I have seen a great parking lot lately:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3NZ6J8Fg6c
116 karma · joined June 18, 2010
There is a tradeoff of computation (doing binary search inside the node) and amount of storage (keeping less pointers). In environments where memory access is much more expensive than a CPU instruction, it is preferable to perform these computations than to have to read all the extra pointer data to jump to the right places.
In fact, a breed of cache-friendly data structures are precisely based on the B+Trees but with even less pointers, having the algorithm compute these pointers instead (CSS-, CSB-Trees)
It is clear to everybody that iMessage is not a platform-independent to send messages today. Thus, there is still a need for BBM, SMS, and all.
However, the distribution of people who own iPhones is not as uniform as the author seems to imply. Sure, maybe there are only 5 iPhones for every 95 other phones; however, I know my girlfriend, parents, and close friends all own at least one iOS device. The service will remove the need for SMS for those who are in the same situation, and the extent to which this happens is not addressed here in any valuable form.
It is also true that GTalk may have a higher usage, and I'd be thrilled if iMessage worked with GTalk (I think). However, iMessage will be tightly integrated into the Phone application, which makes it much more convenient to use than any other IM service on the iPhone. Maybe iMessage/GTalk interoperability would make iMessage more effective; this doesn't mean as it stands iMessage will be ineffective.
An example of these classes is Prof. Michael Mitzenmacher's algorithm's class, which is both challenging and fun. I think the class is offered online and maybe in person during the summer. (http://www.extension.harvard.edu/2010-11/courses/21462.jsp?c... )
I don't particularly remember ever seeing an ad for Facebook, Google until recently, or OKCupid. Yet it seemed to matter little as those sites grew.
However, I find the choice of the term 'Third World America' to be particularly deceiving. Let's take Louisiana, for example, marked as amongst the worst regions according to the infographic. Median earnings are 28,000 and about 75% with at least high school education.
Now let's compare against Mexico's average. Mexico is not nearly as bad as other third world countries. Average earnings are about 7,000 USD/year [1] (and median earning is probably worse). Roughly have of Mexicans haven't completed their junior high school education (6th to 9th). These are national averages, though, which --unlike the infographic -- do not focus only on the poorest areas. The poorest areas are, of course, much worse.
I'm not trying to say with this that you shouldn't complain if others have it worse. I am just saying that this particular choice of wording is not realistic and, in my mind, took away from the credibility of the rest of the site .
[1] http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/12/07/index.php?section=econ... [2] http://simposio.asu.edu/2004/docs/mesas/2/suarez.pdf
This is normal and has nothing to do with how you choose to represent it.
It would have been meaningless to show any graph or table saying 'Python has the most messages with profanity" if the amount of Python projects is 80% of all the projects out there.
If this is the case, then I guess that explains the anonimity.
They have fixed costs (independent from the number of tickets bought) in the form of payments for search results to ITA plus whatever company overhead (maintenance, salaries, etc).
Whether Hipmunk can afford improvements in user experience while earning thinner margins than the competition is not entirely obvious to me.
I do hope they make it though. Hipmunk rocks!
The question is pretty legit; the long application asks a number of questions like how much you use desktop apps (Anything from MATLAB to Citrix), and also about your preference in Google products vs anything else (gmail, calendar, docs, etc).
Is there any indication to whether they are picking people with good fits (e.g. those who basically use all the Google products already) or are they just selecting people randomly, using the data provided just for stats and context to the person's inputs?
However, I'd make the following claims:
(1) Some of the functions are simply not that used. You can get by perfectly well without knowing what double and triple clicks on the home button, for example, If you don't know they exist, you will never even notice.
(2) iOS has less features than Android and arguably this makes it somehow less powerful but also less confusing for my mom (e.g. no task manager, no intents).
(3) Switching to a Mac was actually quite challenging coming from PC land ("where's maximize?", "where's a working Alt-Tab?", etc). I'd say the usability still kicks in as far as how easy it is to do your job for most after the learning curve has passed. Your mileage may vary, but I find myself enjoying using my Mac more than I ever did using Windows on my PC for usual tasks, and that's part of what makes it usable for me. I'd expect a similar phenomenon with iOS.
Did this happen to anyone else? In any case, best of luck to BankSimple. I can't wait to actually get to try the service. :)
I think this is a great idea, but having worked on benchmarking database structures in the past, I'd be weary of using them for any type of real benchmark.
For one, trying to model a real disk would get very complicated very fast. Say, the access time of the disk will be a function of the position on disk, so it would be unrealistic to get random delays when scanning a large chunk of contiguous data or by just having a few delays in a random-access heavy load would also be extremely unfair.
In short, trying to model complicated disk latencies is pretty hard, and usually if you are programming with some model of disk in mind, building a disk latency simulator under that same model may end up giving you a false sense of security.
For what it's worth, I'd favor getting a cheap hard disk and trying the load there instead.
One of them asked that I solve some programming challenges. Sure, I like puzzles and I like being challenged. However, at the time I was already being challenged by my thesis work, problem sets, interviews... it's hard to agree to make a huge time commitment just to get the right to a first round interview.
Since other hot startups/ cool companies (Google, FB) don't require this type of activity, it makes sense to me to think that a lot of people simply won't have the time to apply because they're busy solving more interesting puzzles.
I have bought more than a couple of CDs from CD Baby and thanks to them I've been able to connect with more than a couple of wonderful artists.
However, from Apple's perspective, it must have seemed like CD Baby was simply trying to make a profit simply by guaranteeing access to the Apple Store, and therefore Apple decided not to move forward in order to protect its brand.
I personally prefer the older Google Images. For one, I lose the ability to scroll the website immediately after finding it. I do this, for example, when I'm searching for some algorithm by first finding a diagram that I think is clearer and then going directly to read the explanation, or when searching for a recipe by looking for the image first.
