Chladni Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://skullsinthestars.com/2013/05/02/physics-demonstrations-chladni-patterns/ <comment><USER2> Really cool post! I wrote a blog post on calculating/simulating these patterns: [http://blog.kaistale.com/?p=1295](http://blog.kaistale.com/?p=1295)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I figured someone here would have studied/written something awesome about them. Is the code for your simulation available anywhere?

<comment><USER2> It's some pretty messy Python code, so at the moment no :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The only thing missing from this is a reference to the mathematical theory of harmonic analysis, which provides a way to calculate the exact eigenvalues (or modes) of these systems (well at least a linear approximation to them). In particular, there is a lot that can be said about such systems (formally defined by a self-adjoint operator on a Hilbert space) beyond simply simulating them.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is believed that the stone carvings in the Rosslyn Chapel show not only knowledge of these Chladni patterns, but also represent the first use of them to encode information. It's believed by some who study them that they encoded sacred melodies in the physical structure of the church in a way that only those with hidden knowledge (at the time) could decipher.

The most fascinating thing about the Rosslyn Chapel is that since it was built during the 1400s it predates Chladni by at least THREE CENTURIES! That's pretty fantastic in itself.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_rosslyn_code/2011/05/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_rosslyn_code/2011/05/the_rosslyn_code_5.single.html)

<comment><USER5> According to Wikipedia :

"Like many claims in the cymatics community, the hypothesis that the carvings represent Chladni patterns is not supported by scientific or historical evidence.[citation needed] One of the problems is that many of the 'box' carvings are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century following damage by erosion."

Citation needed indeed, but there's no academic research about this extravagant theory anyways, and with my foray into the subject, I just found the patterns to be decorative geometric shapes with a coincidental resemblance to Chladni patterns.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics)

<comment><USER4> I know it's debated, but it wouldn't be the first time humanity rediscovered forgotten knowledge! What intrigues me about it is it still lines up with Occams Razor and the KISS principle, if mystics and academics of the day wanted to encode secret knowledge this would fit the bill perfectly at the time the original chapel was built.

I haven't looked I to the actual history as much, I ran across Rosslyn reading about art history and cathedral architecture and I spent a lot more time reading about Chladni patterns than I ever did about Rosslyn itself. Thought the link would be interesting in light of the original article.

Now what I am wondering is the shapes of these patterns on non-square and non- circular plates. I haven't seen many exotically shaped plates so it leads me to wonder if the patterns don't show up as well on other shapes. I'm curious from a visual perspective what 'patterns' occur in nature like some people obsess about relationships between made-up numbers ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had heard about these a million times and understood laser resonance, but hadn't previously made the connection to atomic resonance! Not sure I fully grasp it yet, but it's great to have identified that area :-)</comment>


New Trello Search Features - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/the-search-features-youve-been-looking-for/

<comment><USER2> Wanted this for a while, but didn't expect to see it. Trello is one of the few productivity tools that has stood the test of time for me (i.e. it gets regular use and has done for a few years now).

</comment><comment><USER3> I swear to God, I love Trello, but what I really want and have wanted for awhile is the ability to create and destroy as many damn labels as I want. I want be able to give me label any color I'd like.

It couldn't be that difficult, could it? Or perhaps I'm overlooking something here.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you choose TLD? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Also if you want to have some fun:

[https://domainr.com/](https://domainr.com/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the mention, I'm one of the folks who operates Domainr.

A few years back we added support for all the new gTLDs, and rev'd our suggestion algorithm to somewhat-intelligently include relevant new gTLDs in the search results. It's a great way to discover TLDs.

(according to our TLD page — [https://domainr.com/about/tlds](https://domainr.com/about/tlds) — there are 1700+ currently, though many are "brand" TLDs which aren't generally available for registration)

Our Favorites page — [https://domainr.com/about/favorites](https://domainr.com/about/favorites) — is also a fun place to see examples of people doing creative work with new TLDs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> .com - For profit organization

.org - Non-profit organization

.io - Fancy tech company

<comment> ng-user don't forget the Canadian's .eh

(I know it's .ca but come on)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I pick .com for everything. .net for network related things but only associated with the .com (CDN cookieless domains, etc).

I'm ok with .tv and .io domains for specific things.

</comment><comment><USER6> .[country code] for localized content regardless of what it is

.com - For selling stuff

.net - Communities / free services

.io - for dev and html5 game stuff

</comment><comment><USER7> .eu - for internal tools/apps. Short, cheep, easy to pronounce.

.global,.design, .[other new fancy] - for cool sounding domain and tld pair.

</comment><comment><USER8> .org when projects seem sufficiently serious

.xyz when it's an alpha, beta or testing project

.com when it's meant for silly or stupid things</comment>


Robots, swarming drones and 'Iron Man': Welcome to the new arms race - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/06/17/robots-swarming-drones-and-iron-man-welcome-to-the-new-arms-race/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_wartech-1045pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> It sounds good, but I say as an Air Force vet, it's not going to happen. The military rewards loyalty over everything else. The only way to get it to tolerate the failure inherent in experimentation is to go to war.</comment>


The Physics of Putting  - <AUTHOR> http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/07/25/the-physics-of-putting/

<comment><USER2> I'm fairly sure you're not supposed to walk along your putting line in golf because it can subtly change the curvature of the green. I know you're not supposed to step within a foot or two of the hole, and there could be enough break in that distance to make a putt miss.

I'm not sure if it's simply etiquette or if there is a little-known rule that penalizes you for doing so, but using your feet to detect a break seems, to me, to be a questionable practice in anything approaching a serious game.

</comment><comment><USER3> OK, so what _is_ the method?</comment>


Giuseppe Verdi on Refunds - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/aida-will-gather-dust-in-archives.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those who are curious:

£31.80 in 1872 corresponds to about £227,995.08 in 2009.[1] Which is about £242,587.00 in December 2011, or €125.29.[2] As of today, €125.29 is about $162.15.[3]

1\. <http://www.cracantu.it/servizi/on_line/vari/valorelira.php>

2\. <http://rivaluta.istat.it/Rivaluta/>

3\. <http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html>

<comment><USER2> Not to be pedantic, but the proper currency symbol for Lira is (or was) ₤.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are being pedantic. :) Both are acceptable: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lira>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very eloquent refund request.

A far cry from what would be commonplace in today's world. :)

<comment><USER4> This comment sucked. I want my money back. Zero stars.</comment></comment>


I want to help you write better... - <AUTHOR> http://www.afterthedeadline.com/hn.slp

<comment><USER2> Yikes, you're making a _fundamental_ mistake. A mistake that can destroy your business. What is a "request"? This is your mistake - it's not at all clear what your pricing involved.

You see, when I write, I spell check the document about 20-30 times. And your thing only allows 80 requests in a month. Is that a joke?

Explain what a request is, otherwise I look at the pricing page and shut it down, because it's totally overpriced. Now, if you you would say each article I write gets spellchecked for $0.063, no matter how many times I spellcheck it, then I would be fine with that. But everytime I spell check I pay that amount? Ridiculous!

And I think it's also a bit unclever how you did the pricing.

You should go like this: "Get your article professionally spellchecked for 7cents. That's all you pay". People don't pay per month, they just pay per article. However, the minimum amount they can put on their account is $5. You can't actually put 7 cents. And there should be no monthly recurring bill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll clarify this on the site. I arrived at the numbers using data I collected about the behavior of my beta users over the past 90 days. One of my users is a blog with eight writers on staff and they do nine requests/day. If the pricing is wrong, it'll change.

<comment><USER2> That's the mistake - maybe people actually only do 9 requests per article. But the _think_ they do a lot more. I personally think I do about 1000 spell check requests a month, but I don't know because it's not something I've ever thought about.

So you may have very concrete data on actual usage, but have you also looked at what users think about your pricing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just copied and pasted a blog post I was writing into this and it worked incredibly well, a few minor issues with the tinymce editor, and one or two naive suggestions. however it picked up a lot of good suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great idea for a start up Raffi! I hope a lot of sites integrate your technology, because writing and grammar on the Internet is atrocious. My only fear is that people who don't bother to learn appropriate English are the same ones who wouldn't even both to fix mistakes. [Non-native speakers excluded of course]

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually working on integrating this into my site right now because the writing of our users will affect our public credibility, so this type of tool is crucial. Thanks for all the amazing work raffi!

</comment><comment><USER6> It annoyed me that the best suggestion was not at the top of the right-click menu. Most people don't like having to move their mouse more than needed. See picture for more clarification: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/10047/atd.PNG>

The style subsection demo retains a couple of errors after following the suggestions of ATD (though I guess if the person checking it is paying attention, they would notice and fix up the sentence).

The grammar subsection demo does not catch the missing hyphen in one-hit wonder (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-hit_wonder>).

I'm loving it Raffi. I use it to check my HN posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> AtD biases heavily against false positives. If it's too noisy, using it is more work than it's worth. I only flag a missing hyphen if P(WordB|WordA) > P(WordA-WordB).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pasting in your welcome note, it misinterprets "have a fancy". But overall, it seems pretty good (e.g. it picks up a repeated "you you" in joel_feather's pricing comment, which I never would have seen).

