Wikia's Got A Truck Full of Servers -- 1,000 To Be Exact - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/wikia-servers-for-search-crawl

<comment><USER2> From Jimmy Wales' talk at the Tools of Change conference (<http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/toc/view/e_sess/13441>) in June, here are some quick facts about Wikia:

1) a completely different company and organization from Wikipedia

2) it is for-profit and will be ad-supported. The deep content in each subject should provide a more profitable, targeted audience for advertising than general ads

3) revenue will be used to pay for computing, hardware, bandwidth, and development. All content is created for free by volunteers and will remain under open licenses.

4) Since quality web searches are becoming a commodity, they want to develop an open source search engine to give power back to content creators (from aggregators like search engines)

</comment><comment><USER3> Never underestimate the bandwidth of that truck.

</comment><comment><USER4> How do they make money?

<comment><USER5> It seems the only way would be ad support, but that seems very un-Wikipedia. However they make money, I just wonder how they expect to get developers to contribute to it when Wikia will be trying to make money off the developer's work. I know I wouldn't be eager to work on a project that somebody else will profit from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope they can get over their PHP addiction.</comment>


Blizzard's Weibo Account Just Posted an Apology To China - <AUTHOR> https://reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfkmp1/blizzards_official_weibo_account_just_posted_an/ <comment><USER2> Gaming companies have messed up and lost gamers' trust in so many different ways: predatory microtransactions, oodles of crappy DLC, half-finished products being shipped with huge Day 1 patches, etc. But all those were directly related to the industry and could at least be bounced back from if the company removed transactions/made meaningful DLC/improved the state of their games in the future.

How the hell do you bounce back from this? "Oh, sorry, player base, we didn't mean to support a totalitarian regime that slaughtered innocents and suppresses free speech. Have a cool skin!" ... That's exactly how they're going to bounce back, isn't it?

<comment><USER3> That's exactly how they're going to bounce back from it, it's going to be easy for the game companies, and it's going to work great. Or, more likely, they won't have to bounce back from it at all. The people cancelling their accounts will be back within a month. Gamers will tolerate anything, unless there's a better game that they'd rather play they're not going anywhere.

<comment><USER4> Disagree - we hurt the sales of Battlefront 2.

And I think there are gamers, like me, who haven't paid money to Blizzard in a while because I don't subscribe to anything Blizzard, but I already own a bunch of games.

What should I do?

<comment><USER5> I guess you could vote with your wallet by buying from a leading competitor instead. It won't hurt them directly, but market position matters to them. They will probably notice it about as much as one lost sale :(

<comment><USER6> Boycott Blizzard and tell all your friends to do the same.

<comment><USER5> I think we both have been, for a while, simply because their games were not for us anymore. The post I responded to was asking what to do when we already don't buy, a boycott won't be felt.

Though anyone planning to boycott would best keep in mind not to forget about anything labelled Activision too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If that's real, that's a surprisingly bad PR move from Blizzard. I understand this was targeted at a Chinese audience (since Weibo) but they must have known this would get back to their English speaking audience almost immediately.

There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation).

<comment><USER8> There is a good chance it was not authorized by HQ and might be some China- specific PR division acting autonomously.

I have a feeling blizzard just wants this problem to go away, otherwise people are going to turn blizzcon 2019 into a shitshow

<comment><USER9> Redditors are already talking about going in Rockets gear and Winnie the Pooh shirts.

<comment><USER10> It would probably be more meaningful to cancel registration, and maybe even picket the place wearing that stuff (or at least post photos of wearing that gear on social media announcing they cancelled their registrations for the convention).

<comment><USER11> The tickets and accommodations are nonrefundable.

<comment><USER12> Not sure about accommodations, but the tickets are definitely not refundable.

> Tickets to BlizzCon, once purchased, cannot be refunded by the purchaser or > exchanged;

[https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket- agree...](https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agreement)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Original post on Hearthstone weibo account: [https://www.weibo.com/3229779100/Iax22g4xQ](https://www.weibo.com/3229779100/Iax22g4xQ)

similar post on the Blizzard account: [https://www.weibo.com/5883095259/Iax1avYRU](https://www.weibo.com/5883095259/Iax1avYRU)

Which links here: [https://playhearthstone.com/en- us/blog/23179289](https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23179289)

EDITED: to add hearthstone account link.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would feel a lot better about companies talking out of both sides of their mouths here if what they said in English wasn't already so compromised. Firing the broadcasters and banning the player shows which side of their mouth Blizzard is speaking truth out of, I think.

<comment><USER15> I might be missing what you are saying but they are not talking out of both sides of their mouth, they apologized _to China_ , not to the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I did customer service at Blizzard Europe back around 2010 one of my immediate colleagues who could speak Chinese and English was involved in the re-launch of WoW in China.

They explained that non-Chinese companies were not allowed to operate in China. What Blizzard had done was essentially a partnership, but legally they gave rights to a Chinese company to operate/use their IP in China.

I suspect this is the same here, this is a Chinese company with a right from Blizzard to use their IP, but isn't actually Blizzard itself.

Blizzard probably can't control what this Chinese company does in China except probably for terminating their license to use their Hearthstone IP, and even then I wouldn't be surprised if that's legally challenging.

<comment><USER17> > They explained that non-Chinese companies were not allowed to operate in > China.

I still find it fascinating how no-one was screaming "trade war!" at such terms. Yet respond to them with a few tariffs..

<comment><USER10> In China, nobody's allowed to complain about mercantilist policies.

In the US, nobody noticed until the US government started employing stronger mercantilist policies, then started complaining about it at home because they don't like that their own government is employing such policies.

That's probably why.

It's worth noting that punitive tariffs, in the end, are taxes on businesses in your own country, because it just raises the price of US businesses doing business (and often gets passed on to consumers, when demand for the product is strong enough to pass the cost on to consumers; otherwise, businesses just suffer and have to start cutting costs in other areas, such as by laying off workers).

Mercantilist policies hurt the local economy as much as they hurt foreign economies. Every act escalating a trade war hurts both sides.

<comment><USER17> > That's probably why.

Pretty much the entire media participated in the narrative that it was Trump that started the trade war - both in the US, and here in Europe. That's what I was referring to, not Chinese media.

> Mercantilist policies hurt the local economy as much as they hurt foreign > economies.

So economists keep repeating. Yet China doesn't seem to have been hurt by their mercantilism. Because yes, in the short term, tariffs hurt, but they let local industry develop without being crushed by foreign competition. In fact, " ... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." [1]. But economic consensus remains untainted by contact with reality.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I cannot wait for the backlash at Blizzcon.

<comment><USER19> You can wait and wait, their target consumer doesnt care about anything else than slight injection of dopamine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Big corporations doing big business in market too big to be ignored...

Still, I think they should grow some balls.

Acting like this now mean it will be worse in the future.

<comment><USER16> See my other comment, but my suspicion is that Blizzard itself is not making these decisions, but rather it's the Chinese company that has licensed Blizzard's IP for use in China.

However, even if my theory is correct, I suppose one could argue that Blizzard is complicit by choosing profits over terminating the business arrangement, but, maybe that's legally challenging.

I don't know the real story, but I think the situation is a lot more complicated than it appears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm trying to think of ways to stop this, but I can't think of any good way.

1) I simply don't think it's feasible to expect that companies themselves will band together and say "we won't accede to such demands."

2) Countries like the US that have better free speech protection could pass laws requiring US companies to comply with the freedom granted in the US. So a company could not impose punitive measures on a user, or self censor, for something legal within the US. But then I think of all of the varieties of harassment & hate speech that could get through.

<comment><USER22> If such a law would be made, US companies would be effectively required to isolate their US user base from the rest of the world. Things that can legally be said in the US can easily be illegal in other countries that value free speech. EU countries tend to take a fimer stance on personal attacks, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Absolutely shameful. Blizzard is chasing the dollars, or should I say the yuan, and turning their backs on customers, players, and ultimately human rights.

<comment><USER19> Most of the world is doing the same unfortunately and I dont see anyone screaming about that.

Yes, its that bad and people think mostly about themselves. If something does not impact you directly it does not exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It might be time for democratic countries to consider not trading with China. China is totalitarian and marxist and is therefore incompatible with democratic values. But still democratic governments and corporations aim to trade with China because it's a massive market and there's plenty of money to be made.

The Australian Prime Minister is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, China is our major trade partner. On the other hand, America is our ally and also a major trade partner. So Morrison has to dance with each.

Blizzard, I read, have significant investment from China, and China are a massive market for them. So they self-censor in order to stay in China's good graces.

I don't see how corporations and countries can do business in China, without compromising their values and possibly stepping on the values of citizens/customers in democratic countries.

<comment><USER19> Thing is China already got rich by trading with rest of the world. Their middle class amounts to like 50% of total population.

