skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To be honest, what you're saying is that to get a 'good model' - you have to 'tweak' these approximations it so they work well "to fit what it was designed for". Maybe you don't like the word 'tweaking' - but your entire post sounds that it is exactly that, make your model match (certain properties of) reality as close as possible.

I'm not saying that in a dismissive/judgmental way - it is probably the most realistic way of doing a lot of things - but it pretty much is exactly what the original post says (although he is dismissive/negative about this). I don't know enough about chemistry in general to comment on this, but we do have batteries and they do improve over time - so some people must be doing "something" right.

What surprises me more are his claims that we don't even understand (or understood) even the basics of lithium on a chemical level? Is this even true? What could be the impact of this paper on future battery development? Could computational models be improved using this data?
#9 They will probably try to downsize. Or they can do a reverse mortgage, but I don't know how that would affect the market.
Careful though, antibiotics are not directed against viruses but bacteria. These in turn are not being "preempted" by vaccination, to use a threading term for a threat.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/medication/question...
Also you can find people saying everything and its contrary.

Retrospectively you'll always find people who "predicted" any up or down in the market. That doesn't mean they will get it right the next time. Or it would be too easy, just find the guy who got it right once and you can predict the future!
Running data centers takes people, but any significant chunk of 50k? There is huge datacenter in my area, and only ~10 people work there.
Researchers discover source of imagination in human brain
If the best you can do is to set a trivial programming problem, then indeed, that is deeply unimpressive.

Happily, that is not what the article is suggesting, nor what anyone actually does. The article gives three steps: first, a trivial programming problem, second, a challenging programming problem (here delivered as homework), and thirdly, a face-to-face interview to check cultural fit.

The purpose of the trivial problem, as explained in the article, and explained by anyone else who has ever advocated this approach, is simply to weed out people who just cannot code at all, and to do that early and cheaply.

My current employer uses a trivial programming problem like this as an early screen (it comes after our recruitment guy has read their CV, but before we put them on the phone with a developer). Therefore, i, and many of my colleagues, are experienced developers who have been given a trivial programming problem to solve. It did not any of us a message which put us off the company. I have not heard of anyone being asked to do this test and losing interest in working for us as a consequence. On the contrary, i was pleased when i was given the problem as an initial screen, because it told me that the company was serious about hiring people who can actually code, which puts them head and shoulders above many employers!
Based on the reviews I saw yesterday only the Escapist was willing to even criticize the game and give it less than a 90% (they gave it 70%). Everyone else seems to have toed the line on this one.
Can you cite examples of non-weapon projects of Brazilian military? (seriously, I'm curious here)
You can write bad code in any language. No experienced Java coder would write a code like this. Java has ARM blocks for dealing with deterministic resource cleanup.
I think projects like this are interesting if only because it gets dangerously close to the idea of having one language and codebase across all platforms. There is something incredibly appealing about that concept, but it never seems to be something that is easily accomplished or well executed.

It seems like you end up with either worse applications that can't give the full "native" experience in terms of speed/responsiveness, or you end up with some kind of emulation layer at the UI level that gives a consistent, but worse experience across platforms. In either case, it never quite turns out as planned.

The closest I've seen to this working is maybe games written in C++ that can be fairly easily built for different mobile platforms with a few native language bits done via a bridge where needed.
> the plural of anecdote is not data

Yes it is. Biased, self selected, very hard to exploit. But it's still data. If you know the biases and counter them (for instance by asking people directly), you could even gather something useful.
.NET Pills Newsletter #10
Yeah, Metacritic scores tend to decline over time. Based on my experiences I'm going to guess it'll stabilize at 94.
Alas it is an affliction that is spreading around the world. More and more people I meet are unwilling to tolerate any 'downtime' for minor illnesses like colds.
Code in the Dark - Show of your HTML5/CSS Skills, win 3000€ in hardware
Except you are not necessarily "building equity". House prices can decline and at the same time you do have to put money into the building in the form of renovations to maintain its current substance. What is even worse is that buying a house on a mortage with say a 10 or 20% down payment means three things:

1) The majority of your net worth is probably in that building so you're badly diversified across asset classes,
3) You are massively leveraged on that one position.
2) You are holding an extremely illiquid investment that could take months or even years to sell. This will probably be worst when when you want to sell the most.

