amit_m

I'd say you are overestimating the day-to-day worries of a typical tech employee and underestimating those of billionaire founders.

Personally, I get a small PhD scholarship, but I don't worry about paying my bills and I like my humble office much more than facebook's open space. I have savings that could last me a couple of years and for all intents and purposes I feel plenty rich. I can also take a vacation free from worries, unlike the CEO of a big company.

Anyone with no kids and a full time job can spend hours per day doing nothing but daydreaming and speculating - most americans seem to waste their leisure time watching TV. If that's what you want, nothing is stopping you. You need not wait for the billions.

The only major difference between a super-rich person and an upper-middle class employee is the freedom to quit your job and pursue other things. However, I know a lot of people who made enough money to retire and none have stopped working.

tl;dr: Julia is killing it.

Inequality is not just about poor people feeling bad because the rich have bigger TVs!

In modern countries, markets are the standard way of distributing finite or growth-limited resources (e.g. apartments in San Francisco). In these games the ONLY thing that matters is relative wealth.

As a result of this, poor people become measurably poorer as a result of other people getting richer.

Amazon is, to a close approximation, not profitable. Would you say it is unreasonable for its founders to take large paychecks?

Source: See second chart on http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/05/27/decoding-share-prices-a...

If you can't bother to understand the work then heuristics are your best bet. In this case, the authors are leading academics from good computer science departments. This makes the probability of the paper being an outright hoax very low. They would be risking their careers and the respect of their peers - and for what exactly? Shamir in particular is already at the top of the game (full professor + turing award + many millions of dollars from royalties).

Now, mistakes CAN happen. But in this case, it would be very hard to make one. If they built a system that reconstructs the cryptographic key then you could compare the keys on both sides.

You probably want to look at a couple of good undergrad textbooks (calculus, linear algebra, probability). The good textbooks explain the notation and have an index for all the symbols.

Unfortunately, in most cases, you have to know a little bit about the field in order to be able to parse the notation. The upside is that having some background is pretty much a necessity to not screwing up when you try to implement some algorithm.

The CPU can also execute instructions exceeding one per clock cycle. For example instructions such as MOV, CMP and even conditional jumps run at a typical throughput of 3 instructions per clock cycle on the intel Core line of CPUs. (source: http://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf)

This means that the simplest handcrafted loop that loads a byte, compares its value to the first byte of the searched string and then does a conditional jump should (if unrolled) take about 1 clock cycle per byte examined!

This means that if our DDR3 memory can read 6GB of data per second and our CPU core is clocked at 3Gh, this completely naive algorithm will run at half of the theoretical maximum speed.

Using XMM instructions (that work on 16 bytes at a time), should probably get us to the limit of the RAM speed.

Regarding SAN-over-10-gig link. I don't know about you, but the computer I'm typing this on has an SSD that can read only a few hundred megabytes per second.

Stop smoking weed for a month. See if that increases your drive in some quantifiable sense (it probably will). If so, stop smoking as a daily habit. Save it for special social occasions and only on weekends.

After you've regulated your cannabis intake, try to get some exercise into your routine, in any way possible. The important part here is to FORM A HABIT and stick with it.

I find that for myself the easiest change was to start cycling to work instead of driving. After about two weeks it started feeling like the most natural thing in the world and now driving appears odd.

After your body is reasonably healthy, if you are still unmotivated then maybe it's time to make a major change to your routine. e.g. job, relationships, location, you probably know which one needs to change. If that change doesn't help rinse and repeat.

Another option is that you're suffering from mild depression, in that case consult with a psychiatrist. Some antidepressants work like magic in matter of days.

I wonder how much these tricks matter nowadays. Even if we ignore the time to read from disk, for simple algorithms that scan data linearly, it is often the case that the CPU is spending most of its time waiting for the data to be read from RAM.

Also, in modern x86 processors, an entire cache line (64 bytes) is read whenever a single byte is needed. So for strings smaller than 64, even algorithms that don't check every byte will read every byte from disk to RAM and from RAM to the processor cache.

tl;dr: (1) Author does not understand the role of research papers (2) Claims mathematical notation is more complicated than code and (3) Thinks ML is easy because you can code the wrong algorithm in 40 lines of code.

