skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Left4Dead sale also probably did well because Valve had not done many deeply discounted sales before. If they do these sales more often, people will hold off purchasing the higher-priced game in anticipation of the sale; not only would Valve lose higher-margin sales in favor of lower-margin sales, but they would also lose the sales of people who forget or change their mind about buying in the interim.

More frequent sales also hurt the novelty of the sales, causing them to be less widely reported and also less likely to trigger an impulse purchase.
Not sure how many Sony Vaio owners there are around here, but I've been pretty pissed about the disabled VT instructions since I bought mine. Hopefully this will let any other Vaio owners fix their laptops as well.
Top Gear's James May goes to the edge of space in a U2.
Also the 45m figure probably means 45m people have created an account at some point, tried it, thought it was ridiculous, and stopped using it. Daily users is probably far lower.
Thanks for the insight on email. I stand corrected.

However I still think that you can't compare Twitter to email.
By now Twitter is widely accepted. And I still don't see how we would _rely_ on it for communication. Its a micro-blogging service, might as well call it "follow my random thoughts and I'll follow yours", which obviously works for a lot of people.

We should start treating it as a enterntainment tool and not as a fabric of modern society without which news would not propagate throughout this world. There is waaaay too much hype around Twitter. The day I saw CNN read random twitter feed is the day I died a little inside.
That's the point, in the 50s women could work but didn't have child care = drop in birth rate.
In the 70s, child care + maternity rights = rise in birth rate.
You can plot it for scandinavia, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece. - Same curve just a timeshift as to which point in the progress they are
No, that's how to figure out if he can predict stock trends. He wants to learn statistics, not necessarily an application of statistics. I see what you're getting at, but before one can ask such a question, one must know if the answer will involve statistical theory and that's a big jump. Learn the basics first, then look for applications lest you can't see the forest for the trees.

The other problem with this approach is that while you may get depth, there is very little breadth. I find that when learning something for the first time, I want to go wide and shallow. Then once I have a basic understanding I can figure out where I want to learn deeper.

OTOH, maybe you just learn things differently from me!

I just gave my friend (a PhD in Operations Research) his basic Statistical Theory book back. I also wanted to get a better understanding of statistics, but that stuff was putting me to sleep too easily :-(
Value is the right word. I wouldn't pay for gmail (even though I LOVE it), because it's one small part of my larger internet existence.

In a vacuum, I might pay for gmail. The problem is tied up in the fact that I also use 10-15 other services (twitter, facebook, etc...) that I might also have to pay for. If I could consolidate all of those into one place and pay just one bill, well then I might be tempted to pay.

The fragmented nature of the web itself makes monetization difficult.
It is interesting that the bridges all seem to be intact, even the one near the hypocenter. I wonder why? Were they shielded enough by the buildings, or were they just built strong enough to withstand it?
I recommend watching the whole documentary if you can find it. It was all about the Apollo missions and was really one of the best Moon landing documentaries I've watched.

Mostly because May is full of boyish excitement all the time :D

And to cap it all the U2 is just extraordinary. My Dad (ex RAF) was in the states on training once and saw them flying. They glide off the end of the runway and just shoot vertical into the air in seconds. Great stuff.
A bank doesn't sit on a large pile of money, it facilitates the flow of money from lenders to borrowers. Eg. if Microsoft makes $1bn in profits and wants to invest the money it calls up Morgan Stanley, who in turn sells them these "structured investments" --- which means Morgan Stanley passes the money on to borrowers at an interest. If all goes well, Joe Sixpack doesn't starve 'til his paycheck comes, so he "happily" pays the interest. Morgan Stanley keeps some of the interest and pockets the premium, and at the end of the year Microsoft has $1.1bn. Now, if Joe Sixpack defaults it's no big deal, because there are many Joe Sixpacks. If too many of them default, then Morgan Stanley would be in trouble and MS would loose their investment --- but what are the chances of that happening...
if social networks are up {

spend time there

}

else {

keep checking if they are up, every two minutes.

worry and talk about why they are down

}
Ah sorry, I didn't realize that =)

I'll defer to your judgment about this stuff, then. (I'm a PhD student in computer vision, and we've recently been using a GPU SVM library that's been amazing for cutting down our processing times, so I guess I've been a little dazzled by this stuff.)

