Machine Learning: Exceeding Chance Level by Chance - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/01/18/machine-learning-exceeding-chance-by-chance/

<comment><USER2> Of course, welcome to _confidence intervals_ and/or hypothesis testing 101. What is correct in such situations is very clear in stacks of college introductory and intermediate texts on statistics. And what to do is known in situations much more complicated than in the OP. E.g., there is the literature on _distribution-free_ statistics.</comment>


Nokia, Please Keep Going - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/11/nokia-please-keep-going-hands-on-with-the-lumia-1020/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like the point where the author praises Windows Phone 8. Many people seem to have the (in my opinion) wrong impression that Windows Phone has not evolved from that crappy thing it was a year and a half ago.

The app gap is definitely a thing of the past. Really good Facebook and Twitter clients, Foursquare, Spotify, the Office suite, lots of cool third party apps (Instance, 6Sec...) for things that are definitely coming (Instagram, Vine, Flipboard). Games? Still not there, but MS has muscle to "persuade" devs.

The only problem I can see is innovation. It's happening on iOS almost exclusively. But I think iOS is another beast, Winokia (reserving rights for the name) is going for you, Android.</comment>


New two player glitch discovered in original Super Mario Bros. - <AUTHOR> http://www.complex.com/video-games/2014/06/new-secret-discovered-in-original-super-mario-bros

<comment><USER2> Quick summary is Luigi dies (hit by a hammer) while a beanstalk is about to grow in 5-2. Mario then spawns back in 1-2 and the beanstalk is there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Skip to 2:40 in the video to see the interesting part.</comment>


Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11794020 <comment><USER2> Personally, I think that the part of this deal that stinks is that the Valar/NZVIF partnership only invested in TWO companies; the majority of funds were just used to buy Xero shares on the public market (yes, they were already listed on the NZX sharemarket by this point).

That's kind of like how Chinese investors could game the system and get permanent residency in Canada by "investing" the minimum amount of $1,000,000 into the Vancouver property market (a.k.a. buying a house). And as an added bonus, they'd leave the house empty, messing up the rental market and making it harder for Canadians to find somewhere to live.

I have absolutely nothing against residency in return for bona fide business investments, but there's gotta be some element of risk involved for the investor. Getting a sweetheart deal from the government and then investing in the public sharemarket is in no way a benefit to the country.

It'd be a very different story had Thiel actually continued to make investments in the local startup community after getting his citizenship. But it sure looks to me like he made a few "investments" for show, got his citizenship (without even setting foot in the country!) and then promptly put his NZ passport into his bug-out bag and moved on to other things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this kind of the point? The NZ governments goal was to increase private investment, not make a return. They succeeded -- Thiel put $6.8m to work in NZ that he may not have otherwise.

Many countries do this. For example in the UK the British Business Bank will become an LP in a VC fund acting as a multiplier on capital raised.

You may not agree with the government's decision, but you can hardly blame Thiel for making use of it.

<comment><USER2> Thiel put the vast majority of this money towards buying Xero shares on the public sharemarket. Hard to call that a bold investment strategy. As if that wasn't low-risk enough, he then managed to buy these shares on 50% margin (that's the NZVIF portion) and double his potential profit AT NO ADDITIONAL RISK.

<comment><USER4> Agree, Nobody likes to see their government whoring out citizenship's (there's no other word for it!) but if they do they they should be be honest and sell the passport for cold hard cash to use in infrastructure or social projects, NOT for investing in real estate (which fucks up the local market) nor stock market investments where there is more chance of actually gaining money in the deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It appears that was the point. It's not like he sailed in and viciously took advantage of everyone. I suspect this is on HN for a very specific reason.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal on your orgs behalf.

I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German) and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways to recreate slavery, etc.

<comment><USER7> Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional troll. I'm sure he's overjoyed to get crazy protests at Berkeley and to get banned from Twitter. The more attention he gets the better it is for his brand. He intentionally picks targets that are the most likely to over-react and uses the most inflammatory language he can.

I mean this has to be the trolliest trollmobile that has ever trolled: [http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/09/img_4893_1024-640x4...](http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/09/img_4893_1024-640x480.jpg)

People need to learn to not feed the troll. The worst possible thing you can do to Milo is ignore him.

<comment><USER8> > _Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional > troll._

Peter is a slice of bread with honey on one side and some sort of putrid matter on the other.

Milo does not have the honey-tinged side.

<comment><USER9> I think he's a bit more complex than that and we should avoid overly simplistic metaphors. I am not a fan of Thiel but I have listened to him explain his worldview at length in person and while I dispute many of his assumptions I feel he holds them in good faith and is persuadable.

Milo, on the other hand, acts as if he aspires to be the Ernst Roehm of the internet age and I have little tolerance for him.

<comment><USER8> When things go from bad to worse, the time for complexity is gone.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I just didn't form the impression that he was actively malicious so much as callously indifferent.

<comment><USER8> > _callously indifferent_

I actually agree on that one. But he has tremendous amounts of money and power.

In the current small, interdependent world, callous indifference can do a heck of a lot of damage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CheckMySaaS – All SaaS Startups at one Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.checkmysaas.com/?utm_source=HN&utm_medium=POST&utm_campaign=Announcing

<comment><USER2> Please don't copy our design[1] and content[2]. Thanks!

[1] [http://betalist.com](http://betalist.com) [2] [http://betalist.com/markets/saas](http://betalist.com/markets/saas)

<comment><USER3> We are extremely sorry for doing so. It was just a test and should not have published on HN for showcase. We will remove everything soon.</comment></comment>


Outdoor play 'good for the eyes' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34243841 <comment><USER2> Did we really need a study for this?</comment>


This isn't your father's Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://sawers.com/blog/this-isnt-your-fathers-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> I think the pendulum has been swinging from Apple towards Microsoft for developer friendliness for some time now. This is definitely an active strategy on MS's part, and a huge misstep by Apple. Some key parts of the MS strategy:

\- Embracing Linux. Beyond what's mentioned in the article, there's the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and the new Terminal app. Being able to run Ubuntu (or whichever distribution) natively on a windows machine, accessing the same file system, is huge for developers. The new Terminal app will make interacting with it even better.

\- IDE dominance. Visual Studio (classic) combined with the .NET environment languages is very, very powerful. Visual Studio Code has taken web development by storm. A lot of what makes these two so powerful is Intellisense, which is extremely good at what it does. Compare this with XCode.

