skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Michael and Xochi Birch are part of the founding team behind Bebo.com, which seems to have worked out rather well for them financially. I'm sure founding a company adds some extra stress to any relationship but you can certainly take proactive steps to assuage that.

One blogger (relatively well known) but I can't remember which (sorry!) blogged about how he and his wife set aside a monthly date to re-connect. They go out to dinner, and exchange gifts (big or small.) There was quite a bit more detail than that and I think it's a good ready for any of today's super-busy couples. After 30 minutes of searching around I just haven't found the link. Maybe someone else here remembers the piece (or wrote it?)
Don't ask us. You're the one with enough karma for it.
Amazingly successful? Perhaps for the game companies but not for Microsoft. It hasn't turned a profit since it was released 7 years ago (although there is some speculation that it might turn one this year).
the moods app forgot to verify_sig on that request. i'm betting there are a lot of facebook apps like that.
It's ambiguous to say "30% of Windows crashes", since the article reports that it's 30% of Windows Vista crashes.

And not to be glib, but if your Vista is crashing, I'd be more inclined to blame a shoddily made OS than graphics drivers. After all, there is something to be said for the fact that the OS is built such that a bad driver can crash it.

Also of note is that the article doesn't say how MS determined that the crashes were nVidia's "fault". If I create an OS that crashes whenever any program writes my competitor's logo to the display buffer, can I blame my competitor's website for "crashing my OS"?
All my exes live in Texas.

Seriously, I'm married, though with the amount of work I do, sometimes my wife fails to recognize me. ;-)
Debate? I wouldn't mind.

I'd say (although maybe I'm unqualified to do so... :) ) that although it may hurt, it can also just lead to a happier lifestyle. And happier people, it seems to me, would be more productive, both in the short and long run. So while relationships may hurt people, the hurt would be short term, while the overall happiness and productivity gains might be long-term.

-----
Oh, and by the way. It took me login to post, because I didn't realize that the ID's were case-sensitive. I'm not sure that they should be, eh?
5 out of 24 in the list were American companies.

Either the European startup scene is in shambles, or else it's just that it's an American writing it.
While people frequently feel happy about romance, what is there that should make one happy? If the answer is something like, "having a close relationship where you understand each other well" then that is possible without romance and without being hurt.
An idea is not an innovation. MP3 players were nothing new when the iPod came out, but the iPod was the most innovative Apple product in years, which is saying a lot at a company like Apple. The iPod remains one of the most innovative consumer electronic devices on the market.
Nerdiness not linked to glasses
What about Linux crashes?

No one can do surveys like that for Linux though, since there is no central authority. Oh well, I suppose we'll have to live without useless statistics. :(
Someone needs a better website (hint: Apple Developer Connection)
Top Ten Obsolete Ports
(It's pretty silly, which should make it be a -1, but not a -20 or whatever)
There've been some interesting articles on this topic in 2600 the past year or so. There was one (can't find it at the moment, will post a cite if I can dig it up) about viewing the information in sealed profiles and another about using an XSS attack to spoof friends request confirmations.

I don't recall much about the articles, but what I do recall are that, in each, the author noted that by the time he got the article written, the whole had been fixed.

Facebook is a big system, with a lot of possible holes, but it seems to be run by folks who care about security and respond well.
Every day we loose something like 30% of users just because of activation emails. We can't change this since we have a partnership that it is currently forcing us to take the verification email but I'll not include any kind of a priori verification email in my next applications.

A decent way to handle the problem is to add the field in the profile and tell the user to fill the field in order to get notifications and to recover the password. It may be a good idea to display a warning in the profile if there
is no verified email address for the account. The best way
to make sure the users will actually enter their email
addresses is to do something very useful with notifications
and/or reports.
>it's worth the risk of being hurt
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work
What percent do you estimate that risk is?
Yes. If you don't make money from it AND it is from personal use, it is technically legal.

