skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd be interested in that too, since people tend to overestimate the inefficiency of apache.
It seems to be more about the detailed and correct answer voted up the most that you find from searching something on Google, for that it works really well, not being part of the community there I don't care about that other 10 half assed replies for badges/points
Don't do a least squares line. That doesn't help. In the first plot, you'll see that in general:

x < mean => y > x

x > mean => y < x

If the scores are normalized. Regression to the mean is that most people move towards the mean in subsequent games/attempts/whatever.

But I fail to see what has changed in the analysis -- a and b are both just supposed to be samples from the same distribution, right?

Not at all. b is not independent of a, thats the whole point of regression to the mean. If you take ordered pairs where there is no connection between a and b, then you won't get any regression to the mean, you'll get points essentially randomly placed on the plane.
No. Currently Sprixi shows CC commercial-ok licences and public-domain-like licences. So CC-BY images are indeed shown, but there are no filters to hide the others.

It's on my to do list :)
I interviewed 2 recent college grads about a year ago, and they both had the same problem. Both had a demo they had made (this was for someone to help with OpenGL work), and seemed to be reasonably competent and intelligent.

What I worry about most is whether someone will be easy to work with. I assume most people have made it through the resume sorting process by the time they get to me (I'm just an engineer were I work, we're a small company, the boss did the initial vetting).

They were both so worried about making a good impression, I couldn't get them to open up and talk to me. I couldn't tell if they had a sense of humor, or if they were flexible enough to learn something new quickly, or anything else really.

So, my advice.. BE YOURSELF. Write a resume that reflects who you are, This will make you attractive to people who would want to hire you. When you interview, just BE YOURSELF. If you are goofy, let it show. Talk about your enthusiasms, show that you aren't a cookie cutter job applicant. Stick out...

You don't want to work for someone that doesn't want to hire you, it'll make you miserable. I've had several really cool jobs (911 dispatching software, glass panel cockpit displays, digital music encoding/distribution, designing paper airplanes...), and I got all of them because I went in to the interview knowing that the guy doing the hiring interviewed me because he could think of me as someone he could work with from my resume, and we 'clicked' when we met in person.

Everyone is going to give you a list of things you should/shouldn't do in resumes and interviews, but except for the obviously universal ones (spelling/grammar/personal hygiene...) these lists are full of exceptions and personal taste. Do what YOU think is the right thing, this will innately sell you to the kind of people that you want to work for.

One of my previous bosses is a regular on here, he's probably going to laugh himself silly if he reads this (I wasn't always the best employee once I got hired -- but that's another story...)

Good Luck!
From a startup company's perspective (hiring a web developer):

- Any effort you make to show interest in the company goes a long way. Use the software, come prepared to talk about what you did/didn't like, and have questions for me. Are you interested in working here? Then you should be full of questions!

- Have a personal home page. Doesn't have to be flashy, but it should suit its purpose. An appealing website is nice (it says, I have some design taste, and I can do basic design tasks on my own), a sparse website can also communicate something (here is a list of my impressive projects, I am very technically knowledgeable). If you can combine both, even better! :)

- Work on cool stuff. This is the #1 differentiator (and it's all about differentiation). If you have 3 links to something really neat you worked on in the last 3 years, that places you well above most other candidates -- it shows that you love what you do.

- Be excited! I know you're probably nervous (most people in interviews are, and hey, your interviewer might be too), but get yourself excited about the job, and show it. Startups need enthusiasm and commitment, and this is a great way to show that you're going to be someone who ups the energy level.

You'd be surprised how many people fail here on some basics. Getting hired is a differentiation game. Your resume doesn't get you an interview (it can only prevent you from getting one). A short email along the following lines places you in the top 90% of candidates who apply:

"Hi [company person],

Josh [mutual friend] sent me your job listing for a web developer, and as I was reading it I kept thinking that it sounded like a perfect match.

I'll be graduating from [school name] this spring and am currently looking for a full-time position. I've been following [company name] for a while and love what you guys do.

I've attached my resume, but even more importantly, you might want to check out some of the projects I've been working on recently: [really cool project 1], [really cool project 2], [really cool project 3].