\- Premium first party hardware. The Surface line of laptops / 2-in-1s / etc is at least as good as the recent Macbook Pros. They also innovated in an actually useful way (the detachable tablet on the Book), as compared to the developer-hostile "innovations" from Apple (replacing the escape key with a skinny phone, a universally reviled keyboard, etc)

I really have to give Nadella credit for the way this has all been orchestrated.

<comment><USER3> MS has always been super developer friendly as far as I can remember. The difference was in the past you had to buy into their ecosystem and way of thinking. Once that was done, VS was by far the most superior experience. Now MS embraces a greater variety of developers, not just those who bought in.

Anyone remember DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS...?

EDIT: found a clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs)

<comment><USER4> How times have changed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5164635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5164635)

> Why should I invest in the Microsoft stack? I'm done. Microsoft is no longer > a platform I will work on and I will recommend open source products and > frameworks from now on.

> The Windows tech hegemony is a graveyard. XNA. Silverlight. WPF. DirectX. > Managed C++. C++/CLI. Managed DirectX.

<comment><USER5> What changed I guess is that they switched to embrace Linux full on. And now extending it as well. I trust that Linux is safe from extinguishing though - too much of the world runs on it, and free servers are just too compelling.

<comment><USER6> Not extinguishing perhaps, but appropriating and building upon Linux for their own benefit without giving much back is certainly possible. Google's already done it with Android.

<comment><USER2> Quite a lot of Google-developed code goes back into the Linux kernel. Look at cgroups - the entire containerization revolution sprung from code Google gave back to Linux.

<comment><USER6> Did that come out of Android? Google uses Linux itself as a desktop OS too.

Android hasn't led to anything like a mobile Linux. Google took Linux, built Android on top of it, and now owns the mobile space. Apple did something similar using FreeBSD inside OS X.

Microsoft could use Linux in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We just got two cheapish windows laptops after many years of not using windows at all.

Pros:

* Keyboard quality (compared to macbooks)

* Low cost

* Good physical design if you choose the right brand (thinkpad carbon for example)

Cons:

* Dark patterns push you hard to connect your account to a skype/xbox/microsoft live/whatever they call it these days account

* License key hell is still a thing

* Schizophrenic split between screens that work on high DPI displays and screens that don't. Sometimes in the same application.

* Too many versions of windows with features arbitrarily disabled depending on the version you have. Neither of these two laptops can enabled bitlocker, and no windows linux subsystem. Is all the code for bitlocker and wsl on my disk? I bet it is, just routed around with an `if version` branch.

* Crapware pre-installed

* Fairly crashy. On one if you put it to sleep with a full screen app open it wakes up with a black screen. Needs a hard reboot every time.

<comment><USER8> > Crapware pre-installed

The first rule of buying a prebuilt system has always been nuke it from orbit and start from scratch. Sounds like this isn't changing any time soon.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but even if I "nuke it from orbit" with a recent Windows 10 ISO I have to trick around to be able to just create a local account (disconnecting network or entering some form invalid three times, dark pattern stuff) and then if I finally get along I get greeted with a start menu full of candy crush and other crap..

Compare that with and Debian installation, quicker, no dark patterns, and no crap. Fedora works too, AFAICR, but Ubuntu has gone already a bit the M$ way, it seems..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there are sections of Microsoft that are very, very good but crappier sections are bringing down company perception somewhat - the company vision is somewhat confused when they drop a cross-platform SQL server and then introduce telementry into Windows.

Microsoft Office, if anything, has gone completely backwards in regards to UX. On a fundamental level it 'just works' but when I started becoming more of a power user I found reproducible bugs, unexpected or inconsistent behaviors, and a complete lack of extensibility for creating / modifying docx documents programmatically in !C#.

By far my least favorite issue is the constant battle I have with locale - I'm not sure if the document creators local was set to EN-US or if my system config is not correct, but every time I try and force the document to EN-AU it seems to switch back seemingly on a per-section basis or something. The most amusing side effect of this is the 'Read aloud' voice changing gender mid sentence but the amusement is quickly offset by it deciding to auto-correct perfectly valid EN-AU spelling for its American localisation for the fifth time in a paragraph.

<comment><USER8> The most brain dead thing about Windows, IMO, is that the keyboard selection is tied to locale. You want UK English but using a US keyboard (as you do on a laptop)? Screw you, it's US spelling or a UK layout.

<comment><USER10> I find the keyboard layout switching really awkward but for different reasons. On MacOS/Linux, setting the keyboard layout is global - under windows it's per-application _and_ the default is for shift-backtick to switch between layouts which is something I manage to hit pretty frequently.

When I was working on a host where I needed two layouts (US-Dvorak + US-Qwerty for other users) I ended up solving the problem using AutoHotKey to hook all keys and send a different keyevent. It was pretty gross but it bypassed all the issues I was having in a convenient way.

Perhaps you could hook US symbols such as "$" and rebind to UK equivalents with AHK? Alternatively, creating a modified EN-US keyboard layout which has relevant key-symbols would also work / be less hacky, but probably require more effort.

<comment><USER11> It's been global by default since Windows 10, AFAIK (and comes with a better (well, _a_ ) UI for switching as well with Win+Space. I've since disabled all the other shortcuts, as I've been hitting Alt+Shift far too often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can't judge a company only by its shiny new things; you also have to judge how they're handling what's already there.

And right now, there are some exceedingly-common things that are far too broken considering how many decades Microsoft has had to fix them. I'm sure we all have our lists but just off the top of my head...

\- The complete inability of an OS named Windows to remember where any of its windows were a second ago, after you have the audacity to plug in a cable such as a dock or external monitor.

\- An OS that drinks laptop energy from a giant straw, combined with an OS that is poor at restoring state when the machine inevitably runs out of battery in your bag and has to be rebooted unexpectedly when you open the lid.

\- An OS and apps that cannot handle the extremely common scenario of a network outage or even a momentary blip. I will be _spammed_ with a half-dozen login prompts from all over the place as punishment for the crime of briefly losing WiFi, as network disks and other apps all lose their minds. The OS also cannot auto-close any of these prompts when I reconnect.

\- Core UI elements can become completely unusable. For example, I should be able to click the WiFi task bar icon at any time, yet at some point this menu will just stop working (its icon still highlights when clicked but no menu appears anymore!). Text is frequently cut off to the point where I am _required_ to hover for a tooltip to even see what the rest of the text says...assuming that a tooltip has been implemented.

\- The OS still completely disrespects its users. Completely unimportant windows will appear right in the middle of the screen, blocking everything behind them, with no apparent way to close them or even move them.