In practice, however, restaurants, salons for private weedings and even individuals who throw parties in their houses are being sued (or charged with a fee) for using copyrighted music in a non-personal or profit-making way. It's totally insane.

The tax is collected not by the goverment but instead by an increasingly-powerful-lobby who "represent the artists" (called SGAE) so the situation it's only getting worse.
Not to be an MS apologist, but bad drivers can crash any OS.

In Linux for example, time critical parts (eg. ISRs) will typically reside in kernel space. So if your driver has some bug (ie, makes a blocking call), you'll crash.
If you get into Mechanical Turk and have questions about it, shoot me an email. I worked on it at Amazon, and I'm using it in my current project.
Major Web sites hit with growing Web attack
Geert Wilders' film "Fitna" taken offline due to threats
come on.. try to have fun! relax
I just got married on sunday.
But you can find it on YouTube and bittorrent.
Brief video chat with Spore developers
These guys will mint for as long as corporate America uses office (probably 10+ years) and mom & pop in Peoria buy PC's from Best Buy (probably 10+ years). Will they ever be front and center again? No. But give them credit. From 1981 to about now they ran things. In this business, staying on top for 20 years is unheard of. And they will still be around, at near current revenue levels, for at least 10 more.

Name 1 tech company today that you think has a chance of matching their track record.
Ok, this is too much:

"It makes me wonder why Microsoft, with all their resources, can't move like this (They used to???) and, instead, still be looking at spending a rediculous amount of money on Yahoo."

Um...i think the answer is in that sentence. It's "all their resources" that keep them moving at that pace. Stakeholders take time guys!

Second! How has FriendFeed done this PR second-coming? Well, they hit the needs of early adopters right between the eyes! Can they sustain this interest? Good lord no! iPhones, Facebooks, (maybe even) Twitters all have some level of appeal to the mass market. FriendFeed is built on the data glut that confronts those who have too many networks (read: early adopters.) Science would call this a "false positive."

FriendFeed is a symptom that indicates the general problem. Social Networks aren't 100% ready for prime-time, and as we take one step closer with each new network we have to deal with the hiccups of having friends (and ourselves) on different networks. FriendFeed is a band-aid that corrects this, when Social Networks reach some sort of bankable state there will be no need for this work-around. (That's what this is: a work-around.)

Sorry for the long comment, but personally I'm exhausted from filtering through the blog noise on FriendFeed. Yes, I'm sure this is flame-bait to some extent, but I needed to call FF on it's shit at least once.

Poke holes in everything I write, I'll debate with all comers.
I'd be very interested in seeing how you'd write a graphics driver that doesn't at least have some kernel mode portion. PCIe/AGP memory accesses need to be in terms of physical memory addresses, as mainstream PCs don't have hardware IOMMUs.
RogueWave. My made-up criteria: they are one of the longest-running advertisers in DDJ, which I have been reading for years..
NASA demos new model moon buggy
In my experience, proper crashes (although very rare except when badly configured) in Linux are frequently graphics driver problems as well, although I think here ATI/AMD win with their terrible fglrx drivers. Both ATI's and nVidia's drivers cause way more problems in 3D mode than 2D, which might explain the quantity of Vista crashes: Aero Glass uses 3D acceleration.

Generally, I suspect badly written drivers or drivers for two components that step on each others' toes are probably the main cause for OS crashes on any OS.

One quibble I have with Linux itself is how it handles out-of-control processes that keep allocating memory. The X session crawls to a halt while the kernel swaps like crazy and you don't get a chance to kill -9 the process. ssh or console logins fail because they time out before you get the password prompt. Linux proceeds to kill off processes one by one, but keeps the amok process alive and tries to satisfy its insatiable hunger for memory... Ok, so it happens to me maybe 1-2 times a year, but when it does, it REALLY pisses me off. Especially as the amok process is usually caused by a bug in my code. :) I think the Flash plugin also had a bug like that a couple years ago.
Internet Archives Brings High Speed Internet to Public Housing Residents (100 Mb/s for Free!)
About time PostgreSQL gets some love.
I have, but most of the music I listen to is music that I review, and I insist on paying for that music.
If the money actually went to the artists I'd be happy to pay a $5 a month tax. But somehow I don't think this is how that scheme would work out.
I would have to respectfully disagree on that score. While there is no accounting for taste, I think that there's a lot of excellent music being done these days. I've even heard a few albums in the past few months which are among my all-time favorites, would highly recommend to anyone and everyone. Iron & Wine's latest album, The Shepherd's Dog is, in my opinion, the best of the last year.