I will reply to each of these points:

1. Research papers are meant to be read by researchers who are interested in advancing the state of the art. They are usually pretty bad introductory texts.

In particular, mathematical details regarding whether or not the space is closed, complete, convex, etc. are usually both irrelevant and incomprehensible to a practitioner but are essential to the inner workings of the mathematical proofs.

Practitioners who want to apply the classic algorithms should seek a good book, a wikipedia article, blog post or survey paper. Just about anything OTHER than a research paper would be more helpful.

2. Mathematical notation is difficult if you cannot read it, just like any programming language. Try learning to parse it! It's not that hard, really.

In cases where there is an equivalent piece of code implementing some computation, the mathematical notation is usually much shorter.

3. k-means is very simple, but its the wrong approach to this type of problem. There's an entire field called "recommender systems" with algorithms that would do a much better job here. Some of them are pretty simple too!

Dropbox has basically replaced my homedir and nearly everything I do now goes inside (documents, photos, git repositories).

It is installed on my home laptop, university desktop, smartphone and tablet. Goodreader (a PDF reader) can sync to a Dropbox directory with PDF files. So I can quickly access all of the papers I ever saved. This is a very convenient way of overcoming ipad's terrible sync-using-itunes mechanism.

What is so funny about it? I think the first reply is spot on.

In fact, one of the best things about Dropbox is that they worked very hard on removing any barriers, including making sure that it can be installed on a windows machine without requiring administrator privileges.

I am confident that a large percentage of their users would have been unable to use Dropbox had this issue not been addressed.

Interesting post. The author could save another 0.83$ per package by skipping the included instruction manual.

I think it's safe to assume that very close to 100% of users will have an internet connection available when playing this game, unless they're on a vacation abroad. I would opt for: 1. Full manual + videos on spacedice.com, aimed for use before the first time one plays the game. 2. Abridged version of manual printed on the tube, mainly meant for recalling some specifics of the game.

AFAIK Israel has more startups per capita than any other country in the world, but the legally mandated benefits are very similar to those in the UK (with slightly less vacation time).

Actually, I think some form of social safety net is supportive of very entrepreneurs. From personal experience, the only people I know who quit their job to work full time on a startup had significant savings from previous jobs. Also it's quite common in Israel to start working on your startup while getting unemployment benefits.

Argh! Worst streaming experience ever. Also, no contents in the first 20 minutes.

It took me a while to understand that the slides were in a popup was blocked. After reloading, the slides don't match the audio.

I didn't go straight from undergrad, took a few years off to work in various places, then started a master's degree in CS/math. The first year was mostly coursework (some were good, most were meh) and a bit of probing to find interesting fields for research. Unlike undergrad, some courses you take in graduate school are incredibly specific and cover whatever material the professor has been researching lately. The second year is typically more focused on doing research - you find an advisor and start diving deep into some specific problem. Though, the exact schedule can change from place to place.

I'm really enjoying myself and continued to a direct PhD track. It's the best job I've ever had. The work is interesting and the freedom is amazing. Your milage may vary.

I'm not sure what is the "value" of a master's degree is. It certainly looks good on a CV and might help you get a higher rank at some megacorp. Google for example is known to be very fond of advanced degrees. If you want to make software for a living I don't think it matters an awful lot. Particularly in the smaller companies and startups. Taking advanced courses will teach you some new tricks and acquaint you with fields you've never even heard of. You'll probably relearn some things from undergrad and understand the better. But the main point in a master's degree is to get a taste of academic research and see if you like it or not. There are a lot of interesting fields in CS and doing research in most of them is entirely different than being a professional programmer.

My recommendations to you, if you think you might be interested in research: 1. Try to get into a very good university (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turing_Award_laureates_...). No point in doing an advanced degree at a mediocre school. Some of those places only offer PhD programs, but you can leave in the middle and get a master's degree.

2. If you have a specific field that interests you, try finding a school with several professors working in that field. You'll have more options that way.

3. Don't do it if you're burned out! You can get a job instead. If you like learning and solving difficult problems, after 1-2 years you'll probably get that itch again.