<comment><USER13> Your comment regarding network outages is an issue on macOS as well with certain apps. FileMaker is a good example. Just putting my laptop to sleeps breaks its network connection to the FileMaker server I need to use for $Employer to the point I have to restart FileMaker and login to my $Employer's system every time my laptop wakes up. I wonder it your issues is more to do with crappy apps rather than windows itself?

<comment><USER14> One of my first software roles was working with a legacy FileMaker database where most of the business logic was built directly into different GUI elements. I do not envy your work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While this isn't your father's Microsoft, this is your grandfather's Microsoft.

Before they started creating business applications and operating systems, Microsoft was in the business of programming tools. Their first software was Microsoft Basic. Microsoft Basic was available on pretty much every major personal computer platform.

Thus in some sense this is Microsoft returning to its roots as a cross- platform programming tools company.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, Microsoft Basic practically _was_ an operating system, in its day. It's what many computers booted into, and sometimes the environment in which everything else was run from.

<comment><USER17> To be fair BASIC was not much of a deal. The interpreter is just a REPL. Very basic at it, hence the name. The BASIC was not invented by MS: they replicated it. The real operating system part was done by computer manufacturers. For instance it was Dragon Data that brought the "kind of" OS routines in the Dragon32. Floppy disk managment, I/O, etc. MS just brought the REPL and ... bugs.

<comment><USER18> > BASIC was not much of a deal. The interpreter is just a REPL. Very basic at > it, hence the name.

The language is named after its goal of being something easy to learn. It is a fairly contrived acronym, Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> .NET Core would've been really incredible had it come a few years earlier, but I've been too busy being enamored by Go and Rust to really consider it more. Still, it is very nice to use when I do use it. I am quite excited by the way it handles async. I had some issues trying to use debuggers under Linux due to licensing... a little bit of "old world" Microsoft?

I really don't care for Windows 10 at all, and make a point of not running it on any of my machines (I am running Linux everywhere.) I keep checking and rather than getting better it often feels it's getting worse. The fresh install experience is abysmal.

Is the "new" Microsoft really great? GitHub has been doing awesome, and I love Visual Studio Code, but as much as it pains me to say it they still have a long way to go. It feels like Microsoft, as large a company as it is, is in two places about many of these issues. I still have fears. Can I trust VS Code remoting? (It's _not_ open source, from what I can tell.) Hard to say. (I still use it, because it's awesome. But, I have second thoughts every time. It's hard to shake the feeling that maybe something is off.)

<comment><USER19> What do you mean by "it's hard to shake the feeling that maybe something is off"?

<comment><USER16> Wondering why this bit isn't open source. Is there really any point? There exists open source VS Code extensions and forks that do basically the same thing. It's weird for the whole editor to be open source but for this part, admittedly very compelling, to not be. Something is fishy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Maybe the Microsoft strategy is to intro into the Linux/Java/LAMPish/open- source camp community, burnish their image, and hope they consider their commercial offerings."

Try plugging a USB stick with an ext2 partition into Windows 10. At least in 1803, you get TWO dialog boxes asking you to format the partition, with the default being format! In between is another dialog box with just one button. This is the new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, this seems not like a mainstream use case... and you can use WSL to read it if you really want to (which seems like an advanced use case anyway). Cross platform FAT32 is the standard and Microsoft made that open.

<comment><USER22> I think a token amount of effort to try to detect ext file system and not to offer to wipe it clean might have improved the user experience. Small things like that accumulate and aggravate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm kind of puzzled by this fanboism about "a new MS happening now". The new propaganda is along: "Hey! reset everything you know about MS. The new MS is shiny!". Why would anybody support MS without being a shareholder or without having any financial interest. Given their proven track record it would be pretty obvious to be cautious about MS. IMHO MS have all the reasons to be doomed. They are way behind technically in key CS areas: HPC, Mobile, embedded, etc. Their flagship OS is FUBAR due to 2 decades of accumulated bloat. Anyway we might envision a future for MS as a profitable business: Embrace 21st century standards, port their SW on *nix(es) and make profit on their core competencies: that is developing boring non innovative SW for big companies.

<comment> t-h-e-chief Exactly. Microsoft quite ironically they isn't a tech company, it has always being first and foremost a company in the business of making money - who just incidentally happens to hire some really smart technical people, who sometimes produce good products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For me, windows 10 is still an issue. I don't like being spied on. I don't like disabling cortana and bing and sending everything i type to microsoft and having my choices overwritten every single update. I don't like having to delete fucking candy cruah for the third time. Respect the very deliberate choices I made and perhaps I'd use it seriously again.

<comment><USER24> _sending everything i type to microsoft_

What do you mean?

<comment><USER23> There are several settings that will send many things you type back to Microsoft. They are on by default. "Getting to onow you" is one such setting. There are also typeahead suggestions, suggestions for handwriting, search box suggestions etc. autocomplete is fine if I am on a specific website or app but definitely not fine in an OS, especially when it turns itself back on silently after I disabled it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My only real beef with the modern MS stack is the occasional forcing of telemetry and updates on certain products. If they would just quit doing that, without insane hoops to jump through, they'd gain a bunch more trust.

I propose universal opt-out environment variables (e.g. OPT_OUT_ALL_TELEMETRY=1, OPT_OUT_ALL_AUTOMATIC_UPDATES=1) that all software, not just MS's, should pride themselves in respecting.

<comment><USER26> The hoops you have to jump through on azure data studio is rediculous. It has a popup saying it is tracking you but instead of asking or providing an opt out button it has a wiki page describing a config option you have to manually insert into a json file and restart the program before it will stop tracking you. By that point it has likely uploaded all of your data anyway.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I just went through that a few weeks ago. It's really user-hostile. It's like they know exactly who cares about that kind of thing, hide it perfectly from the users that don't, and then do a bunch of stuff to piss off the people that do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hadn't heard of Nano server at all. Kinda neat to see this entire howto guide is based on (power)shell commands: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- server/get-started/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get- started/manage-nano-server)

They do have a lot of cool new stuff but MS is still the same old MS. Tried doing some RAID driver stuff the other day on a Win 2019 test box and wanted to get hit by a train. I have spent so many years in open source land that I forgot how painful it is to get help with obscure errors in Microsoft world. Installing a fresh OS takes what feels like forever, especially account provisioning and unchecking the dozen (literally) trackers/cortana/etc garbage. Simple things feel slow. The UI is clunky, and half the stuff you use is going ot be using a circa-last-last generation UI toolkit anyway so it all looks out of place.