The way China spends that money is very smart - they will be self sustained soon by buying up Africa.

They dont care about rest of the world, they dont have to. Soon not USA but China will be the biggest imperium on Earth.

Thats how more or less cards look like now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I.. I'm not even sure.. Why? Do the employees just want to increase the fire now?

</comment><comment><USER26> Blizzard you had a choice to make, you could of been the gaming company leading the charge in freedom and human rights, (you have enough fucking oney tbh) But no you decided to make just a little more money instead of becomeing the coolest fucking gaming company to ever exist. Blizz if you supported BlitzChung, i guarantee your sales would of went up waaaaaaaay more then the entire chinese market is worth u shit for brains. There is more in the world supporting democracy then not supporting it. Blizzard you guys suck i would FIRE whoever made those decisions to ban him.

</comment><comment><USER27> Goodbye Diablos, Overwatch and WoW.

</comment><comment><USER28> NBA did the same thing.

Their Chinese statement was way more apologetic than the English one.

[https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/07/nba- chin...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/07/nba-china- statements-different-english-chinese/3898513002/)

<comment><USER29> While the NBA's Chinese statement denounces what was said, it also affirms their commitment to freedom of speech. The NBA stance and the Blizzard stance are very different. Blizzard seems to show zero backbone and zero support for free speech.

<comment><USER30> There are a lot of pandering people in the games industry. Take riot games for example with the recent fiasco they've been involved with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The translation is soft, literally it should be:

>... are filled with indignation and strongly condemn it, also absolutely object to ...

</comment><comment><USER32> What's blizzard? Can't tell from the post.

<comment><USER33> The video game company who made WoW, Starcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, etc.

They recently banned a player and revoked his winnings for speaking out in support of the Hong Kong protests.

[https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/hong-kong- hearthstone-b...](https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/hong-kong-hearthstone- blitzchung-blizzard-ban-protest-remarks.html)

<comment><USER32> Ah, thanks for the context.</comment></comment></comment>


How to install Ubuntu 12.04 on a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://tech-devnet.blogspot.de/2012/05/running-ubuntu-1204-on-mac.html

<comment><USER2> what are the benefits to doing this compared with using a vm?</comment>


The Mathematics of Lego - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/the-mathematics-of-lego/ <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested I have access to this kind of data (via Rebrickable.com) so can redo these calculations using more recent sets.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting argument, and from my experience seems to hold true. The only counterexample I can think of is the Taj Mahal: <http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10189-1>

This is why I always enjoyed getting larger sets, especially technic sets, as they always had rare pieces that were extremely useful for a specific function. For example, the shifter gate piece in the original supercar set: <http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/6543>

<comment><USER4> I always thought very specific pieces like that weren't really in the spirit of Lego.

<comment><USER5> I don't know. I think a good selection of different pieces vastly expands your options. Some of the coolest models are the ones that use weird pieces in clever ways--my favorite example was an Audi R8 that used white rope pieces (very specialized) for the front LED lights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought it would be closer to that <http://www.clear.rice.edu/elec201/Book/legos.html>

there was a nice website tracing history of bricks dimensions but I can't find it for the moment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did I read it too fast or this article is a necklace of tautological pearls?

<comment><USER8> There is some real data, but it does look like a case of research confirming common sense. Anyway, it make sense once you see it, but I probably wouldn't have thought of it myself. I enjoyed it.

<comment><USER9> I think the key point is not _that_ the number of piece type increases with number of overall pieces, but rather the nature of the relationship (sub- linear in log-log space) meaning that while number of distinct component types increases with number of components, it does _less_ so the more components there are. In other words there is a sort of economy of scale. C.f. similar results in biological and municipal networks due to Geoff West et al (sorry for lack of citation; typing this on my phone). I get the sense this work is related to West's.</comment></comment></comment>


Why building SaaS well means giving up your servers - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/why-building-saas-well-means-giving-up-your-servers/

<comment><USER2> Obligatory: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing)

That said, sure, PaaS makes a lot of sense for a lot of things... but since those fallacies are even more true of long-distance links (generally speaking) than of LAN links, I'd say most companies will need a mixture of hosted-on- site applications _and_ "cloud" applications for the foreseeable future.</comment>


Show HN: Keep a Diary of Your Fitness - <AUTHOR> https://exercisestory.com/ <comment><USER2> Congrats on Shipping!

I'm very much interested in fitness but I don't know from the landing page what your service offers exactly.

It would actually be great if you could provide a sample of what you offer before asking people to signup. Maybe a video on the landing page, a demo account or in the best case scenario let them actually go through your UI and only ask for registration when they want to save some data.

Here's an example: [https://ewolo.fitness/](https://ewolo.fitness/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I will change around the landing page to make it more clear.

At the moment you keep a diary of your fitness, have a streak, telegram chat, telgram bot to add to your diary, check your streak.

<comment><USER3> I also think that the landing page should give an indication of what the UI looks like (in addition to the feature list that you currently already have). As a casual fitness app user I wouldn't sign up to a service if I did not have any indication from the landing page about the look and feel of the UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do I know what it looks like and how the UX is?</comment>


A dataset of every Reddit comment - <AUTHOR> TLDR; magnet link:

    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:7690f71ea949b868080401c749e878f98de34d3d&dn=reddit%5Fdata&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.pushshift.io%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80
 Someone has already put it on Google Big Query - https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-bigquery:reddit_comments.2015_05
Link to original Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/3bxlg7/i_have_every_publicly_available_reddit_comment/ <comment><USER2> As linked below, I've played around a bit with this dataset: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjyvb/rel...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjyvb/relationship_between_reddit_comment_score_and/)

BigQuery is the best interface for it. Can resolve queries on the entire dataset in less than a few seconds (however, you only get 1TB processing free per month. Since the full dataset is ~285GB, you only get 4 queries per month. Plan ahead on the May 2015 dataset, which is only 8GB.)

I can answer any other questions that people have.

<comment><USER3> > Since the full dataset is ~285GB, you only get 4 queries per month.

That's only true if your 4 queries need to read every single column.

One of the big advantages of BigQuery's column-oriented storage is that you only pay to read the columns that are actually needed to answer your query.

For example, this query to extract the top 10 authors only cost me 19GB to run (and took 7.0s):

      SELECT
        author,
        COUNT(*) AS COUNT
      FROM
        TABLE_QUERY([fh-bigquery:reddit_comments], "table_id CONTAINS '20' AND LENGTH(table_id)<8")
      GROUP EACH BY
        author
      ORDER BY
        COUNT DESC
      LIMIT
        10;

      author,COUNT
      [deleted],228425822
      AutoModerator,3677774
      conspirobot,575576
      ModerationLog,547671
      autowikibot,402076
      PoliticBot,388395
      imgurtranscriber,360248
      dogetipbot,358093
      qkme_transcriber,301968
      TweetPoster,293309

<comment><USER2> Good point.

Although if you're doing analysis on the body column itself, it'll use the majority proportion of the data set, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not trying to throw cold water on this...but are the Reddit execs OK with this? I mean, Twitter and Facebook would most likely issue takedowns for similar kinds of data dumps...but is there something in the Reddit API TOS that says this is OK?...I wouldn't be surprised if there a fairly liberal license, as that would be aligned with the early spirit of the site. And an onerous TOS would have likely curbed the active user-run bot ecosystem that helps manage and monitor Reddit's discussions.

<comment><USER5> I believe reddit comments are made under a CC license

<comment><USER6> Closest thing to an answer I've found is from the licensing page: [https://www.reddit.com/wiki/licensing](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/licensing)

But it doesn't specifically address collection and distribution of API results as a dataset.

(From the page:)

A licensing agreement is required in order to:

* use the reddit API for commercial purposes. Use of the API is considered "commercial" if you are earning money from it, including via in-app advertising or in-app purchases. Open source use is generally considered non-commercial.

* use the reddit alien logo ("snoo") in your app or for its thumbnail. Any new apps you create must be approved as well before usage. The circular "r" logo is reserved solely for use by reddit, Inc.

* allow users to subscribe to reddit gold via in-app purchases. If your platform allows for it, we encourage you to work with us to make this happen. We see gold purchases as a way for you to help reddit and to give back to the reddit community.

<comment><USER7> > use the reddit alien logo ("snoo") in your app or for its thumbnail

Do any of the apps actually do this, though? (Especially the free ones.)

<comment><USER8> UReddit does, but may not be a great example because I received permission to use the logo in a private conversantion with hueypriest years ago (as long as I didn't try to monetize the project).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used this[0] query to find the top ten[1] most downvoted comments of all time on Reddit.

The most downvoted comment[2] is ironically in iAMA, by a mod of iAMA (ironic because of the recent drama).

I'd find the top ten most upvoted, but I ran out of free bandwidth on BigQuery :(.

