skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
julia is indeed designed to give you the power of R along with much of the ease of python, although it's a bit off from dong that in terms of packages and extensions. i would suggest that if you know python julia would be easy to pick up.

a pure python alternative would be to use the Sage math (http://sagemath.org/) setup that wraps a lot of the Python math and science packages into a cohesive set of APIs. i use that a lot and enjoy it. i have yet to find a way to do the document generation in LaTeX although i think with some templating it should be easy (e.g. jinja2 or something and emit LaTeX and not HTML). charts are pretty easy using matplotlib for example. and also rpy (http://rpy.sourceforge.net/rpy2.html), which binds Python and R.
In this case they are actively working to hurt their users in order to serve their customers' interests. This is not a customer care issue.
This is supposedly how Apple got its name [1, 2].

[1] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_Apple_computers_get_their_...

[2] http://www.tydknow.com/did-you-know-that-apple-was-named-so-...
That's like campaigning to eliminate pronouns. "Former" and "latter" are just like "it", except they are for when you mentioned two things.

Repeating the proper noun doesn't achieve the goal of emphasizing the fact that you're referring to something you just mentioned.
Yeah - the Google security team are very good in my experience. They are very fast to respond and to fix problems, and are communicative all the way through.

Bugs will always come up in systems as large as theirs, and it is nice to speak to as team so receptive to reports.
Actually Twitter didn't just pay IBM, but bought the 900 patents from IBM outright, which hopefully Twitter will not then use offensively as IBM did, so this could be a good thing, and perhaps another way to deal with patent trolls: buy their arsenal leaving them with fewer extortion tools.
Interesting coincidence - a colleague of mine just shared this link with me: http://www.wolfram.com/data-science-platform/

Seems to be in line with what you are looking for.
Really?

I wonder how many people could take medical care, buy food (mind goes to Africa), etc with that amount of money that apparently was given to a patent troll (IBM).

Just sad.

ps. Nothing against twitter, or IBM. They are just exploiting rules made by humans.
526 Mailable Live Animals
I've been programming in Python for about 3 years and learned a couple of tricks from this post, which was why I submitted it.

There's always tricks to learn, and it's hard to remember everything when you're first starting out with a new language.
More info here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/scp-foundation
The 2886 most popular .me domains
Software Patents Are Bullshit
AIRR Tablet: Floating Display with High-Speed Gesture UI [video]
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/27/fragile-empire-...

Ben Judah seems interesting. I shall read more of his work.

Now, how do we change things? I'd like the Labour party back myself. You know, actual socialists with a vaguely radical agenda.
You hear about chickens going via the mail every so often. I think if you sent bees to a prominent government official you'd go to jail as a terrorist. Not sure you could pull an "upskirt" and argue that it was legal and win. But the law would change, and overnight bee farmers who rent hives to orchards would be all but out of business because they use USPS to ship hives.

Legislation is reactionary. Which is why there is so much of it, and why it is often made to protect one group at the expense of others.

Scorpions in the mail seems like a great way to ruin someone's day.
Ask HN: Sales for a small web consultancy: am I too small to hire a salesperson?
I run a small, "boutique" web consultancy under my own name. Thus far I've done my own sales and project management. I'm a back-end developer and sub out my design and front-end. I've finally hit my new year's resolution of delegating more: I'm now subbing out most of my back-end dev as well, leaving me to focus on client relations and management.

My subs are all remote folks I've coded in the trenches with and trust. My customers are all word-of-mouth and view me as a "developer + team" rather than a Brand, LLC type of firm. I follow the (somewhat risky) model of One Large Client + Several Smaller Clients, and cashflow is usually decent.

The sales cycle in my business can be lengthy -- a few weeks of courting followed by a few weeks of estimation, proposals, and contracts. I typically receive leads from my contacts and do the rest myself, but I want to delegate this process as well if possible.

Question: how can I leverage a commission-only tech-knowledgable sales-person in this situation?

Challenges are:

a) I can only take so many clients at once (until I scale up operations), so I definitely won't be this salesperson's only source of work.

b) Beyond procuring the lead and getting the customer excited about the business solutions we can provide, it seems that the bulk of the sales cycle (the in-depth proposals, etc.) is out of scope for most salespeople.

Is the occasional mid-4-figures (USD) commission enough to attract a salesperson who can do more than just get me leads? One who can go deeper with potential clients before I have to jump in?

Advice and feedback welcome, as I'm sure I may be overlooking some possibilities here.
When did support for dictionary comprehensions make it into 2.x? I could've sworn it didn't used to work, but I just tried it in the shell and sure enough, it does in 2.7.3.
> Any of these mechanical/automatic solutions are going to make "secret" or compartmentalized work even less efficient.

