skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What's your definition of a dictator? Chavez was reelected with 2/3 of the votes, against the leading runner-up with 1/3 the votes, and numerous independent parties have failed to show evidence of the massive election fraud that would have been necessary to skew the results by that much.

I know the US thinks that it has a monopoly on what democracy means, but just because he happens to be opposed to the US does not actually make him a dictator. Comparing him to Kim Jong Il shows a massive lack of perspective.
I hate screencasts. They force you to sit around watching, don't let you cut and paste or easily skim the content, and of course aren't like sitting next to someone in that you can't stop the guy talking and ask him a question.

On the other hand, I'd love to see some good Rails articles.
As you say, MongoDB has support for replica pairs that are partition tolerant, but part of this functionality is in client libs. For Ruby, you register both dual masters in a replica pair with the client library. This seems like a practical approach to me, or at least fairly easy to work with.
Ask HN: Should I try Lead Generation?
Hey HN, I'm posting this under a fake name because I'm kind of embarrassed to be asking this.

Today learned about "leadgen" sites where you basically put up a form, get customer information, and then sell it to someone who needs that customer. Apparently its a huge business (for which there was even a conference in Vegas recently).

By day, I work doing datamining / machine learning with Hadoop. I'm comfortable with doing A/B testing in Rails, and I'm competent in photoshop. Surely I could compete on a technical level, but is this even worth spending time on?

I realize the market for the "big 4" (mortgages, loan modification, automotive, online schools) is very saturated. That said, I think there may be a lot of opportunities in the local space for smaller categories: handymen, personal trainers, wedding photography, (maybe cosmetic surgery?) etc.

Let me give you an example: The other day our phone rang and it was a man in his thirties who was short on work. He asked my wife if we had any handyman work we needed done. My wife said that we didn't and he continued by suggesting a list of work he could do (plumbing, painting, yard work, etc.) We politely refused because we don't need anything done, but I felt bad for the guy.

He seems like an ideal candidate for selling a home improvement lead. I can only imagine that in this economy there are many more individuals and companies like him.

I don't want to get rich, I just want to make a couple hundred thousand to pay off my mortgage.

So HN: what are your thoughts? Is this a sleazy, saturated market for which I will be selling my soul in exchange for pittance? Or is it a viable side business for making a little cash? Any legal issues or pitfalls you want to warn me about?
Because mises is the light at the end of this tunnel of irrationality we are in. Eventually, the world is going to end up exactly where they describe and everyone is going to wonder how we got there.
It's hard to often hard to reach a consensus because each system has mechanisms for compensating for features that they lack. Ex: RDBMSs often deal with partition intolerance using replication and sharding.
I agree, attention span is something that's really hard to maintain.

Front end coding: Very little, I'd use the nifty_layouts. No reason to spend time when the likelihood of you using the exact same design is very little.

In terms of editing, that's very time consuming. This raises the question, would you be willing to pay for that at a "fair price"?
Extrapolating feature size reductions every two years:

2010: 32nm,
2012: 22nm,
2014: 16nm,
2016: 11nm,
2018: Nanoelectronics/magic

Eight years away from the end of CMOS? That's mind-boggling, especially since the ITRS roadmap puts 11nm feature size out in 2022.
Theory of Change
> only if they're well edited

I second that - an edited and concise screencast is worth much more than an non-edited one. PeepCode are a very good example about how to do this right!
This makes complete sense, and I thought this is the way battery replacement for iPods and iPhones always worked. Note you do not get a new iPad. You get a refurbished iPad of the same model. Your iPad then is refurbished and sent to a future customer.
Try roundup: http://roundup.sourceforge.net/
I had a similar experience once. The thing is, though, that a Venezuelan on an international university course almost certainly comes from the tiny elite whose interests are so opposed to Chavez that they would hate him no matter what, regardless of the interests of the country as a whole. That doesn't make the opposite opinion any truer, of course.
Datacenter operators pay attention to cost of ownership per increment of performance. They'll be very interested in faster chips but only when they can run an extra virtual instance on each server without raising power and cooling costs, for example.

On clock speeds you're mistaken. Yes, Intel went from 20 to 1000 MHz during the nineties, and their marketing was all about clocks. But during that period, they also added 20-stage pipelines, out-of-order execution, 3 levels of caching for instructions and data, branch prediction, and hyperthreading. That's the substance of the Hennesy and Patterson claim: during the 10-year up-clocking binge, 90% of performance gains still came from architecture.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about cost per die. Can you elaborate?
If your using git, try http://wiki.github.com/schacon/ticgit/
Any material that gives a holistic view (that will be an aid to n00bs like me) or exploring the limitations of rails while building real world applications would be interesting. Where is it hard to work idiomatically within the framework of rails and what are the workarounds... just some thoughts
Rails 3: Well, it's a huge shift from the previous rails version, so, yes.