[0] [https://gist.github.com/alexggordon/7b56353dcf8044a7a5f9](https://gist.github.com/alexggordon/7b56353dcf8044a7a5f9)

[1] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- eWticy1BR2tCRDQ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- eWticy1BR2tCRDQ/view?usp=sharing)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s5guk/iam_bad_luck_br...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s5guk/iam_bad_luck_brian_ama/c4b8m3u)

<comment><USER10> Here's the top ten most upvoted using that query with desc instead of asc:

[http://pastebin.com/Zvg6mdjZ](http://pastebin.com/Zvg6mdjZ)

<comment><USER11> I don't even want to spoil any bit of the surprises that await you, dear readers. Thank you for BigQuerying this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some insights:

Relationship between Reddit Comment Score and Comment Length for 1.66 Billion Comments [0] and the Github repo [1]. Reddit cliques N°2 - deeper into the subs [2]

[0] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjyvb/rel...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cjyvb/relationship_between_reddit_comment_score_and/)

[1] - [https://github.com/minimaxir/reddit-comment- length](https://github.com/minimaxir/reddit-comment-length)

[2] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cofju/red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3cofju/reddit_cliques_n2_deeper_into_the_subs_oc/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickables:

[https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_c...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:reddit_comments.2015_05)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/3bxlg7/i_have_eve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/3bxlg7/i_have_every_publicly_available_reddit_comment/)

</comment><comment><USER12> There was also someone that created a dump of all HN data a while ago: [https://github.com/sytelus/HackerNewsData](https://github.com/sytelus/HackerNewsData)

<comment><USER2> I have a GitHub repository for getting all the HN data the hard way using Python and the Algolia API, and storing them in PostgreSQL: [https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news- submissions...](https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news-submissions- comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wanted the data in a form I could easily query, so I wrote a program to convert the JSON to an SQLite database: [https://gist.github.com/ers35/3b615a75fa0ed5e6d5cc](https://gist.github.com/ers35/3b615a75fa0ed5e6d5cc)

I have the program running on Amazon EC2 right now converting the whole dataset. I plan to upload the database to the Internet Archive when it completes.

<comment><USER13> Here it is: [https://archive.org/details/2015_reddit_comments_corpus_sqli...](https://archive.org/details/2015_reddit_comments_corpus_sqlite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's fascinating that if anyone uses this dataset to train an AI, some tiny piece of my personality might make a contribution.

<comment><USER15> It's going in my /raid/datasets with about 1.4TB of other comment data. So the answer is going to be "yes" ... well probably by Tuesday morning it will be.

I've used older reddit dumps before ... it's not great data for most things, but there's an awful lot of it!

<comment><USER16> What are you going to use it for? If you don't mind letting us in on some details, however vague albeit interesting.

<comment><USER15> sure. [http://frustrometer.com](http://frustrometer.com)

<comment><USER16> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could this be used to model the lifecycle of a Reddit post? What makes one thread get more votes and be replied to more often versus another similar thread posted at the same time. Is there a time when a comment is more likely to be voted for, based on wall clock or relative to the start of the thread. What topics are more likely to receive votes than others. Is there a minimum time between when reposts can be posted and still get upvotes. What are the most reposted things on Reddit. Why do people keep voting for reposts.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, that is much, much, smaller than I thought it would be.

Anyone have a recent link on Reddit's infrastructure? Given the small size I would think it easily fits in memory so I'm a bit curious how they handle it.

<comment><USER19> This is the newest (2010) one I know of, and probably the one everyone's seen (I think it was HN back when it was first posted: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/17/7-lessons- learned-...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/17/7-lessons-learned- while-building-reddit-to-270-million-page.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This should be pretty great for research - the Reddit API is actually fairly limited in my experience, I wasn't even able to get my full comment history last time I tried.

</comment><comment><USER21> This could be amazing as input to a question answering engine.

<comment><USER22> I actually built an IRC bot that did this once. It searched reddit for your question, took the first result, and posted the top comment. It worked very well for certain kinds of questions. Especially if it came from the better subreddits like askscience, but even just reddit in general.

I improved on it a lot with a whitelist of subreddits and some machine learning to select the best thread. But I was only touching on what is possible with that data.

The scope of the discussions on reddit is huge. Despite a lot of jokes in the comments here, the quality of the comments on average, is pretty decent. And the metadata like subreddit and score are extremely useful for filtering it down more.

<comment><USER22> Sample of conversation with it. Not cherry picked, just showing some of the good and the bad:

[https://i.imgur.com/LDD9isL.png?1](https://i.imgur.com/LDD9isL.png?1)

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome! how does one get started programming 'intelligent' things? I know how to program, haven't coded anything that is 'intelligent'. I would really love to know what all the things/concepts I should know to build a bot like yours. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I grep-ed my own comments in it and only shows 39 out of thousands. Is it really complete?

</comment><comment><USER22> I really want to get my full commenting history from this, but the download is enormous. Anyone know how I could go about this with cloud services?

<comment><USER24> Hey there! I'm the one that uploaded the original dataset. I'm creating API endpoints that will easily allow you to do this. It should be completed in 1-2 weeks.

<comment><USER24> I just realized my username on here is ... oh god.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This would be a really amazing way to make factually backed statements about the nature of Reddit for news sources given the recent publicity.

I.e. the frequency of comments of a certain nature, typical karma scores for those comments, breakdown by subreddit etc.

<comment><USER26> You have to be careful determining the nature of a certain comment algorithmically.

I saw one analysis of subreddits that checked for negativity. /r/PathOfExile came in as one of the most negative subreddits, which could easily be turned into a narrative about gaming culture.

To a person familiar with the context it seems far more likely that game concepts were skewing the data. Discussions involved killing, physical damage, life leech, killing, dying etc. Not to mention creature names themselves Devourers, Plummeting Ursa, Miscreations,

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone know if this includes the spam? This dataset is obviously very interesting in its own right without spam, but far more useful for me would be all of it, including the spam.

EDIT: regardless, does anyone know if similar datasets with spam?

<comment><USER28> If they grabbed it via the API then no, it doesn't. It also won't include a lot of older stuff which is no longer accessible through the API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is an awesome dump, what types of analysis could we use this for?

tspike mentioned a QA engine which would be awesome, what else can people think of?

</comment><comment><USER30> If anyone is working with the data, we should see how many users actually hivemind comment on things vs OC

<comment><USER2> You can't determine what is OC from comments, only from submission titles.

But by sheer coincidence, I have made a chart comparing average scores for OC submissions vs. non-OC submissions a few months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2rv76z/oc_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2rv76z/oc_reddit_submissions_receive_almost_double_the/)

<comment><USER24> Hey there! I know you! Posts are coming soon!

<comment><USER2> Good to hear! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anyone know how big it is yet?

<comment><USER2> Dataset on BigQuery is 265GB.

<comment><USER31> I wasn't able to get access to it on BigQuery .. the progress bar just sat and sat .. can you confirm that its usable on BigQuery - I'd sure love to play with this data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does someone have the equivalent for reddit links (with associated title)?

</comment><comment><USER33> Does this data include private subreddits?

</comment><comment><USER34> Someone should try make a sentient twitter bot that learns from the Reddit data

<comment><AUTHOR> How does one go about doing that? I know how to program, but I have written anything which do 'intelligent' stuff.

<comment><USER34> I have no idea either, I would also love for someone to chime in with some first steps.

<comment><USER35> Markov chains would probably be a good start.

See reddit.com/r/subredditsimulator (not always safe for work)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> its good

</comment><comment><USER37> how to access the BigQuery data?

I get this screen

Welcome to BigQuery! What is BigQuery?

but it doesn't show the data.

<comment><USER2> You'll need to set up a project in BigQuery first. (you don't have to give billing information to use the free quota)

<comment><USER37> got it running!

I just did a query for my reddit handle and it took 6.5 seconds to retrieve all of my comments. Kind of a snowden moment but this is super interesting, first time I played with Big Query.

Would love to run some google API for sentiment analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Since 80% of all Reddit comments are vitriol, nonsense by 15-year old kids, why would anyone do this?

<comment><USER39> How does complaining about the SNR on reddit in a way that decreases the SNR here help anyone?</comment></comment>


DataNitro (YC S12) Looks to Increase Power of Excel With Its Features - <AUTHOR> http://rightstartups.com/y-combinator-alum-data-nitro-looks-to-increase-power-of-excel-with-its-features-500/

<comment><USER2> I really hope they do well, if only to make people stop talking about how "big data" won't fit in a spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER3> If anybody from DataNitro is lurking, I have a question: what's the advantage of using DataNitro over Win32com + Python?

<comment><USER4> one of the founders here. mainly, it's a _lot_ easier to use. we've made our syntax as basic as possible, and we handle all the COM magic on the backend. this means you can get your code working faster, and it'll automatically include a lot of behind-the-scenes optimizations to make it run better.

here's one example of an optimization: if you're using a basic Win32com script, it'll freeze Excel while it's executing. DataNitro doesn't do this, so you can turn a spreadsheet into an interactive dashboard just by using a while loop. it'd take a lot of time to get that working properly using Win32com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excel is not a database.

