Recent Comments

Maybe Big Data is just the reincarnation of data mining?

Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

I realise that there is a lot of truth to what you are saying, but assuming that the boy has the physical ability to fight back, he could do two things:

1) Try to hold them off without actually hitting them.
2) Run away

Of course it depends on the exact situation - but there is a difference between being beaten up by two girls (implying helplessness), and two girls trying to beat up a boy - in the latter case the boy might still be hit/injured, but there is a slight difference.

Not sure what my point is.

I fully agree with the overal message of the article, pointing out that just having a lot of data does not automatically prevent sampling errors/sampling bias and/or other fallacies.

That being said, I think they were downplaying what Target seems to have achieved a bit too much. Of course the system is bound to produce some false positives, but given the criteria described it does seem reasonable that they can make a quite good assessment of pregnancy. Granted, without having access to Targets systems we cannot know for sure how well it works, but the article seems to strongly imply that it doesn't work, and indeed cannot work.

So you're saying BD can be useful for exploratory data analysis to suggest avenues for investigation using more traditional methods. I remember they used to say the same about data mining before Big Data became the buzzword.

Maybe Big Data is just the reincarnation of data mining?

There's also Stratosphere , which, besides map and reduce, offers several more second-order functions like join, cross, union, and cogroup and can do flow iterations.

As a biostatistician working in bioinformatics, I'm well aware of both how powerful and how dangerous "big data" can be--powerful because it can tell you things you couldn't discover any other way, dangerous because it will tell you all kinds of things that aren't true unless you're very, very careful with your analysis. A lot of the people talking about "big data" and "data science" and all the rest of it are sound like teenagers who have just got their drivers' licenses.

Boys in this situation have no good choices. If they fight back, they'll be crucified for "hitting a girl." If they don't, they're wimps who got "beat up by a girl." The main difference between this and the unknown number of similar cases is that the girls were dumb enough to publicize it.

Frankly, there's enough pr0n elsewhere it's not an issue, but you were probably joking. I could use an improvement on Reddit for technology and computer stuff, though. The Reddit system seems to favor shitty word play and pun fights, and the comments quickly degenerate into banal, four-word one liners based on a shared lexicon ("you gorgeous bastard," etc.). I'm done with Slash, and the drama at Soy has cheapened the site, for the moment.

The site's 'flavor' will probably evolve as a function of what kind of articles people enjoy posting and others enjoy commenting on. Post stuff, and let's see what happens. What if suddenly a team of astrophysicists decides to camp out here and suddenly all the articles are about astrophysics? Pipedot becomes the world's best tech site for discussion of astrophysics. Just sayin'.

"Better" rather than "less bad" is everywhere.

Compare from the NPR link "Nolan says he saves 10 minutes out of every hour by vaping at his desk instead of trekking outside to smoke".

Wow - he's saving time, that's a good thing!

Or perhaps he simply used to waste 17% of his work time due to his addiction, and isn't honest enough to word it that way?

Yeah, but the |. tagline is a not-so-thinly-veiled reference to the other one. I take both Pipe and Soy to be competing with Them and providing the same sort of news coverage. Just without the asshatery. That's just my take on it. YMMV

I think things will get better and I would hope that people would post and not worry about cross-posting stories.

Maybe Pipedot could be a more intelligent version of Reddit, with out the pr0n?

That's better.

Keep in mind that SN and |. are still quite new and still searching for the direction. Things may improve or may get worse.

One of the problems I see is that people try to avoid cross-posting stories. Two times I decided not to post a story as I was not sure if people will found it interesting and also because it has appeared on /.

I personally think that we need more stories covering a wider range of topics as everybody can pick and chose what to read.

I liked your comment as, if people listen, it may have a positive effect on the stories. I also would like to see more "Stuff that matters".

However, if you look at the bottom of the page:
Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant.
:-)

Despite all the crap that's happened over at The Other Site, it stayed my homepage for 15 years. I like the breadth of stories. Even if they're dupes and "old" news (a few days to a few weeks) I didn't really care because I wasn't going to scour those sources and find those articles on my own. I left when the boycott started and have been back maybe 3-4 times out of morbid curiosity to see if the number of comments have decreased. I don't even read the headlines there, let alone dive in to read comments. Instead, I jumped on the SN and |. bandwagon. I certainly appreciate what each is trying to do and wish them success, but they're both a little disappointing TO ME because the style of stories is just different. It seems it's more News For Nerds, but it was the Stuff That Matters that I cared about.

