skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love R, and I think that the insight people often overlook for R's success is pretty simple: the easy things are easy. Doing hard things in R can be very hard, but the easy things are easy. Eg loading a csv full of data and running a regression on it are two lines of code that are pretty easy to explain to people:

$ R
data <- read.csv(file='some_file', header=T, sep=',')
model <- lm(Y ~ COL1 + COL2 + COL3, data=data)

and if you want to use glm -- logistic regression, etc -- it's a trivial change:

model <- glm(Y ~ COL1 + COL2 + COL3, family=binomial, data=data)

It really allows people to do quite powerful statistical analyses very simply. Note that they built a dsl for specifying regression equations -- and you don't have to bother with bullshit like quoting column column names; quoting requirements are often hard to explain to new computer users.

R's other key feature is it includes a full sql-like data manipulation language to manipulate tabular data; it's so good that every other language that does stats copied it. If df is a dataframe, I can issue predicates on the rows before the comma and columns after the comma, eg

df[ df$col1 < 3 & df$col2 > 7, 'col4']

that takes my dataframe and subsets it so -- row predicates before the comma -- col1 is less than 3 and col2 is greater than 7 -- and column predicates after the comma -- just returns a new dataframe from the subset with col4 in it. It's incredibly powerful and fast.
I could benefit from that suggestion as well..
Same system, same versions but it's fine for me. Still power hungry though.
It doesn't really require any math… some exercises and examples do require math, but you can just skip them. The first chapter has a lot more of that than the rest. It's very much not essential.

To give an example, the hardest math I can remember is one exercise where they ask you to _prove_ the equation listed if you search for "closed form" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number .

I'm relatively sure that the point of this exercise was just to drive home that performance characteristics of a problem can be non-obvious. We just finished making an O(n) implementation of Fibonacci numbers and feel pretty good about it, but oh wait, you can actually do it in O(1).

However, to literally answer your question, the math used in exercises mostly tops out at polynomial algebra (like, adding X^2 + 3X + 1 to 3X^2 + 3), with a little bit of calculus - namely taking derivatives (and maybe integrals? I forget) of polynomials. The calculus is not used to solve a problem - rather you're implementing a program that lets the user take derivatives of polynomials.
>Apple was late to the party with 4G as well.

I remember the battery life being just awful on LTE phones until around the time the iPhone 5 came out.
I'm surprised keyboard size is mentioned only once so far. When I have to type Chinese a bigger screen is a lot more accurate. I switched to my current iPhone 5c from a Lumia 920. Typing Chinese has been a major setback for me. (Typing English is not that much different though)
If I had a few million to spare, I'd support individual hackers and collectives as well. Because we need people that aren't under the pressure to deliver something for profit.
I don't believe they are trying to keep every cable separated. I think on the top photo we're looking at bundles of cables -like a nicely done server room, different bundles go to different places hence the arrangement.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but whenever I access maps.google.com from Firefox running on my Arch Linux... I am unable to zoom or search or do anything. It just shows me the world.

When I open the same URL in chromium however, everything works perfectly.

Just my 2 cents.
No, it's not looking over his shoulder at his laptop. It's actually seeing his trades on a public exchange at the exact same time that everyone else sees them.
How accurate is text recognition (could you use it for dictation?) and how fast between the end of a command and recognition/parsing of said command?
Maybe if you want to sell commodity stuff (furniture or cars or beer), but not for innovation. How many ground-breaking tech things have emerged from Africa? Very few. And that's unlikely to change any time soon.
Microsoft to launch six Xbox original TV shows in June
You'll need the equivalent of 1 semester of calculus, I'd guess, including working knowledge of pre-calculus material like sums of series (sigma notation). Try poking around Amazon.com for a highly-reviewed book, or use Khan Academy content.

You might also try starting with the videos, which are more-code, less-equations. But to get maximum benefits, one must do the exercises (at least some of them), so you'll still need the book.
I would bet that the noise comes from people who have no idea just closing their eyes and clicking at random.

Clearly the map wasn't coloured to differentiate bodies of water, considering the clusters in the Black and Caspian seas. (But you'd think people could at least identify the major oceans...)
Coming from a non-American as well:

Assuming ignorance would fall in the same spectrum compared to other nationalities, you don't hear other nationalities confidently stating their opinions about things they know nothing about.

To be fair, I don't have data to back that up, but I can tell you from my personal observations that people usually refrain from commenting or are reasonably educated about the topic.