<comment> t-h-e-chief Please do not mention Powershell, this is a civil forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My wife still uses Windows (out of familiarity) and I have to fix her computer whenever there's a problem. I can confidently report that, when it comes to type and frequency of bugs, it is the exact same Microsoft it always has been.

</comment><comment><USER29> I hate to distract from the content of the article, but I have a request from those without good vision: the text color on this blog is just a shade over 50% grey. I know people are opposed to the starkness of #000-on-#FFF text, but going approximately #888-on-#FFF seems extreme.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just adding this in case anyone is using vs code and is wondering about dev on windows. I'd say that wsl is nice for some tasks but I wouldn't rely on it as a daily driver. It's great for installing some CLI tools to perform certain tasks. Maybe some file grepping or searching that you want to do with your local stuff but find it infuriating to do with powershell or bat scripts. This doesn't mean WSL is bad by any means. It's actually great. But not good enough. Not yet.

But I use windows as my daily driver and what does work amazingly well for me is virtualbox and running a VM as my developer machine on it. I run Ubuntu server. And for developing, VS code has this amazing feature that allows one to connect to a remote and develop on it as if it's a local filesystem. This includes having extensions that interact with the remote too. This also means I don't do the whole shared folders dance with all its oddities around speed and syncing anymore. Honestly, it changed the whole windows dev game for me.

Once the new terminal for windows is actually v1 (not holding breath for that. Theres a lot of work for that. Its probably going to miss the winter v1 projection) I think the windows dev experience will be complete.

<comment><USER31> I've used sshfs for remote editing for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not really considering it for my personal stuff, but since work is a Microsoft shop, I'm really pushing to get on .NET core. We're at a point where most of our Windows bound stuff is going away and we can start to shed a lot of weight if we can port what remains to .NET Core.

<comment><USER25> I'm lucky enough to be leading a brand new huge project in .NET Core 3 at work. I wouldn't consider it for personal stuff either, but I love that the Windows devs at work don't even need to know I'm doing my work on Linux. Something will probably come up eventually but, 4 months in, no one has brought it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Once you get used to developing in a *Nix environment there is just no going back. WSL/WSL2 just isn't there yet. Too much "beta" software for me to rely on it professionally and things just don't work out of the box.

I don't ever see myself going back to Windows.

Other Microsoft products, sure. I prefer Atom but Code is a fantastic editor that has quite literally changed the game in web development. The acquisition of GitHub was incredibly smart. .NET core, etc.

They've made many correct plays over the last 5 years with the dev community - the problem lies in their core product...Windows.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm really curious about where Windows will be in 10 years.

We see MS making launchers for Android, and offering their products more and more cross platform (based on electron + web client). Even switched Edge to be Chromium based.

How long until MS makes a Windows launcher for Linux. As long as they can provide a consistent experience and offer their services, they don't seem to care so much about which OS they champion.

</comment><comment><USER35> The one thing that has persuaded me the most has been vscode.

Until switching to that, I had assumed Microsoft incapable of producing something with excellent design/UX. Also it's open source.

Opening Microsoft software every day on my Ubuntu machine and feeling grateful they made it has slowly chipped away at my anti-Microsoft stance.

<comment><USER36> Man, I have such fond memories of VC6. It was such a great debugging experience. And MSDN was absolutely the best documentation website I've used. I think Microsoft's developer tools have always been high quality.

<comment> t-h-e-chief Agreed, they do have some of the best tooling. Damn, VB6 was one of the most amazing development environments ever made when you think about it - shame the language was so limited.

Still, I did prefer Borland Builder and do prefer Jetbrains Rider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's in the technical sense where Microsoft is different these days. But I don't believe the Company's Grasping Mindset (TM) has changed in the least.

I still do not _trust_ Microsoft at all.

Patent wars, appropriation of standards, locking out of competitors, underhanded business tricks, etc, etc. None of that has changed. It still continues.

</comment><comment> t-h-e-chief Ah. Yes it is. They still don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, but now Windows bugs, when you encounter them, are stupid as hell.

<comment><USER38> I am specifically talking about error code-less messages like "An error occurred"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My father is dead.

<comment><USER39> RIP.</comment></comment>


Are You An Entrepreneur or a Wantrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infochachkie.com/are-you-an-entrepreneur/ To what extent do you share the list of entrepreneurial characteristics outlined in this post? <comment><USER2> This article buys into the idea that entrepreneurship is hard, and most people can't do it. Beyond being an exercise in self-love, this is the perspective that the 'big dumb companies' crave. Whether we say "damn, I'm not good enough to leave" or we say "damn, I'm one of the few that is good enough to get out", we're still buying into the vision that industrialists wrought for us a century ago.

Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs. The barriers to entrepreneurship are not inherent flaws in the majority of humanity, but intentionally manufactured barriers to promote the industrial model of production and consumption.

Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street.

<comment><USER3> > Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, > then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street.

I understand what you're saying, but that's the wrong way to say it. I've learned more about entrepreneurship from hustlers I've known than anyone else, and hip hop usually captures that spirit better than any other music. Entrepreneurship takes balls, and your stones have to be massive to flip dimes and quarters under the noses of teachers and cops.

<comment><USER4> You're right. Few things are as entrepreneurial as drug dealing or even ticket scalping :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the person who coined the term Wantrepreneur the same person who coined the term Web 2.0? Did Godin have something to do with this?

You're not an entrepreneur unless you own/owned a company (the rest of the details are very debatable). I hate sales jobs that describe themselves as "entrepreneurial" in nature. You're still taking orders from someone else.

<comment><USER5> I respectfully disagree.

An entrepreneur is anyone who can see an opportunity or an idea and turn it into hard cash. If you can do it through someone else's business then even better. You are simply reducing the calculated risk.

A few years ago several bartenders and waitresses went out and bought investments properties because another bartender had done it and made lot of money. They had a few properties, incorporated their business and rolled over the taxes, and got loans easily. That did not make them entrepreneurs. Those business owners helped to drive house prices all the way up, then all the way down taking the economy with them along the way.

On the other hand, take Google. A great search engine, a good amount of visitors who love the product. But someone outside the founders came up with Adwords and executed it pretty well. That s an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> It's funny, one of the original details I left out and put "debatable" for instead was "profitability".

IMHO I still don't think the Adwords guy is an entrepreneur; he's an employee - a damn good employee.

