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sthlmon MacBook Neo

Europeans (I'm German) often sigh at the price differences, but a big part of it is just that US prices are listed without VAT, while European prices are, and VAT differs across EU member countries.

Denmark has a VAT of 25%, so the DKK 5499 price without VAT is DKK 4399, which amounts to ~$684. Still more but not substantially.

sthlmon Deutsche Bank Inadvertently Made a $35B Payment in a Single Transaction

From the article:

> “A bank mistakenly making such a large transfer shows its controls aren’t working adequately, and it’s embarrassing,” said Dieter Hein, an analyst at Fairesearch

Also:

> The error should have been caught by an internal fail-safe system known as a "bear-trap,"

The issue is not that someone said "let's not have any controls", but that the controls failed.

Additionally, yes, ranking all transaction and double-checking the big ones should probably be part of a fail-safe, but I assume that even more harm could be done by a larger amount of minor issues that go unnoticed over a longer period of time.

sthlmon I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet

I can attest to that, my newborn at the time screamed into my ear unexpectedly loud and my hearing was affected for a few days.

sthlmon Quick, Draw

This is the best "visualization" / "explanation" of the possibilities and limits of AI that I've seen.

I can show this to someone and say:

1. The software can recognize a feather, as long as it looks similar to what it thinks a feather looks like.

2. The software can't recognize a feather if it's never seen a feather like that. It's not a sentient being.

This is good, because most examples focus on point #1 and -- if enough marketing is involved -- don't go enough into point #2.

People read news articles like "X can recognize cats in a picture with Y certainty!" and are quick to assume that this "AI" can make sense of a picture and understand it, when all it does is apply certain methods for a certain use case.

This does a much better job by letting people write (or draw) their own test cases and figure out the limits intuitively.

sthlmon Slouchy – a small Python script that warns you if you're slouching

I can recommend to peruse the source code. It's well written and documented. Such projects always put a smile on my face, since they demonstrate how far we've come in some respects:

- We've learned how to write and produce reusable, easily digestable code

- Python gives us a language that is concise, readable

- Frameworks like OpenCV let us do incredible things

- Open Source allows us to share it and collaborate*

- Platforms like Github facilitate the entire experience

10 years ago it took forever to configure my webcam on my Linux machine. I had to scour mailing lists and custom web sites to download various versions of kernel patches. Now my webcam is built-in and it takes 2-3 commands to take something off of Github and have fun.

* Of course Open Source is not new, but today it really seems like "Open Source won".

sthlmon Unicode Text Converter

In Javascript, many unicode characters are allowed [0], so háćḱéŕŃéẃś is a valid variable name [1].

Note: The number of іllэБіъlэVаѓіаъlэИамэѕ [2] used in your production code is inversely proportional to the number of friends you'll make in the maintenance team.

[0] https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/javascript-identifiers

[1] https://mothereff.in/js-variables#h%C3%A1%C4%87%E1%B8%B1%C3%...

[2] http://www.panix.com/~eli/unicode/convert.cgi?text=illegible...

sthlmon Yahoo is killing off the Yahoo Directory

The Yahoo Directory was Yahoo's first product.

This is a stark reminder that very few things last and maybe a point to reflect how Yahoo succeeded and failed to pivot into other directions.

Can you imagine Google terminating Search? Facebook terminating their home page? What else would they do and would they be successful?

In a historical context, back in the day directories were a big deal, it took a long time for search engines to become powerful enough to rival the usability. A piece of the old web is gone now.

sthlmon Vis.js: A Visual Interaction System

Graphs are a poor visual representation for a lot of data sets. In cases where they provide significant benefits (think maps, dependency structures, routing), graph layouts are hard problems.

Generic algorithms are great for large networks but computationally intensive. Small network diagrams with an explicit message often have to be manually curated to make sense.

That said, this is a great library, especially since it works so well in the browser. I'm looking forward to future development.

sthlmon One Page Websites and Landing Pages Catalog

I am a huge proponent of one-page websites for a variety of scenarios. I find that browsing existing examples is one of the best ways to get inspiration and ideas for what is possible.

It's also interesting to browse the source to get a feel for what's easily / hardly possible with different frameworks and how some things are implemented.

sthlmon The Best

I had the following experience, which I considered quite useful.

