skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> maybe one of you could show at least one example of a "competent" nation conquering disfunctional ones before building your complete world view on it.

Countries with a mix of a stable economy, advanced technology, and organized military regularly conquered their neighbors that didn't have those things. Countries with the tech/military but not the stable economy (USSR, for instance) could have a brief go at it, but inevitably came down upon themselves.

What sort of examples were you looking for? Nations with the combination advanced technology relative to their neighbors and a well organized military have done a lot of conquering throughout history, and those with stable economies held onto their new possessions. There's so many examples I wouldn't know where to start. Rome and all of its possessions would be a decent place, or one of the many functional or dysfunctional Russian Empires, or the Unification of Japan under the Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa daimyos, or Manifest Destiny in the United States...

Those are just a few to come to mind with the economy/tech/military edges, but there's quite literally hundreds, from little tiny islands taking over other little tiny islands in Oceania to the various international powers/empires. Maybe the question is with the word competent? You do need a healthy economy, advanced technology, and stable military, which in turn requires some sort of decent courts, checks and balances on military rule, some science and production happening, and so on. Complicated question - could probably go on more if you clarified a bit.
The other important reason to use a library is that if someone improves the algorithm someday, you can benefit for nothing more than installing and testing the new version of the library.

I remember this also being the case for Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) algorithms in AI. If you can formulate your problem as a CSP and feed it to a library, you automatically benefit from future improvements in the field of CSP solvers.
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Awesome... my RV is in the shop now, but would love to meet up and check out each other's RVs at some point (you know... like dogs sniffing butts)

Tynan
This seems backwards to me. Traditionally, aren't managers appointed when there is a need to manage people doing work? You don't (generally) appoint a manager and then wait for them to somehow create the work that people would do.
I would hope not overreact. She's taking it personally, acting as if her kid is being insulted by being on the watch list. I too am sometimes flagged as being on some kind of list for no apparent reason, and can't check in online. I do not take it as an insult.

If it happened more often I might take the time to file the paper work, which is sounds like she finally just did.
The most hilarious "Amazon shut off our API access" email ever.
I don't know yet. I'm waffling a bit. I ordered dishes which will be delivered to Palo Alto tomorrow...poor planning, as I should have waited until I was settled somewhere for a week or so before ordering them. So, I can either proceed with my "keep going south until it gets warm" plan and be without dishes for a couple of months until I get back up north, or detour back up to Palo Alto to pickup the dishes. I might also bother my friend who's receiving them to ship them out to me next time I settle somewhere. I also have solar panels coming that were supposed to be delivered several days before I left, but got delayed. I suspect I'll cancel the solar panels and just keep going south; Los Angeles, San Diego, maybe Mexico.

I think we're going to do a conference in February in Los Angeles, so I'll probably stay in California until then. We'll definitely be doing OSCON, so I'll be in Portland in July. I don't think I'll make YAPC this year, since it is across the country and doesn't leave a lot of time to get back to the left coast for OSCON (my goal is to drive no more than six hours between stops and never stop for less than a week, since I do have work to do and can't be driving all the time).
You're assuming that people aren't capable of weighing all the costs (dollars or otherwise).

Which is a reasonable assumption. We wouldn't need laws if people could rationally weigh up the costs and benefits of their actions.
Microsoft Advances Search Privacy with Bing
Still, you can compare 60MB vs 2GB of RAM or ~512MB of gpu memory.
IPv4 addresses: Less than 10pc still available
Are 3G dongles common in the US? What's coverage like?
XMLHttpRequest in node.js
>People often ask where it’s legal to park an RV. And the answer is, generally, “Wherever you can park your car, I can park my RV; as long as it fits, doesn’t obstruct signage or right of way, and doesn’t spill into another space where spaces are marked.” The law in most of California is that vehicles under 45 feet and used for non-commercial purposes can park anywhere any other consumer vehicle can park.

Interesting. This is not the case over here in Europe (at least in the parts of it I've been to). You get fined if you sleep overnight in your vehicle outside designated areas (like camping sites, specially RV-dedicated parking lots, etc., all of which you have to pay, of course).

EDIT: of course you can park everywhere, I was referencing "sleeping" part of the article.
According to reviews Earth Class Mail is among the worst of these services (though they have better web design and better PR). PaperlessMail.com and sbimailservice.com are better reviewed, and the prices end up being a lot lower. I don't have enough experience to say what is best, or whether Earth Class Mail deserves its bad reputation, but I did spend a lot of time reading up on it, since it's pretty important that mail works right for me to be able to keep running Virtualmin.
While there may be some intercorporate chicanery going on, I think that the "blame Andy Rubin" explanation makes the most sense.