<comment><USER6> adwords came from overture/goto.com - a separate company. Actually, google _stole_ it, and got their pants sued off. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search_Marketing>

note that "adwords" isn't just the idea of putting ads next to search, but mainly the auction aspect of it (so google always gets the highest price possible; and advertisers never pay more than needed - the idea is it's a little market), and linking it to search.

Overture/goto.com was basically adwords alone (no search results), and was quite profitable I believe.

Unfortunately, my little correction doesn't contribute to the topic of the debate... um, departments can certainly be entrepreneurial, also, in some companies, with skunkworks and so on, you are certainly doing _all_ the things an entrepreneur does: funding, new products, marketing. The only difference (and perhaps a key difference, according to fallentimes) is that it ain't their money. Entrepreneurialism certainly has a gut-test component... and maybe that risk/reward of ownership is essential.

Otherwise, you're gambling for matchsticks. Using all the same skills, but you ain't gambling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why it's _necessary_ to write articles like this... Are there a lot of people out there who may have _thought_ they were entrepeneurs, but needed to be convinced they're not via a list of traits they need to possess?

<comment><USER8> I bet a good percentage of the people reading entrepreneurial blogs have great ideas, but haven't actually leaped into the void. I'm in a startup, but its not MY startup, so I don't consider myself an entrepreneur .. yet.

<comment><USER4> That's a lot better than being a bitter cuber/red taper who criticizes everyone's startup while not having their own. I believe many of them hang out on Techcrunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The differentiation between inventor and entrepreneur is helpful for me. It's not about technology, but usefulness. Not one brilliant perfect insight, but iteration. Not money, but creation.

 _most entrepreneurs iterate on preexisting ideas to the point that the inventions represent marketable value propositions upon which sustainable companies can be created._

 _...obsession is the father of innovation. Innovations are often sussed out by entrepreneurs who cannot let go of an idea ... compelled to succeed by creating something from nothing, not by the lust for money, power or fame._

He didn't say this, but the thing about "marketable value propositions" is they are about problems or needs. It's frightfully easy to invent a "solution" without a problem.

Joel said "Where there's MUCK, there's brass". He meant unpleasant work is rewarded. But I interpret it as: for a solution to really make a difference to people, it has to be a solution to a problem/need they have. The worse the problem (i.e. the more ugly, confusing, complex, frustrating, painful, horrible and MUCKY it is), the more worthwhile the solution. No problem means no solution - by (my) definition. A "solution" without a problem isn't worth anything. Therefore, MUCK is a pre-condition of a worthwhile solution: where's there's muck, there's brass.

Arguably, inventors (of products) create solutions; entrepreneurs (marketers of products) connect solutions to problems. Most powerful when combined e.g. Wozniak + Jobs, or unified in one person: Edison.

</comment><comment><USER9> I normally really like this blog, but this post is puffy and superficial. You could replace "Entrepreneur" with "Eagle Scout" and, apart from TJ Watson, the post would still make sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your point is well taken. Not every post on the site is a "How To", which I tend to like better as well.

Some are more inspirational. I do agree that this one has less 'meat' than some of the others, but I still like the description of the characteristics shared by many successful entrepreneurs.

Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER10> _"Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!"_

For the record, I'm an Eagle Scout, one of my co-founders almost was, and one of my other few friends who is also starting a company is also an Eagle Scout. Anyone else out there?

<comment><USER6> I don't know much about Scouts, but isn't the idea to be useful and effective in serving the community, with an emphasis on initiative, and getting done whatever needs to be done?

Isn't that pretty much what a successful entrepreneur does?

<comment><USER6> Scout Oath is similar: <http://www.scouting.org/Media/FactSheets/02-503a.aspx>

The "BRAVE" one differs, because the article talks about such confidence and optimism that one doesn't experience fear. Courage requires fear, as the article says.

The Motto reminds me of: "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a horoscope: Sincerity, Humility, Honesty, Naivety, Impatience, Optimism, Influencer.

Sincerity, Honesty, Optimism would be pre-requisites for any legitimate profession (perhaps internal auditors need to be pessimists).

Naivety if it means ignorance is dangerous: you can ask fundamental questions but that's different from being naive. He doesn't give the full quote from Orville Wright on audacity, it continues "Yet faith in our calculations and the design of the first machine, based upon our tables of air pressures, secured by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence in our system of control developed by three years of actual experiences in balancing gliders in the air had convinced us that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining itself in the air, and that, with a little practice, it could be safely flown."

They clearly contemplated failure in selecting a location for test flights with strong headwinds that didn't force them to build up a lot of ground speed to take off (making landings safer).

"We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing." Orville Wright in "How We Made the First Flight" <http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/6000/6100/6126/flight.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER12> Does this mean if I want to be my own boss that I can't just work on something for 5 minutes and then spend the rest of the day on Twitter and playing video games?

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately not. What kind of boss lets their employees do that? :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know about anyone else, but self-applying the word entrepreneur gets really old, really fast. I've done it myself out of necessity (and brevity), but it still feels wrong.

<comment><USER15> When would you ever have a chance to _say_ something like that? "Hi, my name is Bob, and I'm an entrepreneur?" It seems so silly.

When people ask me what I like to do, I say "Make things." It's quicker, easier to comprehend, and lends itself to what usually gets called entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER14> Resumes, Social networks, lots of places. Its not good, but it is fast. Trying to explain to people my career path takes more than 20 seconds.

'Make things' is good, but it isnt specific enough for most people. They would say "What do you make?" thinking some sort of art/craft/machinery.

Dont get me wrong, I still like 'Make Things' better than entrepreneur, but they are both pretty bad. I usually end up telling people I'm self employed and that I do lots of things and am currently between projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "They often have a naive view of the future - not Pollyannaish, but one in which failure is just not a potential outcome ... Entrepreneurs have the audacity to believe that the odds do not apply to them, because they know they are going to win."

This sort of hubris has always bothered me about some entrepreneurial types. I understand "looking past limitations", "going against the odds", and "taking risks". But, I think: a) There _are_ outside forces which you cannot control and which can drastically affect your business (even to the point of failure). To ignore them is foolish, IMO. b) I think failure is a _key part_ of being an entrepreneur. It's how you learn and grow. Failure happens sometimes.

Also, I wish his points on humility were a little more thorough (and included points on failure). I'm not sure W. Churchhill and John Lennon even qualify as entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER6> "success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm"

But focusing on the possibility of failure doesn't work as well. One must be fearless, and fail fearlessly; then fail again and again.

You get more information from failure than trying to anticipate failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another blog post dealing in platitudes and absolutes.