Why this is important in this case is because it's largely a matter of geo-politics, and if you don't even know where the damn country is, you should not seriously suggest a certain course of action.
You are referring to direct feed content, I was explaining (in the interview) direct feed speed and content. Who buys a direct feed for a speed advantage and then doesn't colocate?!
Twitter acquires Android lockscreen startup Cover, will keep app alive ‘for now’
"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here."

tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.
I think the point is that these days we live in an era of abstractions over abstractions which are all very well documented and ever-changing. There are not hundreds of them, but thousands. There's no way to actually push the boundaries here, and even if it is, nobody cares to do so. There's no "scene". You get a few +1's or Likes in social media and that's all. Fuck that. That's no collective.
The point is that calls for intervention in Ukraine are being driven by people who are ignorant of the situation.
Thanks for commenting. I don't think there is a misunderstanding, but just to clarify, I was taking issue with the article author's description of Switzerland -- not your choice of where to set up shop.

I can see why Switzerland is a smart choice, for reasons such as those you give.
Guys, could you tell me where did you get the music for your demo? How much did you pay? What was the process? Did you use something like MoveMaker?

I'm building a tool (prototype phase) for creating trail videos. One of the use case would be to create the demo movie of a product.
The Myth of Compulsory Union Membership (1998)
That's amazing, I'm impressed. I have no idea how voice recognition software works, but is it possible using this open source project to add other non-Latin languages (e.g. Greek, Arabic, Japanese)?
Every single alert I have ever seen through outlook "So-and-so requested a read receipt. Do you want to send it?" has been 100% declined on my part.
I have been wanting this for a while as well. Performance is not a huge issue in this scenario for me, as security is the really the reason anyone would use this. I would want to prevent data from leaking completely if possible. My ideal scenario is that an adversary/host could take down my box, but they couldn't get at the content inside without my authentication. I don't want my instance to be clonable/rootable by the FBI, NSA, the hosting provider, or anyone else. Ideally I should be able to set up a Tor host in this instance, no one should be able to see inside under any condition, and I should have some proof/verification that it is secure from outsiders as claimed. If they realize that something undesirable is going on, I have no problem with the instance being shut down, but I don't want my privacy/security compromised.
Only in the start-up world do you call a few months a "journey". But as I'm sure they got very little sleep it probably felt like a journey for them. Cover only launched (invite-only) in late October.
It's easy: they use their brains!
Thanks for the reply. You can look at http://www.lessdate.com/img/screenshot.jpg which shows the basic use.

As mentioned, you can set wallpaper for cooler interface. Another differentiator is the smart icon. Try input text like "lunch" and you'll see the magic :) ultimately, the app focuses only in basic needs and try not to confuse users
Many replies here try to dispute the methodology and UX in the survey. When it comes to geography, you either know it, or you don't.

The distance from Ukraine for many data points is so big, that you can't possibly write it down to projection/UX.
I can barely use my Moto X one-handed (e.g. standing on a bus). I must be one of the only people on the planet who a) does this and/or b) does not have monstrously large hands. :P
Obviously they would increase. There seems to be an assumption that reduced spreads at any scale benefits the economy as a whole. On the scale of cents, I don't see how this is necessarily so.

On the other hand, I can imagine there being a trivial limit as far as the wider economy is concerned, but still eliminating the benefit that colocation gives HFT firms. Do you disagree?
Web App Recreates Your Face As A Swarm Of Text Symbols
Sony is quite close to that idea with Smart Bluetooth® Handset SBH52: http://youtu.be/aSp8yHUDhZc

If only they would give it a bit of personality (a proper name, for starters) - could be a hit.
Demailed, a simple solution to marketing spam
> However, I think they got stuck on dimensions set in 2007 and an operating system that isn't flexible enough. (FYI all my devices except my phone are made by Apple.)

Not really the operating system, so much as the APIs provided to developers, which previously required complex layouts to be hand-coded.

However, constraint-based layout was introduced 3 years ago and is being aggressively marketed as 'the future', although it has required some learning time for developers (and wastage of old devices) to become mainstream.

It is likely that the reason for introducing this several years ago was to ease the future introduction of varying screen sizes. I'd view the delay as a consequence of thinking about the problem in its entirety instead of rushing to play the numbers game.
Except not:

>A direct feed from one exchange could be $10,000 to $60,000 a month. If the SIP is no longer real-time, it means that people who want to get real-time data have to pay, well, significantly more. It’s no exaggeration here to say you go from $1 a month to well over $100,000, with your own networking staff and a room full of computers just to get real-time pricing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/04/a...
Actually, the exchanges are REQUIRED to split up your order, if the bid/offer is better on another exchange.

Example:
NYSE order book

100,000 shares offered $10.02

100,000 shares offered $10.00 (quote)

NASDAQ order book

100,000 shares offered $10.01 (quote)

You send a "buy 200,000 shares $10.02 limit" order to the NYSE.

The NYSE is REQUIRED to route 100,000 shares away to NASDAQ@$10.01, rather than filling the extra 100,000 at $10.02.