I was traveling and in the meantime let a friend stay at my apartment. For this, I moved all of my belongings to the basement. After I returned, I shared my apartment with another friend. It was small and quite full, so I only took back the bare necessities from the basement. At some point I noticed that I had taken all that I needed from the basement, and that the rest was mostly unnecessary. So every once in a while I go to the basement to take out some things and throw them away.

The good thing about this approach was the following: Don't go through your stuff and think what you can throw away. Assume that you want to throw everything away and pick what you want to keep.

It's much easier to decide to keep something than to decide to throw something away.

sthlmon Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)

I thought the whole budget was rather low compared to the total value that is to be created.

Sure, 100k for 1 language sounds odd, given that 200k was enough not only for 2 languages, but also the entire framework. Still, the overall price point is more than fair.

You have to take into consideration that Light Table aims to be specific; adding further languages will likely result in more efforts than merely adjusting an IDE a little bit.

sthlmon German Police Used Only 85 Bullets Against People in 2011

Isn't shooting in the air potentially dangerous, since the bullet (assuming straight up in an empty space) will return to the ground with the same velocity it was fired at?

sthlmon How text editing on the iPad should be

A 2-finger solution probably wouldn't work so well on the iPad, and especially not on the iPhone. Consistency across devices is a pattern that Apple clearly follows.

I agree however that the method in the video is not so feasible either, for exactly your reasoning.

sthlmon Test your browser's safety (according to Microsoft)

Your scores aren't necessarily representative for the browsers you mentioned, as the outcome of some of those tests depend on your browser/system settings.

sthlmon Quixey Challenge: $100 for a 1-Minute Coding Puzzle

That seems to be a strange rule; how would they know where I'm from? As far as I know, Paypal doesn't normally release that information.

I could see how they might have to adhere to some sort of policy, yet I don't see how it could be enforced.

sthlmon Frontend developers, compile this in your JVM to get hired by Mashape

Are we just supposed to spend 20min coming up with random classes to make the function return 'true'?

This seems to be more busy work than something that requires a lot of thinking.

Maybe I'm missing something...

sthlmon MySQL vs. Neo4j on a Large-Scale Graph Traversal

Of course I meant, "I misread that".

sthlmon MySQL vs. Neo4j on a Large-Scale Graph Traversal

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't misread that. That's very good to know. I know Gremlin, didn't know it was based on Pipes. Thanks!

sthlmon The Entrepreneur’s Guide to (not getting kicked out of) Coffee Shops

Not all libraries want you either. In my home town, the main library is so filled with students and high schoolers "hanging out" that honest researchers didn't have any more space. They started a policy that if you don't need the resources of the reading rooms (books, machines, ...), you're not supposed to use them.

My hometown has >1mio population, 3 universities and a lot of students occupying the libraries. Coffee shops can be a comfortable alternative.

sthlmon MySQL vs. Neo4j on a Large-Scale Graph Traversal

I meant that the Neo4j API offers methods for graph traversal out-of-the-box which are likely the same ones that most people will use. MySQL doesn't have a default data structure for graphs (that I know of) or default algorithms.

So while the methods used to traverse the Neo4j graph are fairly representative, the data structure and algorithms used for the MySQL traversal are not.

Of course, I agree with you that the data structure itself is optimized. In general I'm not doubting Neo4j's ability to excel in most benchmarks. I just think the approach is very basic.

sthlmon MySQL vs. Neo4j on a Large-Scale Graph Traversal

While the conclusion that Neo4j is usually faster will generally be true for most such comparisons, the method to get to this result is very flawed.

Traversal methods are built-in for Neo4j, so those can be used for representative testing. The MySQL traversal methods chosen are very basic and don't necessarily reflect the optimized methods people will use in production.

Neo4j performance is highly dependent on caching. If it has to fall back to access the disk store, performance goes down rapidly, which can happen with a large data set [1]. MySQL optimization is a whole different horse. I suppose a BTREE might be the correct indexing solution to use here, but more information about the cache size would be good to know here as well.

With such performance experiments it's always useful to add a memory profiler to the discussion. Java VisualVM is a nice one that integrates well with Eclipse [2].

[1] http://wiki.neo4j.org/content/Performance_Guide#Disks.2C_RAM...

[2] http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/vi...

sthlmon Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

That's not necessarily true, you can abide the terms and create a real account with real information, but close your wall, etc, making it essentially a profile with your real name and profile picture.