Anyways, since you're in this field, what's your feeling about the future of parallel computing, with regards to the different vendors? Which of CUDA/OpenCL/Larrabee will win out? Or none of the above? When will APIs settle down?
I agree with you, starting with a problem can help provide motivation, structure, and focus and all of those can help keep you learning quickly.

Still, there is a place for an introductory book if you are truly coming from minimal knowledge of the subject.
SF 8/18:Find Harvard alumni to volunteer/work for your startup
Harvard-Jobnob Happy Hour: connecting jobseekers with startups<p>Hey Harvard Jobseekers: Frustrated with your job search? Meet cool new startups!
Hey Startups: Strapped for cash? Buy a few drinks and find volunteers!<p>Harvard alums, come "Jobnob" with cool new startups and other job seekers at this informal networking happy hour where unemployed people who want to keep their skills sharp are matched up with startups that could use their help.<p>Harvard Alum Job Seekers<i>-- are you willing to volunteer at least 5 hours a week for a startup or work for alternative comp? Help out a startup and you'll get a leg up on the competition, keep your skills sharp and have some good experience to put on your resume.
</i>Please note that this event is only open to Harvard alumni jobseekers. Space is limited.<p>Cash Conscious Startups<i></i>-- are you willing to buy a smart, talented, unemployed person a drink? Come with one or two specific projects that you need accomplished and we’ll help you find the perfect person to get the job done.
<i></i>Companies do NOT need to be Harvard alumni. Space is limited.<p>Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 4:30pm (20 companies will have 1 minute to present their projects. Each spot costs $20 and can be purchased when you register. Company summaries will start promptly at 5pm).<p>Location: Jillian’s at the Metreon<p>Address: 101 4th St., San Francisco, CA 94103 (paid parking garage at 4th & Mission)<p>Registration Required:
Harvard Jobseeker RSVP: http://harvardclubsf.org/events/index.asp#696<p>Startup Company RSVP: http://www.jobnob.com/happy-hour/Harvard-august-18-2009<p>Event Organizer: Jobnob and the Harvard Club of San Francisco<p>Contact person: Julie Greenberg <julie at jobnob dot com><p>Legal Disclaimer
The information related to the Jobnob Networking Happy Hour events are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to employment laws and issues.
Just to flaunt my vanity, I thought I'd say that my family (father-side) comes from Trysil, the small town mentioned, where the KDE guys spend a week hacking each summer. It's a really beautiful place - desolate, with miles and miles of pine trees in every direction. I think the place has about 10.000 inhabitants in summer - although in winter it enjoys its status as the largest ski resort in Scandinavia. (My trip to eastern China this summer was paid with some of the cash my family earns from renting out real-estate to ski tourists).

I've never heard the story behind the KDE developer camp up there, but from years of personal experience it is a great place to go disconnect from everyday distractions. You can actually be alone up there, while still enjoying a top-notch standard of living.
David Simon recently urged the NYT and WP to start charging, at the same time: http://www.cjr.org/feature/build_the_wall_1.php?page=all

The cable model is interesting. Perhaps such sites could work out deals with ISPs - you'd pay a few more bucks each month and in return get free account on WSJ, NYT etc.
The big problem is that you can work with some fairly large amounts of data and still have the bus be your bottleneck. I was doing some GPU work a few summers ago that focused on matrix multiplications. We were sending matrices with 8k numbers on a side to the GPU for multiplication and still ending up with the bus being the slowest part of the computation.
it's still down!
I've discovered a great hedge against inflation: consumption.

Right now is the perfect time to blow your savings on a great vacation. I just returned from Egypt, India is next.
Most users won’t pay for news, but if we move quickly, maybe enough of them will
Reminds me of the Batman line: "Why do we fall, sir? So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up."