http://www.amazon.com/Shepherds-Dog-Iron-Wine/dp/B000TQZ7O4/...

So yes, there's a lot of dreck out there, but I don't think it's fair to say that one has to search very hard for music "worth listening to".
11 "Don't tell the wife" secrets all men keep
You are completely correct.

Amazon's client, as clients go, is fantastic.
It is a good client. My personal preference is for direct downloads, but if you pressed me on why, I would be unable to give a reason other than simple preference. I kind of like cutting out the middleware and not needing Yet Another App on my machine.

Still, as clients go, Amazon's is excellent. As another poster pointed out, it is quite lightweight and unobtrusive.
Interesting. So it'd probably work alright if not too much of my face was bloody/bruised?
> ... its top speed is a pokey 15 miles an hour.

Hey now. That's not the hot rod the original was, but that's way faster than I thought this thing went.
I'll be the first to admit that the extent of my knowledge of graphics cards and drivers doesn't extend much past how to install them. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that on the dual-boot systems I've used (mostly machines designed for cross-platform testing) Linux and previous versions of Windows (notably XP in its SP 1 iteration), seem WAY more forgiving than Vista and don't crash or recover gracefully in situations where Vista bombs.

Admittedly, this is based on personal anecdotes and, as the saying goes, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
There can still be competition within the industry though. All that is needed is a way to to determine how to best reward the industry participants for effectiveness. For music that could be some measure of the number of downloads/listens to each artist's piece of music.

I'm not sure this is the way to go. You could argue that innovation in 'non-measured' uses of music would be stifled. But within the framework there would be incentives.
Interesting.

I guess the point I was getting at (which, on rereading my post didn't really come through at all), is that they seem to be blaiming other software developers without actually defining how they attributed said crashes. Perhaps it's outside the scope of the article, but I'm just a touch dubious of an article in which MS blaims others for their OS crashing. Doubly so when they don't provide much more than a pie chart to back that up.
So far after posting support for my statement I've lost 13 more points. I don't care, but this is useful as evidence: I think your theory that I was being downvoted due to lack of support for my statement is incorrect.
Did anyone else see that picture and wonder if NASA's pick up some spinners and ground-lights to go with that gold paint job?
If the music industry as we know it is dying, what's going to replace it?

Music tax - definitely bad idea.
Buying CDs/albums - apparently, that is 'dying'.

So, then, how are artists going to get payed in such a way that both artists and consumers are happy? They won't work for free, after all. I've been think about this, but to no avail - nothing really comes to mind.
I don't see why there would be a lot. Client libs usually take care of that. I don't know what these guys are doing here.
quality in news is really decreasing
I'm going to go with it's impossible to estimate.
I actually just installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop because Vista crashed alot of the time when security mode kicked in. My machine would hang for atleast a couple of minutes, then BSOD. It was always because of nvidia drivers, but i had installed the latest, and the Vista error help program said there was no solution :)

I'd always wanted to try Ubuntu, but didn't want to invest the time in setting it up, as I don't want to do anything not related to my start-up. The crashes finally made it related, and i couldn't be happier.
I'm in a long term relationship with my lovely girlfriend. We're currently living together, can't complain