An HFT intercepts the trade, buys the 100,000 at NASDAQ @$10.01 ahead of you, and also can buy the 100,000@$10.02 at NYSE ahead of you. Now you have to pay $10.03 to buy the remaining 100,000 shares.
Apple doesn't focus on market share and it never has. Instead they focus on profit. Take (for example), the personal computer market. According to wikipedia, Mac OS X has around a 7% market share[1] yet Apple's larger competitors like HP and Dell are barely making any money while Apple is still making huge profits. (Not as much as on their iOS businesses of course.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
If somebody's view of how to communicate and work with others is restricted to Google+ and FB and Twitter, then that's their own lack of creativity showing, I think.
I'm pretty sure that I read more longer pieces than I used to, as so much is available for any topic of interest. In fact, I must decline to read some things simply due to time constraints. Contrast that with getting a magazine once per month, where I was much more willing to "curl up with a good article" even if it wasn't so good, where I was willing to wade through asides on the colorful characters of the main players.

These days, I want non-fiction articles to get to the damned point. I'm fine with long articles, but I don't want my time wasted. Not long ago I began reading popular coverage of an exciting scientific finding. The article began with something like this: "John grew up in a small Ohio town. His father was a clerk at a hardware store and his mother worked for an optometrist." Close tab. That might have been fine pre-internet, but it's not what I want now. Things have changed, but writers and editors are still operating in the old model. I don't mind humor, style, interesting biographical bits, et al, but I want them to occur in reasonably sized chunks inline with the actual subject matter. But mostly I want the information that was promised in the headline.

For fiction... I still buy books and read them on kindle. I buy and read more new books now than I used to.

I don't think I'm all that unusual among people who habitually read.
Yep. It seems that most people were actually quite close (with the majority at least pointing at other Eastern European countries) and, like you pointed out: most people from Europe wouldn't do much better. An even better comparison would be to ask Europeans about the location of different US states, I'm pretty sure the results would be very poor, if not worse.
http://designpepper.com/a-drip-of-javascript/ is a nice weekly newsletter-ish resource
Seems clean, useful, and well-documented!
You should reevaluate; I'm using it with MSVC right now.
I have no memory of that...
Hmm I don't like the idea of involving a third (untrusted party) with what could be basically the key to your whole online identity.

I would love to see a system which allows your heirs to access online accounts without having to fear that a simple government request will hand them everything they need on a silver plate (including stuff not obviously related to you).

Probably physical objects need to be involved (code on paper etc) but then again how to make sure the next best burglar doesn't get the prize of his lifetime.

Does anyone know of such a solution?
I think this is a great project! But Raspberry Pi might be a bit overpriced/overpowered for this task. Maybe something like Arduino Yún would be more appropriate choice. I am really hoping this movement of small GNU/Linux based home appliances will take off and lower the price.
Brendan Eich and Mozilla
Ask HN: Will we ever get a HN API?
I know this has been mentioned before, and if it has been discussed at length recently, please do inform me of my wrongdoing in re-asking but...

Considering we have somewhat of a leadership transition for HN, wouldn't now be a good time to reconsider the provision of an API with authentication that could allow us hackers to produce what we produce best: really great services/products that sit on top of a HN layer?

I for one, as an iOS dev, would absolutely love to take advantage of a HN API that allows me to make an app that supports not just user-based actions (comments, votes, etc), but also tertiary functions such as notifications and personal analytics.

Is there any current official voice on the matter?

I am aware there are 'unofficial' HN APIs, but personally I think the way to go would be some kind of (at most) pseudo-private official API
Believe it or not, but there are many real people who point to UK, when asked where Finland is.

The point is, if you know where Russia is, you likely know where Ukraine is. The clicking at random is by people who have no idea about either.

EDIT: Sorry. I meant that as a reply to your comment regarding legitimacy of the map.
Damn. This was one of the few apps that made me prefer Android over iOS. It's highly likely it's now going to die (the only thing Twitter gains from this is the team, the app has no relevance to them). It also probably means my one major annoyance with the app won't be fixed. It changes to work settings based on location but I work from home. Was hoping they would add a setting to set it to work between certain hours.
How to do usability testing without wearing down your friends and family
Who's this 'they'? Corporations are automatons without insightful leadership.
The problem isn't so much with WebGL performance. WebGL is easily fast enough for simple particles like this (although 2D canvas could probably also manage it). The problem is that a lot of web devs don't have a full understanding of the OpenGL pipeline, and how using tools and effects in one way rather than another can lead to crippling performance issues. That entire scene could probably be batched into a single render call.