Difference being, it's the Joker who's getting up.
So how have we spent fifty years talking about a trend that started in the 70's?
Right. Everyone has different learning styles. The problem with learning just basic theory is that you get caught up in minute details. That's why I always recommend people to start with a focused problem, then in the process of trying to answer that problem, you become knowledgeable about all the pieces of the puzzle. The key is to make the discipline of statistics interesting to YOU!
Ask HN: Shared Hosting CPU Protection: anyone tried this already?
I just read on Matt Heaton's blog (CEO of Bluehost) that they already have CPU protection on their shared hosting. If this works well, it might be a very good alternative to VPS. Any bluehost customers here who can tell how effective it is?
So instead of giving poor people a few months to get back on their feet, you want to bankrupt them immediately?
Google's On2 Move Will Pressure Adobe To Open Source Flash Player
Physcab suggests a great step #2: diving into some real statistics problems. The information available online today is more than at that point.

Step #1 is going to be getting the foundations so that you can quickly digest the meaning and purpose of things like machine learning. Fortunately, statistics can be largely summarized as "the science/math/art of explaining variance".

Study what variance is and means and you'll dive through probability, distributions, modeling, inference, prediction, parametrization, simulation, and all of those fun topics while keeping an understanding for why they exist.

Finally, I'd highly suggest taking a look at Tufte's work because once you understand variance, you've still got to explain it.
The First Haiku Alpha is Just Around the Corner
It's frighteningly reminiscent of Stallman's "The Right To Read" dystopia.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The 'at the same time' is telling. That's collusion.

AFAIK that is an excellent way to get into trouble with the law, and if it isn't then it should be.

You are supposed to come up with your price independently and without 'backtalk' in the boardroom.

If two gas stations get caught doing this they'll end up in serious trouble, I don't see why it should be any different when you're running newspapers.
This is a complete non sequitur. Photos of a destructive event do not imply that no destructive events preceded it.

Further, the photos on that page are presented with relatively little commentary. Perhaps you're bringing your frustration with other articles you've read that suggested the bombings were unjustified to an article that does no such thing?
cut -d ' ' -f 2
Fail. Says "No".
BBC are reporting it too.
The face that no such libraries exist might be interpreted as a Big Fat Steaming Clue (trademark used without license).

Language geeks need to start thinking seriously about practical infrastructure issues before any of this happens. The existing infrastructure people aren't going to start using Haskell simply because you tell them too.
The Twitter DDoS
Agreed for arbitrary HTML, but there a lot of webapps (including one I've written) where it's useful to be able to produce PDF output. When you control the HTML and can test that it converts to PDF the way you want, this can be much faster than trying to generate PDFs from raw Postscript or whatever.
>> I don't think you can try to make light of this WORLD DAMAGING situation with other evils.

I'm trying to think of how you got from my discussion of hundreds of thousands of innocents being butchered, these included some of my wife's relatives, to my "making light".

>> the effects of the atomic bombs can still be felt by those born deformed and sick

The effects of being bayoneted cannot be felt by any of those on the receiving end, at least after the first few minutes.

>> Not to mention the damage to the actual earth.

When it comes to down to a choice between ending the most horrific war in human history and damaging the earth, I'm going to have to go with the people every time. But then, I'm a secular humanist.
There's a really good article on writing a spell checker (with code) at http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html.
IANAL, but I totally agree---algorithmic law is a frightful prospect indeed, not to mention totally untrue to our legal tradition.

The second point the article makes is a good one, though. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are useful tools, but they are neither free nor particularly easy to navigate. A hypertext version of the law, organized hierarchically and cross-linked with explanations for lay people as well as expert opinions, would be invaluable. A "Legapedia", if you will---or "Nomopedia", if you're not the sort to mix Latin and Greek. :)
I was banned for using the word "twat" (modded down mercilessly even after I posted the full definition because I wasn't sufficiently humble about it).