That wasn't my point though. I get annoyed when I see these non-solutions being offered. Of course, barely anyone will mind the linking of their FB account. Those people who don't, have no obvious way out (sign up for a second email address to sign up for a second facebook account to sign up for spotify). To suggest otherwise is a bit insulting. The answer should have been: "We're sorry, this is just how it will be from now on."

sthlmon Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

This does not stop you creating the Facebook account adding nothing to it and making it totally private as the Facebook account does not have to be actively used.

Actually it does, based on the FB Terms [1]:

4.1.: You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook [...]

4.2: You will not create more than one personal profile.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

sthlmon Bring a stick man to life.

Actually I think the fact that it's one-time use drawings increases creativity, because you don't have to bother with perfection.

sthlmon $1,279-per-hour, 30,000-core cluster built on Amazon EC2 cloud

The total costs of operation would be much greater than HW Investment + HW Operation (Power, Space, Cooling). Especially initial setup costs and maintenance costs are a big dent; other humongous cost drivers are high availability, etc.

The cluster, announced publicly this week, was created for an unnamed “Top 5 Pharma” customer, and ran for about seven hours at the end of July at a peak cost of $1,279 per hour, including the fees to Amazon and Cycle Computing

Given that the article states that the entire system only ran for about 7 hours, I assume that it was one of those ideal use cases for cloud computing. So the benefit of having a disposable system adds value that is also missing in the napkin calculation. Sure, if you ran the 30k-core cluster for eternity, you might as well build your own data center. But for this case, the comparative cost analysis seems a bit pointless.

One more small nitpick: the $1279 you extrapolated from in your calculation was the peak cost, not the average cost.

sthlmon Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and working with Visa, AmEx and Discover

Just because something is free of charge doesn't mean it should be readily adopted.

sthlmon PG's Rarely Asked Questions

PG is of course correct in suggesting that if you want to keep programming, don't accept a promotion to a non-programming role.

That's not what he is suggesting though: His statement doesn't include "if you want". He formulates it as an at-all-costs mantra -- stay in programming, for the worst could happen. It can be absolutely horrid advice to a number of people who would excel even more at other IT roles or management roles (see interesting comment from robertk [1]). I myself was long not considering applying to non-development roles, because many of those great opportunities are more and more looked down upon as "not programming". I know some people who've come as far as "Be Mark Zuckerberg or die trying", completely rejecting any business model that isn't two guys coding in a garage. I didn't actually read PG's comment like that -- I have the utmost respect for PG; but this is the background for why I authored such an opposing comment. I don't actually think the RAQs we are discussing were designed to be put under lawyer-like scrutiny ;)

Depends on what your goal is

Completely agree. Casual focus will rarely lead to greatness.

they should get out of the way and enable programmers to work optimally

For someone to get out of the way, he first has to be in the way. You make the general assumption that a manager is bad unless he actively changes his style. I cannot challenge this assumption for I have no data or ideas on where to find some concerning if managers are universally good or bad. And even then employee satisfaction might not be the only metric to measure success. Although I do think that having fun at work is one of the most, if not the most important metric. Many things would be better if everyone enjoyed their work.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3012765

sthlmon PG's Rarely Asked Questions

That's a much better point than the one I made.

sthlmon PG's Rarely Asked Questions

What you're talking about is known generically as the General Learning, which is an aptitude in itself. Some people learn better than others. It also depends on what you learn.

Nurture: At various ages, the ability to learn changes (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88....). It might well be true that there is a lot of optimization to be done in the way we teach -- something that Salman Khan illustrates well with his new teaching methodologies. That doesn't necessarily mean however that at all stages, ages, circumstances, people will be equally able to learn something.

Nature: Some people have an innate aptitude; I won't look for papers, as I find this to be truly obvious.

sthlmon PG's Rarely Asked Questions

I wasn't actually arguing that people are born to be better at anything, although I suppose this is the general consensus.

Talent = "a special natural ability or aptitude" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Talent)

Aptitude = "capability; ability; innate or acquired capacity for something" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aptitude)

Like tentonwire argued, whether it's nature or nurture, people are better at some things than others.

From what I understand, you are effectively making the argument that anyone can excel at anything. In this case, I also concur with tentonwire, that the burden might be on you to prove that hypothesis.