All three of those are marks of a questionable investment.
I am using firefox 23.0, the program appears stuck at the decompressing step while showing 0 MIPS. Also restart with asm.js button doesn't appear to work.
It just came out, so there is considerable room for this to go down. Not saying it will, but if there's anything I learned from following game reviews in the past, it's that they frequently change drastically after the first week.
I saw one that criticized quite a few aspects but still gave it a 9.5, which is almost perfect.
Amid NSA Scandal, ACLU Report Turns Spotlight Back To FBI
Sorry for not replying, I never keep up with my comments on here. I did see the article, and that helped a bit. Again, not trying to bash it -- seems like a great idea, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it.
Show HN: WebEngage API 4.0 - cool demos for push notifications
EdX will offer a sequence of courses in Computer Science
Microsoft announces $40 billion stock buyback
It's not a candidate's problem that they can't code? I think the candidate has a level of responsibility here. Really they shouldn't be applying for a development position if they can't code.
Overuse of antibiotics has also been linked to some "slow development" abnormalities in children, it is suspected (or so a report mentioned in New Scientist says...) this is due to disruption the gut biome which in some cases can for a time disrupt how much energy the young'n' can extra from food which as some developmental stages could be quite a inconvenience. IIRC that report suggested that most of the affect kids seemed to catch up eventually, but it is probably something that warrants more detailed investigation.
1. You don't understand what I mean by complex system, and i'm talking about changes to a single file in a container. Running a new container does not change the old container.

2. Compiling a binary is not a 'monolithic change' (?), it is a static configuration with dynamic elements. And please quote the line where I called myself an expert of anything.

3. Uh, I don't have a "ghetto deployment script", but thank you for the kind words. Like I was saying before, your only option is to continue adding on more unions every time you change a file, which I bet will lead to performance degradation, if not just general application headaches in the future. If somehow Docker also prevents the need to stop and restart the container when adding a new layer (which should be possible with Union), that's great too! It still leaves a world of cruft behind in the form of old filesystem layers and a maintenance hassle.

Awesome, you have real world performance numbers! So how many layers can you add to a container without it going down before there's performance degredation? How does it affect memory, or disk space from added layers? Does aufs have an upper bound on the number of layers, or any other metrics? Would love to see some numbers on this.
Hopefully not until after my house sells ;)
Cute website. Some random thoughts:

Concurrency:

- No mention of it. There appear to be spin locks in the source. No multi-threaded tests.

Stability and data safety:

- Github has 2 days of history, and 4kLoC of test code. Why should I trust my data to you?

"high load environment":

- So what exactly does it do in a "high load environment"? How do you define "high load" in the first place? CPU load? I/O load from other processes? What shortcomings of the competition under a "high load environment" are you trying overcome?

Backup:

- How do I do hot backup?

Benchmark:

- LevelDB is not a fair comparison as it offers additional non-trivial functionality (snapshots) that cannot be built up on top of Sophia. LevelDB APIs are also safe for concurrent use, which adds overhead. Kyoto Cabinet would have been more suitable as a peer to benchmark with.

- 3 million records with 16-byte keys and 100-byte values is not really an interesting benchmark dataset.

- Iteration over a static database is not interesting, either. Is there any alternative other than locking an entire mutating database for the duration of iteration?
No Flight of Fancy, the Jetpack Is Coming — From New Zealand
I don't know, if shit hits the fan you can change your utilities budget. Change your cellphone plan to a prepaid, take the bus instead of your car, eat ramen everyday instead of going to the restaurant...

But when you have debt, you can't just decide not to pay this month or you really get in trouble.
Show HN: Building an App Business, My Self Published Book
Gamespot gave the game a 9/10 instead of a 10/10, causing a rather large amount of controversy.

Not the first time that's happened to Gamespot, of course. (see the 8.8 Twilight Princess incident)
> I was so disappointed to see the brute-force solving solution to work perfectly fine

I had the same slight disappointment when hacking a PostScript solver together back in 2005 (see https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/sudoku-solver-in-postscript)

On the positive side, a brute force approach means you can easily test for unique solutions.
Your brain is 100 billion cells working together
That's why I could never get into Sudoku. There is no creativity in the endeavor. It's like doing math homework for fun.
Freelancers: Work for free
+1. I live in an extremely rural community where you can afford to buy a 3 bedroom home for under $100k. If you can put 20% down on a 15 year loan and pay it off in 12 years, then yes, buying is much better than renting. If you're 25 years old, from the age of 37 to retirement you've just earned almost 30 years of free living (with the exception of taxes, utilities, etc.).
> Interviews are a two-way street. If you're looking to hire an experienced developer and the best you can do is ask him to do something that he'll probably never have reason to do on the job, you're sending a pretty strong message about your company.

I know others will probably disagree, but I feel this way about brain-teaser questions. I remember one very specifically from a ex-Microsoft employee who interviewed me: "If you're alone on a deserted island and you have two unmarked jugs, one that can hold 3L of water and the other 5L of water, how would you make sure you had exactly had 4L of water?"

