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craigching

881 karma · joined October 21, 2012

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craigching··on The Rhino's Last Stand
You may be thinking of the Northern White Rhino which is found (or was found) in Northern Parts of Africa. These are Southern White Rhinos which are still endangered, but not as bad off as their Northern brethren. Southern and Northern White Rhinos are different species (or sub-species).

Not an expert by any means, just sharing what little I know about it ;)

craigching··on Hit Charade
I have Becz and Endless Summer, they find their way into the mix now and then as well :)
craigching··on Hit Charade
Yeah, tough choice between BoC, Hecker and OPN. If you haven't experienced OPN yet, try him out (Daniel Lopatin). I'd probably start with his older stuff and progress through it as his newer stuff is more avant garde, but familiar if you progress from earlier stuff to newest.

His latest record is due out in November and from what I've heard so far it's even crazier than anything past, but still has the OPN sound even though the medium appears to be completely different.

EDIT: I actually find it hard to program to Hecker. There are certain parts of Ravedeath, Virgins, and Radio Amor, (among others!) where I am completely distracted by soundscapes!

craigching··on Hit Charade
That's a tough one, even today I feel that Zep is as relevant as ever, so you can't really compare. But there is good modern music out there, but maybe it's apples and oranges comparing to Zep. Zep is still relevant!

I mentioned some of my current favorite artists in another post, but try Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) or Tim Hecker, these guys are doing crazy things today. Honestly, I was a Zep fan, still am a Zep fan and think that there is no comparison to Zep. But OPN and Hecker will blow you away much like Zep can blow you away, if you give them a chance. Just my opinion of course ;)

craigching··on Hit Charade
I'm old. And I know what you're feeling, I have many friends who are stuck on 70's, 80's, 90's music (you can guess my age cuz I didn't mention 60's ;) ). But as an oldie, I can tell you that there is good music out there.

I don't know, I don't know you at all, but explore, get out of your comfort zone and give music a chance.

So a little about myself, maybe 20 years ago I couldn't imagine loving music that didn't have lyrics. At that time I thought that having words was important, sort of like poetry. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy lyrics, but lately I've discovered more experimental music, ambient music. Artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and Tim Hecker. Of course Boards of Canada which are probably better known than either Hecker or OPN (though OPN recently toured with NiN and Sound Garden, go figure!).

Point is, if you enjoy what you enjoyed in the past, go for it. If you're lamenting that music today "ain't what it used to be", you may need to expand your horizons a bit, there is good shit out there! Give it a try!

craigching··on Free Data Science Books
This is a new book by Danny Kaplan that I was able to provide some feedback on prior to publishing:

http://data-computing.org/

I really enjoyed the book, it took a modern approach to R using many of the newer packages (dplyr for instance) and ggplot and combined them into a very nice introduction to R with labs, etc. Well worth checking out.

craigching··on Free Data Science Books
And the Stanford version of the same class linked above for ISLR is, in my opinion, better:

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesandScience/S...

craigching··on Linear Algebra: What matrices are
Agreed, I bought the book and am doing the class as a "refresher". I put refresher in quotes because there is stuff in Strang's class that I know we didn't cover in my university class, notably SVD. Strang definitely has a way of really helping you deeply understand the concepts. I remember the subject pretty well but I don't think I understood it as well as I do now.
craigching··on Linear Algebra: What matrices are
Bengio's deep learning book has a nice linear algebra refresher if that's what you need: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~bengioy/dlbook/
craigching··on PostgreSQL 9.5 New Features with Examples [pdf]
I honestly don't see what's so hard about the gp's set of instructions. Your grandma doesn't need to install alpha builds of PostgreSQL (though I shouldn't assume, there are some technical grandmas out there ;) ), for 99% of people out there they can use "apt-get" or "yum" or whatever and can wait until the release.

So let's turn this around, how would you like to see builds become easier?

craigching··on Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Machine Learning in Python?
I guess my point is that it's such a broad overview of all topics that fall under artificial intelligence that you don't get much of a good introduction to applying machine learning. But point taken, you're right, it is an introductory text.
craigching··on Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Machine Learning in Python?
That's a nice repository, thanks for sharing! I'll be combing through that as I make the transition from R to Python ;)
craigching··on Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Machine Learning in Python?
I have Norvig's book, I'm not sure I'd recommend that as an introduction ;) Awesome book though!
craigching··on Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Machine Learning in Python?
"Introdocution to Statistical Learning" by Trevor Hastie et al. [1] They have a free online class through Stanford [2] Sign in to their system and you can take the archived version for free.

