skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, what is the right answer here? There's only two real choices:

1) Store

2) No Store

The App store solves packaging, distribution and sales, while making it harder for apps to stand out. It looks like everybody developing for the iPhone agrees that Apple having complete control over distribution isn't the best thing. Perhaps they should let 3rd parties run stores, or perhaps they should just get out of the way and let developers package and distribute their own applications if they want to.

The more I think about it the more it seems like app developers are the new musicians with Apple being the RIAA? "Device security" is just a silly way of saying we want to keep "distribution royalty".

That being said, from a consumer perspective, having the store on my phone and not having to scour the web for apps is definitely a good thing. Perhaps, then, the right answer is to allow 3rd parties to run App Stores and allow developers to sell their own apps if they choose to do so.

Now, that's what Android is doing, and it's great. But, too bad their device sucks. However, it does seem like the pressure is mounting and something is going to give. Either Apple gets out of the way or they fix their broken approval process.

And god knows what Palm is up to, given that they should've learned from Apple's mistakes already they seem to be making all the wrong moves so far.
I think implicit rewards are better than explicit rewards in this abstract non-linear system.
Hey Angus - just saw you speak at the Startup Bootcamp yesterday. Great talk! http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu

For letting people schedule meeting with you, you might try Tungle.me. See my page here for an example: http://tungle.me/natea
People get offended way to easy and overreact.

People suck.
Interestingly, the problem isn't so much in building a scalable store on a single machine that goes up to a certain point -- a billion edges, for example (about what we've tested our DB up to). Distributing the data becomes a really hard problem, however, because the issues of data locality is tricky. Typical map-reduce patterns are only of limited utility since each traversal may imply additional traversals, so you end up having to have "smart" (computing) nodes which may themselves trigger a second tier of map-reduces.

This is quite different from the problems of even large scale web apps where there's essentially a set of data that's pulled from a caching layer and assembled.
A blog post would be great. Don't you find it odd though, that the engineers at Digg, Twitter, and Facebook think it is a very difficult problem?
Fedex Management should fire the asshole who blew a tweet way out of proportion, ignored his own company's leadership structure by directly contacting his executives, and directly contacted a customer's leadership.
Grand Central Dispatch internals and FreeBSD port [pdf]
So, are you going to stop talking to your colleagues, friends and family because you might offend them by saying something? Man, live your life, do what you want/like doing. If people get offended by something you said genuinely with no bad intentions, they should be the ones feeling bad. Rather the best part about blogging is that you can proof read it as many times as you want before posting, unlike talking.
Diomidis Spinellis has written two books (Code Reading and Code Quality) on this subject that take you through annotated examples of industrial strength systems code (mostly from BSD IIRC): http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/
Nokia, AT&T Offer $299 Booklet 3G
CNN's 50 Best Places to Launch a Business 2009
> The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.

No I did not conflate them. The author only presented "good" opportunities, so it is obvious that the people who noticed them would always benefit from being more observant of things they deem good.

In fact this attitude made them more expectant that good things happen to them, as evidenced by the lottery test where they expected to win twice as much as the people who were "unlucky".

If you naturally expect to benefit more from any such activity, isn't this naturally more risk-taking and credulous?
I think it's laughable to put Twitter and Digg in the same category of scalability as Facebook.

Maybe things have changed since the last time I visited Digg over 2 years ago, but the social networking aspects are not very significant. The vast majority of their hits are practically fully page cacheable.

Twitter at least has an interesting scaling problem, but they don't have any features and they move at a glacial pace.

Facebook on the other hand has a graph that almost as nasty as Twitter's (minus the million followers thing), but they have 100 times the features, and they push new code every week.
I agree that it's very beautiful code. I wouldn't go as far as "the most beautiful I've seen", personally, but it's really, really good. Also, when you come to it, you're typically shell-shocked from reading lots of crappy Win32 code, and it's just such a nice change.
Seed investments from big VCs
With Windows 7 & TV Tuner you can watch & record programs, just like Tivo
Untangling the Web with Mozilla Weave | Linux Magazine
ACM has a great interview with Werner Vogels, Amazon's CTO, about how their platform is structured.