So to answer your question: Yes
Earth Hour
No doubt most of you will notice that at the stroke of midnight, Googles homepage will become black (http://www.Google.co.uk) as a "gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour", which I am in full support of. However, a bigger and better "gesture" would have been to have the search results pages in black as well, which they are not. I actually like the black theme (with a splash of colour) better. And of course, there is always Blackle (http://www.blackle.com/), which links to this story: http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-google-would-save-3000-megawatts.html
Example of Guerilla tactics for profiling a startup
You're allowed, but 21 is the legal drinking age.
but you don't want to cause the film is pretty stupid.
just to give you a heads up....

it's a waste of time.
Ask YC: Which companies/products have the best UI/UX?
Thoughts? Local miami startup, Scrapblog has an awesome ui.
I like this one: http://www.asmomarine.com

Very clean and professional.

Disclaimer: a friend of mine did it.
married! (and pregnant!)
Interview with Kernighan and Bruce Maggss
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/maggs-interview/index.html

Old, but interesting ;)
You're free to stay at my place: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q...

Send an email to sebastian@stadil.com
oh muxtape is cool.
The Gauntlet
The gauntlet has been thrown down, bitches. :-)
Then how do you judge that it's worth it?
I actually have a date with my wife tomorrow night! Just secured a babysitter. Our last date was on Valentine's day.
To be fair, the last I read they turned a marginal profit on the 360 (earnings report from the EDD divsion) in January, but that isn't what gives them a $260 billion market cap. Compared to the profitability Nintendo has raked in through the Wii and DS it's anemic.
Depends on your definition of best. The sites that tend to be flashy without purpose I don't like.

Some common sites that I tend to use frequently that the UI never seems to get in my way: News.YC, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.

To me, simplicity is bliss.
Anyone working on iPhone apps? Do you think it'll be the next gold rush?
Do you even believe the argument you're trying to make here? Frankly, it seems ridiculous.
Re: data

The slickest (if not sickest) example of this that comes to mind: www.gracenote.com

Thousands of users manually entered label/track/artist information, helping to build a massive commercial (read: license fee) CD Title database

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listenin...
>I've got a few summers of experience working for startups under my belt

You can always go back to school...

Have you considered working for a startup in Europe? (broaden your worldview - old cliche: if the world is a book and you don't travel, you've only read a couple pages..)

Read the "4-hour Work Week". It might give you some good ideas.

Kolbe personality test - Slightly expensive and comprehensive - may give you insight into yourself (http://www.kolbe.com)
Conference by a younger Clifford Stoll
Depends where you are. In New Jersey and California I argued along these lines unsuccessfully for years.
You're comparing fundamentally very different approaches to the game console industry. Nintendo must be profitable selling its consoles and software licenses in order to survive. The company ethos is letting people have fun and doing so in the most economically efficient way possible. Microsoft cares more about getting their hardware and software into America's homes. They don't want profit, they want a platform for content delivery.

Both companies are doing pretty good right now.
Abel Prize Awarded for Decoding Symmetry
The Best 11 Time Travel Tales of All Time
Addressing 'b': Since you won't need a lot of money, you should try approaching angel investors -- affluent individuals who invest small amounts in startups in return for some share of the company. I suggest looking in your local area for angel networks and see if you can gain audience with them. You'll usually need a full business plan and presentation for audience with them.
This isn't a facebook hack at all. It's a Moods application hack. Really, it's the application programmer's fault for not checking if the auth_token received corresponds to the fb_sig_user. James Hong's Pets application used to have the same problem, where you could sell other people's items to make money for your own pet. He just needed to validate his inputs...

And so do most amateurs web programmers.

Facebook is pretty secure. Its apps vary.
I like FF. It certainly doesn't feel like a "frenzy", though.
H. G. Wells is going to be upset that they will forget this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
Did that. Not all their email addresses are verified. At some point they'll have a secure way of passing on the information that a certain address is verified, but for now I have to verify them myself before sending other mail.
Cool Pictures from Inside a Dutch Museum Made to be a Human Body
Github (github.com) is beautiful all around. Git can be complicated, but github made setting up a repo there so easy that I made several just yesterday.
So the buyer donates to his friend, and his friend donates to him, and effectively no one ends up paying the computer tax.
I love the interfaces of 37signals (as many of you would do).. Apart from that I still love Flickr.