To his credit, he helped me through the question and I was able to figure it out.. but the first minute was spent trying not to be a smartass and ask "Is this a problem that programmers in this company frequently have?" (I did get the job fwiw)
Assuming the use of the technique spreads will it have a self defeating affect whereby having everyone 'spam' these core agents that people will begin to change their behavioyr in some way?
REST API Design Antipatterns
I wouldn't use GoDaddy as a "good" example to compare other services to!
I can never tell if these rants are meant to be taken seriously.
Appirio Buys TopCoder
Fantastic. I love that it's OpenRISC based rather than the "obvious" choice of yet another x86 emulator. And framebuffer support, though slow.
What Does It Mean to Have a Design Style?
I'm Brazilian. This is one of the least entrepreneurship friendly places in the world.

Everything we don't need is more crazy taxes and regulations...
Two hilarious observations about stereotypical business programming culture:

Before hiring, tech fit decisions are made by elaborate pretend tests and painfully detailed technical discussion upon people who supposedly needed to gain years of experience in a specific field. After hiring, tech fit decisions are made by a PHB glancing at the cover of PC magazine and saying "make it so, number one" and the existing staff starts googling furiously and supplies something workable in a week or two even if they never heard of the technology the day before.

At 2pm "Work at home, are you crazy? Without my direct supervision hovering over your shoulder I'd appear unnecessary and you can't be trusted to accomplish anything at home and nothing can ever be accomplished individually, things can only be done by a team where a sociopath will take all credit for the teams effort" or, uh, usually a little more carefully phrased but this is what they actually mean. But at 2am the tone changes "well of course you can work at home at 2am to fix any emergency all by yourself in a completely undocumented system you've never heard of before and we trust you'll always be available 24x365 and never out of town or drunk"
Apple offers older apps for aging iOS devices as iOS 7 nears
Currently, we'd be able to live if we can't raise cattle, pigs and sheep at all - there would be implications in culinary habits, food markets, and agricultural equipment changes caused by switching from livestock to food crops; but nothing that should cause a total economic crash or destroy food security.
Show HN: Control Ubuntu Rhythmbox with commandline
Which, depending on how much you appreciate the scope of an endeavour, can be valid.

Some of the most appreciated games of generations are deeply flawed. An example is Deus Ex, which is a very mediocre shooter, but was enjoyed by many.
I actually prefer working on a programming assignment when applying for new jobs. Most of my side project code is undocumented with few tests, so getting a coding assignment gives me the chance to prove that I do include those elements in paid work.
> Facebook is Doomed

The least controversial headline ever -- everything is doomed in the long term. The sun will become a red giant, expand beyond the earth's orbit and vaporize everything, so Pez dispensers are doomed. Alert the media.
Rental prices are based on supply and demand, except for in a few cases (for example, rent control). That's why he suggests using rental prices as a way to check how reasonable a house price is.
I currently have 4 servers with them. Are you using their French/European servers or their US-based ones (or Montreal)?

They don't offer much tech support, but they do fix basic issues like failed Hard Drives, RAID, etc pretty quickly. You pretty much have to do everything yourselves, but that's the point of a dedicated server.

In the end, you can't beat the price, and that's why I went with them. With the Paypal, I could use my CC with them.
Spot on. I recently audited a project that was using an over the top technical solution for a problem that would - with only minor nuts and bolts work - have fit easily on a single machine instead of on a cluster, and it would have run much faster too. Demonstrating this made the case and they've since happily converted. You can buy off-the-shelf machines with 256G of ram at reasonable (for large values of reasonable) cost with IO speeds to match if you equip them with SSDs.

Big Data to me means at a minimum 10's of T, and what big data means changes over time, so todays big data will fit the laptop of the day after tomorrow.
Nice to know I am not the only one - I have a similar answer that brings me enough points I can see my reputation safely (and undeservedly) rising.

However my biggest problem with SO is actually that it is narrow in scope, but due to its success other (broader reaching) sites don't have enough users. I still hope they will change their policies to allow broader (still well-researched) questions, but I am not holding my breath.
Ansible 1.3
True, but 90% of resources is memory. Java makes 90% of resources much easier to handle and 10% only little harder (like always use the try-catch-finally or try-with-resources).
Google is done selling the Nexus 4 in the US
Multiple Users in a Self World
s isn't an rvalue. It has a name, and you can refer to it within the body of the constructor.
Why Touch ID is bigger news than any of us appreciated
On the topic of the agencies' own success criteria: Schneier theorizes that NSA measures "by amount of data collected". While he declines to speculate as to the CIA's criteria, he suggests that their surprise at the end of the Cold War was not to their credit.

I think this is a misunderstanding. Any agency of the federal government measures success first and foremost by the volume of federal resources it consumes, and by the swelling of that volume over time. This priority is seldom articulated, and it isn't as though the "real" mission is ignored, but the structure of the organization and the incentives to which its members are subject make it obvious. To take the example of the NSA, their commitment to copy all the data is really a commitment to maintain their size at a fixed ratio with a quantity that will grow indefinitely.

