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nkhon What it takes to build great machine learning products

* If you are doing stuff related to genetic programming then category and type theory have riches to be plundered.*

Could you expand this a bit as I don't understand the meaning. Are you saying that if the problem you are working on can be solved with genetic algorithms, then you could blow it away with category and type theory?

I don't have a vested interest in either, I am just curious. Thanks.

nkhon The Evolution of a Python Programmer

Here is the discussion from the last time this was posted (90 Comments):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1087068

nkhon Ask HN: How much can I sell my company for?

I think the better question is how much do you want for it?

I'm sure you have heard of Flippa.com. Head over that way.

I would determine how much you want to fund your next thing and see if anyone takes it. I would multiply the revenue by 3X, so I would put a price at ~45K. However, that is me just making up what I would do.

nkhon [dead]

If you haven't already read it:

http://www.startupbook.net/

It walks through a lot of the things for asking. Once you have an idea, you will find marketing it is all of the work for getting traction.

I would recommend Seth Godin. Specifically "All marketers are liars" if you need somewhere to start.

nkhon Ask HN: Would you still by Apple stock?

I suppose the question is, assuming they are dead reckoning, is the current stock price 531 asking too much, or is there still profit to be made?

nkhon Ask HN: Would you still by Apple stock?

I'm excited with where Siri can go as well. Maybe I'm suffering from the "it can go an higher" bias.

nkhon Build a house for less than $5000

If your interested in cheap housing. Yurts are worth a look. They are used by half the population of Mongolia, and can be very warm. They make a great cabin retreat, but they are not quite as nice a normal american home without the added expense and convenience of plumbing, electrical, etc...

However, in there base form, they cost around $5000. See the link below for pricing:

http://www.yurts.com/products/default.aspx

(I am not affiliated with anyone selling any yurts, I just happen to like them).

nkhon Training in 'concrete thinking' can be self-help treatment for depression

Can someone clarify what 'concrete thinking' actually is?

nkhon Why Developers Never Use State Machines

Can anyone recommend a good python library for state machines and example code of its use?

nkhon U.K. men get 4-year sentences for Facebook riot posts

Can someone from the UK comment on if 4-year sentences are typically served to full term. I believe in America, you can be sentenced to 4 years and only end up doing a few months of the actual sentence.

nkhon How You Should Go About Learning NoSQL

That makes sense, but it is certainly not 90% of what I use an RDBMS for as the author stated. Especially if most of the things I do are not real time web. I will take a look at the link above, as I am curious about it. But I am still struggling for use cases.

By the way, thank you for your comment. I up-voted it.

nkhon How You Should Go About Learning NoSQL

From the article:

A lot of NoSQL solutions are about solving specific problems. MongoDB is a general solution which can (and probably should) be used in 90% of the cases that you currently use an RDBMS.

As I use don't use any NoSQL solutions today, can someone list out a few of these cases where I am using an RDBMS and I should be using MongoDB?

nkhon Detroit in Ruins

I have lived in both LA and Detroit. These are really different animals. I read somewhere that you could fit the entire city of San Francisco in the vacant lots of Detroit.

Also, you can easily find lots of property in Detroit for 5000 USD or less. I was at an auction where abandoned homes were going for less than 500 dollars.

nkhon Detroit in Ruins

I grew up in Michigan.

If you want to see some of the prominent architecture that has been abandoned check out this site:

http://www.forgottendetroit.com/

If you drive down Woodward Ave. to go to a Tigers game you get the sense you are in postwar Germany in parts. Some of the highrise buildings have facades on them so they look like functional buildings from the baseball stadium. However when you walk around the back side, the windows are blown out and they are abandoned.

nkhon Ask HN: Beta users flocking over to competitor

I really miss the up-vote count here. As I wish mine would show. This is like having your hotel on fire, and wondering why guest are reluctant to book a room.

nkhon Poll: Should HN display comment scores?

How about showing the comment scores after 24 hours?

I personally like the not having the comment scores while the discussion is active. I do think it makes thinks feel more intimate, and you can not just scan the comments and move on.