Of course, there's an easy solution to that, and to the greater problem of how to prevent insider threats: limit what you declare "secret" to something far smaller and more manageable.
Those features are all available on spreadsheets in google docs. I use google docs as a mathematical scratch pad all the time. It also does graphs and it can be scripted in JavaScript. One of my friends wrote a script that downloads all the latest stock data every few minutes and does a bunch of analysis on it.

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets

I'm not suggesting you should give up Excel. Just pointing out the features you listed are available should you decide to take a look.
Can a classifier that never says “yes” be useful?
Have you actually looked at the test in question? For example, one question is basically knowing the definition of a trinomial, which is all about memorizing a definition, and has nothing to do with understanding the underlying mathematics. It's a problem of syntax and the meaning of a word, not semantics.

Another requires calculating the area of a square by knowing to measure the lengths of the sides and multiplying them with each other. This is all about memorizing a set of procedures and applying them.

Contrast that with this German question for 7th/8th graders: http://www.joerg-rudolf.lehrer.belwue.de/j3/images/mathe_sek...

You're required to show that the quadrilateral IJKL is a square if the distances AE, BF, CG, and DH are of equal length, for which you have to show that all sides of IJKL are of equal length and that the angles of IJKL are all right angles. This requires a number of substeps, since you'll be reducing the problem to the question of congruences between triangles. More importantly, the point is not the difficulty of the question but that the question requires application of knowledge to a novel situation that the student hasn't encountered before (known as "transfer of learning" [1]), whereas US math problems tend to be carefully tailored to be straightforward applications for the memorized procedures. To the point that it is known that US math tests tend to eschew even word problems [2] to a great degree.

Nobody says that "teaching to the test" doesn't teach students anything. The problem is that it teaches them procedures that require a minimum of independent thinking and are more about following down an established path.

[1] http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Transfer_of_learning

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_problem_(mathematics_educa...
And Excel requires a save step. It also requires manually making sure 2 people don't edit the excel file because git won't be able to merge that changes. Google spreadsheets won't have that problem.
Be Successfully Happy
[video] Russia targeting Ukraine news media
No better than PHP? That's more than a little ridiculous. Every language has shortcomings, and there's no silver bullet/perfect multitool that can or should be used for everything.

It's too bad it's apparently not good for... whatever it is you do. It is pretty great for some things, and having spent more than a few years with both Python and PHP, I can say without reservation that there is absolutely no comparison in terms of language quality.
It was. Glimcat's comment got me thinking in that direction, and I couldn't resist.
I've observed this as well, and I think both models are valid. Sometimes banging out code non-stop is where it's at. And sometimes resting and letting the solutions bubble up into your consciousness is where it's at.

Here's my theory on when they both apply, based on my experience: When you're in a problem domain that you've mastered thoroughly, then writing code non-stop is where it's at. When you're in a problem domain that you're newer to and haven't mastered as thoroughly, then you're going to be banging your head against the wall more often and find your solutions more often while resting.

This is the big difference between "research" and "development". If it's a research project, you don't really know what you're doing, or how to do it, so there is much uncertainty. If it's a pure development project, you pretty much know what to do and you go bang it out.

I started contemplating this a lot because for about 20 years, I did business software-- ERP systems-- inventory control, order management, that sort of thing. I had been doing it so long that every problem that came up, I pretty much knew exactly how I was going to architect the data, everything just instantly crystallized in my mind once I'd talked with the stakeholders about what kinds of problems we needed to solve. I could estimate development timeframes astonishingly well.

Then I moved into game development a few years ago, and suddenly my ability to estimate went into the toilet. I started finding that trying to code 15 hours a day wasn't as effective as it once was. I spent a lot of time being stuck with problems.

Finally I realized that the reason I was so radically productive and good at estimating things wasn't because I'm a natural programming badass. It was because I had 10+ years of experience doing the exact kind of things I was doing, and developed all kinds of experience, intuition, and tools to rock the house. Once I changed problem domains and languages and lost my old bags of tricks, the entire landscape changed.

So I agree with you that sometimes it's all about banging out a ton of code, and sometimes it's more about relaxing and meditating. Most developers today-- if they're not going obsolete-- are radically changing technology landscapes every few years. Or should be.
AlwaysTwisted has a really great guide on this for more info and copy-and-pastability. http://alwaystwisted.com/post.php?s=2014-02-27-even-easier-b...