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1142065
Why Are Women So Unhappy At Work especially after 40 ? | My Complaint
Did the Guardian use Twitter as a weapon of free speech?
Top 7 Technololgy Disasters of the Decade
Certainly a fun thing to ruminate over, but the model Matt uses here is way too simplistic to draw any conclusions from about the sufficiency of using a NN.

A short stack raising >11% when he shouldn't be is a pretty severe leak ;)

Just a thought: I don't see the implementation of the algorithm here, but if you're using the values of individual cards scaled to 1, then you are saying that v(A) - v(K) = v(8) - v(7) which seems absurd. Imagine that there were (fantasize for the sake of argument) a few shoves in front of you, then should be that v(AK) - v(KQ) >> v(87) - v(76).

I'd need to give more thought to this problem in general, but I have to ask Matt...why did you choose short stacking full ring NLHE? It seems mechanical for someone very familiar with the game, but it's so situational. The first area I'd think you'd be most effective would be LHE-HU-SNG's.
It's not difficult to squirm out of this particular case. "I couldn't live here." Such a statement imparts neither a positive nor negative reaction. It's easy to turn around on the offended party: "Why would you assume an insult?". With Twitter's character limit, it's unwise to read to far into something lacking much context.
Again you and the author are twisting the definition of luck.

I will use this example again. If I learn how to prospect for gold, does this count as increasing my luck since chances are higher that I will be able to find gold? The answer is a resounding no.

Getting a better life from a positive mindset cannot be attributed to luck anymore than learning any other skill (say a MD) is making me any luckier.
Do you disagree with those who say dynamic languages are bad for big projects, which the author appears to concede by arguing big projects are bad in the first place?
Yeah, that could work. I definitely like it. Also has the obvious path to monetization via kickbacks from the places you are sending people on dates.
Storage using dispersal is getting better all the time
The two ways I've experienced:

1. Yank power cord while db writes are happening.

2. Grow the tables over a couple of GB in size.
I was hoping Mozilla would get around to this first as the XUL/desktop concept had been sitting dormant for quite awhile: http://robin.sourceforge.net

I suspect Google will put more attention into the usability (easy programmability) of a data-driven desktop shell.
Anyone can point to a good javascript code?
How about the third option of Store but allow outside channels. Say being able to load an unsigned random bundle through iTunes or a direct download from the intertubes.
>What is up next - the "improve my search algorithm" game?

http://www.netflixprize.com/
oh yeah.... here are some smoking guns (or “part two of angels that charge”) http://bit.ly/URKMR

:-)
This guy is selling software that generates "topical fillertext related to your targeted keywords and search phrases, implementing predefined keyword densities, randomized page descriptions"...

In other words, he's the parasite here. Instead of saying "make things people want" he's saying "don't do any work, just be really loud and leech content".
A Deep Dive Analyzing the Results of ~10M Crawled Tweets
What a jerk (the person with the long overblown complaint letter, of course).
Ever since I can remember Dreamhost (~5 years or more?), there were always a way to get a year of hosting + domain for less than $10, and seems like that's their break even point. Their overselling of course, but it works for some people (I've had a personal blog running off there for a long time, until my luck ran out and I got moved to a busy server).

This is actually not a bad deal if you want a low traffic & low cpu shared hosting. If nothing else, their good to bounce a SSH tunnel off of.
Amazing post from a talented guy in Vik. Great stuff.

When Vik and I were talking about this we were struck by the large amount of duplicates in the system.

What does this mean?

Here is my ANGLE: It's possible that Twitter is mostly echo chamber (NOISE) or it's lacking circulation of quality content

I think BOTH.
Ideographic Myth
I really like the idea overall and think it is a great approach to this problem. Personally, I think you still need some of the profiling, but maybe keep a "blind date" aspect to it.