4. In my experience 2-3 months of travel is enough to completely recuperate from any feelings of burnout and to start getting excited about "regular" life again. This shouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars if you fly to somewhere far and cheap.

You got it wrong: more DOLLARS want to cure baldness than malaria.

I don't get this post.

O notation specifies the asymptotic behavior of (mathematical) functions. e.g. sqrt(n) = O(n/log(n))

In order to use O notation to describe the performance of an algorithm, one must specify 1. What is being measured and 2. What is the class of inputs.

What startups outside the US need to know about health insurance in 2013: nothing.

This choice is decided in a democratic process. Countries with very high levels of taxation and public services (e.g. scandinavian countries) have earned a high level of trust from their voters that the money is put to good use.

To pay less taxes you could either relocate to some place with less taxes (this is quite possible in the US, since state and city taxes vary). Or you could work democratically to change the system. If you really want to live in any place approximating anarcho-capitalism, you would have to move to a 3rd world country.

If one could opt out of taxes, that would be the end of the tax system. Of course no individual wants to pay for the public services. Everybody want the other guy to pay! In the same manner, you could ask why one cannot opt out of the penal system. --- As to the "hunting as theft" issue: as long as there are plenty of animals to hunt, you are not taking from anyone. That was the state of affairs 100,000 years ago. When resources are limited they must be managed/taxed in some way. Humanity has not solved most of these issues at this point. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

So you could ask: when did I agree to those japanese fishing vessels depleting the fisheries next to my shores, do I have a choice in the matter? Their fishing raises the price of wild fish and serves as a de-facto sushi tax, only you don't get to eat any of the sushi...

My point is, we are not in the paleolithic period anymore. The world is too complex and resources are too few for fully individualistic economic philosophies.

So you have a problem in taking taxpayer money for working on science that advances all of mankind?

Instead you could work in Ad targeting/personalization, where you will help trick people into clicking on ads for products they have no interest in, while invading their privacy in borderline-illegal ways.

Or you could do for-profit research whose only purpose is to convince decision makers to buy X, regardless of the true reality. (drug companies put billions into this type of work)

Or you could work in Microsoft Research or similar environments. It is actually quite similar to academia in many regards. The funding is also mostly taken by force (of monopoly, many individuals and companies have no choice but to work in Microsoft Office due to deliberate format incompatibilities).

Taxation is not theft. It is a societal agreement. I know of no society, except extremely primitive hunter-gatherer societies, that has no notion of tax for public services.

And even there, you could say everyone is "stealing" from the public goods all the time. (if you hunt and eat an animal, then you have stolen it from the rest of the people).

It looks like they could've chosen to extend one of the established projects (e.g. Cython, PyPy, CPython), maybe making some compromises. Instead they chose to start from scratch, which means that the chances of this actually becoming usable are.. Rather slim. What a pity. The Python community could really use something like this.

A cookbook has recipes. If this is a cookbook, where are the recipes? :-)

Such a concept might make sense in this context. e.g. Recipe to calculate p-values. How to fit various distributions. A recipe to calculate posterior probabilities, etc.

I wouldn't call it a cookbook.

It is an (unusually large) cheatsheet.

Because IT JUST WORKS. Dropbox is multiplatform, fast, almost zero-hassle to install and maintain and free (up to a size limit). What more could you ask?

I often work on my Macbook on the train, then when I get to the office I switch to a Win7 PC and continue working on those same files. There is zero hassle and I can hardly imagine a better solution. ()

As a bonus I get access to all my files from my smartphone and ipad. And with the ipad being such a pain in the ass to synchronize, you really need some kind of dropbox-like solution.

() - Maybe if you did all your work inside VMWare and had the state of the OS image automatically synced between computers that would be a nicer solution... Then you would not have to close your project files on computer #1 and reopen them on computer #2.

This might become a great transition technology. But leaves many problems unsolved: 1. All the issues surrounding fuel-burning engines OR all the issues surrounding huge and expensive batteries. 2. An inherent lack of energy efficiency. The payload/car-weight ratio is typically 1/10 or worse. 3. Cars are very expensive, they take a lot of space and require roads that take even more space. 4. Cars are not safe.