ISL is an excellent, free book, introducing you to ML, you can go deeper, but, to me this is where I wish I'd started. I am taking the Data Science track at Coursera (on Practical Machine Learning now) and I am kicking myself that I didn't start with ISL instead.

Now, I know you specifically asked about Python, but the concepts are bigger than the implementation. All of these techniques are available in Python's ML stack, scikit-learn, NumPy, pandas, etc. I don't know of the equivalent of ISL for Python, but if you learn the concepts and you're a programmer of any worth, you will be able to move from R to Python. Maybe take/read ISL, but do the labs in Python, that might be a fun way to go.

Lastly, to go along with ISL, "Elements of Statistical Learning" also by Hastie et al is available for free to dive deeper [3]

[1] -- http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/

[2] -- https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesandScience/S...

[3] -- http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/

craigching··on Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide
I bought the book and I'll say I was disappointed with the book. A couple of points, though. 1. The topic is huge, it's hard to cover everything because the way you can query and setup your mappings is really very open-ended. 2. The book is a good way to get started, but it lacks as a reference. See point 1., a reference may not be possible.

The best way to learn ES is to set yourself up with a scripting language (python, ruby, etc.) and prototype everything, then apply what you learned to your language of chocie (i.e. Java if the scripting language isn't your language of choice).

craigching··on I Hate the New Macbooks
Just bought the new MBP this week. Personally:

Ethernet Port: Don't need

Optical Drive: Don't need, but took my old one out to make room for a hard drive in my previous MBP and put it in a case so I have it if I need it. Haven't actually used it since (about two years ago).

17" was always too big for me to lug around, always preferred the 15" (and always upgraded display to get more resolution which is not needed with retina). For me 15" is the right combination of screen real-estate and size.

And I actually appreciate the slimmer design and lighter profile. It's noticeable over my almost 5 year old MBP that I'm upgrading from.

My only lament is that I wish everything wasn't soldered in so I could replace/upgrade it myself, but that's not just an Apple problem, most laptops are going that way in the name of decreasing size.

I'm pretty happy with this new kit actually, but I've only used it for a few days thus far.

craigching··on The Ubiquitous B-Tree (1979) [pdf]
> Cache coherency is something else.

Ugh, yes, sorry about that. I meant that they are more cache friendly.

Not to disagree with anything you've said and only to back up what I was trying to get at is this SO answer:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/647537/b-tree-faster-than...

The part I'm talking about is:

  Also, unless you play nasty allocation tricks with the red-
  black trees, it seems reasonable to conjecture that B-trees
  have better caching behavior (it accesses an array, not
  pointers strewn about all over the place, and has less
  allocation overhead increasing memory locality even more),
  which might help it in the speed race.
That's not exactly the reference I was thinking of, but it says what I remember about it.

Again, not taking away from what you're saying and not disagreeing with you in any way, more backing up what I originally said ;)

craigching··on The Ubiquitous B-Tree (1979) [pdf]
Both times before this was posted it garnered 0 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4317545

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7243568

When I read this I immediately recognized it as a PDF that I have in GoodReader (where I store all my technical PDFs). So I'm curious if it will start a good conversation about b-trees this time :)

To get the conversation started, a couple of years ago, I decided to write a b-tree data structure to refresh my skills a bit. I wrote it in C since I've been doing a lot of Java the last 10 years or so. I only got as far as an in-memory b-tree and had started working on getting it stored to disk before I abandoned the project (think I was working on it during Christmas holidays and the holiday ended).

I subsequently read that in-memory b-trees can actually outperform other tree data structures like rb-trees due to cache coherency. I never bothered to performance test my b-tree vs. an rb-tree I also wrote for fun.

Anyway, that's my story about b-trees!

craigching··on About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.4 Update
Yes, I have the same problem. Not only with my MBP though, with my iPad as well so I'm not sure we're going to get the fix :-/
craigching··on The man with 1,000 klein bottles under his house [video]

  But seriously just read the whole page, this is like a
  bear hug from a friend I didn't knew I had.
That made me laugh, thanks for that :)
craigching··on The man with 1,000 klein bottles under his house [video]
Ok, never heard of klein bottles before, watched the video and I learned about something new today. Awesome robot and storage area as well :)

But, aside from that, when I went to youtube to watch the video, the ad I had to watch was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYhdbxj-yoI

First time I watched a youtube ad all the way through :p

craigching··on What Happened with Lego (2013)
Agreed. I have a 6 year old daughter and a 4 year old son. We have bought some specialty sets for younger kids, some regular bricks (I forget what they call these, builder?) and some that are more complicated adult kits (Tower of Orthanc, Hogwarts, etc.).