Something like:
Profile contains basic physical attributes (age/weight/sex/hair color/eye color/body type (slim|fit|pudgy|etc), but NO picture, or maybe a face pic only. Then each profile/person is "rated" based on another set of criteria from the people they date. Maybe even sliders that would range from ("talkative" to "quiet") ("frisky" to "frigid").

The idea being that you might setup the date/time and the system might suggest 3 or 4 daters based on what you want and how other people have rated that person.

It becomes kind of a long-term thing in that it would take a couple of dating cycles for each person to be rated enough times to have some validity to the ratings. So, it's not for people with biological clocks ticking, but for more people who tend toward the social/adventurous side with an interest (but not burning desire) for a steady relationship.
What a massive inferiority complex!

One person does not like Memphis. A lot of people who live there do. How can this be a problem?

A lot of people dislike the city I live in. I like it a lot. I see no reason to dislike people who don't like my city.

As for the guy who was so offended, I would recommend the FedEx HR to look into possible psychological help, if the employee is worth keeping. Overreactions like this can happen in other more damaging circumstances.
What non-geeks hear when you speak techie
I certainly hope there's a more robust process for ".com".
Thanks for posting this.

We're going to have these people on this Friday's This Week in Startups at 1PM pacific. http://bit.ly/mW2zR

If you know anyone from Keiretsu Forum who had a GOOD or bad experience we're looking to have them on the show.
Seems like a nice catchy tech name. I like the logo! :-) Looks like an interesting product. I looked at your pages in 3 different browsers.

1. I’m looking at your index.html in IE 7:

(a) The content below the red and black header is sitting on the left margin of the page, I think it will have more impact on the reader if it is in the center of the page.

(b) The whitespace between the red and black at the top and between the paragraphs is non-existent in this browser. There should be some.

(c) Very small amount of whitespace below the footer in this browser. With my large monitor I think it would look better with about 1.5 inches of whitespace below the footer.

(d) I noticed your comment in the html code "Hi There! Sorry for the slopply HTML, I haven't done web development in 4-5 years, I hope you'll be able to forgive me ;)" I would scrap that comment for 2 reasons:

(i) Your selling a code analysis tool, expect some people (like me, lol) to look at your code behind the page, it seems unprofessional and probably will not help you make any additional sales of the product.

(ii) You have a coding (spelling) error in this comment. It should be "sloppy" vs. "slopply". I’m not trying to be cute with this, but it just looks sloppy. A code analysis tool should not associate itself with anything that could be viewed by a potential customer as sloppy. No one like sloppy code.

2. I’m looking at your index.html in Chrome 3.0.
Same justification and whitespace comments as above, except there is a 1px grey box around the "Analyze and Query Your .Net Code Using Linq" code sample that makes it standout better in this browser.

3. I’m looking at your index.html in Firefox 3.5.1.
Looks the same as in Chrome 3.0.

The website needs some layout work. I would recommend making this sales tool look very slick and professional. It will make the product seem more desirable to the potential customer.

Rather than try to make the web pages yourself with FrontPage or hand code them in notepad, you should give this product the maximum chance of success by presenting it on a first class website. To do this I would recommend getting together with a ”good” graphic designer and having him or her produce a Photoshop image of every one of your pages and then give these images to a “good” “professional” html coder who can duplicate the images in code using Dreamweaver.

What might it cost to have the site professionally done? Maybe budgeting $2,500 for this would work. Could be more, could be less. I think this product might have a pretty good chance at success with a little better looking site! If it were my product I would spend the money on this site improvement immediately—even if I had to eat ramen for a couple of months, lol. The reason is I think it will give the product a much better first impression and therefore generate additional sales.

Congratulations on your release! :-)
What is the money plan? - Are customers paying to subscribe? Ads? Other?
Flatland - Critique of Tog’s proposed Springboard redesign
1. An MP tabled a question about the affair to be asked on Thursday.