Driverless cars really only solve (4) and have small advantages in terms of fuel efficiency and congestion. A network of Driverless taxis should be much cheaper than owning a car, since these cars will be utilized heavily throughout the day. An even better approach would be an automatically dispatched shared-taxi system that would group passengers that want to go to close destinations.

I wonder why there isn't more effort directed towards Personal-Rapid-Transport system. i.e.small electric carts on dedicated lanes (or lines, or rails), with low weight and no battery. Like a packet-switched version of the train system. Such systems can be highly automatic, very energy-efficient and provide convenient rides relatively cheaply. It looks like we have had all the technology required to do it for at least 30 years. It seems that the only thing stopping this type of technology from being developed is that it requires someone with a lot of capital and guts who's not afraid of dealing with a regulatory nightmare. Unfortunately there aren't that many Elon Musks out there.

Here are some specialized PRT systems in use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit#Existing...

Seriously? Most of the world's population doesn't drive a car. It's not good for very long distances and not good for very dense urban areas where traffic is slow and parking is lacking. It can't drive in rural areas (unless you have a sturdy jeep) and it costs a lot of money. Also, it has a non-negligible probability to kill you along the way.

The modern car is not some one-true solution to transportation, it's great success in the US has a lot to do with the patterns of suburban sprawl and to destruction of the rail system by the car manufacturers.

I suspect the car is going out of fashion as people move more and more into dense cities.

3% of the budget, not the GDP! I am not sure it makes too much sense to divide it by the GDP.

Israel's GDP is around 250$ billion. So US foreign aid is around 1.2% of GDP.

However, as I mentioned in the previous post, this aid does not come in the form of actual dollars but in the ability to purchase goods with highly inflated prices and some strings attached. I'm pretty sure Israel would happily trade 3$ billion of US foreign aid with 1$ billion of actual money.

So you think only highly prosperous countries can afford vacation days? I believe that among western countries it's more about priorities and who is pulling the strings - if it's the regular folks who have power through their vote or the company owners, who use lobbying firms, campaign donations and control of the media to abort any legislation mandating vacation days, etc.

Western europe has used its economic prosperity to get more vacation days over the years, maternity leave, free education and other social goods. While in the US it seems to work in the exact opposite direction.

The extreme case is France, where they seem to be on constant vacation (>60 days!), get free university education, excellent free healthcare and all the good wine to the great dismay of the Chicago school economists that keep predicting its imminent collapse year after year.

Israel's history is also a counterexample, as it was very poor in its early years (1948 - 1980s) and much more socialistic than it is today. Surely Israel can afford MORE vacation days and other social benefits today than it could 40 years ago. But the trend is exactly the opposite. Unfortunately we have a US educated prime minister.

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About the magnitude of US foreign aid to Israel and its role in the economy, here are some numbers:

Total US foreign aid to Israel: about 3$ billion / year. [1] Total israeli budget: about 100$ billion / year. [2]

Even though this is serious money, canceling the US foreign aid would not make a huge dent in Israel's budget. e.g. 3$ billion can be taxed by increasing the VAT from 16% to 18.8%. [3]

In addition to that, as someone who watched how this foreign aid budget is spent in the military, one dollar of foreign aid is worth MUCH LESS than one real dollar. Since goods must be bought from a specific purchasing catalogue, and this catalogue is both limited and has highly inflated prices. e.g. more than 2500$ for a standard IBM desktop PC.

I think this follows partly from the requirement that at least 50% of the manufactured goods must be made in the US. So many products are made in China, then shipped to the US for repackaging (where their price is doubled) and then shipped back to Israel.

Note also that a large part of US foreign aid goes to purchasing very expensive fighter jets (F-15, F-16) and spare parts. A hugely important goal of the Israeli air force is to have more F-16 planes than the egyptians have. But the Egyptians also get their aircraft from US foreign aid. My interpretation of this state of affairs is that main reason congress is backing both sides of this arms race is in order to take taxpayer money and give it to the military-industrial complex.

Sources: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_re... [2] (sorry, hebrew only) http://budget.msh.gov.il/#00,2012,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0 [3] http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4234752,00.html