joehilton

watching Werner's talk now; is AWS CloudShell the same thing as GCP's browser terminal? seems like it is...anyone have any early indications?

I respect that. I don't know if I have a specific suggestion on how you can run leaner, but look for ways to sell/trade what few assets you control for cash.

When I was trying to learn to code, I was an undergrad with literally no money, but I had a prepaid college meal plan my parents had bought me. So I ate one meal a day for a month and sold off my extra meals at a discount for cash to buy coding books.

For example, if your van runs, I can think of several possibilities, especially if you don't need it during the day (i.e. drive to a library or somewhere where you can work for free all day and then you've got a HUGE asset available to work out trades and deals all day every day).

I'm interested in this. Would you have a way for me to pipe you lots of data? Like way bigger than a CSV file upload?

This study adds a little more color than the Dice study (which has been reposted from multiple sources at least 3 times now).

If you adjust for the same basic factors as the Dice study but also factor in location and some cost of living factors, it matters quite a bit where you are geographically when comparing tech salaries.

But never thought I'd see a study that ranked it better to be in tech in Detroit than in SF, so either this is very interesting or also flawed in some key ways.

I'm looking for research on quantum encryption (which is only briefly mentioned at the end of the article). Is anyone aware of work being done for this, specifically how the quantum keys would be stored?

Right now the write speed for this is 1.6MB/s, which is starting to get pretty good for long term storage.

Beats DNA's current state of the art in both speed and durability, although capacity is still quite small by comparison.

Pretty cool.

Yes, I think this visualization would be FAR more helpful if the weighted lines were adjusted by the relative population in each group. Or at the very least make each group a different sized bubble so you aren't surprised when so many lines seem to keep going back to it.

This is one of the interesting connections on the chart. My theory (being an ex-welder as well as a dancer) is that both of these are strongly one-gender dominated professions - almost all my welding friends were male and almost all my dancing friends were female (in three different states no less). And for the majority of marriages up to this point in largely heterosexual historical data, you don't meet many people of the opposite gender to marry in your regular day. The one exception is when set workers (male welders) are around a stage all day where the performers (female dancers) are doing the show. So you get these relatively few places to meet a potential mate that turn up in funny combos.

Do you mean cash free as in no paper money and coins, or do you mean cash free like super slick trading algorithms in a stunning shared economy that really requires no form of money at all?

Or maybe it's just that throwing more money at Facebook won't make it any faster or better at doing good. It's quite possible the Zuck really does think Facebook is the best way to have an impact, but more money won't increase the impact. So, having more money than ability to deploy in a single entity, he's branching out into others.

The difference between the amount and a number is exactly what I'm afraid negative numbers misrepresent.

Real and imaginary number sets are the heart of the point (and I think my high school calc - if I can remember that many years ago - did include some work with imaginary numbers, certainly by early college work).

Since an amount can never be negative, then a negative number only makes sense to denote the movement of an amount from one system to another. If we say that negative numbers are real numbers, and especially if we use them as the same class as positive numbers when building blocks to formulate ideas and theories about physical properties and amounts, I'm wondering if there is a potential downside to our fundamental understanding of what our results actually mean.

One of the other replies points out the necessity of units paired with numbers, and I think this is correct. The problem I'm observing, and the heart of my question, is that we have many, many ideas/proofs/theorems in mathematics with unitless numbers (constants and so on, both positive and negative), and then we use the results of this work to jump back into the physical universe to "prove" something. Could there be a problem with our basic use of numbers when we do this?

This is very interesting - thanks for the reply and link. I'll dive into Becher and Figueria.

Yes this is exactly right: "The physical intepretation of a negative number is the quantified absence of a unit." In the physical world, the absence of a unit just means the perspective doesn't include whatever it is that is intended to be observed, although that thing may exist elsewhere. In other words, a negative number may be an abstraction for quantifying that a unit has left an isolated system, but I'm not sure our current usage of numbers as abstractions captures this - it seems like we often use negative numbers (in any unit) to denote the actual subtraction of that unit universally as opposed to its transfer to another isolated system. (This could be where mathematicians can get into trouble compared to physicists as perhaps they don't have the same habit of observing units.)

I was actually using the terms "real" and "imaginary" non-colloquially to denote real and complex numbers (5, -1, pi, e, -1^-2, etc.).

It's true that nonnegative numbers are just abstract ideas that we come up with to represent quantity, but that's just it: quantity is a real thing. Is there such a thing as negative quantity? That's my question.

I like the reference to the contention of what we currently denote as imaginary numbers and how they should be compared as just as real as other numbers. This is the same issue I'm questioning but from the other side. I'm questioning if we should count negative numbers as real as opposed to understanding them as a set that is at least imaginary, if not complex or irrational.