I know, get off my ass and start submitting the kinds of stories I want to see. No. I have enough on my plate that some days I barely have time to read the newspaper (which is what these sites are for me). So that's my grouse and I won't mention it again, since I'm not really willing to do anything about it. Sorry.

Nobody gives a shit what you think

;)

I don't think anybody can claim that Autism is not on the increase or decrease, or even being steady.

We know that rate of Autism is going up and at the same time our diagnosis is improving. While linked, there is no evidence that the two are moving at the same rate.

Most of people read both sites but the comments will be different.
I think cross-submission is OK as long as it is marked as such (like this one was). Saves us reading the summary twice.

Thanks for publishing it. I'd like to see Pipedot evolve a different mission, since both Soylent News and Pipedot are basically trying to do the same thing, and the audience seems to be with Soylent by a significant share. Maybe Pipedot could be a more intelligent version of Reddit, without the pr0n?

This is a great article - well written, informative. But I was blown away by the link at the end (History of Computer Communications). What a wealth of material, and the way he's organized the book makes it so easy to understand.

But why for the love of all that is holy did he decide to leave it as a bunch of HTML pages instead of offering an EPUB or a PDF? I'd love to read this but definitely won't/can't sit in front of the computer to read it on line. This is annoying.

I might have to see if I can create one or something. This would be a huge hit on my ereader, but less so if I need to be connected to the website to read it.

I was the editor for this article, and I asked Bryan the same question: is it cool to post articles already posted elsewhere? His response was that the poster has done so before, and it was fine with Bryan (so it's okay with me).

I personally don't want much overlap between the sites, for two reasons:
1) I don't want anyone to think the two sites are poaching each other's articles, and
2) Different articles at each site means a reader gets more choice and more interesting things to read, which is good.

That said, I think I agree with Bryan here: the submitter posted at both sites deliberately, and I thought it would be rude not to post an interesting article someone had taken the time and energy to submit.

This question might become more academic at some point, as different communities evolve around both sites. I'm active on Usenet's comp.misc too, which frankly grapples with the same issue. There is bound to be a bit of overlap and cross-fertilization, but provided we make an effort, it won't necessarily become a problem.

Interesting article, by the way. I know a teacher of autistic kids, and it's clear we're just scratching the surface here with regard to our understanding of autism.

How about that we are now correctly identifying autism and that the numbers of people with autism has not changed. This would mean that autism is not on the increase, just our ability to detect it.

Special note: I work with a borderline autistic person. He was not diagnosed until well into his 40's.

Right, those guys not only had technical chops, but they were all whip smart as technical entrepreneurs. This would be before anyone had heard of Sun, and only a few hobbyists had heard of Microsoft (Gates wrote MS-BASIC). I'm not sure what MS was using networked VAXs for though - maybe they had an 8088 software emulator?

Good luck finding a decent topic which is only submitted on one site.
So, submit on them all and hope for good comments

As the title implies, replacing all of someone's blood with a saline solution sounds like the kind of thing a Bond villain would do to kill people in a creative way. I keep reading all of these stories about how good revival techniques are becoming. It's a really great time to be alive, and these guys are helping all of us do that for longer.

Post. Pipe. Moderate.

That's pretty much it. The community's not going to build itself, on either site - saying something, even if it's offtopic, is helping out. Heck, troll. Okay, don't go quite that far. ;)

I'm guilty of abandoning all but the last lately. I blame daylight savings time. That excuse should last till autumn, right?

Both sites are covering the same kind of news, so I'd imagine there'd be a lot of overlap between the stories reported on each site. Ideally the two communities would diverge slightly so we could get two different angles on the issue, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

Cross-submitted by the author at Soylent News.

I "cross-submitted" a story yesterday but then wondered if that was appropriate. Since many people visit both sites, would it just be seen as a duplicate? Would people comment on both stories?

What is the best way to support both sites?

The rate of vaccination declines and the rate of ASD increases? Blasphemy! Anecdotal evidence clearly shows that the opposite should be happening!

Ars Technica has a good article today with a lot more links. Robert Reiner, principal organizer of the Cybathlon and sensory motor systems professor told Ars, "We are allowing 'techno-doping' in order to deliver the best possible assistance for paralyzed humans, thus trying to improve their quality of life."

At this point, it's a last-resort, "What the hell, this guy's probably going to die anyway" kind of thing, so not likely to catch on with the crystal-healing crowd. ;) Even if it does eventually become safe enough to be part of the surgical standard of care, I really doubt it's something people will do casually.