Feel free to call me anytime at [cell], or email me back.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

[name]"
Agree with only one point (more availible drivers).
Developer mindshare - irrelevant point, from the point
of view of non-kernel related development, FreeBSD an Linux are very same.
Higher performance? - not sure.
Proven terchnology on netbooks? - well netbook i just a small PC, nothing to prove IMHO.
Maybe a stupid question but does anyone know how they hook into your bank account and credit card details?
To my knowledge, the famous experiments of Kahnenman and Tversky have proven otherwise. When studying the effect of "anchoring", for example, they would actually explain to their subjects how their rational decisions are influenced by this irrational heuristic. Yet the subjects could not rid their decisions of that influence.
BTW, a lot more close Toronto use it's river to cool air in AC units in office buildings.
How can they call this a radically new type of engine when it is still ran on petrol / diesel ( ie fossil fuel )?
Also see: http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/
The automatic distaste in our industry for things that are old is a disease, a form of vanity. Old ideas are not inadequate because they are old. Most great ideas are old. Sometimes, of course, an old thing is a vestige of some ancient limitation that no longer applies. Those ones are good to clear away. But the prevailing thought process in the software industry, no less dominant for its astonishing primitivity, is to reject the old per se. The will to novelty is so extreme that it doesn't matter if the new thing is worse, only that it is newer. We want to program in new languages like we want to drive new cars (a bad analogy in Common Lisp's case, unless you assume that the older car is both faster and more fuel efficient). Lisp in general, and Common Lisp in particular, is up against this dynamic. You can't understand the reactions to it without accounting for that.

That CL contains TAGBODY is a brilliant thing. It amazes me that a language can be at once so high-level and so low-level. I haven't had occasion to use it yet, but the fact that it's there, and that the higher-level abstractions are built in terms of it, is a thing of beauty to me. (I don't know about PROGV.)
... and away from people with accessibility issues.
Usability Crimes You Really Shouldn't Commit
"I can better spend my time by watching the world-class version of the lecture on iTunes U."

That's a really good insight.

There needs to be a site where I can go to to watch the best possible explanation for any concept. Something like a Wikipedia for videos.
I'm sure you're not alone. My beau gets motion sickness at the sight of some GUIs, and I get seizures from same. Hence, I will not be taking a look at Google's new homepage, and I'm going to warn him about this change.
Depending on how we split it, the money invested will be split as well (i.e. Lawyer costs and server costs split according to our ownership percentage)

Its hard to say who will spend more time on the website. The concept is mine and I have already done research on it and I will be doing the manual data entry into the database. The programmer will obviously do the programming, we didn't discuss if he will assist past that.

Business Connections - I have a few connections in the industry I'm planning to service, I don't know how much connection programmer has.

Also, programmer likes to do 'projects' for fun. He's worked on a bunch of products for good of society and I don't know how much he has profited.
A good analogy is gold farming in a game like WoW: bots killing off pigs and cows, collecting the in-game gold and selling it on eBay for US dollars. Quants are in the stock farming business. Both are "hard" in the programming/modeling sense, both are about liquidity and the WoW analogy helps one to see both are about beating the rules (and other farmers!) in a "virtual world".
word on the street is he took on his last round of financing at an extremely high valuation in order to drive the asking price of Mint up. Sounds like the investors in the last round got screwed!
The first point really shows an employer that actually cares. To be honest, out of all the places I have interviewed, there was only one instance of being questioned about the specifics of an open source project; it was for a QA position, and actually just a Pick-from-List kind of question. Oddly enough, not too many of them seem interested in actual code I can show them.

The second point, I think, deserves some more discussion.

There's no denying it: I consistently fail at coming up with questions to ask when an interview nears its end. Although I do try and ask small questions along the way, after the whole thing is done, there's just nothing else I care to know about that's appropriate at this stage in the process. In terms of work environment, if it was interesting enough to talk about, the interviewer would have already given me a spiel or the topic comes up naturally. The actual work gets discussed in some detail regardless, so there's not much else there without actually working on it. Having some opinions about the product in question would be nice, but no such luck there either: they've all been doesn't-exist-yet, enterprise apps, and generally things the general public doesn't have enough access to to be able to have an informed opinion about. That said, if the other side cooperates, I generally try and make the interview into more of a conversation, and seem to leave a very positive impression on the interviewer. Doesn't really help with the having-a-question-to-ask at the end, though.

What sort of questions do you really hope a keener would ask?
I'd say getting a university degree would be the single best thing you could do. Yes, some will argue you can have experience without a formal education, but immigration programs are very bureaucratic.

Learn the things you'll hear people dismiss as "academic". They do that because those things are hard :) There are many people out there capable of figuring out how to use jQuery after reading a few tutorials. Much fewer understand how computers actually work. Learn the theory. You can start before university.

This isn't meant to be insulting. It's just something I wish someone told me at that age. When you are young, it is easy to impress those around you who "aren't good with computers". When that happens, briefly congratulate yourself, then keep working.
The idea is a good idea and we don't know yet if it will make $.

The partnership will be setup in advance of the websites success, if any. The website data will be licensed to companies and only then will we know how important the data is for them.

Since the concept is mine, I should have majority share. Although 'Ideas are a dime a dozen', but a programmer is nobody without a concept. We each need each other: that's what makes a team!