I find the new interface to be slightly cluttered to use (with all the animations and uncomfortable feeling when scrolling), At some point, Yahoo (and others) had pretty cluttered interfaces and people eventually shifted to Google, commonly citing simplicity. For this reason, I find that taking the leap to 'everyone complains about changes' to trivialize the fact that many people may, in fact, appreciate simple interfaces.
There sometimes is a superior interface, and discussing the pros and cons of a new interface is very valuable.
The task you are splitting has to be sizeable enough that the setup costs of parallelization (in this case, going to every cashier to put your stuff and then going and picking it up) don't outweigh the potential benefits from parallelization.In this case, unless you are buying the whole store, it just doesn't make sense to bother splitting your shopping cart like this.
Further, if all the cashiers are busy at all the times being useful (ringing customers), you cannot possibly get a gain from splitting any further. There's no way you could improve the throughput of this system when every processing unit (cashier) is at the top of its utilization.
Slim's story includes several investments on different industries, including specialty shops (Sanborn's) which he has managed to completely turn around from near-bankrupcy to huge commercial success.
I am not making a claim that his wealth from Telmex didn't contribute to his success, but implying he just managed to get where he is because Mexico's regulatory bodies are useless is a huge understatement to his ability in an industry where several key players (Like AT&T, Nextel, Telefonica Movistar, and others have failed).
(2) It's interesting that they trust the voice recognition so much that you can say "Call X Company" and they will google it and call it. If they get it wrong, you'll end up dialing some really weird place instead. This is a personal problem I have with the voice recognition commands on my iPhone. I've ended up calling completely unintended people because the phone misunderstands me, and I can only imagine adding an extra factor of error may make things worse.
I really hope this type of stuff catches on.
I haven't had the opportunity to look at a brain layer by layer, so it's hard to imagine how to construct it from it. However, with common fruits which we've always seen inside out, having an idea of how they look when MRId helps me figure out an inverse map from MIR images to whatever they came from.
As an international student in the US, I personally would enormously benefit from a cell phone that can do video conversations well. My family lives thousands of miles away, and seeing their faces is actually something I really value. We communicate via Skype constantly for the video functions, but this really limits the flexibility of where I can take the calls.
I am going to be working far away from my university, and I will be using video conference to talk to my girlfriend while I'm away. I am considering getting a pair of iPhones for the ease of use and convenience (she's not very tech savvy).
As to IMs, I personally am a heavy IM user, and there's a number of iPhone applications for IMing (Palringo, Beejive, Windows Live Messenger come to mind). I don't use it because it is just too bothersome to have extended conversations when typing with any small keyboard.
Of course, I'm not implying that just because I feel like this would anybody else do, but I don't think it's as crystal clear as the OP describes.
I usually found the problem sets were usually really hard. Much harder than the actual exams. Most study groups that I had seen simply consisted of one person that found the questions very easy, and a group of people that scrambled to write down the responses, even if they didn't understand them. I always found it hilarious (not really, in fact I always thought it was really unfair) that psets would be so hard, and I would do relatively poorly compared to the almost full score everyone got. On the other hand, when the exams came about, the averages were usually extremely low, with exams that should be a piece of cake for someone who can actually figure out the pset questions.
As a Teaching Assistant, I saw this situation even more clearly. As part of an assignment, students had to write an algorithm in pseudocode. We didn't publish a very well defined syntax for the language. However, interestingly, like half of the students came up with identical syntax, including instructions we had never discussed and that weren't even conventional. After finding several pset copies that were simply identical to each other, the professor decided that simply sending them an e-mail was enough of a punishment.
I find that insulting for those who actually try hard and expect their grades to be an accurate reflection of their standing in the class.
The question is: why does it make economic sense to refuse a cheap labor force? If suddenly some aliens came to the US and said "we have figured out a way to get free food. have all the food you need here", would there be complaints about the number of farmers that are losing their jobs or unfairly competing against free products?
Theoretically, it seems to me that the positive aggregate effect on consumers is larger than the negative (and very regrettable) effect on the farmers. For this reason, wouldn't it make more sense to have the consumers compensate the farmers by helping them pay for their education, etc, so that they can find new jobs? This seems to me as the efficient way to think about immigration.
Where I come from (Mexico, of all places), I hear people sometimes complain about how computers shouldn't be allowed on certain government offices, since they will leave thousands of people without a job. I'd say that, if they can find a different job, then we can all be better off by finding cheaper production factors.
I feel that using these stories to conclude that we shouldn't let kids have access to valuable equipment to be counterproductive. I would say it's much better to reason with them (as the author seems to have done).
My father bought me a computer when I was really young and told me to play with it all I wanted. He also told me not worry if I broke it as long as I was not being reckless. Thanks to that, I am now a graduate student in Computer Science.
You can always make the case that, on the contrary, you may want to go to a hotel to experience something that you haven't experienced before.
If the design is somehow more functional or otherwise makes the room look very beautiful, I'd be more than happy to stay at a place like this.
If necessary, they can always put little notes explaining how some of the main tasks get done.
I agree that the fact that people stay in a hotel for only at most a couple of days puts more constraints on how accustomed people can get to another interface. My own programming "quirks" have developed for a reason. So why does the author then use this example to justify his point about teamwork when the metaphor breaks? Or is he implying that you will only work with a team for such short time that no one will reap any benefits from getting used to ideas that make things faster in the long run?
I've helped my friend do recruiting at his startup (albeit, not in the US). There are hundreds and hundreds of applications, and the constraint I pointed out becomes evident. Is it really cost-effective to personally interview and understand the context of every single resume-submitter, including those with absolutely no experience? How about someone without even a compsci degree and no experience to make up for it?