skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No, but this is my question as well. There's plenty of stuff on the net about how great Rails 3 will be, but the last time I checked out edge Rails (around three months ago), it felt pretty far from ready for prime time.

They've done a lot of refactoring, and made a ton of improvements, so I can understand a longer-than-usual development cycle, but all the hype around how great things will be, without seeing a stable release, is a little unsettling.
> The people using the machines every day know that (for example) all the database servers are named after planets, all the web servers are elements of the periodic table, all the development boxes are Muppets characters, etc.

I have nothing against naming things in such a manner (my computers at home are cartoon characters), but the problem is that it doesn't scale. The company I work for is under 10 years old, and while a bit too old to still be called a startup, we already have more print servers than there are planets, let alone DB, dev, QA, and web servers. The last couple start-ups I had also had hundreds of boxes, and I'd go insane if "db-35" was actually named "WASP-18b" and I had to remember a list of 50-ish planets.
I would ban them because they are cliche. They started grating on me years ago.
It was one of the best companies when led by its original founders.

Fixed it for you.:-)

That Paul Allen didn't liked to show up on newspapers doesn't mean he did nothing.
Nice in theory, but it's just not possible for every single person to be an engineer, and yet every single company has IT.
> The thing is, nobody has compared the moon and North America.

The comparison is implicit and my statement was a generalization; that spacefaring means traveling and colonizing the moon and beyond.

> Instead.. the moon is analogous to the inhabitable rocky island just off the coast, just past the horizon.

This is exactly the analogy I was rejecting in my comment. The moon and space are inhospitable. Even the astronauts who went to the moon and back were lucky they weren't fried by radiation. They were getting dosed the whole way and avoided a solar flare or radiation flux that would have killed them out right. Not to mention the deleterious effects of long term zero-G on biological systems. For the Vikings it was "relatively" easy to get there by orders of magnitude and no need to bring air, food and water to their destination and total dependence on complex support systems.

I'm not trying to quash your dreams and I am as big a fan of the early explorers as the next guy but living in space is totally impractical at this point. I wouldn't rule out venturing out in space some day but that is probably 100's of years away, if ever.
Netscape, Yelp, and the Tech IPO Boom of 2010
Splashtop: the pragmatic alternative to ChromeOS
Ask HN: What's the best book to understand everything in the Java ecosystem?
After some initial and (very) rewarding attempts to learn Clojure without any CS or programming experience, i'd like to make Java and Python my next languages. Java's ecosystem is complicated and there are a lot of concepts and ideas wrapped in marketing. What's the best book that instead of teaching pure syntax or practical algorithms focuses more on the entire ecosystem of Java - something that covers everything in http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/index.jsp and all the related Java EE technologies?

If it's current with EE6, that would be ideal.
As the revenues are dependent on search deals with Microsoft and Google, predictions like this one from an expert such as Rand Fishkin would have serious implications if borne out:

This Real-Time Search Thing is Outta Here

Microsoft initially beat Google to the punch in announcing their integration with Twitter data in their SERPs. And in response, last Monday, Google released what is, in my opinion, an early test version of Twitter integration that's nowhere near ready for prime-time. Google has a history of jumping the gun to prevent other companies from stealing the press narrative, but in this case, I think it's seriously damaging (and nearly everyone, consumer or search enthusiast, agrees) their usability and relevance.

This is, in my estimation (and many others), the worst implementation of new results Google's ever implemented. I imagine the clickthrough and abandonment stats have their usability folks up in arms already...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/8-predictions-for-seo-in-2010
Odd to see the NYT descending to such linkbait. One psychology prof at Bennington thinks "nerd" is derogatory, and that's a story?
Thanks for the tip! I've been using TwoUp for a while and have found it useful. This is even better.
A timeline:

By the time the derogatory terms for a group have become in-your-face badges of pride, your "scene" will have become a kind of herd overrun with fractionally clueless imitators, who don't deeply understand the subculture. Many of these newcomers are really only seeking a new territory for staking out social dominance signals of "cool." Shops and websites catering to the lifestyle soon appear. The "scene" has transformed into a bloated, cancerous cargo-cult caricature of itself.

The faithful and true anxiously await the upcoming implosion, where the "cool" goes away, taking with it all of the pretenders. Sometimes, that day never comes.
Thanks for this list. I took japanese in high school for several years and wanted a way to refresh and expand on it.

I wonder if there are as many resources for korean.
How to say nothing in 500 words
This is immensely useful. Would love to see support for custom drop-zones with custom actions. For example, allow the user to change the width from 1/2 screen to 1/3 or 1/4. Or even 1/2 width and 1/2 height instead of 1/2 width and full height.
Some quick answers to several of the questions posed in responses (I will try to spend more time in this thread later today):

The expense of good quality food -- agreed wholeheartedly. It's one of the many reasons for solving (as PG says) "the money problem." There are also policy changes we could make -- subsidizing fresh produce instead of corn and sugar would help.

