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Simon Lisa

Personal blog · sifter.orgprogramminghardwareproductivity

Simon Lisa writes Project Sifter, a personal blog at sifter.org about programming, hardware and productivity. Since 2007, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 40 times, most often “Netflix Update: Try This at Home (2006)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.

No feed foundVisit the blog
40mentions?
35HN people?
2007–2026first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 7 in 2021

Most-linked posts?

  1. Netflix Update: Try This at Home (2006)
    13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2008-03-30
  2. Netflix Update: Try This at Home [2006]
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-23
  3. The Pioneers Get the Arrows
    2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-22
  4. /~simon/journal/20061211.html
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-07-07

What Hacker News says?

  1. fossuser · 2020-05-12
    I really liked the lifecycle of software objects and liking what you see: a documentary. All of his stories are good though. I’d recommend True Names by Vernor Vinge and After Life by Simon Funk if you like Ted Chiang: https://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/

    Comment linking /~simon/AfterLife/

    on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?”
  2. busymom0 · 2025-05-18

    Submitted $30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024) as a story · 329 points

    HN discussion
  3. RobertoG · 2021-02-22
    In my opinion, the best fiction book about this subject is 'Permutation City' by Greg Egan. Also, this one is pretty good: https://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/index.html And, in a very similar line to "Lena", this one by Vernor Vinge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella)

    Comment linking /~simon/AfterLife/index.html

    on “Lena”
  4. bufo · 2015-05-27

    Submitted Cheap, Deep Learning with Fusion Reflection as a story · 18 points

    HN discussion
  5. bluishgreen · 2021-08-19
    "Try this at home" I did and became a Machine Scientist (took a few years) https://sifter.org/simon/journal/20061211.html

    Comment linking /simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”
  6. dstein64 · 2015-08-26

    Submitted Netflix Update: Try This at Home (2006) as a story · 12 points

    HN discussion
  7. scotty79 · 2025-05-19
    I think you can read about OP's automation stack here: https://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20240412.html

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20240412.html

    on “$30 Homebrew Automated Blinds Opener (2024)”
  8. olalonde · 2012-08-25

    Submitted Netflix Update: Try This at Home as a story · 6 points

    HN discussion
  9. samplenoise · 2021-07-07
    The author is still underselling the significance of the progress made during the first years IMO. The simple idea that is still behind most practical recommender systems (using gradient descent to do SVD to complete the rating matrix) was first described in 2006 by Simon Funk [1]. Koren, who ended up taking home a big part of the prize, recently wrote another paper about how that basic idea still outperforms most “…

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?”
  10. mlLK · 2009-01-17

    Submitted Chaotic Flow, Focus, and Interrupts as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  11. sytelus · 2017-01-24
    Is this a more formal treatment for algorithm that Simon Funk gave? http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20061211.html

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Lecture Notes on Randomized Linear Algebra (2013)”
  12. mercer · 2014-05-25

    Submitted On Debating as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  13. fossuser · 2021-01-27
    I'm an outlier on this one, but I thought Consider Phlebas was bad and disappointing. The Culture was cool and interesting, and the world had some interesting detail but everything else was pretty weak. I generally agree with this review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48178154?book_show_act... While we're on the topic I also really didn't like the three body problem. I loved Permutation City and most of Ted…

    Comment linking /~simon/AfterLife/

    on “The Culture War: Iain M. Banks’s Billionaire Fans”
  14. eric_khun · 2026-08-16

    Submitted Knowledge Representation (2013) as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  15. Nogwater · 2012-08-25
    Here's mine if anyone is interested. I wrote it in D and haven't looked at it in years. I'm sure it's not usable as-is, but it might be fun anyway. https://github.com/nogwater/NetflixPrizeD The algorithm is based on Simon Funk's blog post here: http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20061211.html For me, the best part was squeezing the data and indexes into memory. :)

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “My Python Code for the Netflix Prize”
  16. speckx · 2026-02-13

    Submitted Time <b>is</b> Different as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  17. benfrederickson · 2015-04-28
    I like matrix factorization models too ! Most of the netflix prize style models will have problems with this sort of data though. The problem here is that you only have positive data, and no negative data: you can assume that artists the user listened are positive, but there is no explicit negative votes for artists the user didn’t like. This means that there is no gradient for Funk style ( http://sifter.org/~simon/…

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Building a ‘People Who Like This Also Like’ Feature”
  18. didizaja · 2022-10-22

    Submitted Chaotic Flow, Focus, and Interrupts as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  19. cousin_it · 2016-08-12
    Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency. Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on…

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20160704.html

    on “The brave new world of robots and lost jobs”
  20. dynm · 2021-10-29

    Submitted The Pioneers Get the Arrows (2020) as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  21. lkozma · 2010-08-01
    Good suggestion for dimensionality reduction. Most ready made packages you will find under the name PCA though (principal component analysis). It's almost always good to reduce dimensionality first, depending on the component number you choose, you can remove a lot of the noise from the data. I'm curious why it didn't work for music recommendation for you. In the netflix challenge for movie recommendation, pretty mu…

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “My website similarity search engine (feedback please)”
  22. monkeybutton · 2021-07-07

    Submitted Netflix Update: Try This at Home [2006] as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  23. stillsut · 2015-07-22
    There was a parsimonious model that got to 8% improvement. We know this as it was posted publicly by "Simon Funk" [0] after he decided to give up halfway through the competition. This simple but more accurate model would have been a useful foundation for Netflix to build its own internal models on, and highlight the flaws in the assumption of the Cinermark algo. [0] http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20061211.html

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Netflix and the Napoleon Dynamite Problem (2008)”
  24. dynm · 2021-01-05

    Submitted The Pioneers Get the Arrows as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  25. mayank · 2011-01-31
    On the contrary, within a few days of the Netflix prize challenge being launched, a guy put up a detailed blog post with a simple linear algebra method that could beat Netflix's system at the time (link below). It didn't come anywhere near the 10% improvement threshold, but it beat Netflix's system with a handful of lines of C code, and it ran off his laptop. Sounds like he would have made an excellent hire. http://…

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Dropbox challenge”
  26. beagle3 · 2020-12-22

    Submitted Pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  27. sprachspiel · 2010-01-21
    Unless X has 17,770*480,189 elements like the netflix dataset. Then you can use something like this: http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20061211.html The site is currently down, google chache link: http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:h4Ljyun3gUcJ:sifter.org...

    Comment linking /~simon/journal/20061211.html

    on “Singular Value Decomposition Tutorial”
  28. carlosgg · 2013-12-11

    Submitted Netflix Update: Try This at Home as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  29. fossuser · 2020-12-22
    There are a few that come to mind, but nothing I can think of as super recent. - After Life, Simon Funk: https://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/ - Most of Ted Chiang, but particularly Liking What You See: A Documentary: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vSPLnv... - Also Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle of Software Objects (not really pessimistic or optimistic, just thoughtful) - Her (Movie), melancholy but…

    Comment linking /~simon/AfterLife/

    on “In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play”
  30. ahalan · 2012-01-07

    Submitted Science Hostel as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

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