I think this is pretty comparable to Word, and what you're really offering is that same functionality on a different platform _viz._ blogs.

It would be very cool if when explaining things like "passive voice", it gave an example of a revision of the specific text in question (instead of a random example). Of course, that's hard to do (approaching AI), so you'd probably get Eliza-like responses much of the time. And you only need to be comparable to Word anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> Who'se been a busy body then? After getting over my disappointment that you can't help me write better (I need to write more to achieve that) and realising that this is a WordPress-centric spell+style+grammar checker, I had a quick look around and liked what I saw. Looking good, well done and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is not going to help you write better any more than naive grammar checkers will, many of which did things like check for passive voice. If you want to write better, check out William Zinsser's On Writing Well.

<comment><AUTHOR> This statement seems unfair. I'll back up my claims:

1\. I help you find errors in your writing. Despite the limitations of spellcheck and misused word detection they are still a valuable safety net to have.

2\. The style checker is useful for helping you write better. Writers like to come up with massive lists of pet peeves. Memorizing these lists is too much for a human. After the Deadline automatically flags this stuff. It isn't the same as a human editor but it does help.

3\. A good copy editor will flag and revise most cases of passive voice and hidden verbs. After the Deadline doesn't rewrite these for you but it does flag them. This is a useful service to call your attention to these things. See: <http://jaffeerevises.com/Nominalizations.htm>

4\. After the Deadline explains your errors when you make them. When you write in passive voice you can click "explain" and learn what passive voice is. If you use the wrong indefinite article you can click explain and learn why it is wrong. I see these as teachable moments and by giving you snippets of grammar info when you need it, I am helping to make you a more aware writer.

BTW I recommend Write to the Point by Bill Stott. Will checker out Zinsser's work.

<comment><USER10> In case you missed it, (a very nastily formatted copy of) Orwell's Politics and the English Language is on HN's front page at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the poem in the "Detects Misused Words" demo, and it will appeal to early adopters. Good marketing. It doesn't pick up _all_ the misused words (only about half), but that would be a big ask.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember when you showed us this on the #startups channel. I was impressed then and now I'm even more. Great work!!

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats Raffi - glad to see the progress since we talked on the train ride from TS4AD Boston.

</comment><comment><USER13> Most web browsers already have spell checking.

<comment><AUTHOR> This paragraph is from a NY Times article. Can you find the error in it?

Still Mr. Franken said the whole experience had been disconcerting. "It's a weird thing: people are always asking me and Franni, 'Are you okay?' " he said, referring to his wife. "As sort of life crises go, this is low on the totem poll. But it is weird, it's a strange thing."

Neither can the spell checker in your browser. Why? Because most spell checkers do not look at context. After the Deadline does.

Visit <http://www.polishmywriting.com/nyt.html> to see the answer.

Besides misused word detection (and contextual spell checking), After the Deadline checks grammar and style as well.

<comment><USER14> Besides the spelling mistake, is "As sort of life crises go" a valid expression? Should that read "As far as life crises go"?

<comment><USER15> I was thinking the same thing. In fact, it distracted me so much that I missed the "poll" mistake. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> i tried "I be smart" and "Thus sucks" and nothing was underlined. Did i not read the directions properly?

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool product idea, I suck at writing.</comment>


Anyone who knows how to program in Lisp is smart. - <AUTHOR> http://occamsoftware.blogspot.com/2007/04/anyone-who-knows-how-to-program-in-lisp.html <comment><USER2> You gave yourself too much leeway in the insert, "(and I mean really program)." Whoever fits that clarificaiton, is smart.

Lisp is a language. A language is a tool. If you can use a tool to build great things, you are good. Perhaps your tool is not for the weak-minded, but wielding a tool is not enough to say anything. A three section staff requires godly dexterity, but is inferior to the longsword in combat. The latter is easier to pick up and thrash around, but way more difficult to master.

I feel like saying this because anybody who programs is likely to be able to pick up a new language and play around with it; the premises are the same. Anybody who speaks can likely pick up a new language and make sentences. You might find, say, the subject-object-verb ordering particularly intersting and conclude anyone who speaks Japanese is smart -- but it's more about practice and application.

If you decompile your mind it's probably half spaghetti code. If you decompile Feynman it'd probably be strangely productive infinite loops of sorts.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say that anybody who programs is likely to be able to pick up a new language easily. Anybody who has been exposed to most of the common ways of thinking about programming (functional, logic, the various subsets of OO, imperative) can probably pick up a language that uses any of those pretty easily (it's basically just syntax from there). Similarly, someone who knows both Chinese and English can probably pick up French pretty easily, because their tools for thinking about languages are expanded enough that picking up another one doesn't involve significant restructuring.

However, if you take someone who programs in Basic, and try to teach them Lisp, it will take them a long time, because there are lots of new concepts to learn. Similarly, if you take an English speaker and try to teach them Chinese, there will be a lot of stuff to learn, and it will take a long time.

<comment><USER2> Valid point. But also look at it this way.

An English speaker who has mastered Japanese will have gone from an SVO (subject verb object) language to an SOV language (Chinese is not as convenient an example, because it is also SVO). This is a completely different "paradigm of thinking," just for the comparison. Your brain needs to sort the order of concepts before your initiate your utterance. You need to match particles to their respective concepts. For anybody who never learned such a system, it doesn't come easily. But those who have gone to a sufficient level will become more perceptive of the nuances and particulars of "language" as a whole. This knowledge is far less accessible to those who only know one language. A linguist who only speaks one language will not be taken seriously.

Similarly, a competent programmer is likely to be versed in several languages, and likely they will fall into different paradigms. A programmer who only does LISP is likely to not have the same level of knowledge about the computer system than one who knows several languages. After all, you are looking at multiple ways of generating 1s and 0s. As such, knowing LISP certainly cannot imply anything. Of course, the author anticipated this response, and added a loophole in the article, which I consider a bit too wide, hence the criticism.

There are visible reasons why LISP trains your thinking. My post above is pretty poorly written, but the reference to spaghetti code is like the BASIC example you mention. Supposedly, good programming practice discourages spaghetti code, and BASIC was taken as the bad example. But people think in spaghetti code. If you pry open von Neumann's brain, it would probably be uber-spaghetti code. It would probably decompile into something more BASIC- like than LISP-like, but he's insanely smart.

Yes, it's the logic training. But if that was the theme, the article should have addressed it clearly. I just felt like pointing out how the current topic in the blog does a rather weak generalization, which helps more to propagate misconceptions than it does to educate.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thanks for the constructive criticism. This is my first blog article, so I'm begining to realize the sensitivity of carefully wording things.

With regards to my constraint "(and I mean really program)", I merely wanted to exclude those people who claim to "know about" LISP, or who are not competent in LISP (and I think I have a weaker threshold for competent than you).

I guess I tend to disagree with your statement:

"Similarly, a competent programmer is likely to be versed in several languages, and likely they will fall into different paradigms."

I think "a competent programmer" is a low bar (70 percential?). I don't think it's true that competent programmers are likely to be "competent" in several languages that fall into different paradigms.

Also, I feel like LISP's paradigm is so far removed from most others (and with arguably a superset of concepts), that any programmer who is competent in LISP _IS_ likely to be competent is several other languages that span different paradigms. Agreed if there exists one programmer out there who _ONLY_ knows LISP, they lack the complete conceptual understanding I'm asserting.

It seems to me that programmers who tend to write spaghetti code and/or over complicate matters will abandon LISP out of fustration before they achieve "competency in LISP".

The point of the article was to assert that "competency in LISP" implies much more than "competency in LISP" and that this statement is not true of most other programming languages.

Sorry you feel this article propagated misconceptions, I'll try to do better next time.

<comment><USER2> Apologies if I came off as too aggressive. I guess you can say that the title -- which at face value made a fairly daring statement -- primed my critical attitude, like many bloggers had to pg's "MS is Dead" article. I may very well have overreacted, so don't take my words too seriously. Clearly you didn't write the article to start flamewars; I could just be an instigator who tries to sound coherent.

Great to hear feedback though, and you found a weakness in my argument. My preconceptions of a "competent programmer" are often based on qualities I wish I had :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think it's knowing Lisp in particular that's valuable, but understanding different paradigms.

Lisp's paradigm is sufficiently different from the normal imperative languages, e.g. C or Python, that grokking Lisp means you understand more than one paradigm. It's this that's valuable, not knowledge of Lisp itself.

You often find that coders who know multiple paradigms will write interpreters for little languages in the implementation language available to them in order to better represent the problem, rather than attempting a dumb implementation in the bare implementation language.

There used to be a good book by Sam Kamin, _Programming Languages: An Interpreter-Based Approach_. It examines cut-down versions of different languages, e.g. Lisp and Prolog, implementing an interpreter for each of them in an imperative language to help explain how they work. Norman Ramsey was working on an update but I don't know if it's been published yet. Some universities seem to have access to a pre-release: <http://www.cs.uml.edu/~dimock/courses/languages/Spring2005/mainpage.html> (Disclaimer: I provided review comments to Ramsey for a couple of chapters back in 2002.)