<comment><USER6> It allows the storage and retrieval of structured data. To me that means it can be (and is) used as a database. Whether there are better tools is beside the point.

The reality is that Excel is the cornerstone of today's financial analysis. It is the de facto tool of the trade and can benefit from expansion of its core feature set.

As someone whose job is Financial Modelling, I wonder how distributable models / spreadsheets built using this are. That would be a barrier to adoption for my use case (and also that I'm the only person at the office who knows what Python is).

<comment><USER5> "It allows the storage and retrieval of structured data."

Can you define datatypes for Excel rows and columns? Can you define constraints on the data? If you can then I say that data is on it's way to being structured. To me, Excel is good for a quick and dirty, but using it for reliable analysis is bad practice because of its fragility. But in reality, people use the wrong tools for the job all the time and their firms and clients pay the price. Excel is the standard in financial analysis I agree, maybe that's part of the reason our financial system is so fragile.</comment></comment></comment>


Content creation apps finally get out of the way - <AUTHOR> http://mikemaccana.com/

<comment><USER2> It feels good to see UX design becoming an important part of writing software, and it feels even better to see people favoring clean, minimalistic UIs built with icons and guestures in mind rather than the button-and-text-heavy UIs that were the norm until just a few years ago. But sometimes I'm afraid this new trend might be taken too far.

As we begin to rely more on gestures and (unlabelled) icons instead of menus and (labelled) icons/buttons, we create a new language of pictures and hand movements. This is not a bad thing. Pictures are easier to process than text for a majority of the population. UIs become simpler, uncluttered and generally feel more "loose" and "free flowing", and hence more fun, with gestures. All this is great, but I see a couple of issues with these "primal" methods of working with user interfaces.

The first issue is discoverability. Unless they are explicitly pointed out to them, it's difficult for someone to find out that guestures even exist. [Aside: non-discoverability is an attribute guestures share with keyboard shortcuts, except the keyboard shortcut for any action can be discovered just by looking to the right of that action's label in the app's menu system. This is possible because we've given names to all our keys and therefore we can just write shortcuts out as plain text (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Z, etc.) Perhaps ... perhaps we could start representing guestures by a standard set of symbols so we can refer to them as easily as we refer to shortcut keys. For example, ⇠ could represent "swipe left", ⇢ could be "swipe right", ╳ could be "pinch to zoom", etc. Even then, the issue of discoverability remains with touch UIs, where there are no menus where we can stick these symbols, no status bars, and often no manuals.]

Second, icons are often vague. The cognitive overload of figuring out what a particular icon means is sometimes just too much. I've personally been frustrated by having to hover my mouse over an icon, waiting for a tooltip to appear, then finding out that the icon doesn't do what I need and having to again hover my mouse over a second icon, waiting for the tooltip gods to enlighten me. Tooltips are not possible in touch UIs, so on tablets you just have to pick an icon and hope for the best. It doesn't help that many apps don't have a visible "Help" key. The solution here, I believe, is to very carefully choose which icons in your UI you want to label and which are obvious enough to remain unlabelled.

Third, menus lend interfaces a sense of hierarchy. Hierarchy is a great navigational aid for situations where you have to choose between a large number of items. People instinctively understand hierarchy. We've spent centuries classifying information into hierarchical structures, and now suddenly UI designers are ready to disregard the benefits they bring. Case in point: replacing the hierarchical menus of GNOME 2 with an icon grid in GNOME 3 and Unity. Apple made icon grids popular with their iDevices and OS X Lion, but I think Apple is the worst possible company to emulate when it comes to building efficient, _useful_ interfaces. If you're looking for shiny and cute, sure. Usable, even. But efficiency and usefulness are concepts Apple does not understand. The icon grid is possibly the worst possible way of navigating through applications if you have more than 5 of them. With 30-40 apps, the icon grid quickly becomes useless and you have to rely on the search function to get to what you need.

Fourth, with icons and guestures, knowing the "language of software" becomes important. You can't just hunt around in the menus and figure out how the app works on your own. No siree, you need to RTFM or watch a tutorial video. That's fine when you're learning Photoshop, but RTFMing for simple mobile apps? Not happening.

Fifth, icons make communication difficult. How do you give someone instructions on how to perform a task over email when the app she is using uses unlabeled icons and guestures for everything? How do you describe the undo icon over email? While I was writing this reply, my mother called me asking how she could pause and un-pause a TV show on a Tata Sky HD+. I told her to "press the button with the two parallel lines for pause, press the tiny triangle button to play". Not that big of an issue with pause/play/rewind/forward buttons, since they're standardized and look exactly the same on all multimedia hardware and software. But what about, say, the buttons in GMail? How do you describe the "Archive" button to your iPad-using mom? How do you describe the "pinch" guesture used to close an app on the iPad?

So what is the point I'm trying to make with this immense wall of text? My point in a nutshell is that while a lot of UI paradigms that are making their way from the world of tablets to the world of PCs make sense, their overuse often renders UIs confusing and vague. I'll admit this is not that much of an issue right now, but it might become one very soon. I'm afraid there might come a time when all UIs cater to what I'm going to call "casual" users and people who actually use computers for work are left out in the dark.

<comment><USER3> Normal people hate hierarchies. I've spent a lot of time trying to teach non- programmers to us them in their work flow. There is no question that they are useful, but people resist them fiercely. Many developers have a hard time dealing with this and are as resistent to acknowledging this limitation, or feature, of human behavior as most people are to using said concepts.

In a lot of ways this is understandable. You don't see many directly manipulate hierarchies in nature. People can deal with piles, and one or two dimensional arrays, and even arrays of piles. And they can deal with sorting and stashing.

More importantly, they can deal with ask and tell.

I've played with various stack based interfaces and while they are interesting, I haven't found any that I really like, much less that seem generally extensible.

I dont have any great ideas here, sometimes I think the answer is to let the user dig holes in the desktop and bury what they aren't working on in little treasure caches; this essentially describes most users' desktops anyway. how you would go about generalizing this to, say, a CAD system interface is another question...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's going to be interesting to see how this type heavy UI trend plays out. It's very clean and appealing looking, and it's fiendishly difficult to make an icon set look anywhere near as elegant.

However... I personally find words much more distracting when I'm trying to produce content. I have all my mac toolbars set to 'icon only' so that the words don't keep drawing my eye. I'm not sure I could comfortably use a system that was so word heavy, however elegant it looked.

I'm sure that different people have different levels of sensitivity to this, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

<comment><USER3> One system that some drawing programs on the iPad use is to completely hide the UI most of the time. Gestures and hot spots cause the UI to manifest itself when needed; most of the time the screen is empty except for the painting. I can imagine a word processor that works like this. (Code editors often _do_ act like this, but use command keys in place of a GUI.) Discoverability is the big problem here, at least for casual users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing about Microsoft tools in general is that their default UI is too busy, but they can easily be customized to make them nearly as clean as you want.

My setup for Word 2007 is every bit as clean as the Office 15 example shown. Just selecting "Minimize Ribbon" gets you most of the way there already. Then select "Customize Quick Access Toolbar" to remove most other icons. I have a feeling the main difference is that Office 15 just hides the ribbon as the default.

You're left with basically an empty window with a sheet of paper.

</comment><comment><USER6> While it is great to have a 'clean' space to create in, I use tools for the powerful features that make my creations 'pop' or give them structure. Quick and obvious access is important. Would be good to address the function of those toolbars as well as their look and prominence.

<comment><AUTHOR> > While it is great to have a 'clean' space to create in, I use tools for the > powerful features

Indeed - in apps like CS6 - where the content is created primarily via the tools, they're shown for quick access, but made less prominent in order not to distract from what's being produced.

In Word, however the content is primary created with the keyboard. So removing tools becomes more of a possibility.

<comment><USER7> In Word, common tools have keyboard shortcuts too, so there's little point in using the toolbar except for infrequently used things.

Bold Ctrl+B, Italics Ctrl+I, Underline Ctrl+U. Want to save? Ctrl+S. Want to print? Ctrl+P. Indent? Tab. Left, Center, Right-align? Ctrl+L, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+R. Increase/Decrease font size? Ctrl+>, Ctrl+<.

You don't need to use the toolbar at all for common operations.

<comment><USER8> Keyboard shortcuts are great--take that with a grain of salt since I like vim too. Unfortunately, the emphasis of Word has always been to make it so a new user can manage to do those things by browsing around the menus and toolbars. It's not a good habit to learn as far as productivity goes, but I'm sure it scores well in usability labs where subjects have no training and an hour to do some simple tasks.