2. See here http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/trafigura-carter...

3. Carter-Ruck, on behalf of Trafigura

4. An injunction prevents publication on any number of grounds, usually pending ongoing legal cases

5. An appeal -- the Guardian were set to appeal this afternoon until Carter-Ruck pulled out -- would almost certainly have gone in the Guardian's favour. But had the Guardian published before the injunction was lifted, the courts would definitely have upheld a prosecution against them, however.
Dyson blade-less fans 98% less power than air conditioning
He's talking about lying to search engine operators to trick users into seeing different content than they actually wanted. That's not capital-E Evil, but certainly unethical, wasting those users' time and making everyone's search results less useful.
Haven't been to the Hopleaf in a number of years, but seems like a nice choice.

I'd be tempted, but things haven't been going so well recently. Maybe in a few months.
Dyson Air Multiplier explained: http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00250/Dyson_...
How I knew I was done with my company
"In other words, he's the parasite here. Instead of saying 'make things people want' he's saying 'don't do any work, just be really loud and leech content."

That's interesting. Where did you get that from? If you had read the entire article, you would not have reached that erroneous conclusion.
Dyson Air Multiplier explained [pdf]
I could read a lot of books if I didn't care about retaining any of the knowledge.
http://www.kurtis.pp.se/blog/2009/10/crisis_information_in_t...

More information from the CEO of Autonomica, the organisation that runs some (all?) of the .se infrastructure.
No, he's not talking about that. Please quote him on it if he is.
We'd love to step aside to let developers build on top of the API. I'd even like to see someone revamp the Octopart UI! Here are some other ideas:

- a really good project manager (with collaborative features and publishing tools)
- browser plugins/toolbars
- ajax circuit simulator
- an AdSense-type widget to help engineering forums monetize their sites

Finally, I think that each node in our category map needs a specialized UI. Since we have 1000's of categories there's endless room for improvement there. Top of the list are:

- power supply picker
- capacitor picker
- opamp picker

Any other ideas???
Hey, I'm people. Sure, I'm a little round in the middle, I'm graying, and I could stand to workout once in a while. I'm starting a program to revitalize myself and fix those problems. Someone in your position as a person should think twice about offending us...people.
Hive vs. Pig
Ask HN: Impossible to successfully make big software?
An earlier article linked from HN posits that software that has become big has failed. Many here argued that there are naturally big problems -- for example, powering Amazon.com -- that must be solved with big software. Others counter that it still becomes a mess and causes high turnover and lower innovation.

What are the principles in building very large systems over long periods of time, such that they remain easy to maintain and improve upon?

What are examples of companies with very big problems needing big software solutions that have done this successfully?

What architecture is used? Is there an optimal class of languages to use?

If you were the CTO of a big company dependent on a massive technology infrastructure, how would you build it?
It's a bit unfair to call it a con. You can choose to try it or not. Likewise you can enjoy doing it or not.
Detecting Light with Graphene
I learned a lot from Qt:

http://qt.nokia.com/

And it's not just their code, everything they do is exemplary. It's one extremely well run software project.

See for example their documentation:

http://doc.trolltech.com/

http://doc.trolltech.com/qq/qq13-apis.html
Streets give up secrets on 'Scenic Route' app
This is nothing new, and I wonder why people think writing "online" excuses being a jerk. People should apply the same rules as they would when talking to someone in person.

I am willing to bet the twitter poster wouldn't walk into that conference that morning and say to someone there: "I don't know how you could live here, I sure couldn't!".
Dyson Air Multiplier launches blade-less fan. Dyson no longer sucks, it blows
I wonder how much power a regular $10 fan uses compared to air conditioning.
Isn't there a huge hole in the market where there should be a quality mobile device running a completely open platform? Such a device would blow the iphone appstore away, I think.
Hey jp, great points. I would have posted the code, but for the life of me I can't find it anywhere. I had the Excel sheet stored in a different folder, which is why I was able to post it.