I just love watching them use their imaginations using the generic builder pieces (love it when they come to me "Daddy, look what I built, it's a ..."), but we also have sit-down "daddy build time" where we work on the harder kits (which are kept in a special place and not mixed in with their own legos). We also do LEGO WeDo robots together as well.

Awesome toys for adults, kids, and adults to interact with kids!

craigching··on GitUp makes Git painless
If you use emacs, checkout magit. I can't live without it now.
craigching··on Fedora 22 released
Same for me, use it in a VM, etc. I've been doing this since 18 and have found it to be very stable. My only complaint would be Fedora 21 seemed like the filesystem was a bit slow. But I yum update pretty regularly and it seems good now. This is all anecdotal, just noticing startup times of the product I work on and other programs I use daily.

EDIT: I just remembered something important about my use and might be why that you say it wasn't good before 19. I use MATE mostly because 18's Gnome3 was really bad. I still don't like Gnome3 and stick with MATE. Gnome3 is just too slow for me and some of the workflows get in my way.

craigching··on Fedora 22 released
I use Fedora for my day-to-day development and love it. 21 seemed a bit bad on performance initially, but I keep upgrading and it now feels about right. When I saw this, though, I thought "Isn't it a bit early? 21 just came out in December and they're on yearly releases." Then I read the link:

  Also with this release, we return to our traditional six-month cadence —
  we’ll see you back here sometime around Halloween!
Nice. Guess I'll be upgrading soon!
craigching··on Ask HN: What are your hobbies, and why are they cool?
Yes, same here, though I've been on hiatus since my first child was born six years ago. Once the kids get a bit older I'm going to pick it up again. It's a nice break from my other tech hobbies.

My goal, when starting up again, is to brew English style real-ales, cask-conditioned and everything. There is nowhere around where I live (Minneapolis, MN) that I can get anything like the real thing. I love when I have the opportunity to go to the UK and try the good, local (not the big breweries like Fuller's, I'm talking smaller breweries like Hogsback or even smaller) brews that are kept well by knowing pub-keeps.

craigching··on Why people don't use Fedora?
I use Fedora, as you mentioned, as a development platform. I develop software that manages, among other things, IBM MQ which technically runs on RHEL, but also runs on Fedora for development. Why use Fedora and not RHEL then? Because Fedora has the latest emacs, git, etc. which makes it a much nicer development platform. If I had to actually develop on RHEL I'd probably gouge my eyes out due to older versions of the tools I use. For a long time, emacs in particular was really, really old. I think it's better now, but I still like Fedora.
craigching··on U.S. NSA domestic phone spying program illegal: appeals court

  Thus, the government takes the position that the metadata
  collected – a vast amount of which does not contain
  directly “relevant” information, as the government
  concedes – are nevertheless “relevant” because they may
  allow the NSA, at some unknown time in the future,
  utilizing its ability to sift through the trove of
  irrelevant data it has collected up to that point,
  to identify information that is relevant.
Just dripping with hubris! I am just gobsmacked at the audacity of such a claim.
craigching··on Artificial-Intelligence Experts Are in High Demand
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but robotics is now, and probably always will be, inherently about combining skills from electronics, mechanics, and software. I'm not sure what you're looking for, a complete robot that you can simply program? You could look into the NAO robot[1], probably too simple for you, but I think they're pretty cool. Wish I could afford one ;)

1 -- https://www.aldebaran.com/en

craigching··on Statistics: P values are just the tip of the iceberg
There was an awesome comment at the end by Stephen Heard:

  Agreed! Much of the "problem" with P-values comes from
  them being expected to do too much; they aren't (for
  example) indicators of effect size or final proof/disproof
  of an effect's reality. And careful attention to the
  P-value can't overcome problems at the earlier steps you
  lay out here. I would differ in one spot, though: a
  P-value should not be "the last of these [inferential]
  steps" but rather closer to the beginning of critical
  thought! (More about all this here: http://wp.me/p5x2kS-Y.)
I like the "p-value should be the beginning of critical though", I'm going to remember that one.
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