Don't really care if I fit into your mold of an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER18> _Interview Question Exercise_

 _Draft five interview questions that you would ask someone in order to determine if they are an entrepreneur_

1) What's the most interesting idea you've had or thing you've thought about in the last week?

2) If you had to write The Great American Novel, what five themes would you consider essential to touch upon?

3) What books have influenced you the most? Who are your favorite bloggers?

4) What's an example of a time you've hacked some non-computer system to your advantage? (paraphrased from the YC app.)

5) What's an example of something you've made that people have wanted.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are Great questions.

I especially like the "Great American Novel" question. If answered thoughtfully, it would provide a nice window into the soul of the interviewee.

The "favorite blogger" question is good as well, as it also helps the interviewer understand what motivates and excites the interviewee.

<comment><USER14> Sure these are good for young entrepreneurs. Of course, I know dozens of people who are totally entrepreneurs but dont spend any time reading blogs, ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's scary how many of the items on that list match me as a kid (except for lame stuff like yard sales. I found better ways to turn a buck).

</comment><comment><USER19> I like the term "Wannabepreneur" better. It better captures the essence of the issue at hand.

</comment><comment><USER20> A writer is someone who writes, not someone who goes about telling their friends that they are "a writer". The same is true of entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER10> The comments section is for your comments, not copy/pasting portions of the article verbatim without quoting...</comment></comment>


Flickr reverse engineers the shapes of continents, countries, cities, and neighborhoods. - <AUTHOR> http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/30/the-shape-of-alpha/

<comment><USER2> I don't get this. It seems to say, e.g., "We reverse-engineered the shape of Texas by drawing a line around all the photos marked 'Texas'."

So? How did the photos get marked "Texas" in the first place?

<comment><USER3> _Each one of those illustrations represents the boundaries of a particular place whose outline was generated using nothing but the latitudes and longitudes of the geotagged photos associated with that location's WOE ID._

<comment><USER4> Correct. But where does the WOE ID come from? Are people manually typing those in or they are using something like <http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/> to come up with the WOE ID? If WOE ID is generated based on latitude/longitude of a place, then all they are doing is a plotting data originally retrieved from their own DB.

Say I have a table of 40,000 zipcodes in US. You take a picture in zipcode 33708 and ask me for WOE ID / state and I say "Florida" and then you upload the picture. Now do this ten million times for every zipcode. Now I will look at every picture with WOE ID / state = Florida and find a list of zipcodes and map them. Obviously they will map out the entire state of Florida. After all I gave you all the state names.

Not that this isn't cool or anything. Just trying to determine how cool it is. If they had used latitude/longitude + tags to generate this, then it would be super-cool indeed. But if they did it by the method above that I described, it is cool but it's also a big "duh."

<comment><USER5> That's because the submission title is misleading (the blog post says nothing about "reverse engineering" anything.)

Here is what flickr actually did:

"Over time this got us wondering: If we plotted all the geotagged photos associated with a particular WOE ID, would we have enough data to generate a mostly accurate contour of that place? Not a perfect representation, perhaps, but something more fine-grained than a bounding box. It turns out we can."

So yes, they're just tracing around the points in their database to see what kind of shapes they will get, for the experiment of seeing how well they could represent a given (country, state, town) by connecting coordinates of photos taken closest to the real borders of those actual regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be more interested in seeing the cases where this kind of thing fails. Surely there must be some?

Does New York have an outpost in Las Vegas surrounding the New York New York casino? Is Venice a bi-lobed city spread between northern Italy and southern California? Does Sydney exist primarily in Australia, but have a lot of tiny outposts surrounding all the places where girls called Sydney have posed for photographs?

<comment><USER7> Flickr, or almost any social network site - particularly with an Amazon style "real name" option - would be in a great position to geotemporally track names.

As of Q4 2008, this is the worldwide distribution of Hugh's, and you can see that name changing in poularity around the world as you drag the visualisation back to Q1 2003...

</comment></comment><comment> Jonathan-e What a load of hype about nothing. All they are trying to do is fool the uneducated into thinking they have actually done something special. A very cheap marketing ploy.

They are the ones who specify which location geo-coded photos fall in to, so it is no surprise that when they over lay them on a map, they match the borders of the actual locations....

<comment><USER8> Flickr have reverse-engineered the technology to physically locate states. This information is no longer limited to a few select vendors who've signed NDAs and non-compete clauses.

Finally people can develop their own mapping applications that work with the existing statename / location combos. This means you will be able to tell where you are. I thought I was in London, which coincidentally turned out to be right when I checked on Flickr's new reverse-engineered 'map' technology, but it could have totally gone the other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool, I speculated on this a couple of months ago in my blog (although even then it was already fairly predictable). <http://blog.blinker.net/2008/04/15/exploring-geotags/>

Another application could be to monitor the spreading of plants and animals, or other memes (fashion sense, cars, etc.).

When I wrote the blog article, it was difficult to get GeoTag information out of flickr (no search option for "images with GeoTags"). Anyway, I wish more data was freely accessible...

</comment><comment><USER10> Too bad that for commercial use, this information is locked up within Flickr.</comment>


Show HN: Chart.xkcd – Xkcd-styled chart library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/timqian/chart.xkcd <comment><USER2> For general SVG "sketchy" effect, Rough.js is a very cool library: [https://roughjs.com/](https://roughjs.com/) [https://github.com/pshihn/rough/](https://github.com/pshihn/rough/)

[https://roughjs.com/examples/bar- chart.html](https://roughjs.com/examples/bar-chart.html) is an example of a bar chart built up with D3

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16571827) was the discussion when it was first submitted

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HN, thanks for the upvotes. I am the author of this lib.

What I want is a chart library with simple API like chart.js but in hand-drawn effect. I find there is no such lib, so I created this one. Thanks for trying it out.

Previous discussions about xkcd styled charts:

\- xkcd styled charts in matplotlib: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19293129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19293129)

\- simple line graph in d3: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4671676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4671676)

\- disscussions on stackexchange: [https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd-s...](https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd- style-plots)

\- why are xkcd styled graph important: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511762)

<comment><USER3> The github page doesn't have the license?

<comment><AUTHOR> it is MIT, I have added it to the repo

<comment><USER4> Seems like merging `xkcd-script.ttf`[0] directly into `chart.xkcd` repository may violate `xkcd-font` licensing.[1]

 _CC-SA-NC_ -licensed thing could not be merged into _MIT_ -licensed thing.