So excited about this, absolutely brilliant. I did notice some frameworks that I was using (I think it was Bourbon) breaking with SASS 3.3 though.
Nice work, but I hate how he has to say "Google should let me know next week whether this qualifies for a bounty; I’ll update this post when they do." -- He's the one who did Google a favor! For him to have to be in this position where he's hoping for a bounty, and Google has no incentives to give him one is kinda a crappy position to be in. We need an intermediary for security exploits that can negotiate bounties before full information about the exploit is revealed. Perhaps something already exists?
Google employees (engineering) are mainly Asian and mainly non - millionaires
the best way to get an answer on the internet, as everywhere else, is to ask a very clear question to the right interlocutor.

in other words, you need to do enough work on your own to figure out what you need to know, after which you'll find that (as long as you have a decent command of the language you're expressing yourself in and the general terms in the field of inquiry) it's not difficult to get good answers.
This is also an interrogation technique: "We know you did X." "No, I was doing Y or was at Z."

Where Y and Z are what the interrogator was after. More reasons not to talk to the cops.
I think that is because quaternions form a division algebra, but matrices don't (neither do sedenions).
My surname is quite akin to the OP first example, but in a "foreign" (non-English) language. Were it instead to be expressed in English -- just a literal translation -- I could well be in the same position as Ms. Yellow Horse.

I've forgotten the multiple names academia has come up with for this situation. But in a nutshell, Google, you are conflating two "problems" you are trying to solve: "True" and "Names".

We could and do debate the merits of these separately. E.g., I think your "true" initiative is kind of full of shit -- based upon my and others' experience on the Web.

But even if you want to and decide to pursue "true", that doesn't give you any authority to judge and decide what is, or isn't, a "name".

Perhaps your overwhelming mountain of data and analysis capabilities might enable you to establish a leading position in some de facto opinions on the matter. But, as the OP example demonstrates, even there you are most obviously failing -- it appears to us, the general public, to be in good part due to a lack of real effort to analytically and functionally back up your "initiative".

So... as a result, once again your "initiative" and "policy" looks to be full of shit.

Just drop it. Treat names like the name qualifier in email -- or I guess that is now, for Google, a field within Contacts: People enter a string, and that's the name. Maybe some subsequent processes try -- more or less successfully -- to parse it into components. But at the base level, it's an arbitrary string.

There, that was simple, wasn't it?

(Now, focus some effort on keeping that name from unintentionally bleeding across properties via Google+, etc.)
Glad that this was fixed quickly. Thanks for giving the relevant team a chance to close this hole, Tom, and likewise for the other bug that you alluded to in your blog post.
I deleted my whole Google+ profile in order to disconnect the connection I accidentally made earlier. It was the only way I could see to do it.
Really, THAT is the procedure they use to 'invent' new patents? Wow, just wow. Appreciate you sharing this.

Curious, did you submit any yourself? Did they provide incentives for you or staff to come up with these 'documents' ? Do they have a monthly quota for # of new patents per week/month? In addition to staff submissions, did they have special division specifically their to conjure up new patents fulltime? Feel free to indulge, I find it fascinating to hear it from someone who has been in the belly of the beast.
right, I have not. I'm very much wedded to emacs, and I like the iPython style of working. Maybe one of these days I will setup emacs + iPython and see how far it gets me. The main problem I've found so far is that python is quite bad with advanced statistical analysis, like producing regressions with the right standard errors -- charts and table are better, but still not there. But maybe things have changed ...
I hate to be this guy but could you please check your attitude? Comments like yours are pretty clearly a veiled attack on Stripe, and they don't belong on HN
a straw man is telling person A that argument B is wrong, therefore person A is wrong, when in fact person A was making argument C.

it is a trick to confuse your opponent and any spectators. it is most often employed by people too stupid to discern between argument B and argument C in the first place, which is to say it is most often employed inadvertently.

amusingly, most times when people accuse someone else of making a straw man argument, they then proceed to immediately make a straw man argument themselves in explaining the claim.

edit: mistyped.
2.7:

http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0274/
Really?

I wonder how many people's lives have been made better by technologies created, sold, and serviced by IBM.
yeah, I mean I get it if they want to make the marketing site look pretty, but cmon, put some effort into the actual site that provides functionality...
Interesting to see the differences between InstaClick and Pjax.

InstantClick

- InstantClick is a little easier to implement, with nothing required server-side
- InstantClick works to reduce latency by prefetching page content on hover.
- InstantClick always replaces the body's outerHTML
- InstantClick provides a YouTube style loading progress bar

Pjax[1]

- You specify specifically which page element is replaced (using the ID)
- You set up your app to return only the required page fragment on ajax calls
- No loading bar is included, but can easily be added
- Content is not prefetched on hover

I think I still prefer the pjax approach because it sends less data over the wire. However, would be interesting to see a hybrid of the two approaches.

Also worth noting that both essentially turn your site into a single-page app that updates the browser URL bar using pushState. Both approaches also degrade nicely.