Where Lisp is useful, is that just about any paradigm and his dog can be implemented in Lisp.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Lisp's paradigm is sufficiently different from the normal imperative languages, e.g. C or Python, that grokking Lisp means you understand more than one paradigm. It's this that's valuable, not knowledge of Lisp itself."

This was exactly my point... grokking Lisp is a hallmark of intelligence. I don't think there is any other programming language that rises to this level.

<comment><USER4> What other languages do you think don't rise to this level?

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me reconsider (I had forgotten about Paul Graham's, Python article). I suspect there are other langauges (not many) that reach this same level of intelligence tagging.

I think the second paragraph of his Python article captures much of my intent. But still, there seems to be something just a bit different about LISP than most other langauges.

Perhaps it is LISP's durribility or the fact that over time different (smart) people develop new lanuages and eventually begin to incorporate more and more features of LISP. LISP clearly got some things right in a fundamental way that every one seems to be rediscovering every decade. This leads me to believe that if you understand LISP, you have a deeper understanding of how things really fit together.

With specific regards to your question, I'd include most main stream programming languages (but that's kinda obvious). At this point, I'd include Ruby in this list, but may not Python. Although even in the case of Python, it strikes me as being very similar to other OO languages (better perhaps, but similar none-the-less).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If only Paul Graham could have been writing 10 years ago instead of starting a company ;)"

Seriously... When I used Lisp in college I remember thinking that it felt like cheating. It felt like using a graphing calculator to solve polynomials in high school. The only other languages I'd used in class were C, C++, Java, and 68K assembler, and it was hard to shake the idea that serious programming was supposed to be painful and low-level.

</comment><comment><USER6> I write Lisp/Scheme for living, but I'm not sure I can make such a bold statement (esp. how Lisp compares to other functional/logical languages---they do require different paradigm).

But I can tell one thing from my experience: All competent Lisp programmers I know are also pretty good at C, C++, Java, or even Assembly. Even if they don't initially, they quickly become good. So, in empirical sense, using Lisp as one filtering factor can work. (But be aware: The fact that they can write good Java code doesn't mean they want to do so).

</comment><comment><USER7> Probably, if only for the same kind of reasons that tends to be true of Python or Ruby: <http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> "I tried to learn Chinese and it was super hard! Anyone who can speak Chinese must be smart!"

<comment><USER7> Except no one is a native speaker of a programming language.

The more valid comparison might be "Anyone who can speak Latin must be smart," and that is probably not far wrong.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, anybody who knows how to use a dictionary to translate one word to another is smart.

Because if you simply "know" a language, it means nothing unless you quantify some experience behind that simple awareness of the language syntax.

A lot of people say they "know", when they mean "know about."

<comment><USER8> I know about Lisp.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At Pruitt's E.P.A.: No Studies, No Data, No Rules (NY Times) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/opinion/pruitt-epa-assault-science.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, took yet another step to muzzle the scientific inquiry that for years has informed sound policy at an agency he seems determined to destroy." The EPA "No Studies, No Data, No Rules" approach shows the anti-science bias of the Trump Administration. Failing to understand and address environmental issues is an existential failing the is likely to impact human survival.</comment>


SmallBasic: "Fun" programming language for beginners - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

<comment><USER2> The intention is good: making a modern, yet simple programming environment for beginners. The result is bad: including GOTO and omitting parameter passing makes programming simple as in assembler, not simple as in helping you do the right thing.

<comment><USER3> I have no idea where this un-natural fear of the goto comes from - I suspect it is a university CS dept. myth. I feel pretty confident that I can write well structured maintainable code in any language that is Turing complete - and this little basic exceeds that requirement and then some.

I can't wait to give it to my young son and see what he can do with it.

<comment><USER2> I thought I made my point clear: including Goto in this supposedly minimalistic language doesn't guide learners in the right direction (and using it in the examples even less so). Goto is not used in modern programming style even though some specific constructs can be expressed succinctly with it.

Regarding Turing-completeness: Perhaps you can write maintainable code in Intercal or Whitespace, but most people can't or at least don't want to write maintainable code without functions and static scoping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a cool idea--is there something similar for linux? My seven-year-old wants to play, but he's really still learning to read!

<comment><USER5> <http://shoooes.net/> comes to mind.

If he's learning to read, there's <http://scratch.mit.edu/>. Scratch doesn't really have a native version for Linux though - you can wine it, or you can try the (somewhat unofficial) build at the following link. I've tried both, and they work alright.

<http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=305>

<comment><USER2> Scratch runs on Squeak Smalltalk apart from some features that require a Scratch-specific native extension to Squeak. Scratch is not free software, so no wonder distros don't package it. The Scratch guys have a package for the OLPC though.

Here's the best guide I've seen this far for installing Scratch on Ubuntu: <http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=52179#p52179>

<comment><USER4> I decided to start with a little python...just a little bit to add or subtract a number repeatedly. He was able to follow it, but not, of course, do it the first time. Maybe if his interest remains, he'll start playing with it be himself!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google details Chrome's latest speed boost - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/google-details-chromes-latest-speed-boost-thanks-to-script-streaming-and-code-caching/

<comment> X-combinator Congrats for making the third front page.

[http://i.imgur.com/A07YxCp.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/A07YxCp.png?1)</comment>


Online articles lead to rapid scientific consensus, forgotten ideas - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080718-online-articles-lead-to-rapid-scientific-consensus-forgotten-ideas.html

<comment><USER2> This is not particularly surprising. When the transaction cost to read an article is lower, there's less "need" to use the work you've uncovered. By analogy, Walter Murch says in his book, "In the Blink of an Eye" that film editors need to avoid "seeing around the edge of the frame" - when the editor knows the hard work that went into getting a particular shot to work, the 'sweat investment', it's harder to discard that shot because it feels like a waste -- even if that's not the best shot to use. Similarly, my investment into getting an article means I'm more likely to use it the harder it was to obtain. By decreasing that cost, writers can be more 'objective' about what's actually useful.

Second, because I can easily get a different article, if the one I have doesn't say quite what I need, I can find something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Leading to more herding and informational cascades (<http://www.info- cascades.info/>) wherein individuals cease to follow their own thoughts and instead rush to verify what they have heard through (in this case) the academic grapevine.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb also addresses this topic in some depth in his book "The black Swan" ([http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly- Improbable/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly- Improbable/dp/1400063515)).

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting counter-point to another submission from today: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249346>

<comment><USER5> Not really. They complement each other. The one you showed claims (rightly so) that openness is a fundamental requisite for the progress of science. This one, shows how that openness results in more hits on the best papers on a given subject.

Think of it this way... even if you have easy access to 100x more papers than before, the number of citations that you put in your paper is still the same. This means that the you will try to pick the best references from the set you have available, which, in turn, will result in some particularly good papers being cited more often than they would otherwise.

<comment><USER4> No, you're right, I just submitted the above before I finished reading this thread's article - I thought it was going in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why, when I click that link, do I have to click "back" 4 times in order to get back to HN? (Firefox 2, winxp)

Are they being rude by doing a bunch of redirects (and making it harder for me to leave) or is there something else going on?

<comment><USER7> I have the same setup, only one backup system.</comment></comment>


Profanity and OS projects - should we care? - <AUTHOR> http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5625 Seems like too much free time and the politically correct got its round over the ruby community for good this time. Luckily they are not reading the linux kernel. <comment><USER2> I think a far better action than saying "oh no, swear words" would be to ask: what code is apparently causing developers to swear and how can it be fixed?

And for what it's worth, when people are offended by mere words I counter with "I'm offended by censorship", because I am. What is it about certain commonly- censored materials that makes them so special? Why can't a person just change the channel or read something else to avoid uncomfortable material? Also, why are people so much more likely to be angry about swear words (which cause no demonstrable harm), when things that _do_ cause harm (like wars) are more-or- less tolerated silently? Makes you wonder.

<comment><AUTHOR> true, code would help there instead of bikeshedding. also it would serve as guide to anyone following the patch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Swear words which are deliberately offensive or pejorative should generally be avoided.

But there's no reason why flavoursome language can't be used to get across the developer's feelings about how fucking awful the shit piece of code they've just had to kludge something into was, and how much they're looking forward to clearing it up in a later release.

</comment><comment><USER4> Source code is not only about the implementation, but also about the approach of the developers to express a solution to a problem. If swearing is part of that expression, it's OK to me, but I agree that unneccesary swearing, and being offensive to a certain group or demographic should be avoided at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lets hope that this douchebag never reads the Linux Kernel source code

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://durak.org/sean/pubs/kfc/> linux kernel fuck count

<comment><USER5> so much love <3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> such pussies.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.

<comment><USER7> Down-voted, why? For replying succinctly? Does the question merit a larger reply?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you accept payment through native android or iPhone app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I'm new to mobile side of the things so just wondering if you can accept payment through your native iPhone or Anroid application. I'm looking for integration with PayPal or some payment gateway where you can accept CC.
Thanks, <comment><USER2> PayPal has Mobile Express Checkout for example: [https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render- content&c...](https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render- content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECOnMobileDevices)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can run a web browser on either. Everything from there is UX.