[0] [https://github.com/ipython/xkcd-font/blob/master/xkcd- script...](https://github.com/ipython/xkcd-font/blob/master/xkcd- script/font/xkcd-script.ttf)

[1] [https://github.com/ipython/xkcd- font/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/ipython/xkcd- font/blob/master/LICENSE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Looks cool! On safari in Codepen it does not render any lines though, only text is visible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I did not test it on safari, will look into this issue later

<comment><USER5> Same in chrome on iPhone. I love this library btw, good job! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Almost 1 MB of JavaScript transferred to render a single chart? I am afraid that is not acceptable. I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the author of the library, but sending that amount of JS for a single component is just outside of any reasonable performance budget.

That being said, a server-side or build-step tool that generates lean SVG code? Yes, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> Updates: the total js file is around 66KB now [https://github.com/timqian/chart.xkcd/pull/7](https://github.com/timqian/chart.xkcd/pull/7)

<comment><USER6> Great job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Matplotlib has this too!

[https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.x...](https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.xkcd.html)

<comment><USER8> I never could this to work, when I was doing research papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also a D3 version already that also has a hosted version:

[http://xkcdgraphs.com/](http://xkcdgraphs.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this page motivated me a lot. But it has limitations

\- it only creates img, no interaction(tooltip)

\- only support line chart

What I want is a chart library like chart.js or echart but with xkcd style. So I created this tool

<comment><USER10> Great comment thanks. The #1 thing I like the most whenever a new library pops up is when the advocates aggressively compare it to the alternatives. Usually they are too polite to do so and as a result leaves me confused on why they even exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see how to provide the Y axis data for the labels but is there a way to use X labels like 1 2 3 but then provide (X,Y) coords for minima and maxima [(1.1, 3.2), (4.8, 7.5), (6.3, 2.4), (8.2, 7.3)] and get a curve?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is on my plan, should be done in next release(within several days), you can watch the repo to get notification about it

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also an R package exists to do this on top of ggplot2: [http://xkcd.r-forge.r-project.org/](http://xkcd.r-forge.r-project.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks nice but why create a whole new plotting library for this rather than adding it to one of the existing ones (eg. Chart.js)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to d3, creating a new plotting library is not so hard

[https://github.com/d3/d3-shape](https://github.com/d3/d3-shape)

You can regard this library as adding styles to d3 instead of chart.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is super cool! Amazing work.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love this, for the reasons laid out in this article (which I always back to):

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graph...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graphs_are_important.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> What is the license of the library?

<comment><AUTHOR> it is MIT, I will add it in the repo soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> beautiful, starred.

</comment><comment><USER18> Really nice

</comment><comment><USER19> isn't comic sans the xkcd font?

</comment><comment><USER20> Turning something witty/insightful into an automated cliche is not an improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> From a usability perspective, "sketchy" or "cartoony" charts actually serve a purpose. To me, they communicate "the trend is important here, not the precise numbers". This can more acurately convey communication intent as opposed to a precise rendered graph.

\--- @sharpercoder [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19293713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19293713)

<comment><USER21> I agree. It's the same approach with sketchy mockups for web pages. It tells you unequivocally that you should not focus on the design itself. I find it very powerful.

<comment><USER22> Still, wouldn't it be better just to draw it by hand and store it in an svg rather than bring in a huge dependency?

<comment><USER21> I guess it depends on each case. I'm sure in many cases by hand would be a better way</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Business of the future - <AUTHOR> From bored college students to business owners it a matter of months. Two London based entrepreneurs changed their lifestyle around in order to start their very own clothing line - Risk Apparel. They set up part time whilst at college juggling between business and studying. Now they have a future proof website with core models that all business should have such as the Fair Wear Accreditation and low Carbon Foot print. For them as young shoppers they believe such values should be taken into consideration when purchasing items not just the price.
Website: www.riskapparel.co.uk
This is what the say about themselves
Risk Apparel a unique and growing fashion brand setting the trends for future entrepreneurs, providing quality clothing and accessories at reasonable prices - there is no need to break the bank to look good!
Risk was founded in 2016 by Jake and Will, who are both entrepreneurs themselves. Since setting up, the Risk the team have continued to grow their product range with new innovative designs. They spend extensive amounts of their time communicating with customers to ensure the high standards of quality, value for money and service are always met.
The design team is lead by co-founder Will who is dedicated to ensuring only the best designs are picked for our customers. Keeping designs contemporary with an individual flair is key to the success of Risk products.
Everyone at Risk feels passionate about fair trade and the environment. All suppliers of materials to Risk are environment friendly and most products are Fair Wear accredited.
www.riskapparel.co.uk <comment><AUTHOR> Awesome website</comment>


Create a hardened Raspberry Pi NAS (for learning/education) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexellis.io/hardened-raspberry-pi-nas/ <comment><AUTHOR> Before anyone jumps on this regurgitating how under-powered the Pi is, please do read all of the introduction - the goals and purpose of this post. Thanks for being a good Internet citizen.</comment>


Bayesian linear regression step by step - liviu- https://github.com/liviu-/notebooks/blob/master/bayesian_linear_regression.ipynb <comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I made something similar in case someone likes your work and would benefit from another example. [https://zjost.github.io/bayesian-linear- regression/](https://zjost.github.io/bayesian-linear-regression/)</comment>


Python: Myths about Indentation - <AUTHOR> http://www.secnetix.de/olli/Python/block_indentation.hawk

<comment><USER2> Any one compulsive enough to attempt to correct other peoples perseptions of Python should be compulsive enough to actually check his page for HTML 4.01 compatibility. 'Cause its not. Otherwise an interesting article. Too many pieces of waffle for my taste though...

\--hsm</comment>


Google Drive for Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-intros-drive-for-work-as-new-premium-option-for-apps-users-7000030877/

<comment><USER2> Damn. For a second I thought Google was making some kind of end-run around regulators to put driverless cars on the road. Wrong sense of 'drive'.</comment>


Internet Archive Sues to Stop New Washington State Law  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.archive.org/2012/06/16/internet-archive-sues-to-stop-new-washington-state-law/ <comment><USER2> I hate articles that are nothing more than links to the real article.

The real thing: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/eff-files- legal-m...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/eff-files-legal-motion- to-halt-washington-state-online-sex-ad-law/)

EFF press release: [https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-sues- sto...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-sues-stop-new- washington-state-law)

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in Seattle, and had read some about this bill. The local paper supports it, and their latest editorial specifically argues against the idea that legitimate businesses have anything to fear: <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2018389853.html>

That said, I trust the EFF and Internet Archive to have a better understanding and appreciation for these issues than some lawmakers who admit that they are specifically targeting backpage.com, one particular site that runs a lot of local sex ads.