Regarding sound quality, yeah, I'm using a headset.

Btw. I added you on GChat.
I'd limit every episode by 5 minutes. www.screenr.com is awesome software. I haven't found anything that fits my needs apart from it(I'm on Ubuntu)
Screencasts can be really annoying, and I prefer the asciicast versions of RyanB's casts. However, I still watch the videos, usually when I have some downtime and want to 'work' with someone else. For me, I do all my Rails dev solo, so all I have is vim, irc, and mailing lists.

Screencasts are fun.
I like the idea. I would love to see a somewhat complex app written using Rails. How long do you think each screencast would be?

I agree with some of the other commentators that many like reading vs. watching a screencast (and it does not help that you can't copy-paste code), so perhaps you might consider putting the code out there.
AFAIK Apple stores have a special tool in the back to help assist changing out batteries in iPhones. So they do it while you wait.
Unfuddle is very good, very light and easy, it specially helpfull if you are using Eclipse IDE, unfuddle has Mylyn connector to synchronize bugs with ide.
I agree. Screencasts are really fun, especially if the lecturer isn't boring and monotone!
New Startup Ideas Spreadsheet
To follow on from cdixon's recent submission (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190710), I suggest we put into practice the "opposite of secret" theory.

Feel free to add your own ideas and leave feedback on the others. Also if you see something that interests you, get in contact and make it happen!
Actually, it's pretty tied with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Since you imply the murder rate in Venezuela is Chavez's fault, I assume the leaders of the other countries are at fault there, too? Except none of those countries have politics in any way similar to Venezuela's...

Besides, actual dictatorships tend to have a very low rate of homicides, at least reported such.
It makes no sense. It's the most horribly inefficient system. It wastes additional shipping fuel. It requires you to accept someone elses iPad. Maybe there's a scratch on it. Maybe you've saved something to the hard driv... oh wait.

The process should be this:

1) Go to newegg.com
2) Search for "ipad battery"
3) add to cart
4) pay with credit card
5) open package delivered the next day
6) remove old battery
7) Insert new battery.
I won't speak for Slava, but I think generally the idea is that knowing either one well enough implies a certain amount of knowledge about computer guts, which in turn implies that it shouldn't be too hard for you to learn the other.

Technically it's in C++, though, if that helps.
Thanks for the feedback. Every episode would be limited to 5 minutes.

The code would be publicly available via github.
You're not a professional until you learn how to say No.

It's the closest thing digital practitioners have got to a Bar Association, and that's not about to change any time soon.
BreakthePaywall! is a free add-on for Internet Explorer (Firefox coming soon!) that simplifies using the various methods for circumventing website paywall restrictions. http://www.breakthepaywall.com
A lot of these items also apply to programmers. Although, I bet the list would be much longer than this since no one knows what programmers actually do.

Like when somebody asks you to do a certain task and say "it shouldn't take more than [x]", even though he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about!
I think this is a great idea. It sounds like I would get a lot out of something like this.
Making the battery removable would make the overall design thicker and less rigid.

While your proposal is good theory, it is not good in practice. For the most part I think that battery technology has advanced to the point that battery replacements should be the exception, not the norm.

I haven't had to replace a battery before a device's EOL in quite some time.
"it is important to sync your iPad with iTunes to back up your contacts, calendars, email account settings, bookmarks, apps, etc. Apple is not responsible for the loss of information when servicing your iPad."

Equally important, it would seem, would be to wipe your iPad clean before sending it in, after backing it up of course.
I noticed something while talking with people on the subject - it's not only about the lecturer, at all.

It's just a matter of taste: some people really hate screencasts, while other really love them (see on stackoverflow.com for debates on that topic!).

You won't be able to please both (unless you have something similar to asciicasts maybe ?)
If an economy is centrally planned at the top level... it's not capitalist.
I really like peepcode:

peepcode.com

I'm learning rails at the moment and I find it quite useful - especially from the very start of my immersion into the world of rails. You may get 'inspiration' from these guys ;-)
"And, wow, downvoted already... some passive aggressive cunt who hasn't bothered to explain why. What a surprise..."