However, I really miss the ability to save articles and see which comments where the most valuable at a glance. It would also make sites like "searchyc.com" a valuable resource for comments once again.

nkhon Justin Kan: Measuring startup success by head count is toxic

This made me think of Steve Jobs solution for the Mac team:

The Mac team they were all in one building and they eventually got to one hundred people. Steve had a rule that there could never be more than one hundred people on the Mac team. So if you wanted to add someone you had to take someone out. And the thinking was a typical Steve Jobs observation: “I can’t remember more than a hundred first names so I only want to be around people that I know personally. So if it gets bigger than a hundred people, it will force us to go to a different organization structure where I can’t work that way. The way I like to work is where I touch everything.” Through the whole time I knew him at Apple that’s exactly how he ran his division.

Link to the full article: http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full...

nkhon When we have money we'll do X

I encounter a variant of this all the time in modeling projects at my day job, due to the fear of beginning an unknown process (in my case modeling).

Our clients often say things like, "We are not going to start modeling until "x" is completed."

To which I respond: "I'm not leaving my driveway, until all the lights are green."

It usually produces a chuckle, and helps everyone realize that we won't get anywhere sitting around waiting for the stars to align.

nkhon You’re Not an Entrepreneur

If you’re not an entrepreneur, you might be: Designing a new product.
Developing a new idea.
Looking for funding.
Looking for a partner/co-founder/developer/CEO.
Working on an app.

Working on a side project.

Whatever you are, be a good one. -- Abraham Lincoln

nkhon Why Clojure?

The text below is directly lifted from the Clojure site at: http://clojure.org/state The article describes it more clearly and succinctly then I could.

There is another way, and that is to separate identity and state (once again, indirection saves the day in programming). We need to move away from a notion of state as "the content of this memory block" to one of "the value currently associated with this identity". Thus an identity can be in different states at different times, but the state itself doesn't change. That is, an identity is not a state, an identity has a state. Exactly one state at any point in time. And that state is a true value, i.e. it never changes. If an identity appears to change, it is because it becomes associated with different state values over time. This is the Clojure model.

nkhon Why Clojure?

I agree with the article, and I have to admit I think Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) is a brilliant man. If you check into his thoughts on programming you will find some very interesting arguments. His talk on state and identity: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hic... is awesome, and I can not recommend highly enough.

If you want motivation for learning a lisp (Clojure is one) check out http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html if you have not already done so. An awesome essay to re-read if you have not done so in a while.

Edit: Fixed Link (thanks atuladhar)

nkhon Clojure.rb

For Rubyist's unfamiliar with Clojure, here is a link to a welcoming talk by Stuart Halloway at RubyConf 2009:

http://rubyconf2009.confreaks.com/21-nov-2009-10-25-clojure-...

nkhon Cross platform desktop apps in Ruby, HTML and JS

Do any of these have anything close to the table Grid support you can get with a .net control. It seems like there isn't a good way to load a ton of data in a table (100 K +) and work with within an app built with HTML and JS yet. Am I wrong? I hope I am ;)

nkhon HN Members' Workspaces

What monitor stand/stands are you using for this?

nkhon NASA Images of Oil Slick

In light of this disaster, I hope we can have a more reasoned debate on the floor of congress than "Drill Baby Drill".

nkhon What Programming Langauge Are You Learning?

I am as well. If anyone is interested I have signed up for the following free course starting next week:

http://rubylearning.com/blog/2010/03/09/clojure-101-a-new-co...

nkhon Logarithmic calendar view

That covers the first point of the article. Anything available for the second and third points?

I don’t care about present-and-future items with equal granularity. I wouldn’t mind seeing today in an hour-by-hour view, but I don’t need the same granularity when showing events three days from now.

If I switch to a more granular view for today, I lose the ability to see any of what’s happening next week.

nkhon Ask HN: Hackers in LA?

I am in NoHo (lankershim and vineland). I would love to have a local meetup. My email is nkhdev at gmail if anyone would like to contact me.

nkhon [dead]

The article has already been submitted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1222483

See it for comments.

nkhon Being Funny: How Steve Martin got his act together

Steve is a master at making his shows odd yet familiar. His mastery of the awkward sparks curiosity, which leads to attraction/engagement from the audience.

This was succinctly outlined in Scott Adams blog post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1164323