SaaSy should work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try <http://squareup.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Massargo,

I'm looking for a way for users to buy stuff through my mobile application. For example If user is shopping for a phone through my application then I want to accept the payment within the mobile application via paypal or any other payment gateways.

Squareup is a card reader which is not what i'm looking for.

Thanks,

<comment><USER5> Your app is disallowed according to the iOS Approval Guidelines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean you cannot accept payments from your mobile application?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok I think I found it. Amazon has a service mobile payment service: <https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/mps></comment>


TikTok app banned by US Army on work mobile phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50952473 <comment><USER2> A app blacklist seems like security theater. Sure, they've banned TikTok - what of the other 4 million apps available on Google Play alone? How many of those are malicious? And what about all the random sideloadable apps? The implication seems to be that running unvetted, arbitrary code on work phones is basically fine, unless a particular app is specifically and publically outed as malicious. This seems like a very naive, sheltered worldview.

The only half-sensible approach to security in this context is a _whitelist_ \- no "apps" on military smartphones, unless specifically vetted and ideally built from source. "Banning" random apps, Chinese or otherwise, ought to be redundant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good riddance that shitty app needs to be banned on a national scale.</comment>


Ask HN: What are top websites in terms of ad revenue? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, I've been looking for an accurate list of top websites with regard to their ad revenue. I think Google sits at the top, but I haven't found any list of other top-earning websites. Any help is appreciated. <comment><USER2> Pirate Bay was estimated in the millions and well, Google is tens of billions of course :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I need a curated list of all such websites :)</comment></comment>


VentureHacks: How to Pick a Co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://venturehacks.com/articles/pick-cofounder

<comment><USER2> The primary problem of finding cofounders isn't seeding out the bad ones, it's even _knowing_ someone you might want to found a company with.

According to the post your cofounder should be someone of roughly the same age and financial standing that you have a history with, have aligned motives with, has incredibly intelligence, energy and integrity. Oh, and it has to be someone that respects you and that you respect as well.

Personally I don't know anyone that lives up to all of these criteria, and I doubt that most people do.

<comment><USER3> I know that finding the above is something very hard. I was lucky enough to find just such a person a while ago by chance. We hit it off pretty well even though I am a product/systems guy and he is a programmer. I actually decided not to apply to this years YC because I am waiting for him to finish his masters in cs and I would rather try it next summer with him than find someone else I trusted less. We even have a third person that we both feel the same about as well and want him in it with us too.

Might sound a bit cliche, but I pretty much know that we can put together the right team in short order. It is a different feeling when you just KNOW the people have your back.

Be open to it and network, you never know. I was not actively looking and it just happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FYI, this issue probably has personal relevance for the author (Naval Ravikant). He was one of four founders who were left out in the cold during the Epinions IPO.

The fifth got $20 million.

[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E5D7113DF...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E5D7113DF932A35752C1A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=)

But the founders of Epinions -- Nirav Tolia, Naval Ravikant, Ramanathan Guha, Dion Lim and Mike Speiser -- have learned that success does not necessarily mean that a company's creators will be rewarded.

August Capital and Benchmark Capital, two venture capital firms that invested $4 million each to help start Epinions in April 1999, profited handsomely in the public offering. They had both made additional investments, and each now owns a stake in Shopping.com worth roughly $60 million. Overall, Shopping.com was worth $750 million at the close of the market on Friday.

By contrast, four of the five founders of Epinions did not see a dime from Shopping.com's public sale -- their shares in Epinions were rendered worthless when it merged with DealTime.

''What the Epinions story demonstrates,'' said Paul Saffo, a research fellow at the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley research group, ''is that the golden rule applies even in Silicon Valley: the people who have the gold, rule.''

Of the Epinions founders, only Mr. Tolia, who took over as Shopping.com's chief operating officer after the merger, fared well in the offering. His shares were worth nearly $20 million at Friday's closing price.

</comment><comment><USER5> My favorite from the post:

"Partner with someone who is a rational believer that nice guys finish first"

</comment><comment><USER6> Mark Zuckerberg wasn't the only founder. There were several for Facebook.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention Apple had 3 co-founders, not 2.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne>

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again "One builds, one sells", the organisations which I started that worked had this at the start, or they started working well once they had it.

</comment><comment><USER8> One difficulty is that qualified co-founders are probably already looking for _their_ idea's co-founder :) Quoting a @venturehacks idea for solving this: get them to work part-time on your startup until you win them over!

<comment><USER9> One afternoon, Nasruddin and his friend were sitting in a cafe, drinking tea, and talking about life and love.

"How come you never got married, Nasruddin?" asked his friend at one point.

"Well," said Nasruddin, "to tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo, I met a beautiful and intelligent woman, with eyes like dark olives, but she was unkind. Then in Baghdad, I met a woman who was a wonderful and generous soul, but we had no interests in common. One woman after another would seem just right, but there would aways be something missing. Then one day, I met her. She was beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. We had everything in common. In fact she was perfect."

"Well," said Nasruddin's friend, "what happened? Why didn't you marry her?"

Nasruddin sipped his tea reflectively. "Well," he replied, "it's a sad thing. Seems she was looking for the perfect man."

From <http://www.sysindia.com/emagazine/mulla/mulla.html>

<comment><USER8> What's the lesson here? :) (you should work on theirs too?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Technical founders who don't sell also use bad proxies ("Harvard MBA!")_

So, what's a better proxy for figuring out who a good business/sales co- founder is? (I ask as a tech guy with a Harvard MBA co-founder ;-))

<comment><USER11> There's a huge difference between biz dev and sales. Most MBAs are "above" sales. If you need business/strategic/distribution partners, MBAs are great. If you need someone cold calling and knocking on doors, find a frat boy or sorority chick. (I'm serious - it's what every drug company, liquor distributor, and whoever else does.)

<comment><USER12> I vaguely remember in Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book that one of the best predictors of success in a business role on grads coming out of big name schools going to Wall Street was whether they were an athlete or not. That seems to jive decently with the "frat boy" suggestion.

Makes sense really, pick team players with a drive to win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for posting...

I will definitely need to follow some of these guidelines in order to find a co-founder, and I mean QUICKLY.

Excellent post!

<comment><USER14> If you are in the bay area, the co-founders meetup next week might help you <http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted-Meetup/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excellent post. Also clearly explains why 2 is the ideal number, and why you need history with your co-founder.</comment>


Is Michael Arrington building a Digg killer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/is-michael-arrington-building-a-digg-killer-2009-4

<comment><USER3> Some day, I'm going to start a news aggregator that creates honest headlines. Here's how it will work: for every degree of separation between the original story and the submission, subtract about 80% of the hyperbole.

"I have a weird entry in my referrer logs" -> "Maybe Arrington is building an aggregator, like last time" -> "Maybe Arrington is going to destroy Hacker News! Like last time he made a tech news aggregator."

 _Edit: though this HN story appears to have been submitted by the story's original author._

<comment><AUTHOR> No sarcasm at all, either. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love how the original article is rhetorically asking if he's building a Digg killer, but it's been changed to Hacker News for the purpose of posting it here.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, and it's not even remotely the same sort of problem. A "Digg killer" or "reddit killer" just needs traffic. A Hacker News killer needs to have a good community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "HN killer" begs the question:

Is PG moving over to TechCrunch?

I'm surprised at how many "experts" STILL equate technology with community...just tells me how many still don't "get it".

<comment><USER7> Please: it 'raises' the question.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=538942>

Maybe just in this one lonely forum we can recover and preserve the meaning of the phrase. To beg the question is to make an argument that has a circular dependency.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I didn't know that!

Back to the main point: any "killer" of a community has nothing to do with the underlying technology, but the people behind the community. The only way HN would be killed by TC is if PG were to be the motivating force behind whatever it is that is going on at TC, and at the same time kill HN himself (unlikely).

I would sure as hell welcome whatever TC has to offer as a competitor to HN as this fosters diversity in thinking...and at the same time offer a second place to exercise the proper use of language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be nice if all the TechCrunch trolls could go back to TechCrunch.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's an update on the site: Astute commenter Daniel Pritchett might have the answer: An app called "Spy" that tracks social media conversations. TechCrunch would presumably use this to come up with story ideas or track conversations about its stories on the Web.

<comment><USER11> What I love is the "astute" part. It's completely random speculation. But then so is the original article.

I'll give you my own astute guess - Arrington was enamored with digg spy - <USER2> real time, ajaxy display of activity on digg (retired a few months back). And today Friendfeed's new beta interface looks just like digg spy used to, but obviously with activity over many sites. I betcha he's going to do something like that.

But when I say it, by "astute" I mean totally random wild ass guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How do you compete with a site which doesn't aspire to be anything other than what it already is... which is precisely why it's growing.

As soon as you try, you've already failed. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> A Valleywag killer, yes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Step 1: clone pg?