Word's problem is that it has evolved so many features that there is NO reasonable interface to access them. I have been using Word for two decades and still I find myself resorting to features like the Format Painter because I cannot find the settings to fix a run of text.

<comment><USER9> I think also the selling point of much software in the 90s , early 2000s was always how many features it had.

Having a big GUI that looks like NASA mission control made an application look like value for money.

Now most people have more features in their software than they need and with apple leading the way in simplicity and usability a sleek interface is much more marketable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You've always been able to remove all toolbars if that's what you really want to do.

Not many people did.

As a forced way to do things, going without a toolbar isn't a good choice for Word.

</comment><comment><USER11> So when is the class action for recovering all the licence fees for what amounts to unpaid UX testing on a worldwide scale?

Why pay for beta software? :P</comment>


Show HN: Flaws: learn about common mistakes and gotchas when using AWS - <AUTHOR> http://flaws.cloud/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this, but doesn't "Show HN" mean you're linking to something you've made? I'm the creator of flaws.cloud

<comment><USER3> Scott, Thanks for creating this! Julien from Mozilla referred this to me back at AppSec and I have been using it as a devops security primer for folks in my org since. Really clever teaching tool. I've had it on my mind to create an Azure equivalent when time permits!</comment></comment>


Make things - <AUTHOR> http://caterina.net/wp-archives/98

<comment><USER2> Very interesting, but somewhat misleading, imho.

People who go their own way may well become leaders, simply because to go your own way you have to be decisive, and most people are indecisive, and in times of uncertainty they will look to people who are decisive to take the lead.

But that doesn't mean that the qualities listed are leadership qualities. I'd say that the ability to understand and empathise with people, to figure out what they want, the ability to motivate others to do their best, the ability to communicate convincingly, and the ability to make decisions under pressure - all those are way more important than the ones listed in the quote.

Of the list of leadership qualities:

> _courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, > determination, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and > clear head even when things are going badly_

I'd argue that only the last one is really a requirement for leadership. All the others make for a better leader, but they are not requirements.

<comment><USER3> Yay, you and she have different definitions of "leader".† So what?

† You're talking about people in charge of organizations, whereas she is talking about people who come up with new ideas, new inventions. These are very different sorts of leadership. Lorenzo de' Medici vs. Machiavelli, or some university department chair vs. Darwin, or Steve Ballmer vs. Don Knuth, &c. Sometimes these qualities overlap, as in Caesar, say, or Steve Jobs.

Also, decisiveness is not the primary factor: there are plenty of decisive people who never possess anything like the "leadership" she's talking about.

<comment><USER2> So, you're saying leadership is not about leading people?

<comment><USER4> Aye. There's a sense in which being an inventor or an intellectual that pushes a culture forward is "leadership", but we have other words for that, we call those people visionaries or influential thinkers or a force in society and lots of other things too. Trying to appropriate the word "leadership" when there are so many other positive ways to describe the qualities of an independent thinker or maker is a bit silly.

<comment><USER2> You could even call it "thought leadership" without impinging on the wider sense of "leadership".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I especially connected with the bit about "fear of missing out", and with her earlier post (linked in the article) on that subject.

When I started playing with computers in elementary and middle school, it helped me put aside some of the trivial things that were important to my peer group at the time, like wearing the right brands or being seen with the right people. Technology was about making a better world, sharpening useful skills, and attacking hard problems that used to be impossible to solve.

The connection between people that technology has brought over the last couple decades is awesome for a great many reasons. I doubt I need to defend that point.

The biggest downside though, for me, is the invasion of the messiness of the social world into the idealism of the tech world. It bothers me when I go to an event that is ostensibly a "hackathon" or some similarly maker-oriented affair, and the mood is not unlike high school, or hollywood, or a nightclub. Many of the people there are paying acute attention to signals of status from others, and working on sending the right signals of status themselves.

It is my impression that motivations like elevating one's social status, and fear of missing out, are the primary things bringing most people into the world of technology today.

Improving the world, solving hard problems, and making things seem to be lower on the list. I'm sure communities focusing on these things are still thriving, but they seem to be getting harder to find, because the status seekers can be pretty good at adopting the lingo of the idealists.

</comment><comment><USER6> I absolutely disagree with that quote about leadership.

If you aren't leading people, you aren't a leader. It's right in the name. If you're going your own direction, alone, you're a pioneer. But not a leader.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but how do you gain the respect of people who follow you? It's by doing something that piques their interest and inspires them. You don't wake up one day and have people searching you out to hear what you have to say because you are a "leader." It's because you have done something that has inspired them, and I think that's more what this is about.

<comment><USER2> You'd think that, but actually, that's exactly what film directors do, and I think we can all agree that they are de-facto "leaders".

Film directors become directors because they go around and tell people "I'm a director putting a movie together, do you want to work with me/invest in me/help me?" not because they work hard at unrelated task X and somehow become promoted to the rank of directors.

Leadership at its best...

<comment><USER8> Film directors become directors because they go around and tell people 'I'm a director putting a movie together, do you want to work with me/invest in me/help me?'

Isn't that usually the job of the executive producer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Invigorating. I am one that got lost in all of the noise. Now 27 an just about to find my footing and get on track to be what I am suppose to be and that is "The One Which is Me". Since I was young I longed for the recognition that come to so many these days yet I have been chasing it in the wrong way. As you say her I really need to focus on making thing and get back to what really makes me happy which is studying what make enterprise business so successful and bringing back to the mom and pop that can barley turn on their own computer. I do this not to have the superiority complex, but to help those whom are lost in the riff of today and cannot find the way to the next stage and or the right person to actually want to help them and not just cash their check and go. thank you for helping to reset my mindset back where is needs to be .

</comment><comment><USER10> Can't agree more. Another symptom of the same issue is that the Internet startup scene is becoming auto referential as hell.

<comment><USER11> Auto referential in what way?

<comment><USER10> Talking/caring more about the scene itself instead of the actual goal that should be building real innovation (and getting money as a side effect and not as primary goal).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To some degree, I feel the same way.

I look at what people had created and in between the thoughts of "this is cool", "this is boring", and "why didn't anyone think of this before?", there's a sense of inspiration that someone has created something and people are using it now. (I also get something similar to NIH, but I've learned through the years to mostly ignore that.)

I get a lot of joy in using software to allow people to do something new, something better than they had done before, or just to make their everyday life a little bit easier.

</comment><comment><USER13> Forgot to post my comment here last time:

<http://caterina.net/wp-archives/98#comment-7988>

I can only comment from my experiences in Berlin,Germany but what I ve found here that many people here read books / watch movies of "How to…. " or someone' story to sucess and use it as a carbon copy of how to suceed.

I think people like to hide behind big names, like if you criticse them " well Bill Gates did that" so like trying to use someone else mask to make you immune from critique. I think also this whole speech using figures and big names as well is a form of name dropping, its like " im in their league / I m part of their crowd / take me serious" . To me it only shows who they want to be but who they are not at this very moment.

The shame is the "doing / creating " aspect gets them to the state that they present themselves. So in this creatlve period, with no current exiting model template to follow, you need to strike out with something new, so if you are actually a new guy acting like you made it, well not much will happen.

</comment><comment><USER14> Despite the potential conflict surrounding the leadership quote provided in the post I found that overall the post resonated with me.

As someone starting down the entrepreneurial path I have found that it's easy to get caught up reading the countless startup news sources, scouring endless books on how to succeed or attending the large number of conferences pitched at people like me. All have their merit in moderation but, particularly as someone who has decided to bootstrap my current startup, I find I get the most done and feel the best about what I'm doing when I focus on what my startup is building and how we're building it, rather than getting caught up in "all that noise".

In writing it down here it seems pretty obvious that focusing on what you're building should be the priority but it can be surprisingly easy to lose focus.

</comment><comment><USER15> _But I want to hear about things out there that they love. About loving the thing they're building. There's less of that._

Just because lots more folks know about valuations and are connected does not mean that they are not building stuff.

This holier than thou post by Caterina actually just sounds like nostalgic rambling.

 _Let's get excited and make things._

This line, from the perspective she delivers it, is almost criminal. Most of us are nerds and have no problem building stuff. We do have a problem making money off it so kudos if we are building a little less and figuring out more about how to make money by charging or flipping(Caterina should know about this?)

<comment><USER16> > Just because lots more folks know about valuations and are connected does > not mean that they are not building stuff.

It's not necessarily so, but there's some correlation. Startups are fashionable now in a way they haven't been since Bubble 1.0. At meetups I definitely have talked with people who seem more interested in worldly success than raw creation.

The upside of this current wave is that startup costs are so low that it's also sucking in a lot of makers who otherwise would have ended up employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps I could take this "make things" post seriously if the things made and shouted out ( _cough_ Flickr) could go the distance and remain viable. Did Flickr have a good run? Sure. But it seems to me there's a problem inherent in cashing out your company and moving on to the next thing. The Internet is littered with the corpses of once-great companies.