The original Sidekick team designed Android originally before being bought by Google, and their intensely odd ideas show up all over the place in the product:

* It makes really poor use of the Linux kernel, basically using it as a bootloader,
hardcoding random shit, implementing its own power management by exposing a few
low-level hardware-specific bits directly to their JVM

* Bizarro JIT-less register-based alt-JVM. Aren't native apps supposed to be faster
than web apps? WTF did they spend effort writing V8 when Squirrelfish was doing
great, and then not bother about performance for the part that makes phone calls?

* Odd decomposed 'Activity' model for applications

* No house style or easy defaults for basic shit like buttons and forms

* Huge holes in the API, sound is fucked to the point where you can't do decent
games, much less the kind of musical apps you see on the iPhone

* Hidden functionality via long-touches and double-clicks everywhere

* 5 hardware buttons in different orders on random phones
with different functionality in every app (back is completely fucked!)

Multitouch gestures in the default apps are just one of the lesser oddities.
I think the first step in overcoming poverty is for all of us to propagate a value system where citizens are held responsible for their countries.

For example, if India is poor and backward, then I am responsible for contributing to its poverty and backwardness, and so are all other Indians.
I think it's interesting how /personally/ business owners take feedback. Especially at first, I know my stomach churned rather unpleasantly when I got even a mildly negative review. It's hard not to take it personally.

But how you end up handling that, I think, is super important. In my space, it's pretty easy to say "Oh, I'm sorry, would you like a refund?" First, taking responsibility for the problem, and then offering to refund what the customer paid seems to disarm even the most vocal critics. I mean, you don't usually get to keep the customer, but they usually stop saying bad things about you.

But really, being 'just a guy' is a little bit of a double-edged sword. you want to be 'human' enough that you seem like a person and not some faceless corporation, but you also need to maintain enough emotional distance that you respond in a polite manner (or don't respond at all) when someone insults the 'baby' you have spent the last 5 years of your life working on.
Distilling the Wisdom of the Classics: On War
I've been using EarthClassMail for two years now. It's worked for my needs (serves as a registered address for business as well), but it's quite expensive and the web UI sucks.

I'd love to hear more about your experience with St. Brendan's. How is the scanning? Does it work for all your business needs (registered address, etc). Any tips?

My parents live in Florida, so that could make residency there easier as well.
you dont need internet to hack.
The first that comes to mind is the Ottoman empire. World power in the 1600-1700s, but it failed to develop the institutions mentioned in this article and fell to Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Britain over the latter half of the 1800s.

Lithuania. Largest country in Europe in the 14th century. Lost large sections of its territory to Sweden and Russia in the late 1600s and 1700s.

All of the Native American nations that were swept aside by the United States. Much of that was because of disease, but a lot was also because the U.S. was better organized and could pick off individual tribes one-by-one.

Mongolia. Genghis Khan's empire, once one of the largest on earth. Great fighters, poor administrators. Eventually overshadowed by China.
I strongly disagree, I think it is more important to look at the system that brings about the results (poverty). Not everybody is in a position to change the system - for example not everybody has the skills to become elected as president to be able to change the laws.

Maybe everybody could do something to change things, but it certainly isn't obvious WHAT to do. Therefore I can't blame people, if they don't know any better.
Scaling a lean startup when servers are melting
Sleeping in the vehicle is another matter; but since it's not obvious someone is sleeping in the vehicle, I suspect one can get away with parking legally and sleeping illegally enough of the time to make it worthwhile (if a ticket for sleeping in the vehicle costs, say, $75, then as long as you don't get ticketed more than once every three nights, you'd come out ahead over an RV park). There are other benefits to RV parks, including the convenience of not having to run the generator for power, not having to dump and refill water, and probably having better Internet, so I'll probably end up staying in parks about 75% of the time. I'm paying $41.50, including utilities and Internet, per night here in Morro Bay, and this is a pretty pricey area; my house in Mountain View cost $71.50 per night, and didn't include utilities or Internet. So, I'm still coming out way ahead.
There seems to be a company in Japan selling one person helicopters. Gasoline powered though.

http://en.gen-corp.jp/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd99ziWFF7Q
What do you need bandwidth for?

My father lived on a canal barge for the past 4 years and is now living in a custom RV. He loves the mobile life and dislikes being anchored to one spot too long.

He rents a virtual server with Linode for things that require constant monitoring, but it also provides him with a SSH tunnel for when he's using public internet.