Look up the account, sharkfish.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sharkfish

What is wrong with you people. Can't you see this poster is ruining the forum!?!? </sarcasm>
Well, pg controls it to a large extent, but not 100%.
Why must every anniversary article about Hiroshima be accompanied by a reactionary response about the inevitability and necessity of the bombing? Yes, the Japanese did atrocious things during the war; yes, the bombing was a critical strategic decision. We get it. Can't you just let it be for a while?

The original article presents the aftermath of a horrific humanitarian disaster, without political commentary. A truly respectful response is to allow the human implications of the event sink in, and leave the political discussions for the other 364 days of the year.
Freenapkin Claims Ownership Over Idea Of Giving Junk Away
The problem isn't with selling the iPhone, it's with letting people DO anything with it.
Simulated Bee Colony Algorithm
Search for "SB093-004" to jump to the software-related stuff.
Yeah, he's aware of that.. "And when the Justice Department lawyers arrive, briefcases in hand, to ask why America’s two national newspapers did these things in concert [..] you can answer directly: We never talked. Not a word. We read some rant in the Columbia Journalism Review that made the paywall argument. Blame the messenger."

Check out the article - it's the same guy who created The Wire, he's not a bad writer :)
Yes, developers aren't end-users.

However, developers do form an important target for a platform vendor such as Apple.

A few years ago you hardly every heard developers complaining about Apple, but with the latest generation iPods, the iPhone and the App Store, this has changed.

Over the last year or so there have been consistent and very negative experiences reported by developers across the table.

Quite a change.
GPUs are not a solution to every problem. There are several problems currently:

a) Explicit data copy required to and from GPU makes GPGPU useless for many problems.

b) GPUs are not as general purpose as CPUs. For example, no indirect jumps (goto address x) is allowed so no real subroutine calls. And no recursion.

c) GPUs are not good at branching. The toll on branching can be heavy.

d) Caches are fairly small. The on-chip shared memory, which is essentially a software controlled cache is a good idea in some cases but its still of a very small size.

Well the thing is that the computational peak power of the GPUs is not free. It comes at the cost of reduced flexibility. Nothing is free in computer architecture.
For the purposes of my post, lenders having money when the banks are unable to provide borrowers is "sitting on a pile of money". The money may not "belong" to the banks, but the effect is the same: Too much supply.

Explaining the banking system in precise terms was beyond the scope of my post.
I don't think it's their updates that are being classed as spam as much as the direct messages that they send. It's certainly arguable that if you follow someone you're subscribing to those too, but I think it's less clear-cut.
This article is flawed. Here's why:

CDS-linked credit lines are just another way to manage risk. If the risk of the loan goes up, the interest rate rises. What this actually means is that the bank can offer a lower initial interest rate, knowing that their risk is hedged.

Payday loans: if someone living paycheck-to-paycheck has their car break down, should it cost them their job? Payday loans are a very effective solution to short-term cash flow crises, and it's often much easier to pay back 10% more money a week later than to, e.g., spend a week without a phone (and with a black mark on your credit).

"Derivatives for small investors." Okay, YCers, let's get hypothetical: what if instead of referring to malicious code as a "virus," people started calling it "code." And then you read an article about how, e.g., "Apple is knowingly shipping a new kind of computer which is full of code. Every application available on the new computer uses code, and users will be forced to send code to anyone they send an email to." That would be incredibly frustrating; this is how the word "derivatives" feels to anyone involved in finance. Derivatives are just contracts whose value is based on the something that varies. You can use derivatives to reduce your risk, or to take on risk. In the case of "structured notes," the derivatives are generally designed to reduce risk -- e.g. you'll get the S&P's return, less two percentage points, but with a maximum loss of 10%.
It's become a cliche, but I sincerely believe that the lack of a decent micropayment system sabotaged any chance of that for-pay culture existing on the internet and prevented it from becoming the economic engine we once envisioned

You mean micropayment for the Web. The Internet is fine and making a lot of cash for everyone involved. It's quite the economic engine.
Ask HN: Why are images used to indent comments?
Why are images used to indent comments? Why not use lists to create the tree structure? Wouldn't lists make it easier, for those using screenreaders, to understand the conversation structure?