<comment><USER16> Seriously? You're discounting this because she _only_ created Flickr? (And Hunch, and whatever she's working on now?)

I was working on my own startup at the same time Flickr was created; the funding climate then was brutal. Flickr was expensive to run, and growing like crazy. This was before things like AWS, so scaling was much harder. Selling to a large company with the ability to scale it easily may have been their only option. So I doubt it was a matter of cashing out.

<comment><USER18> I totally agree. Flickr was started 7.5 years ago. Believe it or not, things like storage and bandwidth used to be a lot more expensive. And with costs so high, monetization often required your own dedicated ad sales force.

It's amazing to me how quickly people can take the last decade or so for granted. Back when I started my first company, we had to buy a PBX and even install our own mail servers. Uphill, in the snow, both ways!!</comment></comment></comment>


DoorDash Breach Exposed the Private Data of 4.9M People - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/doordash-breach-exposed-the-private-data-of-4-9-million-1838499197 <comment><USER2> >"We took immediate steps to block further access by the unauthorized user and to enhance security across our platform," the company said. "These steps include adding additional protective security layers around the data, improving security protocols that govern access to our systems, and bringing in outside expertise to increase our ability to identify and repel threats."

Why do companies need to get hacked to implement such security enhancements? Should be there day 1 imho.</comment>


Reversal: Australian Govt picks ODF doc standard over Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/29/reversal-australian-govt-picks-odf-doc-standard/ <comment><USER2> Great news!

Check out this map of ODF adoption in the world [1]. Purple is mandatory standard, green is officially approved. Governments around the world are really pushing ODF forward.

... Now just get my uni to move off of docx and I'll be a happy programmer :)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenDocument_adoption_worl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OpenDocument_adoption_world_map.svg)

<comment><USER3> I live in Iceland and ODF isn't being used by any government institution that I know of (and I've worker in/for government quite a lot). Is it possible the NATO mandated use of ODF applies only to official NATO documents?

<comment><USER4> In Iceland in particular (and I'm guessing a lot of countries have the same situation) what'll happen is that the Ministry of Education will publish some official recommendation about what formats should be used, or that free/open source software should be "strongly considered".

Then what happens in practice is that everyone just ignores that recommendation and buys proprietary software anyway, feigning compatibility with existing systems, re-training costs etc.

So in practice a government recommendation about ODF can mean absolutely nothing unless you really make it mandatory. So this map on Wikipedia is effectively useless as an indicator for "adoption". It's probably actually a map of what governments have made feel-good press releases about ODF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, Microsoft Office supports ODF and can use it as the default for all new files. At least since the 2010 version. If even MS recognizes that ODF has won, we have no reason to use OpenXML.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why you are being voted down, but I tend to agree that ODF is the standard to use. Not sure if MS have agreed that they believe it should be _the_ standard to use though :-)

<comment><USER7> Regarding downvotes, I'll take a guess - OP's post says:

>[MS office] can use [ODF] as the default for all new files. At least since the 2010 version. If even MS recognizes that ODF has won, we have no reason to use OpenXML.

That leap of logic just doesn't compute... By the same token, since OpenOffice / LibreOffice can be set to use OpenXML as default, they've admitted that OpenXML has won. Being able to use each other's formats should be viewed as an attempt to move into each other's markets, not as declaration of victory.

<comment><USER8> OpenOffice has to support OOXML because they have always positioned themselves as supporting everything under the sun. They supported .doc from the start.

Microsoft has traditionally supported only their own formats, so their decision to adopt an open source format is much more meaningful than OpenOffice's decision to support OOXML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What technology do govt departments across the world use to maintain trustworthy records?[1]

Some Indian departments use pdf with DSC for this. Interested if there are alternatives.

[1]: <http://www.epa.gov/records1/faqs/rks.htm#q4>

</comment><comment><USER10> Also interesting with this update is the suggestion[1] to use open source multimedia DirectShow filters including LAV Filters and ffdshow. LAV Filters appears to ship with DeCSS code[2] -- something which appears to be legally usable within Australia, for most purposes at least, as per §132APC(1) of the Copyright Act 1968[3].

Further to the above, widespread adoption of open source multimedia libraries on government computer networks would appear to further lock in a future for Australia where software patents are not recognised.

[1] Page 19 of [http://agimo.gov.au/files/2013/05/SOE-Build-Guidelines- Windo...](http://agimo.gov.au/files/2013/05/SOE-Build-Guidelines- Windows-v3.0-Official-Draft.pdf)

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/source/browse/#git%2Fco...](https://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/source/browse/#git%2Fcommon%2FDSUtilLite%2FDeCSS)

[3] [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s132apc.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not an expert on government documents, so I am wondering: what formatting does the Australian Govt need?

Why wouldn't plain text suffice?

<comment><USER11> Even for long documents with structure, gamefaqs has shown us that plain text can be used effectively there as well.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention Org Mode... but there's about a zero chance of emacs being picked up as 'standard'.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps Emacs could me made to produce ODF.

<comment><USER14> org-odt-export-to-odt

[http://orgmode.org/manual/OpenDocument-Text- export.html#Open...](http://orgmode.org/manual/OpenDocument-Text- export.html#OpenDocument-Text-export)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So does this mean that all that money Microsoft put into getting this 'standard' through ISO was wasted? It would be a delightful slice of schadenfreude if now everyone was refusing to use it. I remember that the main reason they wanted the ISO to bless it was so that governments could use it.

</comment><comment><USER16> They should NOT go for ODF 1.1. Instead they should push for ODF 1.2. Someone needs to tell them.

<comment><USER17> The standard has to be pragmatic. 1.2 is still new enough to make support an issue. MS Office 2013 was just released with native 1.2 support in January.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Correct me if im wrong - no computer out of the box can not open Australian Govt documents anymore?

<comment><USER19> Every computer that has access to the internet can open them in Google Docs. Every Tablet or Smartphone with Polaris Office can. Every Chromebook can.

Also in what way would the Microsoft "Standard" be different?

Only for the MS time limited crapware installed on all the Windows Laptops?

<comment><USER18> I can open any MS Word document with any computer out of the box. Without installing _any_ crap or having account at Gevil (and uploading anything). On OSX Textedit, on Windows Wordpad, and so on. On iOS any MS doc as attachment. In that way Microsoft Standard is different, i can view the docs without doing nothing, only "standard" ODF documents i can not view on standard computer.

<comment><USER13> Texedit on Mac opens ODT, as does Wordpad on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Should have gone for RTF. More widely supported.

<comment><USER21> unfortunately RTF is not rigorously standardized, some basic elements of documents are, but lots of stuff is still adhoc, and not really suitable for an encompassing editable document standard.

<comment><USER22> On the other hand I suddenly thought about HTML/CSS. I think HTML for reflowable and PDF for fixed would be awesome. The only thing is that you need a very good wysiwyg editor for html that's as good as word yet produces clean code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They might not want to base their financial calculations on Microsoft Excel, after what they heard a few months ago.

<comment><USER24> Because some idiot may get the formulae wrong? I don't think there was an actual Excel bug recently, just PEBKAC errors.</comment></comment>


Why is Python so popular despite being so slow? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Python-so-popular-despite-being-so-slow/answer/Laeeth-Isharc?__snids__=1392536548&__idx__=0&share=1 <comment><USER2> I was going to comment here that the answer didn't actually answer the question. That is, it elaborated why Python is so slow, and how slowness can be a problem, and how other languages are faster, but it didn't address the question of _why_ Python is used _despite_ it being so slow.

Turns out I had to restructure my response because the author already used what I believe is a British colloquialism to preemptively reject a challenge to the legitimacy of the answer, saying:

> a self-proclaimed 'Python fanboy' complained that I did not answer the > question in this response. I think I did, although it's true that I would > score nul points on the modern A-level style box-ticking approach to scoring > exams. Whether that is a negative thing depends on your perspective!

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I don't think you can blame English colloquialism for that... But I did answer the question - python is used because it's gratifying, or has been in years past. But what's also interesting is whether this will hold in the future, and for some of us this may lead to a different conclusion.

<comment><USER2> You don't need to poison the well to make that point.</comment></comment></comment>


Samwers Clone Stripe - <AUTHOR> https://www.paymill.de/index.html <comment><USER4> I don't get it. Why do US net startups very often make the same mistake of not expanding into the whole world quickly?

It took eBay something like 4 years to go to Germany, by which time there was a local clone there that proved to be uncatchable. The expensive result was that eBay had to buy the clone (Alando) for 43 million dollars to become relevant.

Kickstarter is still US-only. Stripe as well. So are countless others.

We're not talking about products that you need an huge infrastructure in the country. This is mostly about translation, and not explicitly prohibiting things.