</comment><comment><USER15> PG is a well respected persona, MA is not.

The day I see PG mudslinging is the day I declare HN dead.

<comment><USER16> PG's all the more respected because he's very rarely active online. He only says something when he's got something interesting to say. Arrington writes 24/7.</comment></comment>


Computer vision (online book) - <AUTHOR> http://computervisionmodels.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER3> Slice of life:

I worked for a company in 2000-2001 that had a small branch that built custom industrial machine vision systems. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in my career. Anyway, one day the head of the branch gathered everyone together and talked about how he wanted to break off from the master company and build a machine vision startup. Everyone was extremely excited and most agreed to follow him on the spot.

One week later 9/11 happened.

One week after that the same branch head gathered everyone together and laid off 80% of the staff. You see, "industrial machine vision was no longer viable"[1]. We were crushed and I moved on to other fields.

I haven't though about machine vision much in the past 10 years, but I think I'll read this book. Thanks for the submission.

[1]: Vision system to seek and destroy on the other hand...

<comment><USER4> Eh? Strange. 9/11 was, as terrible a tragedy as it was, great for computer vision. DHS and DOD were throwing money left and right at researchers and companies (through SBIRs), though mostly for surveillance, activity recognition, vehicle recognition, not industrial machine vision, as far as I'm aware.

I wouldn't expect a large company to pivot, necessarily, but if the branch head wanted to do a startup, he probably missed out on a huge opportunity.

<comment><USER3>
        DHS and DOD

Hence my note _Vision system to seek and destroy on the other hand..._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi - I'm the author. If you can't download, just wait a day or two - <USER2> aren't so many people interested in this that the server will be struggling for ever. Please don't torrent it as I update it every few days and I'd rather not have redundant old versions full of unnecessary mistakes out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a recent great book with free pre-print pdf: <http://szeliski.org/Book/>

Along with the lecture slides from different professors linked to on that page, it should be a sufficient start.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You might also be interested in Predator Object Tracking: <http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html>

previous thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403290>

</comment><comment><USER7> I managed to download it after multiple tries and uploaded a mirror here: <http://multiupload.com/3I1SLCNT1Q>

I will edit out the link when the book on the site gets updated.

<comment><USER7> link deleted as new version is up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't download any of the pdf's -- the download just fails. I'd really like a copy of this, could you possibly send me one?

<comment><USER8> I still can't get the full download, even after the update. I've been trying all day. It gives it a good try, but cuts off about 1/3rd of the way through. I'm still very much wanting a copy.

<comment><USER5> I think it is just because it is on the front page of HN. I had more hits today than in the last year! Just wait a couple of days. It's not going anywhere and there hasn't historically been a problem with downloading it.

<comment><USER8> I'm just curious as to why it starts and cuts off. It doesn't seem useful to randomly terminate downloads whenever new requests come in.

<comment><USER5> I think it just has a time-out which is quite short (it's not my server it's mounted on). When the traffic is heavy this is activated before the download completes. I have managed to compress it to about half size now, and I'm uploading that at the moment. It takes about an hour because Rogers pointlessly throttle my upload speed at home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It speaks __volumes __that this guy can make a pleasantly readable page with a _red background_.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone torrent this? I couldn't finish downloading the entire thing.

<comment><USER3> The PDF is listed at 230MB... his server is doomed.

<comment><USER11> Sounds suspiciously like it is image heavy (which is understandable in a book about computer vision).

I would be curious what the size would be if one used ePub.

<comment><USER9> _The download is huge because I made the figures in Inkscape and it can't produce compressed PDFs. If anyone knows how to solve this problem, I'd be happy to hear about it. Mail me at email@example.com._</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This file's a Win Executable, PDF, Java executable (or Python script), and HTML - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/corkami/downloads/detail?name=CorkaMIX.zip <comment><USER2> Anyone more knowledgeable in assembly and file formats care to expand on this:

>It serves no purpose, except proving that files format not starting at offset 0 are a bad idea

What exactly does it mean to start at offset 0 and why don't these file formats do that? Is there an advantage in not starting at offset 0 or is it simply oversight/indifference? Any kind of background on the problem would be appreciated, I'm really quite intrigued.

<comment><USER3> When a file format starts at offset 0, it simply means that it starts at the first byte of the file.

Other than that, I can't provide any information on file formats allowed to start at offsets other than 0, or why this may or may not be a good idea (I suppose maybe it would allow an enterprising programmer to hide a malicious file by embedding it in an otherwise-innocuous format?), though I am certainly curious as well.

<comment><USER4> I've seen files have been distributed on 4chan before via a .rar file embedded in an image.

<comment><USER5> That's kind of a different issue though, my understanding is that .jpeg has an unlimited size footer and .rar has an unlimited size header. It gets similar results, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you test how different antivirus programs respond to this?

<comment><USER7> Here you go [https://www.virustotal.com/file/1fc14ab461828afd34f92c69e34d...](https://www.virustotal.com/file/1fc14ab461828afd34f92c69e34dd05270c73b744de09ea97170c07616a78384/analysis/1343862855/)

Edit: someone posted results for .exe file inside the .zip, which are a bit different (it seems like some antiviruses don't try to unpack it?), but then deleted the comment. Here's the link for .exe: [https://www.virustotal.com/file/2a9c7a16cdb3c3f2285afaf61072...](https://www.virustotal.com/file/2a9c7a16cdb3c3f2285afaf61072dd5e7cc022e97f351cad6234a13e5216f389/analysis/1343862883/)

<comment><USER8> Given what its doing and how it's doing it then those virus alerts listed are understandable and if anything I'd have to say kudo to panda AV for being the most honest about it. Probably breaking the PE and the CRC checksum aspects would get it flagged as it has in some and the html/exe flagging is also explained as well having read thru how it works.

Still impressive stuff and also given the use of undocumented opcodes and x86 foo it does raise a new question:

Given some VM's will fail on some of the instructions instead of running on bare metal, is it possible to have a virus that will only trigger on bare metal or VM machines thru use of undocumented op codes and the like.

Non the less a wonderful definition in hacking in its truest sence and educational on undocumented OP codes and how for some things you cant beat pure assembly for fun and jollys.

<comment><USER9> My corporate proxy chokes on it too.

An error occurred while performing an ICAP operation: File decompression/decode error; File: CorkaMIX.zip; Sub File: No file name available; Vendor: Kaspersky Labs; Engine error code: 0x00050000; Engine version: 220.127.116.11; Pattern version: 120801.124000.8311194; Pattern date: 2012.08.01 12:40:00

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It being an .exe and a JAR file doesn't surprise me at all. JAR files follow the ZIP format, and self-extracting ZIP files have always worked by being simultaneously a valid EXE and ZIP file.

</comment><comment><USER11> You could make this a valid Ruby script without the "extra byte" problem with making it a Python script.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why is this a bad thing? and not a good thing

</comment><comment><USER13> Below is a valid program of:

* perl * ruby * python2 * python3 * lua

In fact, they all return the same result![1]

== the program ==

print ("howdy")

[1] visually. If you ignore the newline.

</comment><comment><USER14> .rar also has this issue.

What other formats don't need to start at offset 0?

<comment><USER15> it's not RAR don't need to start at offset 0, it's Self-extract RAR could be an exe. And WinRAR accept files like these.</comment></comment>


Game Theory 101 - <AUTHOR> http://gametheory101.com/

<comment><USER2> What I really like about Khan Academy is that Sal takes away all the magic. The limit as x approaches 0 of sinx/x isn't 1 because "that's the formula," it's because (insert Sal's 15 minute proof showing the graphs and allowing you to intuit the result).

In contrast, I just watched the first two lessons of this series and so far it feels like a lot of magic. It's just a "rule" of strictly dominated strategies that each of player 2's middle column values are larger than their end column values, so we can eliminate the whole column. Why is this? What do those values represent?

For anyone who has watched more of the videos, does the series improve in this regard?

<comment><USER3> When I started making the videos back in 2009, my concern was just showing how to solve games. Details were details, especially since your average YouTube viewer does not have much an attention spam that lasts past five minutes.

But you're right, the other things are important. I eventually get to them in some of the later (and longer) videos, I talk about them in the textbook. The first lesson is a free PDF on my academic website wjspaniel.wordpress.com, so you can check it out if you are interested.

Thanks for the feedback.

William

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually think this approach to game theory is better for the uninitiated trying to get their hands dirty with some fun problems in game theory without needing the math or economic background. He doesn't go very in depth with the proofs but those aren't really needed. Most of the examples he gives are more fun mental exercises that have to be talked and reasoned through, which really is the essence of game theory. Once you have that understanding of backwards induction, it's then much easier to move into the more complex problems (dynamic, incomplete, asymmetric information).

To be able to grasp a problem like pirates after watching a few videos is very cool and much more practical, where the Yale course jumps directly into Cournot/Bertrand games after five lectures. If you have no prior knowledge of economics, it would be much harder to visualize things like competition and marginal cost in this context. This online course is really just a primer for bigger topics.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am about to take a Game Theory final tomorrow so this post if very relevant :)

The Yale Open Courses Game Theory class is also worth checking out. Material is taught in a very accessible manner.