Like I commented above, programmer does 'projects' for sun; I just don't want to come across greedy and take more than is fair!
Scalpers often have the time, money and incentive to build automated systems which hammer ticket services to buy up tickets which otherwise would have been sold directly to people attending an event. Whenever you hear about a concert or sporting event selling out within a ridiculously short period of time (sometimes 30 seconds after online sales open), it's because of this, and represents the creation of inefficiency rather than the remedying of it.

Also, first-party ticket vendors have been known to actively partner with third-party resellers to essentially eliminate the original market. Ticketmaster, for example, owns an online scalping service (TicketsNow) and there have been repeated allegations that they give preferential treatment to their own scalping subsidiary.
Erik Prince: Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy
This article is much more flattering than Prince deserves, but it's still candid by the standards of Erik Prince.
The reality is that many people cannot communicate anywhere, so if they are writing good stuff on Stack Overflow, they are probably going to have some ability to explain to their team how their code works. (But it also means that they are the type of person who is happy to waste an hour replying in detail to some dumb person on the Internet.)
Some people do both. Why gamble on someone who won't show any of his work when you can just pick someone who does?
Facebook: FarmVille is bigger than Twitter
Since it doesn't work with every bank and I heard it is sometimes waky, I suppose it is a hack like : http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/dist/Finance/
I'm no 'rockstar', I'm a newbie with a good concept and programmer like the idea already contributed to the idea on our first conversation.

I don't think he will take the idea from me since he has no business experience. We need each other for our respective pieces we contribute. Programmer has admitted to me many times how he has no business sense and he would probably accept any % share. (Might be his love of new projects)
Yep, I assumed they were normalized. I don't see the canceling out, though.

If you do poorly on the first test, the x-coordinate is low/close to y-axis. You're then expected to do better on the second test, so the y-coordinate is high. This will flatten the left half of the line.

As you said, if you do well on the first test, the x-coordinate is high, and the y-coordinate is low. This will flatten the right half of the line.

Right?
Example #745 of how Microsoft is Broken
We Have Been De-googled (IMDBs Google Adsense rejection)
The only winner here is the scalper though.

Even if true, we only say that after the fact when all the risk in the trade is gone and the profits banked. The trade could have gone badly and wasted the scalpers' time and money.

If I remember correctly, there WAS a console flip fiasco in Boston (PS3 I think), where the scalpers who waited in line all night didn't wind up profiting.

Edit: first link I found, probably many others...
(http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/some-scalpers-give-up-return-ps...)
Microsoft begins to really compete with Google Maps
Scaling Rails with MySQL table partitioning
No. Like someone else said, you can make a perfect bitwise copy of a DVD without running afoul of anticircumvention laws--just copy it with the DRM intact.
> how [does] making money from money contributes to something worthwhile to society?

I don't have any formal training for credentials, but here's how I've come to think about it...

The markets (of which the stock market is one, but the venture capital and private equity markets also count) are capital allocation machines.

This is easier to see in venture capital. The market for startups makes it possible for promising startups to raise capital. It also "encourages" "bad" startups to die.

It's capital allocation.

Same thing for the public markets. They give companies access to capital (either through debt or equity) at a cost that's proportional to how valuable the company is, or is likely to become.

So society, through the open markets, gives Apple and GE the opportunity to raise capital.

Dying public companies, on the other hand, have a really high cost of capital.

And my favorite way to think of capital is man-hours.

So if you were king, and you were responsible for allocating man-hours to different projects, this is the same problem as capital allocation, and it's the same problem that securities markets solve.

They also provide liquidity and at scale the operational overhead goes to zero.

They also provide opportunities for investors to hedge against inflation, participate in society's long term growth, etc.

But the most important function from a societal standpoint IMO is very efficient capital allocation.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=966716
Unfortunately what is really tripping me up is when we draw that line. I get the principle of regression to the mean, and why it occurs. What I don't get is this particular manifestation of it.

Fair point about "no connection between a and b".

What I should have said was something like: Why is it important that a come before b chronologically? If we were mistaken, and we thought that b came first, then what we would be seeing is "progression from the mean".

Does the concept of regression to the mean depend on the chronology of events? That would be weird -- most probability doesn't, right?
Looks great.
Do you use your own crawler?
Free Printable 2010 Calendar - Holiday Calendar 2010, 2009 & Blank Calendar
They'll arrest him decades later, when he least expects it, like that Polish filmmaker.
Ask HN: What is going on with Captchas ?
Am I the only one going insane ?
Today I decided to try the app developed by a fellow HN member. After failing 3 times to enter the captcha, I gave up.

And this is not the first time this happens. If I am having trouble, how many other users are stopped by the gate ?