The expenses seem miniscule to the possible upside. So why do all those fancy startups hold themselves back?

<comment><USER5> Some suggested reasons, to add to the others cited:

0\. You're obviously speaking mostly about startups that primarily interface with moving money or physical goods. Regulations and infrastructure in these areas are not insignificant operations. US startups working outside these areas (e.g. Facebook, Zynga, Stack Overflow) don't stop at US borders.

\- Each market has its own customs, language, and tone. Marketing into a new country cannot be an afterthought, or it will not be successful.

\- Language is a big deal. If you translate your website into German, you create the expectation that your customers will be able to email you questions in German and get help in German. You don't have resources for this unless it is a necessary step on the path to success. Even Stripe's $20mm isn't enough for this: remember that they are competing against very big, rich, public companies like eBay and Amazon.

\- There is competition at home, in a very large, familiar, homogeneous market. If you are based in the USA and lose the American market, you will likely fail. (In fact, someone could become a competitor by starting the US- only version of your service to take advantage of your distraction.) So you need to win there first. Startups by definition have not won any markets yet.

\- Non-US markets in industrialized countries are in general not all that big individually compared to the US market. Germany is like 20% the size of the US market; the UK about 12%, and Australia 10%. So it's really hard to get any major additional scale in one country, even after you jump through all the hoops to launch there and service their customers.

\- US states are _big_ economically. A startup trying to scale can probably get more mileage out of a big marketing push in a single state than by launching internationally. One sample choice: launch in the Netherlands (~15 hour flight from CA, different language, customs, regulations) or make a big push in Florida (~5 hour flight from CA, you're likely already in compliance with all their laws, your website is already in their language, your support staff speaks their language, etc.). Florida's economy is about the same size as the Netherlands'. Texas (~3h flight from CA, 4 metro areas over 2m people) has an economy and population roughly the size of Australia.

Startups need every advantage they can get to not take the default startup path (failure). The bottom line is that launching outside the US is not a barrier to ultimate success (your eBay example), but does introduce risks. So it's not often going to be a priority.

<comment><USER6> To add to this list:

\- Being a market leader in your home market is much more important (and usually cost effective) than growing internationally. Stripe still has a huge way to go in terms of 'crossing the chasm' in the US, moving out of SV bubble and in to the main-stream.

\- Geographical acquisitions when expanding globally aren't necessarily a negative. Although they feel dirty, a lot of the time they can be a win/win for both players (quick foothold in the market, market leading position, entry certainty, local hires etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's actually great news, why would Europeans have to wait for an undisclosed date Stripe gives (or rather, doesn't give).

<comment><USER8> I was initially appalled when I first read about the Samwar clone factory. Now I agree, in cases like this they're filling a gap in the market.

<comment><USER9> The only gap is, that Recurly and Spreedly were not able to tell the EU founders that their service is available and working perfectly fine with European payment gateways.

They all have JS and REST-APIs and a lot more:

\- <http://recurly.com/>

\- <http://spreedly.com/>

<comment><USER10> Nope.

Although Recurly could be technically used in Europe, it generates invalid invoices (at least here in Spain).

We are switching away from it, and personally, I do not recommend it anymore.

<comment><USER9> well. you could do your own invoicing if you're not satisfied with the pdf they generate. Stripe and Paymill don't do invoicing, too.

<comment><USER11> Ouch, that's a big minus from the point of view of an European company - <USER2> having to look for another app to generate invoices or futz around with generating your own was nice.

The specific issue with Recurly that we had is that they silently changed their platform to perform VIES validation on all VAT numbers. While this makes sense for transactions with entities from outside of the merchant's country, validating VAT numbers for German-to-German or Spanish-to-Spanish transactions is silly. Not only do such transactions always get charged VAT, but it's possible that a given string is a valid VAT number and yet is not present in VIES. Since you will pay (and therefore charge the customer) VAT for same- country transactions anyway, you don't care if the number that the customer provided is valid according to VIES.

This change has cost us a little wave of support tickets and an ugly workaround, in preparation for moving off Recurly.

I firmly believe that a company that gets online recurring payments right in Europe will become a money-printing machine in no time.

<comment><USER12> Did I understand you correctly that:

1\. Recurly is right to add VIES validation for out of country transactions.

2\. They shall not implement this feature for in country transactions.

???

<comment><USER13> Those are special cases for Germany and Spain (I implemented that stuff for a german webshop that has to make the same exception). I'd guess it's the same for Spain.

German customers who buy in a german webshop have to pay VAT and then claim it back later in their tax return, because the german tax authorities don't allow that exemption beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a bit bizarre, because one would expect a German clone to support the payment variants that are far more popular than credit cards in Germany.

EDIT: The biggest payment variant I was thinking of is direct debit (German: Lastschrift), which is highly convenient. However, wiring the money before getting the goods is also surprisingly popular here. Many people just don't have credit cards. (I do, but I also use some US services like Github which only allow credit card payments.)

<comment><USER9> because nothing works like a credit card. e.g. the popular direct debit payments can be charged back very easily + you just have to search for an valid account number (= fraud).

The only payment method that works with recurring and more or less "final/instant" transactions is credit card.

So there is no alternative for SaaS or in-app-payments to credit cards (or some direct debit risk mitigation business like paypal)

<comment><USER15> _the popular direct debit payments can be charged back very easily + you just have to search for an valid account number (= fraud)._

This sounds highly doubtful. Care to explain?

<comment><USER9> in Germany, direct debit transcation currently need an account number and a bank id (BLZ). Or BIC/IBAN (see Wikipedia).

There is no validation except some nummerical tests. You can enter the number of some charity or your landlord when doing an order at e.g. Amazon.

To deal with that risk, every bank account holder has the right to chargeback transactions without giving a reason. That's why banks typically keep a lot of the money you invoice for a grace period of approx 6-8 weeks. And companies like Otto have their own credit check companies…

tl;dr if you instantly deliver items or services, direct debit is not safe.

<comment><USER16> > There is no validation except some nummerical tests. You can enter the > number of some charity or your landlord when doing an order at e.g. Amazon.

That is... simply not true. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are saying. There isn't a bank in the EU that will allow you to make a transfer from an account that's not yours (authenticated by whatever means - <USER3> readers, digipass, RSA keychain gadgets that display a new number sequence every minute, etc.).

<comment><USER9> direct debit ("Lastschrift") is kind of a reverse transaction. You tell your $own bank to collect the money from an account of your customer at $other bank

<comment><USER16> Oh right, I see, my mistake. I didn't know Amazon used this. In Belgium it's only used (afaik) by 'trusted' institutions, like utility companies. And as a customer you still need to authorize them the first time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like they're a PHP shop and only offer PHP client libs yet. Seems they didn't even understand the message Stripe has in kinds of developer focus.

Also: Why would I use a payment service of _the biggest copy cat company in the country_? To deliver them my revenue numbers on a silver plate so they can decide if they should "enter my market"?

They don't even openly publish the upcoming fees and just want you to "vendor lock-in" (or dig around to find the transaction fees somewhere hidden on their site). really sad :(

<comment><USER17> I want European credit card billing _NOW_. Sadly, the only support german companies it seems. :-(

<comment><USER18> An opportunity to clone the clone in other European countries?

<comment><USER17> That just seems silly. However, a Stripe equivalent for the whole of Europe would be great. Clone or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are _so_ many payment startups, so Paymill is the least of Stripe's worries. Just an ad-hoc list that have been recently funded:

Approve.io Ogone Zuora Recurly Stripe gocardless.com (Royal Bank of Scotland) blinkpay/blinksale (no funding) Buck (fka Billing Revolution) Gumroad Dwolla Braintree ZenCash WePay Bango Clover PayOne (fka PaymentOne) Isis (verizon, At&t, etc.) Fee Fighters' Samurai Bump Pay BeamIt LEaf Dynamics Corduro Paydici Jumio Paymetric MiCash HelloWallet iZettle Card.io PayLeap BluSynergy PayTap Payleven TraxPay MineralTree CurrencyCloud Square LevelUp ZipMark Paymill

<comment><USER20> BTW: Payleven is also a Samwer (Rocket Internet) incubated company. Payleven is obviously a Square clone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fantastic. Maybe this will put some fire under Stripe to launch in Europe...

</comment><comment><USER22> Only seems to support German bank accounts at the moment (not any European) - though they're not terribly difficult to open.

<comment><USER9> consider alternatives:

\- <http://recurly.com/>

\- <http://spreedly.com/>

\+ WireCard.com as gateway/acquirer. Works for all EU countries.

<comment><USER23> also:

<http://chargify.com/>

<https://cheddargetter.com/>

<comment><USER9> to my knowledge Chargify does not support a Euro-based gateway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> On a related note, they also cloned Square in Brazil and Europe (payleven.de/.com.br)

</comment><comment><USER25> For people thinking about international expansion as just translation: beware, here be dragons.