Organic food is prohibitively expensive to many, and contributes to class divide. There's also some ethical argument regarding whether a class division across food should exist at all. Is it appropriate for the wealthy to create a separate variety of more healthful food which only they can afford? Having done so, what incentive do they have to improve the food supply generally? In the US, the demand for organic food has always exceeded supply.

Regarding the healthfulness of MSG, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excitotoxicity

Regarding the suitableness of agave nectar as a sweetener: Yes, it's fructose, but not all fructose containing substances are the same. Agave has the useful quality of being very low glycemic -- lower than a peanut. This means it's absorbed slowly over hours instead of minutes like refined sugar. As a result, it avoids causing insulin spikes and blood glucose instability.

However, ideally health conscious people will become accustomed to less sweet foods over time. I think eventually tastes recalibrate. Personally, I now find broccoli and cashews to be very sweet, but I didn't years ago when I used to frequently eat sugar.

Regarding nitrites -- their safety is mostly argued by the meat packing industry (no surprise.) For (one of many) authoritative references, see the World Cancer Research Fund's report: "Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective" (2007). http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/

Artificial colors -- Take note of the history of colors approved by the FDA. We've spent decades approving substances and then later finding significant problems with them. I'm not ready to trust the current batch, and evidence against them is accumulating. Ironically, some of the safest color adding substances right now are made from ground insects! http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.asp
Some Thoughts on the Twitter API as a "standard API" for microblogging
So, your argument is that oh noes, there's Too Much Energy! (gasp). That clueless scientist's "proof" of the impossibility of heavier-than-air flight rested on a speed of 600 mph being "unobtainable."

Color me impressed!

Really the hurdle for rocketry to LEO has to do with the horrendous increase of reaction mass in the rocket equation. With the enthalpies available from chemical reactions, the required delta-V for earth is just on the cusp of impractical, requiring mass-fractions just at the edge of our practical fabrication technologies.

But we are not inherently limited by the energies of chemical bonds or by the rocket equation.
One simple proxy: implied volatility of put options. Since put option buyers only make money when the stock falls--dramatically, and quickly--they are the most effective way to bet that someone is cooking the books.
This could be grounds for getting out of your contract, if you want that.
Or have non-engineering people willing to listen to their employees.
> The people using the machines every day know that (for example) all the database servers are named after planets, all the web servers are elements of the periodic table

So, what type of machine is "mercury"?

I've never seen a theme-based naming scheme that didn't eventually run into ambiguities like this.
The danger is when managers think of themselves as engineers.
He says that fiber mitigates the fructose in fruit. It's when it's separated from the fiber as juice that it becomes a problem.
I've been in an office where the free fruit was removed. Towards the end of the afternoon I normally get quite hungry. With a bowl of fruit I would silence my stomach rumblings for an extra half hour and get some more work done. Without - screw it - time's up and I'd rather go home to cook.
Seems like this is becoming commonplace. Another example: newspapers. Photographers are spending thousands to buy their own camera rigs b/c the company won't spring for replace 5-year old equipment, reporters are using their own laptops/cameras (even notepads!) because they have to. All while they're being pushed to be tech savvy. Sad.
That one made me laugh!
The fiber does not compensate for the high levels of fructose in modern fruits. Modern varieties are much sweeter than they were even thirty years ago. Modern seedless grapes are basically candy.
Focus booster live - the pomodoro technique (app)
As well as the cost there's also greatly increased liability for corporate officers:

http://www.kirkland.com/sitecontent.cfm?contentID=223&it...
See also http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html - "A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Cost Away", written in 1993...
3D simulation and evolution
The Start Project Launches To Create, Incubate Startups
Titled: "What He Said"

On a side note, poetry isn't poetry without proper spacing.
How the heck are you supposed to remember what is running on "Feynman" vs. "Fermi" or "Farnsworth"? Why not just stick to IP addresses if you're going to do that? And what do you call the next server?

By contrast, "hq-web-001" is an early webserver at head quarters, while "br1-sql-020" is a later database server at branch office 1, and the next server name is the next in the appropriate sequence.
Yeah. Earlier this year, while Firefox 3.5 was in beta, I noticed that the update check wasn't working any more. I finally figured out that our company proxy was blocking it (Firefox isn't officially supported at all, but many of us use it). I promptly browsed to Mozilla's FTP site and pulled down the installer manually. Silly admins.
i actually added twitter as a feed to google reader.
Hmm. Good idea.
Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1000404

URLs didn't match because of Google Analytics tracking cruft. Curious to know how bad the dupe-URL problem is on HN.
Based on what he says, end of the free sodas is a lagging indicator that is significant only for the reason that it serves as a "wake up call" for the "heads-down" talent. Unless the talent is entirely clueless (which makes you wonder about the "superstar" qualification), at some point they will realize that they are no longer a good fit for the company and will leave.