He's parking in pub car-parks a lot of the time and as he's in the pub most evenings the landlords are happy with this. He uses their wi-fi (with permission) and gets great bandwidth and has his SSH tunnel to offer security.

When he's not parked with such favourable conditions he uses a 3G card which gives him decent reception everywhere. With a blackberry all of his email is taken care of so he only needs to get online to do specific things.

Now, granted he's not a programmer... but how much bandwidth does that SSH connection take? And if you're using a virtual server to do your downloads and then can drive by a wi-fi spot to collect them from the server then you would've successfully avoided the very expensive cost of a satellite connection.
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Maybe I am not fully awake yet, but where is the joke?
No. Packfiles. http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git?a=blob;f=Documentation/technical...

You need to know about them if you look deeper into how synch is negotiated
What do you do when your RV is in the shop? I had a propane tank issue that seemed like it was going to require an overnight stay (it didn't, as it was just a gasket), and I was a bit flummoxed by the problem. I guess I'm maybe traveling a little heavier than you (big dog, and three very expensive guitars that I wouldn't want to leave in the truck while it's out of my hands, along with way too much other crap that it seems like I'd need to sort out, like the food in the fridge), but still...since I'm not towing a car, I guess I'd need to first rent a car, then hand over the RV, and settle in at a nearby hotel for the duration of repairs. Seems stressful, but I guess I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.
Also see:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990874
Whoa. Thanks for that link! I only follow the demoscene sporadically these days as I always lose a couple of hours everytime I end up at Pouet!

By following that link I also had the pleasure of ending up on your demoscene group . I had to watch a few, and timestamps may be off here (could only watch the video) but at 2:02 in "Extatique" I had this shiver down my spine as it sent me back to the 90's Amiga scene with resizing-bob-starfield (only lasted for about 2 seconds before I was yanked back to reality, though). :D

Nice productions!

PS. Nice to see that you guys seem to provide source for everything!

Edit: link for those who might be curious: http://www.vimeo.com/8607459
I've fixed it for you. Sorry for the distraction :)
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I doubt that will have WiFi, intentionally omitted to make it useless for this purpose.

It's also almost definitely not the right form-factor.
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Google should have left the cell radio out of the Nexus 1, and sold it at the iPod Touch markup instead of the iPhone markup.

Then they'd really have filled a huge hole that isn't being met by the market, helped developers immensely, and not pissed off their partners.
Yeah, don't move to NYC to do your Startup (Yet)
Critical Success Factors for a Web Startup (Diagram)
Sure but I thought the benefit of exercise was quantified already. Quantifying the value of (!exercise) seems redundant.
The title is misleading - in this description there is no business to fail. It's a start-up that's not going to succeed, not a business that's failing.

Having said that, all the points are valid, but they're all made by Paul Graham in his essays, and mostly better.

http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
> Therefore I can't blame people, if they don't know any better.

This sounds to me as patronizing. I refuse to think that Cameroonians "don't know any better".

I was not really speaking for Cameroon anyway. My main target was India, where you'll see the most demeaning, wretched kind of poverties. I am responsible for it, and if I choose not to do anything about it, then it's my deliberate choice. That's all I am saying.

> for example not everybody has the skills to become elected as president to be able to change the laws

We are not all born with the tools required for the things we need done. We acquire them over time.

Waiting for a messiah to materialize is what I'd call the Kalki-complex. Kalkis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki) are myths. If there's to be change, it must come from us. And that sense of responsibility is what would inspire each of us to strive to be mini-Kalkis, and with any luck, some of us might even become major-Kalkis.
Have you a/b tested the image quality of your screenshots?

I'm just curious about whether a higher quality image would be easier to read and thus more helpful (on the flip side, it might take longer to load, which is bad).
Most of Latin American countries are democracy, but until relatively recently, they were run by right-wing dictatorships. Generally speaking, their institutions are still recovering, the legislative branch is discredited, and the executive still concentrates an awful lot of power, making it very easy to slip back into caudillismo.
gitk already does that, doesn't it?
It's much harder to find someone who doesn't self market themselves.
A plug for un-tiny: http://untiny.com/
Can be used with greasemonkey (my revisions: http://github.com/markhepburn/untiny-greasemonkey/ )
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I'm not sure either. Maybe hilarious in its frankness? Maybe the magnitude of the mistake is hilarious?