When I moved (back) to Europe 8 years ago, I used my web skills to help make some extra money on the side (I'm an English language teacher because I love it, but it doesn't pay for holidays and toys :) and there is so much more to developing multilingual sites. Think more along the lines of multicultural.

That color on your call to action? That's our color for cowardice. Ед завыл бела два won't fit on that button. (sorry to any Russians here, I just typed out randomly on the keyboard, but it illustrates the point) most of our customers like to go to the post office to pay for products; oh, and our country's POs are still based on old communist operational principles.

This is without all the different regulatory matters involved. Try iterating quickly when a country's national bank has to vet all the founders to issue the proper licenses... International expansion can mean a lot more than just translation.

[edit] formatting

</comment><comment><USER26> Sure, startups & companies should operate worldwide, but the Samwer business model is really scummy. I could understand if they would build the clone with the background to avoid monopols, but they just try to fill a niche market with a stolen idea and make money with it. Just look at <http://www.lazada.com.my/>, an amazon clone for countries, where amazon doesn't operate(d) yet. They even use the same layout. I wouldn't say that cloning something is bad in general, if your main focus lies on the extension of an existing idea, but the Samwer brothers nearly copy the idea 1:1 without innovation and creativity and sell it to the mother company later. Thats a really bad motivation for the real entrepreneurs, who try to be innovative. Startups should really start worldwide, to avoid that these copycats make further money with their ideas.

<comment><USER27> As a Malaysian, I know more people here who use Amazon.com than those who use Lazada.com.my, even though Amazon doesn't technically serve our country.

Branding and the first-mover advantage are very important.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, thanks for bringing this up. Does amazon.com charge extra money for the delivery to Malaysia or do they ship for free, because they doesn't serve Malaysia(yet)?

<comment><USER27> International shipping to Malaysia is almost definitely not free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They've even copied someone's logo!

      http://www.launchbit.com/

<comment><USER29> Well, in their defense, the Samwers' incubator is called Rocket Internet, so it's more like they're copying themselves.

<http://www.rocket-internet.de/>

<comment><USER30> I don't see the Samwers' names on any of the Rocket Internet pages. Are you sure they are connected?

Edit: Never mind, googling "rocket internet samwer" shows a lot of connections. Still surprised there is nothing on the Rocket Internet pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not a big fan of the Samwers, and try to avoid using any of their services. And this time I might end up using their service. I simply have no option. This is not only proof of their lightening fast execution, but also how all others fail.

German/European startups: fail. None of them were interested to get into this space. They all want to become the next payment / mobile solution and all had no interest about serving the biggest platform- web.

Stripe: fail. I know how startups work. I know that expanding is not easy. But they have raised $20 Million. You could pay a local team of 10 a year, and would have not even spent 5% of your funding. There is just no excuse. German developers wanted stripe BADLY.

German / European banks: total fail. They completely lack of any vision, and are busy enough staying alive.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is great news. I'll be adding subscription payment options to my UK-based startup in a few months.

I'd love to be able to use Stripe and I hope that the introduction of Paymill brings Stripe support to the UK more swiftly. If not, I can use Paymill.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would love a Stripe Clone in Brazil. It's really annoying and expensive to set up payment in web apps here in brazil.

Somebody knows what would take to clone a startup like these? Besides money?

</comment><comment><USER34> Everybody is taking about Stripe. But how is Stripe different from existing/established services like Digital River or Plimus?

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, that was inevitable. I don't care if it's Stripe or someone else, I just want a service like this for New Zealanders.

</comment><comment><USER36> The best part about Stripe is, and has always been, their amazing understanding of developer needs and their top-notch customer service. No copy-cat can provide that at the same level as Stripe. Helping a website accept credit cards is only half of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wrote a blog post asking for this to happen in the UK awhile back. [http://peebs.org/free-business-idea-for-a-united-kingdom- sta...](http://peebs.org/free-business-idea-for-a-united-kingdom-start)

Glad to see it starting to happen in Europe!

</comment><comment><USER38> <http://www.izettle.com/>

Have been around for a while too

<comment><USER38> Actually these guys are like Square not Stripe - getting my payment companies confused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this is great! I assume Stripe didn't have imminent plans to launch in Germany anyway. Looks like they have a rate of 2.95%, which is pretty good. Especially for outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER40> This just a payment provider like many others. The only difference I see is that they use a 'REST-like' API instead of the usual Web-Service API.

</comment><comment><USER41> The Samwer's are effectively a tax on innovation.

They contribute nothing new, only cut into the potential profitability of web innovators

<comment><USER42> They are delivering value to people around the world. Those people now don't have to wait on the expansion plans of companies which don't have globalization built into their DNA. Also they are a live example of what relentless execution looks like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Now that Europe has had this, where's Canada? Am I still stuck with PayPal as my only viable option for payments?

<comment><USER44> * Germany has this. Doing payment processing in a range of countries is hard.

<comment><USER43> My apologies for the mistake. Yeah, it's hard which is why I think the brothers are just doing a great job of exploiting opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Will never be as good as Stripe. Mostly because Stripe is coded by it's founders, get support questions answered by their founders who will even teach you how to use git. :)

<comment><USER46> That stuff is great, but doesn't help EU customers if they can't use it. So at present this thing is already better than Stripe, because "90% of success is showing up". The repeated message from EU countries is "get here, we need you", and the repeated answer is "we'd love to, but can't yet". That's handing the business to Samwers on a silver platter.

I'm in South Africa. I can't even begin to imagine how long it'll take Stripe to get here.

(btw, didn't downvote you)

<comment><USER47> You should start the South African Stripe ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is a beautiful twitter bootstrap site...

</comment><comment><USER49> Stripe is now in hot pursuit ;)</comment>


Theoretical Motivations for Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://rinuboney.github.io/2015/10/18/theoretical-motivations-deep-learning.html <comment><USER2> There is a recent 5 page theoretical paper on this topic that I thought was pretty interesting, and it tackles both deep nets and recurrent nets: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101)

Here is the abstract:

This note provides a family of classification problems, indexed by a positive integer k, where all shallow networks with fewer than exponentially (in k) many nodes exhibit error at least 1/6, whereas a deep network with 2 nodes in each of 2k layers achieves zero error, as does a recurrent network with 3 distinct nodes iterated k times. The proof is elementary, and the networks are standard feedforward networks with ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit) nonlinearities.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) I am curious about learning more about the statement: "Deep learning is a branch of machine learning algorithms based on learning multiple levels of representation. The multiple levels of representation corresponds to multiple levels of abstraction. "

What evidence exists that the 'multiple levels of representation', which I understand to generally be multiple hidden layers of a neural network, actually correspond to 'levels of abstraction'?

2) I'm further confused by, "Deep learning is a kind of representation learning in which there are multiple levels of features. These features are automatically discovered and they are composed together in the various levels to produce the output. Each level represents abstract features that are discovered from the features represented in the previous level. "

This implies to me that this is "unsupervised learning". Are deep learning nets all unsupervised? Most traditional neural nets are supervised.

<comment><USER4> The whole presentation seems very hand-wavy, which I think is pretty much the level most motivational discussions of deep learning are at.

I think the presentations by Yann Lecun and Leon Bottou are more interesting - and tend to involve more uncertainty and fewer pronouncements.

see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047)

<comment><USER3> This was fascinating and greatly informative. As you said, the authors were not afraid to show the real warts and bleeding edge, as a good scientist should. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if "lots of data" is wrong. If I show you say twenty similar-looking Chinese characters in one person's handwriting, and the same twenty in another person's handwriting, you'll probably do a good job (though maybe not an easy time) classifying them with very little data.

<comment><USER6> Because I've seen lots of other handwriting, even if in another language. I have very strong priors.

The problem is that a computer comes in without knowing anything about tangential phenomenon. So it needs lots of data to catch up to me and my years of forming associative connections about other handwriting I've seen.

If I showed you alien (ie not human) handwritten samples, you'd probably stuggle too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What tools did you use to make those nice pictures?

(didn't read it yet though, will do when I have time)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. Very well organized.</comment>


They're Going To Do It Anyway - <AUTHOR> http://intermittentintelligence.com/2010/10/theyre-going-to-do-it-anyway/

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1806539></comment>


Ducksboard for Twilio: A New Way To Monitor Your Twilio Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/02/ducksboard-for-twilio-a-new-way-to-monitor-your-twilio-metrics.html

<comment><USER2> Great job Ducksboard team, looks fabulous. Have you looked into using Connect vs asking for credentials?

<comment><USER3> Thanks Jeff! It did cost us some sweat and blood to get right, but Twilio's API is a joy to work with. Connect looks awesome, not sure how we missed it, will investigate and probably migrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Totally impressed by the Twilioboard. It's not a new way of monitoring your twilio, it's the best way!

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice tool, congrats!</comment>