Backpage.com has also sued over the law: [http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/06/backpage-com- sue...](http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/06/backpage-com-sues-state- of-washington-over-age-verification-law/)

<comment><USER4> I think you're right to trust the EFF more than the Seattle Times here.

That editorial says "The law was narrowly crafted to target Backpage", and that the law is only aimed at "classified advertising company representatives".

In fact, only one of those four words appears in the bill at all -- "advertising" -- and only then to define it so broadly that it can apply to virtually any public speech or writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another law "to protect children". As soon as I see that justification, I know there is a 99% chance that the law will actually be advancing government power, control and/or surveillance over the general populace. Why is this? Because lawmakers know that no one likes Big Brother laws, but most everyone's common sense goes out the window as soon as the "but think of the children" argument is brought out as a cover for bad law.

<comment><USER6> _...most everyone's common sense goes out the window as soon as the "but think of the children" argument is brought out as a cover for bad law._

Does a good persuasive counter-position exist to the "think of the children" argument? Is there a way of telling a parent "This person is using your concern for your child against you, making you afraid so you won't think logically about what's being done" -- without sounding like a heartless jerk?

<comment><USER7> I suspect it depends on the rationality of the parent you're speaking to. As a parent, that wording sounds fine to me.

<comment><USER8> I, too, am a parent (of two teen-age daughters). I agree with the parent. "Think of the children" is almost always an appeal to an emotional response to gain support for laws that are generally an attack on adult behavior. These laws are usually worded to be vague and carry an intention (though often not overtly stated) to apply to _all_ "taboo" behavior.

As mentioned elsewhere, we already have laws and punishment for sexual exploitation of children (and adults, for that matter). There's not need for special laws because the state isn't fond of a specific entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The wording of SB6251 seems rather confusing to me -- I wonder if the intent was to make it intentionally vague.

As it was written, if the only qualification is that "an individual who is less than eighteen" "must be depicted", then I would think that the Seattle Public Library would clearly be guilty of dozens of these felonies, for all of the movies with underage nudity that you can see on their own webpage that they make available to borrow, like the Academy Award-winning "American Beauty".

</comment><comment><USER9> Archive.org's donation page is here: <http://archive.org/donate/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER10> Full docket here: <http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=1474512>

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do governments everywhere feel the need to legislate things they know little about and even less how to deal with?

<comment><USER12> Are you propagandizing against government (not that there's anything wrong with that) or asking a factual question?</comment></comment>


Confirmed: Amazon RDS Mysql is not vulnerable to the Password Exploit - <AUTHOR> https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=353148

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry my last post had a funky char after the URL</comment>


A small notebook for a system administrator - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/437912/ <comment> GuB-42 I love how that small is the opposite of the new MacBooks.

\- Keyboard vs touchpad

\- Connectivity overload (inc 4 headphone jacks ;) vs you need a bag full of dongles

\- thick and small vs thin and wide

\- practically vs esthetics

I don't have high hopes of seeing it made as described but nice idea. I especially like the kvm mode. That's something I thought about long ago, it sounds like an obvious idea, easy to implement, but I've never seen it done.

<comment><USER2> The Pandora handheld can act as a keyboard/mouse/joystick/mass storage peripheral over its USB-OTG port, and the Pyra is expected to as well. These devices follow a similar aesthetic, if not quite a similar role - small, chunky, and overloaded with i/o options, Pyra especially so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This looks super cool, but also completely implausible. It's fun to throw out wacky requirements like "can arbitrarily route power between sources" and "every component galvanically isolated from every other", but these things take PCB space. I'd love one of these, but I just don't believe it can exist. If it could, it's fair to say it would be a miracle of engineering and phenomenally expensive.

If you like the look of this, the closest thing that stands a chance of actually existing is probably the upcoming GPD Micro PC. It's designed for a similar network-engineer type niche, with its ethernet jack and RS-232 port.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wondering if the GPD Pocket minicomputer would suit these requirements. Also, GPD is about to kickstart an admin-oriented minibook soon. I'll have to find the reddit link. Other Chinese manus offer similar PCs too. Liliputing has some posts and reviews.

<comment><USER3> Here's a link to the upcoming GPD MicroPC: [https://liliputing.com/2018/12/gpd-micro-is-a- tiny-299-lapto...](https://liliputing.com/2018/12/gpd-micro-is-a- tiny-299-laptop-aimed-at-it-pros-coming-in-2019.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea... except for neodynium magnets anywhere near electronics.</comment>


Benchmarking Random Forest Classification - <AUTHOR> http://about.wise.io/blog/2013/07/15/benchmarking-random-forest-part-1

<comment><USER2> Its random forests ... each tree is trained on a __subset __of the data. You can split the massive dataset into chunks and train independently. That sidesteps the "big data" hangup.

If you look at the implementation for ski-learn, each tree emits a normalised probability vector for each prediction, those vectors are simply multiplied together to get the aggregate prediction, so its not very difficult to do yourself.

Although regardless, you are applying a batch learning technique anyway. You want an incremental learner for big data.

<comment><USER3> The training subset for each tree can still be quite large. Note that most of the implementations failed on their 12 GB dataset.

Although I'm a big believer in streaming/online machine learning, it's not necessarily the best solution. There are many cases when batch is the better option, especially for big data. Anything historical, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance for you to run your benchmarks on this branch of Scikit-Learn? [https://github.com/glouppe/scikit- learn/tree/trees-v2](https://github.com/glouppe/scikit-learn/tree/trees-v2) This will be shipped anytime soon :)

We have been working hard to reduce computing times and memory footprint (though, there is still a lot of improvement on that side).

(Unfortunately, I cannot run your benchmarks myself, because the compiled version of WiseRF requires a newer version of glibc than the one on my cluster, and crashes.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Question: Why do I have to implement hyperparameter selection?

For me, the promise of in-the-cloud machine learning is that I can call 'train' method, and specify one single hyperparameter: training budget (i.e. $). Perhaps also the max time before I am returned a trained model.

That's it. Can you do that?

<comment><USER6> This is exactly what we're enabling with our ML Platform (currently in private beta). Such a system needs to be built on top of fast & scalable ML technology with smart & efficient tuning/optimization.

Would love to hear about your use cases & get you on the beta.

-Joey Richards, Chief Scientist @ wise.io</comment></comment>