<http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/game-theory/>

<comment><USER6> Hahah I was the first reply with the same link... Are you taking the final tomorrow at Yale?

<comment><USER5> Ya I took the exam yesterday at Yale. Pretty long and difficult, everyone stayed for the full 3.5 hours. Professor Polak is a firm believer of having a good spread of scores and so made the exam long and challenging. All in all it was a good class, I just wish he spent more time defining things in a more rigorous way rather than bombarding us with intuition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this is a nice effort Mr Willian Spaniel did here. I just watched some classes, and they are very nice spoken and clear. It's just like Khan Academy!

But the most impressive is the textbook costs, only 99 cents or 2,99 cents! I think I will buy, watch the classes and wait for the stanford free class to make a better foundation in game theory.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stanford will be continuing its tradition with online courses this spring and one of the classes they plan to host is an introduction to game theory: <http://www.game-theory-class.org/index.php> .

</comment><comment><USER9> When I checked the Amazon US links, they're priced at 2.99 and 4.99, respectively. Are the .99 and 2.99 prices available to some countries only?

<comment><USER10> The prices are $3.44 and $5.74 for me (when logged into Amazon US). That's a nice +250% price hike for us Europeans!

<comment><USER11> Came here to say this __and __I accidentally bought the basics version instead of the more extensive one.

Oh well, I really liked the YouTube videos so the author more than deserves it. It's just that those obvious price hikes get under my skin especially for e-books. Or is it that Amazon includes any taxes they have to pay to the EU in the price?

<comment><USER10> Amazon is paying VAT in the EU, but the last time I checked, the tax wasn't quite in the hundreds of percents. This is just Amazon taking extra profit because they can, and the author is only getting paid based on the $0.99 and $2.99 price points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should've seen this a couple of weeks ago when it was the topic for AI class. Will probably use this as a reviewer for the finals. Thanks! :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I used that website for my micro econ final 2 days ago

If you skip classes to work on your side project, that web site is must see.

</comment><comment><USER14> I couldn't tell from the first chapter, but are there a lot of equations? If so, would be a big plus for me.

<comment><USER3> Game theory doesn't become computationally intensive until you reach mixed strategies, which start about half way through the first chapter. (If this comment is referring to the PDF preview on my website, the PDF only contains the first lesson.)</comment></comment>


How Much Do TikTok Biddable Ads Cost? - <AUTHOR> https://jungletopp.com/tiktok-ads-costs/ <comment><AUTHOR> By looking into TikTok's costs in their Biddable Ads, we'll search to find clarity and a base for Marketers and Advertisers to look to for reference.</comment>


This is how the "diversity" complaints sound to me - <AUTHOR> http://www.impressivewebs.com/diversity-in-sports-2013/

<comment><USER2> Jeff Atwood's tweet sounds to me like: "Who cares whether black people are prevented from playing hockey due to racism?"</comment>


Google "Nexus Two" Hardware Issue Delays Launch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/05/google-nexus-two-hardware-issue-delays-launch/

<comment><USER2> Hope it has a notification light and a flash!</comment>


Ask HN: What are the most challenging pages to scrape? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Try PWA based one. Since they load in segments and cache a lot you'll have fun:

[https://pwa.rocks/](https://pwa.rocks/) \- Look at the business and news webpages

Also look for the website that use AMP. They're even more fragmented then PWA pages. Below is article about AirBNB using AMP and iFrames:

[https://medium.com/swlh/how-airbnb-is-putting-amp-at-the- cor...](https://medium.com/swlh/how-airbnb-is-putting-amp-at-the-core-of-its- digital-strategy-d6b9cf1fc0ad)

[https://www.ampproject.org/](https://www.ampproject.org/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for pages which are difficult to scrape, to see the applied techniques, and to learn how to bypass them.</comment>


Ask HN: Do 100+ comments ever scare you? - <AUTHOR>

I love making comments on HN. It's definitely the best part of the site. It is usually coherent conversation among intelligent people.
However, when I look at a post and it says "120 comments," I get scared. It seems anything I say is just going to get lost in the noise. No matter the merit. (Some things I say should get lost. :])
I want to participate, but ya'll are scaring me away. Does this happen to anybody else? <comment><USER2> Yeah, I think 100 is edging north of some sweet spot where there's a good signal to noise ratio. I often don't comment on threads or do more than skim them when they've gotten that large.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really. In theory though, some of this self-limiting SHOULD happen. After 100 comments, the chances that I (or any other user) have something new and unique to add is diminished. So, I think it becomes a natural throttle. If I still think my comment adds value to the conversation, I'll jump in.

Maybe my comment is upvoted, maybe not. Maybe it is not even read at that point, but either way my cost is a few minutes of my time to potentially share knowledge or info. I try to contribute where I can, if my input is lost in the shuffle, I don't take it personal.</comment>


Principles of pitching - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/4/18/pitching

<comment><USER2> I've been amazed at how many pitches I've seen that were missing the 'next steps' aka "the point of this."

One of the things that has always helped me is realizing that people listening to something I'm pitching _are doing their job._ Which is to say this is work for them too, they are here because they think spending 15 minutes or an hour listening to me will have some economic benefit for them down the road. The absolutely best thing I can do for them is to help them work better and more efficiently by helping them extract as clear an understanding as to what I have to offer in the shortest possible time so that as a group we can see which, _if any_ , of the next steps are appropriate.

I realize that sometimes I'm helping them figure out if the topic du jour is just a fad or a real trend (which won't directly help me) but by helping them I leave a good impression and an opportunity to come back.

Nice writeup swombat.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here I was thinking this would be an article about baseball... Must be the haze of a new baseball season fogging my brain; I should have known better!

<comment><USER4> Me too. I was expecting some physics of the curveball.

<comment><USER5> I submitted an article just for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it needs to be said: swombat.com is quickly becoming _the_ best source for startup analysis/advice. Daniel does a brilliant job aggregating and curating links to startup-related articles; plus I find his long-form pieces to be generally well-written and thoughtful.

Subscribe to the blog, if you haven't already. And @swombat: thank you for taking the time to do this. Swombat.com's quickly becoming one of the few sites I check on a daily basis.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the kind feedback. It's always very much appreciated :-)</comment></comment>


Adobe versus the 'Open Web' - <AUTHOR> http://www.webkitchen.be/2009/05/27/adobe-versus-the-open-web/

<comment><USER2> What a bullshit post.

 _So why don't we open source the Flash Player? Well… First of all… I'm not sure what good that would do?_

Maybe you need to think about it a little more.

 _That said, Adobe doesn't own the rights to every single bit in the Flash Player. We don't own the rights for the video and graphics codecs for example._

That didn't stop Sun from open-sourcing the rest of the JVM. If they can do it, so can you. If you don't want to open-source Flash, just say so. Don't insult my intelligence by pretending your hands are tied.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought he was going to point out that there isn't a competition, because they can work together.

Instead he (an Adobe employee) says (paraphrasing only slightly) that there is a competition and Adobe Flash wins because the open web sucks.

Way to win friends and influence people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Flash-bashing by HTML5 fans is a staple on HN. FWIW, at no point does he say open web sucks.

I only posted this article because it clarifies common misconceptions and assumptions made open web fanatics in hopes that another view might be respected.</comment></comment>


A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xpqy3/a-teenage-girl-in-south-sudan-was-auctioned-off-on-facebook <comment><USER2> "When worlds collide."

This is news primarily because putting it on Facebook made it visible to First World residents and made them feel complicit in the transaction. Otherwise, we mostly don't really care that there are child brides being auctioned off in Third World countries (etc). "Not Our Problem."

And the outrage is problematic for a variety of reasons. Historically in the US it was common for girls to get married at age 14 to 16. Deciding that age 18 is the age of legal adult consent etc is somewhat arbitrary.

That doesn't mean I approve of auctioning off young girls for marriage, but you need to look at a variety of factors and judge this in context. The practice of a _bride price_ does two things: It compensates the parents for providing a valuable wife who will most likely never have wealth and power in her own name because that primarily goes through men in most countries the world over and the problem is more severe in less developed countries. It also is intended to insure that her husband has the capacity to provide for her.

What you see in less developed countries is less education overall and less opportunity overall and less use of effective birth control overall. So you wind up with inherent issues where getting laid at all is highly likely to lead to pregnancy and a lot of cultural practices grow out of that reality.

I'm a former full-time wife and mom. I was also one of the top three students of my graduating high school, a National Merit Scholarship winner, etc. A friend of the family once told me "Everyone expected you to be a millionaire by the age of 30. What the hell happened?" And I pointed to my kids and said "That happened." basically.

So I've spent a lot of years reading up on women's issues and history and so forth, trying to figure out why in the hell I never got the two career couple lifestyle that I expected to have and that I felt was my due in life. And it's led me to think long and hard on what I have come to think of as "human sexual morality" and the myriad things that grow out of trying to resolve the issues rooted in "people hunger for sex and then that can lead to babies, disease, social drama, etc."