I also like the point about a counterclockwise rotation being just as real as a clockwise rotation. This is where the non/negative sign is used to indicate a vector. As long as you have a point of reference, this is always ok because it's simply referring to what type of amount of whatever quantity/magnitude/etc we're dealing with.

But I believe this is different than what we often do with negative numbers when working through many of our problems that involve unitless numbers/constants or take an abstraction and apply it as a physical theory - in these cases the negative numbers were treated as separate and real when in fact they should have been directions, unit movement, or other information about actual physical quantities. This is where I'm wondering if we should treat negative numbers as a different set altogether.

Yes, this makes sense. If this is the case though, then aren't there some obvious problems with how we think of dimensions (at least the first three or four anyway)?

It seems like creating space to fill the "voids" between particles moving at-what-would-be-faster than the speed of light is like a tesseract for whatever matter is in that rapidly created/expanding space. Unless that space is only accessible to the particles creating it by their relative motion (which still gives us problems with our ideas of dimensions)?

It was my understanding that this is true from our perspective in time right now, but the Big Crunch could still be plausible if the universe turns out to be young enough (which it seems like it is) that not all the fusion fuel has been exhausted. Once it is, we'll have big clouds of nuclear waste interspersed between black holes, and perhaps in this environment the Big Crunch could still occur.

I think another question for the Big Crunch is what type of "fuel" is needed to create an exothermic fusion reaction comparable to the Big Bang? For example, the sun compresses hydrogen to produce helium and release massive energy. Black holes are undoubtedly compressing helium enough to make Beryllium, but this doesn't seem to release any energy that can escape the gravity that created the pressure required in the first place. So for the Big Crunch - Big Bang cycle to hold up, what type of matter (and how much of it) has be be compressed (and is gravity the only force that's compressing it) to the point where some type of "fusion" reaction produces enough energy to escape the compression forces?

I've also had a long-time question around this point. I've asked various university physics professors, and they all stutter and disagree (which means either we really don't know or I'm going to all the wrong universities). The underlying question is: When we say in general relativity that particles can't travel faster than light, what is that speed measured relative to?

If it's photons emitting from flashlights pointed in opposite directions relative to each other, then are they compressing space as they travel so as not to exceed the speed of light? Or even massive particles accelerated to over half the speed of light at different times around an ellipse so there is a moment when their opposite directions make one traveling at greater than the speed of light relative to the other? (Or even particle accelerators on two different planets already expanding away from each other - does this just mean that space is really twisting and turning all the time to make sure no particle ever exceeds the speed of light relative to any other particle?)

It has been my understanding - and appreciation at Einstein's unbelievable insight and brilliance - that relativity is truly relative because there really isn't any such thing as an arbitrary particle or space that all other motions are measured from. But if this is true, does that really mean that space is really so constantly twisting and turning that SOL can't be exceeded?

I'm sure there are great answers to this, but I've always wanted a definitive one. Anyone have any comments on this?

I usually read through a couple pages worth, but I'm usually only reading the asks and shows. I'll scan the headlines of a few articles, but they're submitted from so many sources that it's hard to sort through for something I want to drill down on.

Is there a difference between QPX Express and Google Flights results?

I can't see that there is (i.e. no Southwest results etc.).

I play chess regularly, and while I don't think chess skills translate into programming skills, I do think there is a moderately high incidence of good chess players being good programmers. However, I believe this to be because you've got thorough minds that "see" lots of possibilities, and those minds are good at both chess and programming.

From my experience in coding as well as hiring coders, I've actually found that the best programmers are those that can make deductive arguments quickly. Most argumentative people argue inductively with anecdotes, references to studies, analogies, etc. But when you find someone who argues deductively by slipping in premises for tacit or explicit agreement and then lowering the boom with an axiomatic conclusion, this person usually creates good code for me.

For computers, chess games are deductive problems where all (or almost all) possible moves (arguments) are examined to choose the best one, which is only made possible by binary brains. For humans, chess is extremely inductive - analogies, patterns, general underlying strategies albeit with changing particulars, etc. The best human chess players deductively analyze multiple possibilities of these inductive patterns (read Bobby Fischer - who I have not played, Tal Shaked - who I have played, and others on the amazing way they do this). So while the skill is not transferable, there are some similar aptitudes in good programmers and good chess players.

I know there's a holy grail out there of the ultimate programming skills assessment test, and I don't have it. But what I do is this: I give two programming problems (no language or syntax required at all, just the problem basically in comments). They have to solve it in a robust way (and every now and then someone comes up with a brilliant solution I haven't seen yet, although most people suggest the same stuff over and over again), and then they have to defend why the solution is good while I time them.

Most people can learn to think (and argue) deductively, but very, very few that I have found do this instinctively (and can thereby do it 10x faster than the average person). When I find someone who can even do it 2x faster than the average bear, I hire that person. It's just so rare.

