pork

That's not innovation, that's incremental optimization.

It sure can't be explained by the fact that ad delivery systems are seldom static and are continually being tweaked based on the latest research....oh wait, it can, but you just go ahead and pick whatever is expedient with your beliefs.

I've used the Facebook secret groups feature and found it sufficient. Could you elaborate on what non-trivial benefits you offer over those? As far as privacy from the provider, it seems like I would have to trust you instead of Facebook, which from my point of view isn't a huge net gain.

Forbes just reported that Ford and Chrysler are keeping their ad spend on facebook and are very happy with the ads.

Any thoughts on writing up similar articles about more advanced nonlinear filters, like particle filters?

These guys are f'in geniuses, and nice guys too. All the best to them.

> If you make 30 million people's lives just a tad bit easier, then yes, you've changed the world.

By that reasoning, if I kick a rock on the street and it shifts 10 feet to the left, I've changed the world too.

EDIT: more analogies

* Bic pens have changed the world

* Toilet paper has changed the world

* Shoes have changed the world

Um...Page took the lead, not Brin.

A future feature that might get me to switch: automatically download many years worth of Gmail attachments to my GDrive. It would be AWESOME to go through picture attachments from years ago.

Have you been to H&R block? They already are!

I remember Sybase ads from my teens. I did not know they were assimilated to generate MSSQL, interesting!

Fascinating...so wrapping an Ajax call inside a window.setInterval automatically switches it to "Comet"?

Avg Joe: "Wow! They bought an iphone app for a BILLION DOLLARS? Must be an AMAZING app"

<rushes to apple store>

Thanks for the clarification. I suppose we're in a time of inflated usage numbers. Sigh...

> Who is the due diligence owed to?

Um...themselves?? You don't spend a billion without doing due diligence for yourself.

I don't normally indulge trolls, but you're priceless! So the NSA and CIA (the government) covertly control and encourage Facebook, but you want the same government to save you from this "evil"? Cognitive dissonance much?

Let me guess...combinatorics background? :)

You should read the original Flajolet Martin paper if all you're doing is distinct count estimation.

Nope, totally off. It's closer to probabilistic hashing where the probabilities of picking successive buckets are exponentially decreasing.

I wrote my mathematics PhD thesis while smoking pot to relieve some terrible back pain. Cognitively, it helped me on occassion to break through barriers in abstract reasoning and creativity. You might have had a bad experience with drug use, and I do sympathize, but please spare us the sweeping generalizations.

I keep seeing this, but have you looked at Facebook's API? What do you feel it's missing, because it's pretty darned open, just access controlled (as it should be).

Please back up what you're saying with some proof. As I said, PHP is no longer the most ubiquitous economy hosting language.

This is outdated, I can find you a handful of hosts that offer Perl, Python and Ruby for under five bucks a month.

-- Am I going to be "on call" nights and weekends, even a few a month?

I agree that GP's "great outcome for everyone" is probably a bit empty, but there's no shame in an acquisition, and "selling out" is a bit of a naive term. They were a for-profit business and realized they could profit most by selling the company. Why this unnecessary delusion that every startup founder is directed solely by a divine inner light?

Sorry, which (widely used) language out there can be statically analyzed without restricting language features? And being difficult to statically analyze is hardly a reason to switch to C++.

Perhaps your use of the word "college" is currently misleading. As the OP says, you're really offering trade school classes. When you offer a comprehensive curriculum that includes a theoretical underpinning, that's when you're a "college".

Has it occurred to you that to increase their profitability, they must use "magic" (which I call math) that actually has a benefit to you?

I don't mean to be rude, but please stop this vapid series. Your last article measured HTTP throughput on a static file using localhost. I can't even begin to critique that benchmark as utterly unrealistic. And now that you've introduced a real world constraint, you find that throughput drops? That's not exactly surprising is it?

If you really want to do a realistic and robust benchmark, load up some typical database-driven apps like Wordpress, generate a sample HTTP request and response stream, snapshot the database and then benchmark the exchange by changing only the web server being used.

Litlet.com is a nicer UI for aldaily.com content.