So it seems the moral of the story is that hold off on sending overt signals to your employees until you have prepared for their (inevitable) exodus.
Hosting Wordpress On Rackspace Cloud Sites
Why does it matter that it's from TC? What's important is the story. How is this the top comment? Does no one here give a shit about the actual story?
well from someone that has done a lot with Firefox since 2.0, i jumped the ship to chrome just 3-4months ago and simply love it. Firefox evolved into a FireBear.
How many other times have techcrunch reported "company x in late stages of being acquired by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft" followed by "Talks for company x being acquired break off?" I'd suggest quite a few. I realize that this can actually happen, but if it happens often enough then the story becomes non-news.
Where does it say that there is no basis in fact?
I've never heard the term "October rain" before, but had to look it up. Quite a few poems with that title it seems. I thought you were referring to the Gun N' Roses song "November Rain" there for a second :)
The author is comparing a disruptive innovator (Netscape) with incremental features (Yelp and Twitter). Netscape truly changed the world by making the Internet accessible to millions of new users, while Yelp created a Bay Area and NY centric yellow-pages -- useful, but hardly innovative.
Is there any kind of possible career progression from doing this? I can't see any.

It's one thing to work like a dog for little money for some chance at success... it's another to do so without any opportunity for progress. That's what makes them a sweatshop, imho, whether or not you can work from your living room.
Twitter cannot afford to be just profitable. The amount of money already invested on Twitter requires it to be out-of-the-charts wildly profitable. That's the key issue.
Stewart Brand: Four Sides To Every Story
The total amount (not the average amount) is what counts to wikimedia. From the original blog post (less suggested -> more donated):

#17 suggests $30, totals $22,000
#18 suggests $1.95, totals $11,000 (same views)
The Start Project: Return Of The Incubator?
Not to quibble but is what happened to Friendster really very recent? Feels like ages ago.
How would such a 'like' be different from an upvote?
User Interface: Communicating color efficiently - red & green
All the major equity exchanges have a signal on their feed which indicates "all stop" to automated engines. It's a signal which automatic trading systems are required to listen to and on receipt suspend trading. Historically it's activated by the exchange if volatility has gone too high or if the market is behaving abnormally. It's one of the many safety systems the financial system has in place to protect against an algorithmic meltdown.

Meltdown being the apt term, as the safety precautions aren't dissimilar to what you have in a nuclear system. You have multiple levels of checks-and-balances. For something to go seriously wrong 11-12 things have to break in combination. Obviously this isn't impossible and can (and probably will) happen sooner or later, but it in everyone's individual interest as well as the collective interest to prevent a collapse.

The big problem isn't the risk that an investment firm will screw up and do bad deals (in practice bad share deals due to system error tend to be reversed by mutual agreement by the counterparties; banks know systems screw up and generally are willing to reverse such deals), but rather some new form of systematic risk is created which isn't properly protected against. Dealing with systematic risk is precisely where the regulators should be coming in because it's outside the capability of any individual institution to deal with it.
Please leave the lack of threaded conversations on twitter -- use the reply link under each comment when replying to a comment.
I think this is a reflection of how consolidated consumer tech is becoming - he who owns the user, wins the game.

AAPL, GOOG, and MSFT have roughly $100,000,000,000 of unspent cash - they can afford to pay a premium rate over market at this point to buy a strategic asset.
Moodagent iPhone App Plays Music Based On Your Mood.
Another nail in the coffin of Google Groups as a useful method of communication.
one of the guys I work with had a good suggestion that's working well for me. Nudge the monitor down just a tad so there's a small 'wall' in the top (or bottom) corner to catch...

http://grab.by/1kfI
Economic theory claims that the size of companies are set by the point when the overhead of internal mismanagement equals the overhead of constant negotiations between independent units. Therefore larger companies are internally less efficient than small companies, but exist because they represent a more efficient way of doing business.

(That said, large companies have a tendency to remain more efficient than the alternative by putting up artificial barriers to entry. For example the difficulty of negotiating access to patents makes large companies more efficient than possible competition, but the extra efficiency is due to solving an artificial problem.)
Does any mainstream browser include the CACert root? Without it, you might as well just use no certificate; self-signed certs add no additional security to TLS in the HTTPS case.
Is there some reason Microsoft would want to accept a Google root certificate?
Natural Menopause Remedy - Don't Pause
Don’t Pause is the most effective of natural menopause remedies that helps women in conquering their menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain and ...
Some people aren't looking for career progress at a given point in their lives. For those writers/editors just looking to make some money, right now, with flexible hours and no strings attached, this may be exactly the arrangement they're looking for.
"Feynmann", "Fermi" and "Farnsworth" are much better than "server001", "server002" and "server003" but are arguably a step behind "hq-web-001" and "br1-sql-020". I work for a company where most of the servers are just numbered and it's can be rather confusing.
> Before making such a change, ask yourself this question: Is what I'm doing good for the company?