BTW, the admin interface for Wordpress.org by HappyCog would also mark as a great UI design (http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/).
Massive IFRAME SEO Poisoning Attack Continuing
Apple picks trusted supplier to assemble 3G iPhone
Don't Fear Failure, Learn from It
google definitely, igoogle not quite as much but still good
Facebook friends not real friends: judge
No Donnie Darko? Seriously...
Yeah.It doesn't matter as far as you know how to balance your personal life and work.
www.apple.com
Don't let them scare you. Let them inspire you.

(Funny, we spend all this time and energy trying to get into "startup mode" while forgetting that's the mode we were already in long ago before we let others change us.)
excellent article.
The iPod remains one of the most innovative consumer electronic devices on the market

It seems fairly straightforward to me, and not a major change from the Walkman of the late 1970s--a device that was actually innovative, but still fairly straightforward.
I was speaking with an Amazon WS evangelist last year and he was recommending a 5 server system: load balancer, two web/app servers and two DB servers.

The issue I brought up was that you couldn't guarantee colocation, so you might be making DB calls cross-country. If you're using a poorly optimized ORM (untweaked ActiveRecord, Hibernate, etc.), that is issuing tons of queries, the net lag between the app server and the DB could slow you to a crawl.

The availability zones seem like the could be an answer to that, but they're being marketed as an answer to disaster recovery and failover. It would definitely be nice to request your app server and DB server are close to each other.
How to Disagree
No, Emmett is not right because there is no definition of qualified. It is a meaningless statement. The problem with the statement is that it implies that you are not funded you are somehow not qualified. What does that mean?
47 comments, 8 points. Might be a new record for that ratio.
iminlikewithyou is pretty darn awesome. And not minimalist at all--very rich interaction, and very well done.
32 Reasons Why Geeks are Severely Underpaid
Amish Paradise
Reminds me of this research study:

Cichlid = fish

"Ethanol and three beverage alcohols were examined for their effects on the aggressive responses of the convict cichlid. At an ethanol concentration that gave negligible effects on the basal level of these responses, rum was observed to depress aggression."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/t2p3167173282h4m/
My application got rejected. May be I shouldn't have said my company's name :).
Indeed, to really address someone's arguments well enough to try to change their opinion takes a lot of time and effort. The question is, what is the benefit to you of doing that? If it is a real live friend that you are going to spend a lot of time with it may be worth the effort as they become perhaps a more enjoyable friend to spend time with (e.g. a friend who keeps telling you what a Great job George Bush is doing may begin to grate on the nerves). However, a stranger on the Internet you only know by a fake name, if you refute their arguments and win them over, it is not clear that you gain much. They go away. So, in casual conversation such as in these responses here or in Reddit, where everything is anonymous and long term relationship is not likely, it is easier and perhaps more satisfying just to call them an ass. Perhaps this would change in a reddit embedded withing a facebook where there is more relationship context for the conversation and where perhaps, there is more to be clearly gained by changing someones mind about something.
I definitely find myself agreeing with that judgment...

That, too, is why I tend to agree with all the 'FACEBOOK IS DOOMED!!!' articles too. Facebook, while being a pretty good web OS and development platform, lacks a decent social networking application. (Facebook itself, after a while, begins to seem very superficial and useless.)
I realize they're going about it in different ways. The focus was on the damage to the brand. As a brand, when people think Microsoft products they generally think "hold back and wait for the first service pack, the hardware refresh, or the 3rd product iteration".

That's expensive when you rush something to market and the market doesn't bite because the product was rushed and the brand suffers. Under the Microsoft model that works because they have the cash reserves to burn through the flops and deadpans, but it damages the brand each time.

In contrast, when people think Apple, Nintendo, Adobe, Google they tend to associate those brands with strong cost/value.