Some might say this is a failing of the system, but it's enough to just recognize it as a property of the system. If we want the federal government to do a job, it usually will, but its performance will have this grow-spending-always, mission-as-afterthought quality. That isn't too terrible when the job at hand is redistributing wealth among the citizens: at least there's a chance that the progressive and regressive impulses will cancel out. When the task is actively destructive to the nation and the world, however, the organization must be controlled in some manner. No such entity will limit itself.

We are equipped to curb the excesses of e.g. the Department of Agriculture. However, the "secret" agencies have gotten a free pass from public scrutiny for 75 years. The answer to the dilemma is to end the culture of secrecy. No action of the USA government should be concealed from its citizens. There will be trade-offs involved with switching to this policy. Certain operations will be difficult or impossible when they can't be hidden from view. Those operations are typically counter to the long-term interests of the American people anyway, and the sooner they are stopped the better.

The unsavory, if still limited, view we have now of the actions of these agencies, speaks not of a failing of those agencies, but of our failing to understand their basic nature, and govern them accordingly.
Unleashed and Unaccountable
You say that the legal system only works for the rich and powerful, but don't back it up. It's just a blind accusation, bare cynicism.

Money and power can't change facts, and if the infringement accusation is as thin as the article says it is, there is no way a court could find infringement. and as far as the money, that's what rule 11 sanctions are for.

I just don't see anything interesting here, assuming its all as egregious as the article says. now, if its a closer case, then why get all upset? you are infringing someone patent! part them!
Don't date a girl who reads
Appirio Combines TopCoder and CloudSpokes – The Uber Cloud Services Company
A tepid Twitter IPO right on the back of Facebook's might convince people to start looking to places with higher growth potential. Anywhere Google takes its Fiber is a good bet.

I don't know about a bust, but things can only go so high before people with money and ambition start looking elsewhere.
"So you wanna work for Nintendo?" - A guide to Nintendo's recruitment system
If he thinks that's weird, then he ought to read Ken Thompson's article about trusting compilers.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Can't wait to try the new cloud provisioning stuff. Did anyone play with it from the dev branch and can share some experiences?
Raft consensus algorithm in JavaScript
using/ARM/etc. make classes which own non-memory resources a lot less awkward to deal with, but one of the big wins of RAII is that the caller doesn't have to know or care that you have things which require special cleanup.
Bellard's jslinux, despite being pretty impressive too, is not open-source.
47% of users will wait only 3 seconds for a website to load
I read through the Julia documentation and a couple tutorials last weekend, and I'm looking forward to building some things with it.

one note - this code could be better optimized by the compiler if you broke everything down into functions, especially the nested for loops (according to the optimization section of the docs).
> check cultural fit.

I see lots of references to "culture" in hiring comments, so I'm not trying to call you specifically out, but what does it mean? It always bristles me, like if your criteria is "white men only need apply" well just outright say it, don't tiptoe around it. As a suggestion to anyone on HN who does hiring, if for example you're not going to hire my wife because of her ethnicity or because she's a woman, just put it in the job ad and save everyone involved a lot of time and tiptoeing around "culture".
There's a fence here - a bimodality if you will. I've been on both sides of it.

I used to do a large amount of phone screening for Amazon, probably over a hundred in all by the time I got sick of being a professional interviewer. I experienced much of what the author did: the bulk of the candidates had zero algorithms or data structures knowledge and could not program. Not "can't program well" or "can't program at a professional level", we're talking "I don't trust you with a simple shell script".

Now I work for a rather more obscure startup - we're relatively well known in the tech scene around here, but we're by a very long shot not a mainstream household name. The caliber of people that come through the door now is vastly different. I've interviewed some duds here, but have never interviewed someone in this position that just outright couldn't code.

The question I have for the author is who he hires for, and how much they pay. The low end of the software industry is plagued with people who have no business calling themselves programmers. It's really a vicious cycle - there's a large segment of our industry where the typical skill level is disastrously low, which causes ever more bureaucratic and ever more absurd filtering mechanisms to be invented, which further alienates programmers who have any real choice in employers.

Nowadays I'd be mildly insulted if given a FizzBuzz during an interview - but I used to do the same out of necessity, because 25% of my candidates couldn't pass it.
As a student currently enrolled in a distance education uni' compsci program, this is a godsend. My program basically consists of being given a textbook and a examination date, and what most students do is basically memorize various exercises from previous years' exams to repeat the pattern during the actual exam. I have found edX courses to be much higher quality that other MOOC provider's and this will hopefully be an opportunity to learn programming and computer architecture for real.
Gradeable's Parul Singh is Boston's Next Big Startup CEO