jbl

9 ms·

61.
by jbl 15y ago
I also agree with the grandparent post. There's always something to do, and something more that could be done to make a project interesting. However, I've often been frustrated by the effort required to get buy-in or recognition from higher
62.
by jbl 15y ago
There are lots of ways to organize companies in the ad tech space, but I like to think of them based on what masters they serve. (FWIW, I've been working in ad tech for the last three years) One of the big divides is serving advertisers vs.
63.
by jbl 15y ago
This is too funny! Now I just know I'm going to spend my weekend remixing source code repository commits.
64.
by jbl 15y ago
This sounds a lot like OpenID to me, even down to the idea of an "identity ecosystem." Does anyone know if this is going to be OpenID under the covers, with the US government being a provider?
65.
by jbl 15y ago
When I was there, there was also the Information and Decision Sciences program. It was a little CS, a little economics, a dash of social science, and a pinch of management. There was a two semester final year course that students had to tak
66.
by jbl 16y ago
No kidding. I just got my first hoodie, but I have a habit of putting a hat on when I need to get down to business.
67.
by jbl 16y ago
One thing I almost never hear in articles about moving to AWS is the mention of network latency and variability of latency. It seems like a fantastic platform for bulk/batch processing but much less so if your service requires low and/or pr
68.
by jbl 16y ago
Sounded to me it's more like they're using CDNs for content distribution and Amazon AWS for bulk/batch processing jobs. From the original article: RLB: Could you describe at a high level what Netflix is doing on AWS? AC: Encoding movies fo
69.
by jbl 16y ago
This is the same situation I'm in, except that I'm at the beginning of my career as a developer (despite being 30+... took a detour through grad school). I feel like it's hard to know what's up, down, left, or right at a small company or st
70.
by jbl 16y ago
The TSA system is a production line - hire cheap unskilled labor, and train around a process and manuals. This is the big thing that popped out at me from reading the article. The personnel described sound highly experienced and trained.
71.
by jbl 16y ago
Ah. Right. Rounding errors and other floating point issues. Guess I should have my coffee before reading HN. headdesk
72.
by jbl 16y ago
What is the issue with using floating point to represent money?
73.
by jbl 16y ago
I'm curious about how well the all-to-all communication strategy scales as clusters grow large. Just going off of this slide, the number of links and amount of communication grows pretty fast as nodes are added. Nodes could get inundated wi
74.
by jbl 16y ago
I've thought about this "you can't break computers" phrase for a while. I suspect, though, that when people say that they're afraid of "breaking" a computer, what they mean is that they'll get the system to a state they don't know how to ge
75.
by jbl 16y ago
My reading is that one needs only to purchase the stock before Jan 1, 2011 and then hold it for at least five years. Gains from sale of the stock after that would then be taxed according to this new bill.
76.
by jbl 16y ago
I heard about this a while back. One thing that I haven't heard any talk about is how this affects early employees who may have had options in their company. It sounds like this could benefit people exercising options. At least, I don't rec
77.
by jbl 16y ago
Yep. Been there, done that. :-D I didn't mean that exploratory analysis is not important, just that it's a distinct part of data analysis and only the beginning. That paper sounds cool. I'm looking forward to checking it out.
78.
by jbl 16y ago
Yep. I totally agree. I guess I've always thought of exploratory work as being a distinct part of analysis projects. That's why I tried to say that I think this would work as a great exploratory tool.
79.
by jbl 16y ago
This seems like a great method for ad hoc visualizations of multi-dimensional and graph-structured data. I could see building a tool that allows a user to pick a few dimensions and toggle between different orderings. That said, I wish the a
80.
by jbl 16y ago
This seems like it also concerns employees who might have part of their compensation in stock options. It's unclear to me how things like early exercise and AMT might be affected, though.
81.
by jbl 16y ago
I see your point (and kind of agree)... but isn't the fact that it's Brainf*ck part of the fun?
82.
by jbl 16y ago
This is the approach that I use except that I generate a Makefile which has: - a target to split the input into chunks - targets to sort each of the split chunks - a target to merge the sorted chunks using "sort -m" Then, if you
83.
by jbl 17y ago
I liked the "fix someone's pain" message in this. It's easy to write software with more and more features (or spiffy never-heard-of-before features), but in the end it really should be about solving a problem for somebody. Well, assuming th
84.
by jbl 17y ago
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics by Gonick and Smith is actually quite good for dipping your toes in. It should give you an okay conceptual foundation from which you can tackle the textbooks you've already got.
85.
by jbl 17y ago
You can even combine this approach with split and parallel make to do a cheap single-machine parallel sort. I use a little script that generates a Makefile that can be called with make -j n that splits an input file, sorts the parts, and th
86.
by jbl 17y ago
Yep. The test gear subsidiary (spin off?) is called Agilent. It's probably the last remaining vestige of the HP of yore.
87.
by jbl 17y ago
It seemed to me like the article was more about particular "NoSQL" databases than it was about the genre as a whole. In other words, I don't think the author's pain is endemic to this admittedly broad class of data stores, just the few that
88.
by jbl 17y ago
You know, these sound like the same reasons I left grad school (Sociology) to go back to coding. I'm much happier building things that other people can use.
89.
by jbl 17y ago
Or, things might go step a further with everything running on virtual machines that monitor the behavior of the program (and the structure of incoming data) to tailor things appropriately.
90.
by jbl 17y ago
I'm familiar with TAOCP. :-) I think it depends on what part of the software development process you're looking at. Designing new algorithms and datastructures... probably art (in the way that developing mathematical proofs is artful). Choo

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