Pic: http://tinypic.com/r/6i9ml3/3
And I am still not sure what "maternity rights" are. I'm pretty sure no civilization has lasted longer than a generation while depriving everyone of the right to have kids, but I'm also pretty sure it's not a "right".
Year over year, Apple's market share has grown from 3.54% to 4.86%. That's 37% growth, FWIW. Seems like that would correspond to a pretty big jump in sales.
Sure it does. The problem is how to do public chat via your mobile phone. Of course, by now that's a footnote...
My First Ritalin Experience
I would argue it is for the market to decide what people need.
Agreed: Why bother? FWIW, lately I've swung away from reading stuff online, RSS feeds, etc. and back to novels. I'd forgotten how much more satisfying long-form reading is. It's like food: Junk food seems really tasty, but you forget how much better a good meal is.
Do not forget that intel released a C++ Larrabee Prototype Library for anyone wanting to experiment. Just sayin'...
Uh, there was no clear business need. Businesses were fine with using fax machines and the telephone. If there was a clear business need, XEROX would have capitalized on it since they had some of the first networked PCs.
Before Twitter, there was no way to Tweet.
JQuery Image Gallery/Slider Tutorials and Plugins
How Medical Breakthroughs Happen
Twitter taken down by denial-of-service attack
Nearly half of US mortgages predicted to be "underwater" by 2011
I see you're now blogging in a fit of hyperactivity... and Twitter's down, which must just make your life miserable. Sorry mate ;)
It was probably caused by Robert Scoble unfollowing 106,000 people.

http://mashable.com/2009/08/06/twitter-purge/
Sure, but shouldn't we also factor in evolution? We can think of voluntary birth control as a virus that impacts fecundity.
Advanced Developer Tools for Easy Game Creation
Had a college professor do that to me. Said to read all the instructions-- instructions said skip #3 (4 question test).

#3 Just happened to be the toughest material of the class, where a mastery of both Haitian witchcraft and the Coriolis effect were needed.
if i had to guess, i'd say that its just less resource intensive or easeier. much easier to just print it out with an indention instead of parsing results into a tree and then printing.
Stuff like this is why we'll never have a Top Gear equivalent in the USA. They have access to pretty much all the latest gov't toys.

Want to borrow a fighter plane to race against a Bugatti Veyron? No problem

Want to borrow an Aircraft Carrier to launch a Jaguar from? No problem

Want to borrow an Apache to race against a Lotus Exige? No problem

Want to participate in a sea invasion in a Ford Fiesta? No problem

Want to borrow a few tanks to race against a Range Rover? No problem

Want to borrow a few APCs to race against an Evo? No problem
On a recent trip to South Africa, I saw a large range of LED lights being sold for home use (in Builders Warehouse, similar to Home Depot).

Where in NY is a good spot to shop for LED lights?
that illustration cracked me up. i don't use twitter but i'm guessing that it's better than what they have on their app's error 500 message. maybe they should buy it.
I was thinking XMPP/Google Wave. Identi.ca will never win over the Twitter audience, something different may.
This is how old school spell checkers that don't know what the heck to do with proper nouns work.
Science Fiction and Fantasy authors in their writing rooms
The headline is missing 22%!

(For those curious but not curious enough to read the article, it's a 30% improvement in the V8 and Sunspider javascript benchmark scores.)

Also: windows only, no OS X or Linux binary for this beta. Sigh. I want to think they're serious about being cross platform, but stuff like this tells me that "everyone" in the developer group is on windows and the other platforms are still just sometimes-updated ports.
just to be clear they are calling it a DOS and not a DDOS - it could well be the latter but it could also point to another form of attack.
I'm just waiting for a more stable OS X version. Preferably with flash support.. :)

Side note: I'm using Safari 4 and anytime I am viewing a gif my browser beachballs and crashes. Does this happen for anyone else?
Accountants in the UK
Your Accounts Team is the one stop shop for all your bookkeeping and accounting needs with services tailored to your needs. We will simplify and streamline your accounting process, letting you get on with your business. Services include bookkeeping, payroll, management accounting, final account production and corporation tax filing.