Anyway, I think I was thinking that including the difference from the average value would help the neural network identify pairs. In retrospect, it should have been able to recognize that simply from the card values, no?

Limit holdem had been done a lot and No Limit was my area of expertise, which is why I chose it. I didn't have that much experience with shortstacking, but I had read pretty much everything there was to read on it and it seemed like a good start because of its simplicity. Little did I know that the profits from shortstacking come from a very few carefully timed moves that are close to impossible for a rules-based bot to emulate (more on that in another post). Eventually I decided to build a no limit heads up bot, which is where my success wound up being.

I didn't mention it in the post, but the key was moving away from rules based to a value based system, where the bot calculated the profitability of its options and decided based on that. It was a lot easier to debug, but there were a whole set of challenges to that too, like estimating your opponent's range.
I just cited your first link on Facebook (where I keep in touch with a number of Chicagoland friends). Doing so, I noticed that Facebook did not pick up a "Windy City" graphic suitable for use as a thumbnail. Maybe an opportunity for a branding optimization?
coff

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878657

Reposting in under 24hrs isn't exactly the done thing (just saying)
I have a feeling that a lot of the attention Twitter is getting is because Twitter generates a lot of attention because of the attention they're getting.

In other words, once the novelty wears off, then what?
Introductory Computer Science Lessons--Take Heart
Encapsulation in PHP
Is that a sarcastic reference to Android?
Quite possibly.

A more important question: is that a bad thing?
Who owns the data generated by crowdsourcing modelling? This data needs to be open rather than owned by a single company. I hope its open. Any info on this?
Seems a bit disingenuous to compare it to an air conditioner, since it doesn't really cool the air, it just moves it. Comparing it to a box fan might be more fair. My suspicion is that a $9 window fan from WalMart uses 98% less power than an air conditioner, too, so it's kind of silly to tout that as an advantage.

The invention is neat, but the only advantages it has over a regular fan is the lack of blades, allegedly less "buffeting" (although unless you're very close to a bladed fan, I don't think this is noticeable), and the chic appearance. I think it's that last bit that's actually going to sell the things.
His tests are so simple that he's not really testing anything. For some real analysis of how neural nets stand up to other player prediction models, check this out:

http://spaz.ca/poker/

In particular, read the paper titled "Opponent Modeling in Poker: Learning and Acting in a Hostile Environment". Section 4 outlines several prediction methods, one of which is a neural net.
Magazines looooove to publish lists like this. They might as well make "best places to do anything" lists. Starting a small business is such a general and broad term. If you're doing technology, silicon valley is probably the "best" place. By best, I mean where there is the most opportunity and available resources to help your specific small business. If it's finance, NYC might be best. Entertainment? LA might be best. Biotech? New Jersey is actually pretty good.
Yeah, you probably won't get banned from Google, but who really wants to take that risk?
Very much in. Although trying to find space at Hopleaf these days is impossible. Map Room?
Digg / macungiemike / Friends History
I agree that analysis of neural networks is not easy, but there are certainly ways to do it:

there is no way to find out the relative significance of the input variables and how they affect the output response

Calculate partial derivatives of inputs w.r.t. outputs.

there isn't a way to cluster similar cases together to analyze what rules bind different decisions together

PCA analysis of activations of the hidden layer. Could also do k-means clustering of activations of hidden layer.

The random forest classifier looks interesting, I'll have to investigate that. Any suggestions for papers/tutorials?
For those interested in the PokerBot aspect, check out: http://pokerai.org/openholdem.html

It allows for bots in Perl and has a DLL interface. I've been meaning to make a V8 based DLL to write bots in Javascript for a while, but it's not a high priority for me.

P.S. Did anyone notice this guy has a Tetrinet bot?! That game made high school tolerable.
Fulltext indexes are available on MyISAM.
Open Wrt - Wireless Freedom