WebGL has lots of potential to be lightweight and non-intrusive. I've started writing a series on the topic to try and dispel some myths of WebGL being slow and bloated.

https://medium.com/p/abf669857722

Part 1 of the technical aspects:
https://medium.com/p/cebd176c281d
That is not the point of the article. The reason why Americans are the subject here is that the news agency is American. It is an artifact. What is the interest to an American that people from Botswana want intervention in the Crimean peninsula? That is useless to you. You want to know what your fellow citizens are thinking and why first. That gives you more actionable information.

Here the article claims that a desire to intervene is correlated with a lack of geographical knowledge. _That_ is the point.

Your comment, whether you meant it to or not, comes off as the sort of defensive reaction that is so very common when any article on the Internet claims something that can be interpreted as putting down Americans.
NASA is offering code from more than 1,000 programs for public use
I'd be very interested in this; I've been looking for a Sonos API for a long time and could only find an old Perl script that doesn't seem to be maintained.

How do you plan on doing this?

Thanks!
If I want to move one lot or ten lots through the market, I don't need low latency.

If I want to move 10k lots through the market, I can afford low latency.
So what happens to all that e-waste when you throw out an old computer board because you don't feel like wiping it?
Do you disagree with my arguments or are you appealing to the genetic fallacy?

Not that it matters - I left HFT a long time ago.
Plug and Play's Accelerator Progam expands to Brazil
The "glue-language" philosophy underlying Tcl can strike an optimal balance between usability and power:

http://www.yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.ht...

Shells partition away sophistication.
The Algolia API is the official API: https://hn.algolia.com/api

It doesn't support authentication/user-based actions. You could still use the public data to derive notifications/personal analytics, though.
Kim King wrote my Modula-2 textbook. If this is as good as that, it's probably something worth picking up.
People don't seek out micro-loans to establish sustainable, value magnetizing ventures. They take micro-loans to get through today, tonight, and next week. All micro-lenders I've investigated long enough turned out to be charity-arbitrage. "You got a guilty feeling? I've got some pictures and stories that will make you feel good. You can just click the (your) pain away." They do just enough to keep selling the narrative and sucking the life out of their believers/volunteers while gold-plate-lining someone's ever heavier pockets.

I don't feel charitable if I expect interest to be paid to me or my "emissaries."
Learn how to add Google Maps to your iOS apps – CodeSchool
India election: Largest vote ever with some 814 million people eligible
you put an extra "v" on the link when you were pasting, it should be http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NK_klocka_2013.jpg
Twisted pair was invented shortly after the telephone line, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair#History and the image there: the wires were still separated by distance. At least in Europe, however, many places still used single-wire connections with return through earth for local lines during the first few decades. Not sure about Stockholm. Anyway, I am guessing insulation was too expensive.
It's a shame no one did something you don't even have idea how to do? Do you really think it's a shame?
I wonder how a document that says "Highly Confidential - Attorneys' Eyes Only makes it into the wild.
And, in fact, based on the Zidisha founder's response above, it looks to me like this was a mix of some legitimate issues (which will be addressed), some misunderstanding by the modern microlending analyst, and some in a gray area I'm not really sure about.

I do really appreciate the quality of analysis Modern Microlending did here. It's also great that Zidisha responded within hours with a pretty full and honest accounting. This is how this kind of thing is supposed to work, I think.
Same for believing in rather mundane things, visions of rather mundane things, and writing a billion paragraphs about a thing only using sentences you could say about anything else, too - leaving the reader with exactly zero information as to what you're actually talking about. Writing as well as reading such blurbs could and should be automated.
Hopefully it leads to improvements in the Twitter for Android app. Compared with the iOS version it's abysmal (IMO).
Someone who makes an enormous salary but is only a brief period of unemployment away from foreclosing on their palatial house and having their Porsche repossessed?

So, in this part of your analogy, it seems Microsoft is the company you're comparing to a person that is ready to have their possessions repossessed. Is that right? If so, I humbly invite you to look at the facts regarding Microsoft. Microsoft's most recent quarter saw literally record revenue and they blew away everyone's profit expectations.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-23/microsoft-s-second-...

Microsoft also has more cash on hand than the U.S Government:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-starting-hoard-cash-...
Libraries. How can the idea of the public library extent properly into the 21st century? Sure there are solutions such as Oyster and Scribd, but they would be considered private libraries that you pay subscription fees for, how can you scale a library to remain free without DRM traps in this day and age?
Reminds me of this video. As an American it makes me sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0TK_vk-XDM
Sure, the music is from http://www.jamendo.com/, where some tracks can be used for non-commercial purposes.
Things I Wish Every Search Box Did
Would you be okay with providing more context ? What kind of articles are you summarizing and for how long have you been doing it ? Have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work from Crawford ? Any opinion on his description of a content farm ?

Are you reading literature ? Any changes in your reading pattern ?