[1] https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax
Cyber Snake plagues Ukraine networks
Ask HN: SaaS apps in the iTunes app store how do you market an upgrade in app? 
We are a SaaS startup with an app distributed through the iTunes app store. We aren't using Apple's subscription billing, so we are restricted by their rules of not linking back to the main site where subscription and pricing information may be found.

We're putting together our free version now, which disables some functionality in the app. I'd like to leave these sections in the app but replace their functionality with marketing pages to ask the user to upgrade. I'm sure though, that this would be against ToS.

Does anyone have any experience with how to properly word this kind of message and stay within App's ToS?
What's so bad about having to rename a file?
3. Clarify the timeout. I have 3 games running in which the opponent is not responding. Do I win? Also, is there a score?
International Women's Day through Google Glass
The article is titled 'How To Think'. It might be more aptly titled 'How To Think About Failure' (in a way that shows failures are opportunities for self improvement while success teaches us little).

Coincidentally the BBC ran a series this week 'The Value of Failure.' http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xl7ff

The series is well worth a listen - 5 x 15 minutes.
They don’t - I don’t want email with a receipt from every company I have an account with. Nor do I want appointment reminders, nor e-cards from every business I do business with.

The right emails from the right people. Everything is spam in the wrong context.
Measure what you care about. If lines of code produced is your thing, then measure that. One year I decided to measure defects released into production, so I could find root causes. I discovered that bad code wasn't my biggest weakness; it was procedures for getting things into production, and procedures for testing and replicating the production environment. So I ended up spending more time getting that stuff right than I did before.

Different people have different kinds of responsibilities and things that should be important to them, based on what's going on in their business and with the rest of their team. Sometimes "hours spent writing code" is the thing for some people, but keep in mind it isn't always the formula for success for all people.
He didn't say incompetent programmers
Or: why not to use brainwallets.
Your final remark is rather callous for someone whose job, presumably, is to educate and connect with students. Perhaps ironically, it seems to reinforce the point I was making--that withholding existing resources which are trivially and by their nature redistributable from students is disrespectful. Saying "if you don't like the terms of the deal, you can choose not to take the class" really isn't helping your case.
I was curious about bitcoin's origin (not so much with a name but in how and why it was developed) and looked into it a bit yesterday. My summary: Satoshi used one or more of the commerical payment systems of the late 90s/early 2000s, wanted something like that that didn't rely on the trust of a particular third party, and realized that hashcash + Haber and Stornetta's public timestamp system could achieve that. Satashi wrote the code first (C++ on Windows), worked out the practical details, then wrote the bitcoin paper to summarize the key ideas and calculate the properties the system had. While there was some ideological basis for the idea, Satoshi was much more interested in writing code and solving a problem then in talking about the ideology. Possibly imitating the commerical systems, Satoshi did have a bit of a marketing spin.

My guess is that Satoshi did not actually know about Nick Szabo's bit gold. There seem to have been several people working on vaguely similar ideas at the time. It looks like Nick got a sense of the bitcoin way of doing things from comments on his blog maybe six months before the bitcoin paper was released (it isn't clear when the comments were made and Satoshi had already been working on code for at least a year at that point), but a couple of years after bitcoin was released Nick still seemed to like the bit gold way better. Bitcoin could be seen as a simplified bit gold, but I think it makes more sense that bitcoin is hashcash + public timestamps without direct influence from bit gold. Nick approches the issue from a much more economic theory perspective (which is really interesting reading IMO):
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-y...
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.ht...
> “It’s uncomfortable to focus so intensely on what you’re bad at,”

When my wife was learning to play the piano, her teacher used to say "if you're going to make a mistake, make it loud so we can hear it and fix it." I make my students do math in pen for the same reason -- instead of silently making the same mistake over and over again, it gets made once, analyzed (by the students), and fixed. This bothered the students at first, but they've come around and become much more thoughtful about what they write.

> “Teaching chess is really about teaching the habits that go along with thinking,” Spiegel explained to me one morning when I visited her classroom. “Like how to understand your mistakes and how to be more aware of your thought processes.”
> " I saw Spiegel trying to teach her students grit, curiosity, self-control, and optimism."

Which is really what teaching is about. I think most teachers know this, and we get a fairly healthy dose of it in professional development every week. I'm a math teacher, but the training I get during the school year isn't in math, it's in things like "accountable talk". It sounds like the teacher in this article is particularly gifted and practiced.

This isn't just for classroom teachers. The same concepts matter for parenting and in the workplace.
I hate seeing this stuff always get blamed on the programmers. As someone who had to implement a stupid "real name" (where real name = precisely a first and last name) system for a web site, it is not my fault. I pointed out the problems with it repeatedly. The suits own the company, they own the site, they decide how it works. Place the blame where it belongs, it is unlikely that the programmers at google decided this was the way to go.
Good for you. Did you know everything else?