dustrider's comments

I doubt that they did this for a short term (weeks of gravy) gain.

I also don't think that it's a case of increasing impressions. I do however think that it allows them to display more ads, and therefore increases the chances of an ad being relevant, and as a result more clicks.

Because you're now getting accustomed to the results changing as you type, having different ads appear as you complete your query is not more obtrusive than the core function.

As an example, searching for employment tribunal brought up about 5-6 different ads (just in the main results area, not counting the sidebar) whereas without instant, their inventory is limited to three.

I would say that where there are multiple options to a character sequence it gives them better value per ad as well as they can pick the ads that are worth more, until of course the character sequence excludes them.

So in the end, you've got increased inventory and better value per ad for Google, increased speed and responses to users. Win-win

Though there are more than two parties in the search ecosystem, the tail-optimised sites are going to be left out in the cold, not necessarily the small ones, but anything that relies on 2nd page or below the fold traffic.

This may or may not be a good thing for the internet, but it's going to hurt a lot of companies.

By the way, not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but it's got a definite sense of history enabled as well, with subsequent queries for the same terms being much quicker to latch onto the directions chose in previous instances.

Dude, the user has just asked for advertising :) why are you even mentioning donations?

Giving the user access to stuff they want to buy, when they want to buy it and where they want to buy it, without giving them anything they don't want, when they don't want it, etc is a great value offering for both user and advertiser, it's great that you've got the attitude that advertising has to be beneficial for the user, but remember that it's also beneficial for the advertiser as they don't have to waste money or time on people that wouldn't buy.

If you've got access to your users bike choices, mileage and location, just contact all the bike servicing shops you can manage and offer them a deal, I will bet money the majority will take you up on it.

Good point, Formal logic I studied in the phil dept far outstripped the AI courses at a similar level in CS. The same goes for Linear Algebra and data mining/IR.

Those two areas, possibly along with linguistics (data mining again), were much more useful to me than the programming 101 type courses.

Absolutely! I once hired a MSc CS grad on a project and he produced some of the worst code I've ever seen, not even just a code perspective, which to some degree is understandable, but from a conceptual point of view as well. Some seriously bad stuff.

That said I still greatly value a CS degree (even a self-study one) simply because of the fundamentals it teaches. It's not an automatic indicator of ability, but having that level of understanding makes the difference between someone that can think conceptually about and around a problem and someone that has a set number of tools to solve problems with.

I don't think that getting a CS degree is the only way to get that kind of understanding, but I do think it's one of the easier ways. If you're a hacker on your own and you've got to trawl through the glut of bad coding books out there, it's tough to get a good education.

Though I firmly believe that if you're the kind of guy that has gotten that education without any help then you're probably better than the guy that got it with help.

I'm firmly in the camp that holds that an education is to educate you and provide you with skills and tools to operate effectively, not to obtain a certificate. Holding the certificate is not an indication that you have actually received an education, the only indication is your ability, ambition and results.

For what it's worth, I think the majority of the books on the list are must-reads for anyone in programming, there may be a few better ones (I'm a Tannenbaum fan when it comes to OS's as an example) and there may be areas that aren't covered, e.g. usability and CHI (Design of everyday things would be my suggestion there) and there is suspicious lack of anything web, mobile or distributed, but if someone internalises these, they'll definitely be better for it.

love that! I'm so going to be using that as a jargon buster in the next corporate symantic symposium navel gazing event.

personally I prefer this intro: http://marknelson.us/1996/08/01/suffix-trees/

or this one which is slightly harder: http://linux.thai.net/~thep/datrie/datrie.html

By the way, if you're interested in scraper/crawlers also have a look at 80legs.com crawling SaaS, with some custom code capabilities too.

Or, if python is your bag, there's a scraping lib called scrapy that was opensourced last year that's ok.

On ScraperWiki, they need source control as the environment is actually run on their servers, I'd guess a bespin type implementation, so you put all your code on the wiki, and it can get augmented etc. hence needs SCM. At least, for the moment, it seems they've got plans of releasing their api engine or at least calls to it in which case you'd end up doing the code locally, and can use your own SCM.

Their confusing naming could be explained that their not pitching this at coders, but rather journalists to try and get them to use the vast data resources out on the net.

They run Hack and Hackers days for journo's, recently in Liverpool and Birmingham. I believe they've got videos up of them too.

We're actually talking to them about hosting one in South London in the next month or two.

Not sure what their plans in the US are, but it could be worth dropping the idea to some fellow journo's and seeing if there's an oganisation willing to act as host.

EDIT: forgot to mention, if you're interested in data you might also want to take a look at the open data initiative (data.gov.uk) and the guardian's data store http://www.guardian.co.uk/data-store apologies for the UK focus.

GP's point is that the truly breakout success redefine what it means to be successful. e.g. Google wasn't taken seriously because there was no money on the internet, MS wasn't taken seriously cos there was no money in software, etc. etc. You don't see the revolution coming, you're in it or you're not.

With FUD and spin making such big motions on startups (see diaspora 2 months ago) you're as well off making random bets, bets on personality or some other arbitrary factor that works for you.

There isn't a winning strategy, or all invested startups would succeed, so it's pretty much a die roll. People like PG pick a few criteria that work for them and to some measure stack the deck in their favour, but it is and will always be a gamble.

I can't decide whether this is serious or not. Don't doubt the actual wikileaks announcement just the comments from the various sources seem too funny to be true.

favorite: "But use it exactly how I tell you to use it, because fuck you, it's my code. I'll decide who's the goddamn grown-up around here."

kickstarter isn't about donations, it's supposed to be about microfinancing startups. They are investments.

I'm with GP, these guys wouldn't get an inch with any angel or VC's so why are the general populace giving them their money? just because it's $20 it doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it in the same way as a $20000 investment. A punt is a punt, but you don't put money on a statement, that's what lobby groups are for.