I think I might need to take the plunge and buy a basic set... I think its hard to visualize what you might want it to do until you have one with which to play? I wonder the same thing about 3D printing as well.

but I can see some "interesting" applications of this technology when the avatars can start to interact with one another...

I wonder if this would ever go mainstream as a kind of mind-body massage/cleansing sort of thing... I wonder how dangerous it is?

I liked the anecdote about the founders of these three companies being 3com's first customers. Maybe these guys were on the ball or something...

Glad to see they are proceeding with this technique. I wonder if this will lower medical costs as well as save more lives.

I agree the whole thing is pretty astonishing - both Mats' performance and the robot's. Even the agility necessary to do that kind of trick is impressive, not to mention the mental processes behind the hands. Most of the people I work with can't even tie their shoes (or type!) that fast.

This is a small thing, but I bollixed up my first submission awhile back because I used 'A HREF' tags (out of long habit from submitting stories at the other site) instead of 'a href'. The content remained but the tags disappeared in the preview, and (since I'm stubborn) in the submission as well.

Then I read the FAQ.

That is a really interesting point. Especially now that the theory of evolution is far more problematic for segments of the lay-population and plate tectonics is virtually unchallenged.

For those of you who've not seen Mats Valk's 5.55 second solve , it's impressive to watch (to a slow-cuber like me, at least), even in slow motion. I especially like where he pauses mid-way to examine the cube and plan his next sequence. I wish I could think and move that quickly.

The Cubestormer is, of course, an impressive feat of engineering and design. I'm especially in awe of the software end of things ... the machine vision and algorithm generation. Plus, combining Lego and Rubik's cubing? Neat!

Even if it is supposedly harmless, I'd prefer that my co-workers do not set up smoke machines in our shared workspace.

I don't expect to be allowed to bring a smoke machine into a restaurant with me either.

I was only been able to ride to work a couple of times this winter. I'm glad I can finally climb back in the saddle.

it's the only break from work I get during the day

This always annoyed me. Why do smokers automatically get to take more breaks than everyone else?

Here today we have rain, high 55F low 38F.
Very mild winter with only a couple of feet of snow spread out over the winter with the majority about 3 weeks ago.
We average low to mid 30's here in the winter and I think the coldest this year in Spokane (Eastern Washington) was around 16F.

Mild winter for us. (a few years ago we did get 73" of snow and a few years before that ice storms with temps in the negative 20's, but those are generally once every 10-20 years)

Hi

Just like others I am a member of soylent news and here, and just like others I keep coming back here more and more. Glad to see things picking up in terms of comments, I hope this continues and the community gets ever stronger. Soylent had some in fighting, not good to see in public but I think they are a stronger team now. What I don't like about Soylent is the look and feel, this is where this site excels. The color scheme and look and feel is amazing, especially as there is only one developer on this. I'd offer my coding skills if there was a need to help out as I am a developer by trade.

Quick thing...I tried to use the check box to register for the mailing list. I got this error on save

"error: value not found - method [post] type [text] name [real_name]"

Also I am not quite sure where I can select which email I want this mail to go to?

I also highly recommend his C++ FAQ book. It goes far beyond what's covered on the web-site. The two are complimentary really.

Cline's FAQ has always been well organized, stuff you need to know right away on the topic you looked up, warts and all. Bjarne's writing tends to be professorial with a strong flavor of advocacy.

By contrast, Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' apparently won nearly immediate and widespread acceptance throughout the scientific community; the deniers were in the minority. But the Continental Drift guys who, e.g. pointed out striking similarities in species between South America and Africa, were pariahs until Tuzo Wilson and his colleagues worked out the geologic details.

You announced to release the |. source under GPL. Please make it AGPL instead, as suitable to SaaS.

Diablo 3's DRM wasn't about piracy, it was about creating a market for the real money auction house. The auction house that, ironically, they removed later on for ruining the game.

There is just not enough known lithium deposits for every car owner to go out and buy an electric vehicle. Heck, according to this article, there isn't enough lead for a similar massively scaled lead-acid battery. Recycling old batteries would at least help.

I think mounting a pad under your desk surface to covert it into a wireless charging top would be neat. Just place your mouse, phone, music player, etc on top of the desk and the field created by the pad would power the device and begin trickle charging it. There are already some products that do something similar, but the pad is placed on top of the desk (very short range transmission) and the phone normally needs a bulky case to hide the receiver coil (not many phones have this built in).