Notwithstanding that Collectorz made a bad mistake in basing part of their service on something Amazon explicitly doesn't allow, I thought it was a pretty good sorry message. He should have been more apologetic about making the mistake in the first place, but it's generally a very open and frank message.
They should brick the cell modem's firmware and sell them for ~$200 as iPod Touch competitors.
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Totally disagree. Classic case of oversharing. Even if yer inept, you don't let your custies know it at this level of detail. There's frank and there's pathetic sounding.
A Little Less Conversation
Have/buy friends in the .LY registrar and/or Libyan government?
Hey thanks. The low-tech feel of this demo wasn't intended tbh :)

For casual watchers, good stuff from recent years:

Stargazer/Orb & Andromeda: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=51438

The Beauty/Einklang.net: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50144

Texas/Keyboarders: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=51448

Receptor/TBX: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=51449

Rudebox/ATZ: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=53937

Masagin/Farbrausch: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50131

Everything ASD: http://pouet.net/groups.php?which=1317&order=release
Ooops... I meant 10^4 or even 10^5... I fail at basic maths.
Usually I prefer just going to the source, as recommended in the guidelines, but on this occasion I found the arstechnica commentary useful and interesting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064344
So much simpler to follow than a paragraph of text.
Then please tell me how software gets built. Provide me with a methodology, instead of being a arrogant fool like you are now.

Yes, a code monkey is a term I'm familiar with. But you need good communication skills too.
Maybe it's this line:

"That's it for now. I really apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but I hope you understand that this is fully beyond our control."

...because I've never written an Amazon API app, but even I know they have restrictions on usage wrt mobile apps.
Ask HN: what are you favorite/absolutely must have/niche Ruby gems?
Hey guys,
me and my co-founder are starting development on our startup, and since it's overwhelmingly ruby, we'd love to hear about any interesting gems we should be using. So shoot!

Thanks!
Yeah, Don't Move To NYC To Do Your Startup (Yet)
Absolutely not; however, I feel that Google made a big mistake. It released a Minimum Viable Product, which might have been okay for other companies to do, but because Google is such a large brand name- and such a large part of the internet- it is expected to come out with an amazing product.

A minimum viable product phone is simply not acceptable for someone like my mother who would by the phone because it has Google's name on it. (Yes. I understand that example has a fallacy or two, but it should make my point clear.)

On the other hand, I keep on getting more and more interested in this phone!
I actually plan to use it that way - without any cell or cell data service.

I haven't bought it yet though, I'm hoping someone else will try it first and let me know if it works.
If you're using Rails:
- searchlogic: incredibly easy searching of ActiveRecord models. I've cut out huge amounts of code by using this gem.
- factory_girl: get rid of those awful fixtures!

Also, even though it's not a gem, JRuby is an awesome platform - I actually prefer it to MRI after using it. It's incredibly stable, fast, and bugs are fixed damn quick. I reported a bug in JRuby-OpenSSL yesterday at about 9am, and there was a fix done by 1pm. Very impressive.
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Real programmers use the keyboard ;-)

I use to joke Git was developed by people much smarter than me, for people much smarter than me. The fact we can use it to do our jobs is nothing more than coincidence.
We're actually not going to go the rails route; but I'll check those out on my own, thanks!
"Dear customer:

We've recently been informed by Amazon, our service provider, that our products may infringe upon certain usage restrictions. As a result, the product you've purchased may experience decreased functionality. We are working with Amazon to resolve this issue before this happens.

If you experience any problems or error messages, please do not contact Amazon or Collectorz.com at this time. We will keep you updated as we learn more. Follow us on Twitter at [blah] and on Facebook at [blah].

We sincerely apologize for any inconveience.

Sincerely,

Blah."

Done.
Or, to use a tired image, "There is no spoon".
Well, as a customer I would definitly feel very well informed. Well enough, to know that I can sue (then again, who would do that because of a cheap iPhone app that is no more working).
Computer Security Research
You are probably familiar with this page

http://www.fceia.unr.edu.ar/~fisicomp/apuntes/biblios/wnotnr...

and the suggested alternatives

http://www.fceia.unr.edu.ar/~fisicomp/apuntes/biblios/altnr....

In addition to those suggestions, here are a few more relevant to the present discussion. For dense matrices and how to think about linear algebra algorithms, I highly recommend Trefethen and Bau "Numerical Linear Algebra". For sparse direct solvers, Tim Davis' book (http://www.ec-securehost.com/SIAM/FA02.html) is good, and you can transition from the "learning"-level implementation to Umfpack which is his production-quality solver (it's what is behind Matlab's backslash).
For iterative solvers, Saad is pretty standard. For multiphysics solvers, I don't think any book can match the Knoll and Keyes' 2004 review on Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov methods (it's very accessible).

The GSL has better implementations for many general-purpose algorithms in NR. SciPy is great if you work in Python. For scalable linear and nonlinear solvers, look at PETSc.