deathflute

I would say 2500$ for a non-apple machine. Yes, building my own is definitely an option, but time is of the essence, so I prefer buying. If I had to allocate a weekend between building this machine or hacking, I would have to go with the latter.

I have one of the older HP workstations under me at work. I agree they are quite nice. It is definitely an option but with the prices about the same, I am a little biased towards apple.

My co-worker has a hackintosh laptop. It is not bad, but every time he updates something, he has to spend time tinkering with it. If you don't mind doing that, you could try that option.

I understand what the author is trying to say, but I find the language very confusing. To say that, you need to be creative and intelligent to be able to deal with crap sounds correct in theory, but in practice it is the worst use of these skills. To deal with crap, you have to basically "suck it up" and swallow you pride. Thats it! Ultimately if that is a large part of what it takes to succeed at your job, then you are basically adding a lot of noise to both your career and the success of your company.

Hey, instead of asking for one sponsor, perhaps you could set up a donation system (kickstarter?) so that people can contribute whatever they feel comfortable with.

I was having severe pain with this last month. Some steps that I took that have helped -

1. Minimize computer usage - the best way to deal with RSI is to rest your hands. So if you are doing something at the computer that you can avoid, stop doing it.

2. Avoid using a laptop keyboard/trackboard. Most of them are ergonomic disasters. I use a kinesis advantage pro now.

3. Mild exercise like yoga or cycling.

4. xwrits to take frequent typing breaks.

Do you have any references comparing the performance of lua with other scripting languages? Thanks

In my experience edanm is correct. map/reduce/filter are faster with built-in functions, but list comprehensions are faster with user-defined ones

For eg. using python 2.5.2

In [9]: l = ['10'] * 5000000

In [10]: timeit -n5 map(int, l)

5 loops, best of 3: 1.29 s per loop

In [11]: timeit -n5 [int(i) for i in l]

5 loops, best of 3: 1.64 s per loop

Thanks, I am also thinking about hiring remote workers for ML style stuff, so this is very helpful indeed.

Hey bravura,

Do you mind elaborating your process of hiring remote workers for short term gigs? Do you make them sign NDA agreements?

How do you make sure they are not abusing the code that you give them?

Thanks

On this note, does anyone know a good tutorial on map reduce for experienced programmers? Basically, I want to learn how to frame advanced problems in terms of MR - I am particularly interested in expressing my discrete event simulation in terms of MR.

Well said. You basically wrote what I would have attempted to write. Taking statements out of context is like overfitting the data and leads to poor generalization.

As someone living in nyc for the last four years, some of the things that I noticed when I spent a few days in SF last month :

1. Cabs advertise could computing instead of strip clubs.

2. It was tough to find cabs in the Mission district.

3. The city never seemed like much of a walking city. The neighborhoods are far apart and everyone has cars.

4. There are lots of cafes and on average they serve better coffee than nyc.

5. The food is a little bit cheaper than nyc.

6. The architecture seems much for uniform and nicer than nyc buildings. Sure nyc has its brownstones, but there are not that many of them.

7. Some of the highest yelp rated bars in the Union Square area were closed on Sunday nights. This would never happen in nyc.

8. I couldn't imagine how people go out to bars if they have to drive.

9. The weather gets a little too cold in the evenings/nights.

10. Restaurants serve more generous portions of wine and the average restaurant has a pretty good wine list.

11. I heard the tenderloin area was sketchy, but at least in the area just around Union Square, I never saw anything like that.

yummyfajitas,

Are you guys lagging behind in email? I emailed you guys, but never received a response back.

Also, when you get a chance please do post some solutions.