How do you resolve those humanely and in a manner that treats all parties well?

Bride Price is one way some cultures try to make sure that women -- who will not have careers of their own and power of their own -- are properly cared for by upstanding citizens who are productive and take care of their family because they are good men.

It can easily go weird and bad places, but selling children into slavery isn't actually the goal of having a bride price.

I would love to see _a better world_. I seriously doubt we get there by jumping to ugly conclusions about other cultures and assuming the absolute worst and refusing to take context into account.

<comment><USER3> As a counterpoint, in Sudan it goes to here - [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/sudan-death- senten...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/sudan-death-sentence- noura-hussein-asequals-intl/index.html) \- and people shouting judgmentally about that to Sudan has helped save that girl's life. Perhaps outrage over this might help this other girl before she ends up stabbing her husband. Might even be good for the husband.

<comment><USER4> Just want to note that the country in this topic is SOUTH Sudan, not Sudan.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for picking me up on that. I try not to be geographically lazy, so I appreciate it being pointed out if I am being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to sound insensitive, but I think some of the worlds problems are caused by the fact that it's easier for people to get emotional about a specific incident they can put a face on than a systematic problems.

<comment><USER6> While I totally agree, it also seems to me that this sort of thinking is almost always used as an excuse not to care about anything, rather than a call to care more about the bigger stuff too.

<comment><USER7> > _it also seems to me that this sort of thinking is almost always used as an > excuse not to care about anything_

Caring is overrated. Unless one does something about what they care for, it's not just useless but also harmful (e.g. stressful to the person caring with no effect towards solving the problem).

<comment><USER8> How about we care AND do small things to help?

<comment><USER7> That doesn't fall into the "useless care" case. But that's also not 99% of caring for stuff in the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Facebook doesn't want this kind of stuff on their platform. But, it can be very hard for them to stop it.

What language were the postings in? The article screenshots one English post, but possibly many of the others were in some local language. Facebook might not employ anyone with language skills in that language. Automated translation software often performs poorly with less common languages, if it is available at all. Even if the postings are all in some major language, they may have been using local slang or jargon, and unless Facebook has staff in or from that country, they may lack the cultural context to understand properly what is going on. Even if someone from that country reports it, it could be very difficult for Facebook's staff to fairly judge the report if they lack the necessary cultural and language skills to interpret it.

<comment><USER10> "Facebook doesn't want this kind of stuff on their platform. But, it can be very hard for them to stop it."

So, in other words, this is the price of doing business?

<comment><USER9> Anyone who runs a website with user-submitted content has this problem. If you allow users to post content in any language, how can you effectively moderate their postings if you don't understand the language they are posting in? There are thousands of minority languages in the world, it is infeasible (even for a company as big as Facebook) to retain staff with language skills in all of them.

The other option is to ban the use of minority languages. Only major languages are allowed. But, from a human rights perspective, that is an affront to diversity and freedom, and is contributing to the endangered state of many of these languages. But, if you allow minority languages, you run the risk that people are advocating or organising human rights violations in that minority language (slave trading, advocating for genocide, etc), and the platform can't stop it because it can't understand it. So, it is a tradeoff, which threat to human rights do you prevent, because you can't feasibly prevent both.

<comment><USER10> Calling Facebook a "site with user submitted content" is not incorrect but to make it a bit more accurate is to add that FB makes massive amount of money from the site with user submitted content (you may want to ponder how exactly Sudanese users are monetized).

With this in mind it looks like the occasional slave auction is just an unfortunate consequence of the scale and ambition of the enterprise.

<comment><USER9> Yes, they make a lot of money. But, I'm pretty sure they don't make a lot of money from all languages equally.

According to Ethnologue, there are 401 languages with over 1 million speakers, and 1370 with over 100,000. Now, can Facebook justify retaining moderation teams with skills in 401 different languages, even 1370 different languages, when most of those languages probably make very little advertising revenue, not enough to pay for the required moderation?

Should Facebook be forced to provide moderation services, at a loss, for lesser used languages? Or, should they ban the use of those languages, where advertising revenue is insufficient to pay for moderation? Or allow them on the platform unmoderated, at the risk that their speakers might get away with saying or doing some horrible things?

I don't think Facebook should be forced to provide moderation services for languages with little or no revenue, and I think allowing them to be used unmoderated is the lesser evil than banning them.

<comment><USER10> Nobody forced FB to run a business that allows a slave auction on their platform. How to make it impossible is not my problem - it should be their problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I realize this is horrific for many living in the Western World, but I think it's important to keep it in perspective.

Does anyone really think it wouldn't have happened without Facebook? That it hasn't been happening for thousands of years?

It's not like the invention of Facebook created this.

This is also the epitome of "think of the Children". I realize that in our culture auctioning off children is not acceptable, but who's to say we know what's right? maybe we're OK auctioning off rabbits or religious artifacts but another culture would find _that_ horrific. So should we just say that whatever we deem OK is fine?

<comment><USER12> I come from a country where child marriages are fairly common, despite being illegal — but the law isn't enforced.

The marriages aren't arranged on social media yet, but I don't see why in a few years with easier access to the internet, and with younger people arranging marriages, more of these won't be done.

I don't think Facebook is to blame for this, and I do think it's unfair that Facebook is being asked to solve a problem governments haven't been able to for decades — but they're in a better position than anyone was.

>but who's to say we know what's right?

However, I gotta disagree with you there. Some things we can all agree are wrong. It's a short list and it includes things like slavery, forced prostition, rape, murder, etc. But that list definitely includes selling children to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER6> I don't think Facebook is to blame for the problem, but they're also not innocent here. They facilitated the transaction. It's little different from fencing stolen goods or being a hit man's agent. Just because governments haven't figured out how to eradicate theft or murder doesn't mean you're in the clear for helping to make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obligatory disclaimer: Facebook has massive overreach, human trafficking is evil, etc...

I love to hate on Facebook, but given the near ubiquity of Facebook, and the internet, is this Facebook's fault? Isn't this just a consequence of ubiquitous technology?

There were so many different human technologies and inventions used in this tragedy, why lay the blame on Facebook, if we rewrote the headline, which of the following technologies are also to blame:

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __the World Wide Web __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __the Internet __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __DNS & TCP/IP __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __mobile phones __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __written and spoken human languages __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __money and the abstract concept of trade __

</comment><comment><USER14> If we were to make an ordered list, in decreasing 'horribleness' of all the things that are 'wrong' in South Sudan, would this even make the top ten?

</comment><comment><USER15> There have some incredibly inappropriate comments in this thread, two of which I've already had to flag.

Please, everyone, respect that this is a very serious issue that isn't to be used as fodder for humour.

It's one thing to make a jab at Zuck or Facebook - it's another thing entirely to try to make any aspect of this situation funny.

Thank you.</comment>


SuperEmbed Builder for embedded videos - <AUTHOR> http://wistia.com/product/superembeds

<comment><USER2> $23 per month for 3 videos.. slightly pricey no?

<comment><USER3> I agree. This seems like a very expensive solution to a problem that really doesn't exist.</comment></comment>


PyCon 2013 Videos - <AUTHOR> http://pyvideo.org/category/33/pycon-us-2013 <comment><USER2> We've been collecting slides, videos and notes from PyCon on Lanyrd. Here's our collection:

<http://lanyrd.com/2013/pycon/coverage/>

(Or browse from the schedule: <http://lanyrd.com/2013/pycon/schedule/> )

88 slide decks and 53 videos so far.

<comment><USER3> PyPy talk slides are missing (despite loading in the small window) <http://lanyrd.com/2013/pycon/scdytr/>

<comment><USER2> Are you using Safari? There seems to be a bug with Speaker Deck where Safari doesn't like the SSL certificate served for the images (Chrome on OS X works fine). I've let Speaker Deck know about the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else think "Sweet Jesus" when this link turned out to be a list of very interesting and widely appealing Python-related videos instead of something to do with purported sexism?

<comment><USER5> Yes. And in fact, you're the first person in these comments to mention the subject at all.

<comment><USER6> How many people are thinking of an issue for every persion than mentions it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some amazing content in here.

Love the talk on how the internet works, it's a great intro for people who are getting into the web.

Getting started with automated testing is a great intro for that subject as well.

Also, kudos to the Pycon video team for getting these videos up less than a week after the conference!

Note: Looks like the videos are still being uploaded.

<comment><USER8> Yep, more will be coming online. Looks like you can track updates at <http://twitter.com/NextDayVideo> until it's all up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those of you looking for a refresher, there is a Linear Algebra class coming up in June on Coursera that uses Python as the main language for a variety of applications. I'm very excited for it, should be fun.

<comment><USER10> Do you have a link to that? Couldn't find it through their search.

(edit: doh; of course Googling worked... <https://www.coursera.org/course/matrix> )

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR Here's what I desperately want: A ranking of these videos so I could tell which ones are the best. There are going to be so many and I don't have time to go through them all. If people were able to vote on the ones they liked so I could see just the top 20 videos, that would be superb.