Can anyone recommend a good (as in readable) free-captcha generator ?

Or maybe its just me (http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg) ?
The captcha that blocked me: http://dinkevich.com/sample_captcha.jpg
In Bed with Ben blog
The customer has a choice on whether or not it's worth the purchase. To the customer who values the item (Wii/Sporting Event/whatever) over the (inflated) cost, it is a net gain, not a loss.

That is too short sighted of an analysis. Too much value is being lost by unnecessary overhead. Have you noticed how overhead is something to be eliminated by every company except the middleman's themselves?

With your reasoning, would it be a "net gain" for someone pay more for oxygen than you if some scalper managed to monopolize all the oxygen? There are probably plenty of people richer than you that would pay for the "true" (sarcasm) value of oxygen. Would it be a "net gain" for someone to buy up all the land and charge a million euros per square acre? Somehow, I think your answer to this question will still be yes, but I hope I've managed to convince everyone else.

Furthermore, scalpers who wait in line for hours to buy tickets/game systems, and then flip it for profit are essentially providing a paid service to those who are too impatient, late, or otherwise incapable of buying said items when they go on sale, knowing that there is a limited supply that will not meet all the demand.

There are plenty of people who were willing to buy it for the initial price instead of the inflated amount.

The problem here is that you are using the broken window fallacy. Just because someone artificially jacked up the "demand" of an item doesn't mean that the item is really worth more.

Take for example the recent housing bubble. People scalping houses forced the legitimate buyers to take out huge mortgages that they eventually couldn't pay off. If you think there was value added there, I don't know what will convince you.
A very interesting TED talk on Mars rovers:
http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_elachi_on_the_mars_rovers.h...

Apparently NASA didn't expect them to function this long; on the dusty Martian surface, the solar panels should have been covered with dust completely, leaving the rovers dead long ago. It's a lucky coincidence that "sand devils" on Mars had been cleaning the solar panels and keeping the rovers alive.
Here are some of my standbys, if I'm stuck:

* What would you consider the average size of a working team, here? (You'd be surprised- sometimes the answer is '1', sometimes it is '50', and the discussion this generates is usually worthwhile. )

* What kind of kid buys Armor Hot Dogs? (Fat kids. Skinny kids. Kids who climb on rocks. )

* (to a developer) Tell me about what _YOU_ do. Could you describe your day-to-day routine to me? (It's open-ended, and certain answers, like 'rock back-and-forth, in the corner, in the fetal position, cradling a rifle' or 'ASP.NET programming' are sure signs that you might want to stay clear. Good answers include 'something different every day' and 'sneaking into homes to steal pens'.)

* What would you imagine that I would be doing, here? ("Mopping.")

* What are your opinions and policies on ongoing education, here? Do you have resources? Do employees attend conferences? (Some companies will laugh you out of the office, and/or point at their tiny 'reference shelf', many others support this sort of initiative. It's best to gauge this before you ask the question.)

* Try to identify things that your interviewers seem especially proud of, and ask them about those things - even if you already know the answer, they will be happy to talk about them. (Say, for example, the HR person repeatedly mentions the innovative "80/20" policy. Despite that you know what an 80/20 policy is, like the back of your freaking hand... ask questions about it, to show interest. )

* Who, exactly, put the ram in the ramma-lamma-ding dong?

* What sort of source control do you use? (This is seriously important. You might get stuck using something vile like CVS or SourceSafe. On top of that, asking this question demonstrates that you are aware of the importance of source control, a point that you could always drive home.)

A couple of more-precise but ultimately not-that-useful technical questions can help, too. If a company is doing web technology, ask them what sort of hosting arrangement that they have, whether or not they have a dedicated sysadmin, whether or not they have a development/production split, how changes get moved from development to production, if they do code reviews, what development methodology they prefer, etcetera, etcetera.

And you must always, always blow on the pie. I mean, ask at least one question. You must always ask at least one question.
Its competitor ARM does too, iirc. In addition, almost everyone (including many in top roles, such as the CEO) come from an engineering background.
Can't edit my orig post anymore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss

Deadweight loss from monopoly pricing power.
This seems to be a specific instance of the Peter Princple. It's typically concieved as a joke, but probably often inevitable in a linear carreer path.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
Same here. I'm so impressed these have been in operation for 6 years!
7F, 3NF; I didn't like this as a metric for myself, because I don't think that the highest value a book can have is "changing my life." The books that most changed my life (by my reckoning) were just the first, not the best. My life will change one way or the other, but that's not why I read.
Anarcho-libertarians obsess on positive liberties while totally disregarding negative liberties. They seem to think living in fear of violent, extremist gangs is just fine, as long as nobody's forcing you to pay taxes.
i just stop worrying about it after a while