I know that's not a perfect test, but as someone who both plays chess and also is constantly looking for a good indicators for programming skills, this is what I do. I've had pretty decent success this way. So who knows, according to my methods, maybe the best lawyers and philosphers are actually the best programmers.

spectrum.ieee.org, money.cnn.com, searchsecurity.techtarget.com, techcrunch.com, and news.ycombinator.com

This is also quoted on CNN feeds under the title "Intel's miracle chip could make your gadgets 1,000 times faster".

The IEEE article is a little more skeptical than the CNN one because of the vaguery around the chip and its application. Still pretty cool - lots of big ramifications on how to optimize hardware and write DBMSes and so on.

I agree - great article, although I was expecting something on relativity or maybe the recent attempts to remodel physics with only events and not rates (e.g. exploring the possible non-existence of time).

But I did love the blog title - always nice to find a fellow Terry Pratchett fan, RIP.

This is exciting stuff. However, the sad takeaway to me is the broken patent system is already stifling what can be done with this innovation.

Consider this: the patent was awarded to a group that could not have invested more than a few thousand dollars of incremental time and resources (in fact, probably the majority of the costs were in the patent application and process itself). And yet the license is worth billions.

Patents were created - and the US Patent Charter still states this - to encourage and enhance the economic stature of the nation. Instead we use patents to throttle it. Imagine if this patent were only good for a few years or up to license fee commensurate with the incremental investment needed to produce and validate the research (even if this fee were 3x, 5x, 10x, etc. of the costs). Everyone could contribute to the work and the pace of innovation accelerates. Instead we've got a couple universities (and, inevitably, follow-on corporate licensors) locking it down for all but the publicly funded and litigous.

There is so much opportunity out there, there are so many brilliant minds, eager innovators, and great startups. Why do we shoot ourselves in the foot with patent nonsense that hasn't been significantly rethought since (in the US) its 18th-century English law origins?

Does a wolf pack count as a herd?

Or possibly the raptors I keep hearing so much about at the movies?

If we're going to critique Friedman, I agree that his verbosity is fair game, but hardly the best criticism. How about his just being plain wrong about almost everything? How about his not including the proliferation of the English language through developing India as a flattener, especially as the language adopted by virtually all programming languages?

Anyway, I'm not a particular Friedman fan either, but sometimes the critics seem to miss just as much of the point as he does (unless, of course, I'm the one missing the point - which is always possible).

Cool solution. I like it.

Is it helpful to first look at the names and sign-up times of a particular set of users, and then search for votes on common posts? This would result in a slightly different ratio:

SUM Votes(U1, P) / Votes(Un, P)

where U1 is a particular user, P is the post voted on by that user, and Un is the rest of the users up to n total users.

The reason this occurs to me is because you can still make this run more efficiently by limiting the number of users you examine (as opposed to running across only certain posts - should be the same number of queries for a particular number of either users or posts), and it would allow you to start the top of the detection funnel on heuristics around obviously fake IDs or correlated sign-up times.

This might help get around vote bots that set up fake accounts and all vote for the same posts, but also vote randomly for at a certain frequency for other posts (which would not be differentiated in the first algorithm from a true vote ring versus voters with similar trends in taste, such as the effect observed on pinterest).

Anyway, just thinking out loud. Or whatever the typing equivalent of that is.

This sounds like splitting hairs over semantics because applying that definition of artificial in this context is circular: all things humans do are artificial because artificial is defined as things humans do.

Humans gather at residential centers with populations in the millions, yeah, so do ants. Are we going to call that antificial?

The underlying point is that human beings have natural proclivities toward certain positive/healthy/beneficial behaviors, regardless of whether or not those behaviors occur spontaneously. This principle probably pervades nature beyond humanity, but Tolstoy's point is that only humans recognize this, and some deliberately place themselves in opposition.

Not matter what we call the words, I believe Tolstoy (and Ganhi, and Jesus, and the people replying to this post) are correct: the only way to succeed as civilization, whether it means ending violence or even just eliminating wealth gaps, is to recognize and develop love for one another.

Great insights.

The thing that has potentially changed (if they can really pull it off) is the ability to get a reliable quote for any particular project in a few minutes. Any technical manager can duplicate the process of building out a project plan and lining up the cheap resources to get it done (and recruiting from schools or whatever), but being able to scope a project reliably, let alone estimate its cost, basically on the fly is a real challenge. If they've actually solved that, then this is awesome. If not, then it's probably just the same as paying someone to use ODesk (or Upwork or whatever they call it now) for you.

I agree that they're not a competitor, but they are highly complementary. It could be that the sourcing that makes this model possible is taken straight from Toptal (and if so, great way to capitalize).