<comment><USER11> pyvideo.org is open source: <https://github.com/willkg/richard> you can implement that feature and send a pull request

<comment><USER11> or you could write your own app, that consumes the API <http://pyvideo.org/api/v1/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For watching on an iOS device, I just discovered the 'Swift Player' app for enabling 2x playback, swipe-10s-jump, and background audio playback for videos on YouTube and elsewhere:

<http://tapparatus.com/swift>

</comment><comment><USER13> I really enjoyed Raymond Hettinger's keynote and his classful development in Python session. Intermediate and advanced Python programmers should watch these as soon as they are up!

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone has a good recommendation on "must see" video from pycon? Most of them look quite interesting (python at netflix, automated testing, Guido's keynote etc.) but if someone has any suggestions please let me know :)

<comment><USER15> It depends what you're interested in. I found these two the most interesting:

[http://pyvideo.org/video/1796/simplecv-computer-vision- using...](http://pyvideo.org/video/1796/simplecv-computer-vision-using-python)

[http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2013-pycon-awesome-big-data- algo...](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2013-pycon-awesome-big-data-algorithms- talk.html) (No video posted yet?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The elasticsearch talk ([http://pyvideo.org/video/1784/elasticsearch- part-1-indexing-...](http://pyvideo.org/video/1784/elasticsearch- part-1-indexing-and-querying)) is fantastic. Can't wait for part 2.

<comment><USER17> That's my voice at the beginning. :)

I was really excited about the talk which is why I volunteered to chair the session. I was happy with the result!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How might I get these into an audio only form, preferably via an RSS feed? (Although if I had the raw audio files I can make the RSS myself.)

</comment><comment><USER19> The recursiveness of PythonBrazil sponsoring PyCon is confusing me atm.

(Refer to the last page in the sponsor navigation)

<comment><USER20> PyCon reserves a few spaces in the expo hall for community organizations and open source projects to run a booth free of charge.

PyAr (Argentina) also wanted to run a booth to interest people in heading down there, especially because the conference occurs close to PythonBrazil, but we were full when they asked.

<comment><USER3> For what is worth, next year would be cool if people were actually force to man the booths. There were a few where there was literally noone there all the time. All cool by me, but a waste of space given some people who asked didn't get a booth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Since my talk isn't up yet, I'll self-plug: MTO On Blast: Using language models to identify endemic constructions in a hip hop gossip blog <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STikIKmsOy8>

</comment><comment><USER22> It's great to see how far pyvideo's gone since early last year. It may be because I'm still on the noob side of Python, but it's been an amazing resource since my first visit.

</comment><comment><USER23> Where's Guido's keynote?

<comment><USER24> They're still processing and uploading videos. It'll be up soon, I imagine.

Edit: It JUST went up on YouTube and Lanyrd 10 minutes ago. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOQLVm0-8Yg>. Not sure why the downvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I recommend downloading with youtube-dl etc. and watching in VLC at 1.5x etc. Only way to get thru so many great videos in a reasonable time.

<comment><USER26> FYI, VLC accepts YouTube links in File > Open Network..., so you don't even have to download them.

<comment><USER25> Very interesting... though there doesn't seem to be much buffer. Running at 1.5x I get to the end of the buffer often and it doesn't stream when it is paused. :( Back to downloading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to see someone summarize these, just a couple paragraphs hitting the key points, and URLs/libraries mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER27> Will the lightning talks also be uploaded? I heard there was a Docker talk.

</comment><comment><USER28> Will there be video of TiP BoF posted?

<comment><USER29> No, TiP BoF is not recorded since is after hours

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> At what point are the big dongle sketches?

<comment><USER31> What is the point of asking this?</comment></comment>


Comparison of data analysis packages: R, Matlab, SciPy, Excel, SAS, SPSS, Stata - <AUTHOR> http://anyall.org/blog/2009/02/comparison-of-data-analysis-packages-r-matlab-scipy-excel-sas-spss-stata/

<comment><USER2> The biggest problem is that the design decisisons of some of the projects listed are pretty poor. Who decided that dataset size should be limited to available memory? Not only does this mean you have a severe limitation to the framework, but it also effects the programmers mentality. It shows. Take a look at the R-source (and tests _cough_ ) and you will see the assumptions.

[speaking from experience writing both in memory and disk based data analysis packages]

Disk based work is pretty straight forward. It's not rocket science, and makes your code much, much faster when working in memory in most circumstances.

<comment><USER3> I would like think that it wouldn't be that hard to adapt an in-memory system to use something like a memory mapped file or even a custom cached memory mapped file. Of course, such a system might not be designed to avoid page swaps/cache hits.

Of course, this is about how the system could evolve - the possibility might not help a simple user now.

<comment><USER2> Well, having done exactly that, you really do need a rewrite or fundamental refactoring. It will touch most functions in your codebase.

Memory mapped won't help when you have a 100gb+ file, and as you say it gets slow as it's definitely not optimal.

You also need custom indexing structures and data caching strategies for most algorithms that aren't easily moved to disk. And most aren't unfortunately. The other issue is that you end up doing a lot of research, because there just aren't many people who have done this. It's a time sucker.

I must say it was awesome seeing our decision tree system running on huge dataset sizes (tested > 100gb) in similar time (~30 seconds) to an in memory database after indexing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scipy+numpy+matplotlib, get enthought's distribution for one stop shop and an interactive shell via Ipython. my 2 cents. Although short-term, matlab legacy code is definitely a big plus for many scientific/data analysis applications.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm using R for largish datasets. When compiled on a 64-bit linux, it can address plenty of memory. The windows version is limited to 1.5 Gb, even in 64-bit windows. This is bound to change as Revolution computing have a 64-bit windows R that works (and adds some Parallel libraries). But that is not free, and it's still in beta. We are getting one. I think 64-bit R + resolver one (no limits for spreadsheet size) can get a lot done in a very visual way. I just happen to catch bugs faster when I color-code cells, but this is impossible to do in straight R (fix() and edit() suck!) or in excel because of spreadsheet limits. The combo I propose (don't have it yet) will be expensive but worth it I think.

</comment><comment><USER6> For the Windows crowd, there is also SQL Server Reporting Services which is "free" if you already have a SQL Server license. It's more of a roll-your-own reporting package but it's quite easy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article was helpful, but read the comments as well. Fleshes out some real life experiences from folks who have used multiple packages.

</comment><comment><USER8> Where does Maple fit in here? I have repeatedly heard of it as an alternative to Matlab.

<comment><USER9> Maple is Mathematica's main competitor.</comment></comment>


Could Reddit sleuths cause harm the Boston bombing investigation? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/reddit-users-may-cause-harm-quest-aid-boston-bombing-investigation <comment><USER2> Teen: I am not the Boston Marathon Bomber

[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/teen-boston-marathon- bomber/st...](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/teen-boston-marathon- bomber/story?id=18990057#.UXBcBKLCZ8H)</comment>


Snowden's Leaks: NSA Hacked into Al Jazeera's Communications Systems - <AUTHOR> http://arabcrunch.com/2013/09/snowdens-leaks-nsa-hacked-into-al-jazeeras-communication-systems.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Where is free media advocacy by the US while it spies on them? do not news organizations have the right to protect their sources?</comment>


How I Blew My Google Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/how_i_blew_my_interview_with_google <comment><USER2> The punchline:

>The interview was going swimmingly until I met up with one interviewer who was apparently anti-military. Using the Google "Do No Evil" mantra as a pretense, he asked me how many people I'd killed when I served. When I explained to him that I was MI, he then asked if I could estimate how many people were killed because of the intelligence I'd gathered. The implication was I was either an evil, efficient killer or an incompetent one - a real no- win situation.

The right answer would be to talk about all the military and civilian lives that were saved because of the intelligence gathered. The comments on the post talk about how such a question was a huge violation of US labor law.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it seem the google folks are getting a bit myopic in their interview process? I mean, yes, they have a very focused mission depending on a very distinct kind of software but it just seems like an awful lot of the interview process is finding out if the candidate will yell "merge sort - n(log(n))" at just the right time.

Google's strength was that meandering "lets just work on what seems coolest" ethos. I'm wondering if they're not selecting out some really great talent by making the interview a test of how well a candidate can scribble some common design patterns on a white board.

I'm not saying that they should hire programmers that can't tell a merge sort from a bubble sort, but perhaps just knowing the difference and when to use them might be enough; Rather than finding out if they can write it out syntax- perfect on the spot in the interview _ers_ favorite language.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure they get a lot of false negatives, which is arguably better than false positives as long as you can fill all positions.

<comment><USER5> Still, they're in danger of establishing an intellectual monoculture, and those tend to get wiped out when environments change.

I'm interested in seeing whether the same mix of staff and company structure can prosper in a recession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alternate title: How one stupid interviewer can cost a corporation millions in settlements.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't it illegal to discriminate on the basis of military service? The guy who asked you those questions may have opened himself, and google, to a serious lawsuit.

IANAL, of course.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is that a picture of Gabor from Xobni?

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow. %%%king unbelievable ending. I would have punched that guy in the face.</comment>