search".
A Novel Language, Spoken, Written, Optimal & Naturally Computer Friendly
I agree that low-power computing is an interesting topic and free turtles all the way down are worth having -- however, the XO had free firmware and low power consumption years ago (and a sunlight-friendly display and mesh networking etc...), so I'm seriously unimpressed by this machine.
I hold precisely the opposite opinion. (How's that for HN-sanctioned "YOU'RE WRONG!"?)

The poster is doubtful "an idiot" for posting something that is a serious attempt at solving spam. Sure the idea won't work, but if coming up with a successful solution to fighting absolutely every spam message was so simple we would already have been solved, no?

Secondly, the form letter offers a terse list of not only the pitfalls of this particular approach, but a checklist of other things to consider when responding with "well ok what if I change $something?".

Thirdly, it's a subtle nudge saying "lots of people have already thought about this stuff, why not have a looksee at other work in the area and learn from people that have gone before you", without calling them out and getting all nasty.

Finally, levity isn't a misfeature.

Good day, ( ) sir / ( ) ma'am.
I just started this thought train, and I fear the amount of work it will ultimately take to go from abstract to concrete. I believe it's worth considering a "from the get go" optimally designed language (verbal, written, and digital). It could provide an pretty drastic improvement to future efficiency since we rely so much on our interpersonal, intercomputer, and one to many communications.
This type of internet-scamming is going to be increasingly common, and programmers really need an ethical duty not to participate.

It's not clear to me that it's unethical to build a tool that someone could use to harm themselves.

Further, you've just described how this will go on anyway ("censorship as damage" and all that).
Should You Take Dumb Money?
Interesting. So the more you can affirm the views of the judges, the more likely you are to win. If you pique the interest or curiosity of the judges, the more likely you are to lose. That's disturbing. To me that's the stance the least likely to get at the truth.

I wonder if there's a highly intelligent and advanced alien civilization out there that would view our adversarial judicial system a mere refinement on "trial by combat."
I can see some people here claiming this is old (it is) and that it's a repost (it is), but I'll still vote this up, because especially now with people yelling "scaling! scaling!" all over the place, I can't imagine a more fitting time for developers to read this.
I do a little of this, using a Dell D630 ATG (reasonable review: http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_dell_ATG630.html) to supply screen visibility in full sunlight.

Programming while out of doors may not be as satisfying as you might think. One is still very sedentary for very long periods: hot weather feels hotter, cold weather much colder, and buzzing insects more annoying. You may miss having a whiteboard or your printed-matter library handy. Also, outdoor furniture typically makes a terrible substitute for proper office furniture.

On the plus side, eye strain is less of a problem given the built-in eye relief of long focus outdoor viewing. And trees and birds make very pleasant office companions who will always respect your privacy.

Ultimately, I find the out of doors better for reading (email, tech papers, the occasional HN link) or reviewing code than actually programming.
1984 again? I wonder if there should be a "recurring" page? Maybe call it a "classics" page? This might be good for reddit, since it has the semi-random box at the top. Such links of proven interest could be randomly shown there. This would be a great tool for catching the eye of new users, with proven great content. It could then be turned off by veteran users. This would give the best of both worlds. New users could be introduced to great links they missed, and veteran users wouldn't have to deal with "dupes."
Phishers Now Hitting Twitter
Wow. That actually changes my opinion from "illegal gambling operation" to "illegal scam operation".

Stay far away from Swoopo.
I've always attributed it to Mae West, but I googled a bit and found it also attributed to Beatrice Kaufman, Sophie Tucker, an a host of others. http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/ive_...

In any case I think they all beat out Woodie Allen. Ne was no more than a baby at the time.
Option b - and email the author too.

It's your "discovery" so you can do what you like with it :)
Serious question: who here who has at least a BS in CS didn't have a mandatory stats class where you learned all about picking sample sizes to give you an accuracy you're happy with or that an average without a standard deviation is nigh-meaningless?

It's just a fact of our profession, there is a significant percentage of people who just slap together APIs and have zero understanding of the maths behind it.

I don't see why it takes Zed 1000 words to say it or why he has to get sanctimonious about it.
and not to mention completely blocking Google Payments from having any part in ebay auctions, and shutting down the excellent Western Union Auction Payments service, where the buyer pays the fee to send the payment, and ebay can't double dip in the fees (charging the seller a fee for the final value and then charging the seller a fee to receive payment through paypal).
The source cited by this article only indicates that women's happiness has declined, but not that it is actually lower than that of men. In fact I recall reading a report recently that men are still less happy overall.

Another possible explanation for the observed decline is that women, no longer expected to be so docile and submissive, are less inclined to pretend to be happy when they really aren't.
A big difference I noticed.

Me: "In my day job, I'm a grad student/professor."

Paris: "Cool."

NY: "Oh. " [with mild distaste.]

Me: "But that's just my day job. My real work is the company I'm starting."

Paris: "Oh." [with mild distaste.]

NY: "Cool."

The women in France are also far less attractive than the ones in NYC. They seem to be under the impression that starvation/smoking + a nice purse is a substitute for jogging.
How Game Design Can Revolutionize Everyday Life
Good points, but OCaml probably has enough credibility to get away with it. Haskell is great (tho' I am but a novice at it) but it is still a bit niche-y.
How we use iChat and SubEthaEdit to collaborate on a book
Chicago's Awesome McDonald’s Cycle Center (Video Tour)