If you knew what the consequences were going to be then they wouldn't be unanticipated, but if you didn't know then you couldn't accurately answer the question.

Aren't you just asking people to 'know the unknown unknowns' and never make poor decisions?

Wouldn't it be a more realistic suggestion to ask them to ask "Was this good for the company and if not, should we revert to how it was before?"
Gravity Well - beautiful interactive artwork (incl. source code)
I have a feeling that forceclose is targetting the AOSP style builds and users, such as Cyanogen Mod. I hardly think official Android support will ever touch that segment of the community.
What a milestone for windows when people on OSX are using 3rd party apps to emulate its UX.
Hey, people actually look at what I write! I didn't realize my version isn't 64-bit compatible. I'll see if I can fix it in my fork later today.
Ha! I did the same thing. Went years without soda. Then after I started drinking it again, stopped for a few months. Now ever couple of months I quit for a week or two. One of these days I'll give it up for good...
> Anyways... A lot of rappers are ex-drug dealers. As a result, many of them are business-savy. I feel Jay-Z is the best example of this.

L.L. Cool J., Missy Elliott, and Kanye West are just a few highly influential artists who have no known history of drug dealing or other criminal activity. And I think Stephen Levitt goes a long way to disproving the whole concept that "drug dealers are savvy businessmen" (http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_analyzes_crack_econom...)
I know it's a horrible thing to say, but was anyone else distracted by the giant forehead on the picture?
So, best shortening of the worst idea: Soxley or Sarbox?
Well, to be fair, that sounds fairly logical. If I get hired in your place, I don't want to have to figure out that I have to run Possum before I can run Koala, and if I'm going to be running Kangaroo I have to explicitly specify the target port or whatever.
Now its time to Shop with Your Facebook Stream
Good post covering all the popular javascript plugins for different libraries. Definitely want to see or build a Raphael library. Who's in?
This is a completely pointless comment to make and you wouldn't make it to the author's face. This would fall under the "uncivil" flag discussed in the pg thread earlier.
Interesting discussion on static-typing vs dynamic typing on reddit.
It's all too common these days to see dynamic typing being praised beyond what it deserves. It made me glad to see somebody speak up for static typing.
A very good point about the disruptive innovator being compared to incremental changes. That being said, Yelp is in a much better position than Netscape was in terms of revenue generation ability/potential and ultimately that is what IPO's focus on.
I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it was to build a ship capable of traveling for a few days, landing at islands with no source of food or fresh water, and returning safely home 1300 years ago.

The only thing on your list they didn't have to worry about was bringing along oxygen. Food? Water? Life support systems? Check. Check Check.

The only difference is that early sea explorers were able to realize economic benefits incrementally. With space flight, the possibility of incremental economic viability is murky at best, and almost certainly improbable.

But you honestly strike me as somebody who hasn't grown up on a coast. The ocean is a dangerous, dangerous place. So much so that even now we haven't come close to mastering it.

Today, we're the 8th century vikings. Not the 14th. But there'd never have been 14th century vikings without the icremental achievements along the way...
A company I worked for in the south-bay area decided to order fruit from a "farm fresh office fruit delivery" service. I don't know how much the delivery company charged.

It worked well for the first several months. The delivery company brought a wide assortment of fruit, many "standards" and also some more exotic varieties like papaya, kiwi, etc. Over the months though the apples took a larger and larger portion of the delivery. And the exotic varieties disappeared.

People got sick of eating all those apples. We canceled the service.

The company also made pretense of being "green" but used extreme and wasteful packaging.
maybe != may be. No, seriously.
“Greenwich Village 60s … Venice Beach 70s … London 80s … Silicon Valley 90s … Blogosphere 00s … NYC now…”
This is exactly what I've been looking for since I switched back to the Mac from Linux a few years ago. Thanks for the pointer!
Fine, your side can explore space and establish enterprises on Mars with remote-controlled machines. My side will have all of that technology, plus immediate human presence.

We can see who innovates faster.
The way it should be is hybrid. For machine management purposes, each machine should be named for the datacenter and rack it's in. For example, dcaa11 is the eleventh machine in rack aa in datacenter dc. But there's also the issue of how to know which machine is running what. For that, we need to remember there can be more than one name for the same thing. The mysql machine should register itself with DNS when it starts up as 0.mysql.datacenter_name.prod.yourdomain.com. The second one should be 1.mysql, etc. Now you have a system where memnonic names and manageable names can coexist.