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Learning from 20 years of personal analytics
Utilizing data analysis capabilities in Wolfram|Alpha Pro, Stephen Wolfram looks at his quantified self based on his large collection of lifelogging data.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 18 posts.
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How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data
We use MySQL for storing all of the data in FriendFeed . Our database has grown a lot as our user base has grown. We now store over 250 million entries and a bunch of other data, from comments and "likes" to friend lists.
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Relational shell programming
Unix is a bestiary of ad hoc databases: comma-, colon-, tab- and space-separated tables. Think of /etc/* or /var/log/* , or of columnar commands.
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OrmHate
Object-Relational Mappers get a lot of hate from people who misjudge the complexities of the task.
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Damn Cool Algorithms: Cardinality Estimation
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under python , cardinality-estimation , damn-cool-algorithms
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Amazon DynamoDB – a Fast and Scalable NoSQL Database Service from AWS
Today is a very exciting day as we release Amazon DynamoDB, a fast, highly reliable and cost-effective NoSQL database service designed for internet scale applications. DynamoDB is the result of 15 years of learning in the areas of large scale non-relational databases and cloud services. Several years ago we published…
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Postgres 9.2 will feature linear read scalability up to 64 cores
Remember when I blogged about linear read scalability out to 32 cores ? Well, the awesome Nate Boley provided me with access to his brand n...
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Probabilistic Data Structures For Web Analytics And Data Mining
Statistical analysis and mining of huge multi-terabyte data sets is a common task nowadays, especially in the areas like web analytics and Internet advertising. Analysis of such large data sets oft…
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Why MongoDB Never Worked Out at Etsy
In 2010ish, we tried to roll out a feature ( Treasury ) using MongoDB. It was an interesting experience. I learned quite a bit in the process. I wrote about what I was thinking at the time here . But for the most part it was an abject failure and Ryan Young wound up porting the entire thing to the MySQL shards which…
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Reddit's database has only two tables
Steve Huffman talks about Reddit’s approach to data storage in a High Scalability post from 2010. I was surprised to learn that they only have two tables in their database.
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NoSQL Data Modeling Techniques
NoSQL databases are often compared by various non-functional criteria, such as scalability, performance, and consistency. This aspect of NoSQL is well-studied both in practice and theory because sp…
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The Little Redis Book
Karl Seguin's Blog - A mix of coding and creative writing
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OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment
10 fictional profiles were created on OKCupid with the same profiles but different photos to test how online dating is different for men than women.
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Map Simplification with Visvalingam's Algorithm
An interesting challenge in cartography is getting data of the appropriate resolution. As Lewis Fry Richardson observed , the more precisely you measure the length of a coastline, the longer it appears; geographic shapes have infinite complexity. Digital displays, in contrast, are limited by pixels. Choosing too high…
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R programming for those coming from other languages
Things a programmer coming from another language needs to know about R, especially those things that might be most surprising
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One way to fix your rubbish password database
Suppose for a moment that you are running a web site that has a poorly implemented password database that stores password hashes using some...