Indeed. If you downvote someone's comment, you should at least have the balls to make a coherent reply stating what you disagree with, or upvote such an argument.
I agree, peepcode is executing their videos really well.
Most commercial screencasts ship with the source code. It's subjective, though, because many people are visual learners.

For example, I had dabbled into jQuery through the docs and tutorials. However, it wasn't until I got a copy of Peepcode's jQuery screencast that I really got hold of it.
I'd think you would have to look at it like writing a book, except with the chapters being in video instead of text. I think trying to approach it as a series of RailsCasts would not cater to the type of people who want such a structured learning system. One of RailsCasts best benefits is that you learn on your own terms, which is the opposite of what you are going for it sounds like.

There are many different learning styles and some people like to see rather than read so I think it has potential. You may check out LearnVisualStudio.net as they have been selling videos for years, including videos that go from nothing to building a full featured application.

Good luck in your venture - the more ways people can learn rails, the more it will attract new developers and grow the ecosystem.
Fugpaint - A misbehaving paint program
It's a problem for lawyers, accountants and doctors.

Except they don't have any of my sympathy because they have officially-recognized bars, certifications, and boards to ensure they are paid what they are actually worth. Because of this, the advice they get solicited for comes from respect, not because what they do "must be easy".
EasyPeasy netbook OS in Ubuntu User magazine
Ah, and this is where Apple's expertise lies. They want a cut in every transaction that has anything to do with their product. From purchasing, to buying apps, to all maintenance. And they give you a feel-good experience from it too.

The average customer will be impressed that they got a "new" iPad for only $99. But really, Apple is just changing the battery and housing for you and selling to the next guy for $99. They make a lot more money doing this than by selling user-replaceable batteries.
+1 for limit to 5 minutes (or concise anyway :-).

About ubuntu - maybe this could be helpful: ?

http://remi.org/2009/04/16/how-i-record-my-screencasts
Wait until you see what comes after.

Everyone thinks DNA is just genetic material, but researchers can already build rigid 3D structures with it, or weave it into flat sheets and then address the individual nucleotides like pixels.

The computers we use in 2025 will probably be self-assembled and might not be electronic, but they'll keep getting faster.

http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna-n...
This sounds like the way that WalMart operates its stores.
replica pairs are replication though, they aren't truly distributed. (they negotiate which one is master on launch)
I supposed that the HN readers are genuinely interested in the story I picked from the Mises daily archive.

That being said, I only picked stories that I think HN might find interesting.
Screencasts are one of the things that attracted me to Ruby in the first place. A few years ago I was debating between Ruby and few other languages and, to me, the best part of the language is the community around it. One part that separates it from others is the quality and variety of educational material. Well written articles, screencasts and podcasts are all consistently good.

If you think screencasting will be fun -- go for it. If you put the time and effort into making a quality product I would watch it.
It's unfortunate, but a lot of people participating in these discussions have no clue. They read that CouchDB claims to support "ACID" and then conclude that it fulfills the C in CAP. Now in reality, CouchDB isn't ACID compliant because it doesn't even support transactions. Additionally the C in ACID is not equivalent to the C in CAP.

Or take a look at this sentence from the article "Consistent, Available (CA) Systems have trouble with partitioning and typically deal with it with replication and sharding.". I assume that instead of "partitioning" he meant "partitions". Even then, partitions can not be dealt with by sharding in any sense. And mentioning "replication" is totally misplaced here because obviously all of these data stores use some kind of replication.
I hear you: TextMate is a great editor, especially when you want to browse through a lot of code. That said, "e" on Windows is fairly TextMate compatible (at least it runs the TextMate plugins). For Ubuntu, GEdit and Emacs are very good. Emacs with Speedbar lets you whip through lots of code quickly. GEdit also provides good plugins and multiple directory code browsing.

All that said, I still boot OS X for specific apps (TexShop, OmniGraffle mostly). Anyway, it is a free world, and certainly OS X is a great choice for development.
I like it. A good marketing strategy, btw, would be to release the first one for free (the blog one), because there are many blog-in-rails tutorials and screencasts. This way people would see the alleged quality of your screencasts and be incited to buy the others.
I suppose you don't include every laptop ever made as examples of replaceable batteries in practice. The Apple decision you support here is called "Designed Obsolescence" and it is a big reason our way of life is unsustainable.

I've never not had to replace a battery before EOL, but I take care of my stuff. Maybe your stuff doesn't last as long. Even though my remington shaver said "no serviceable parts, return to manufacturer for repair," when the batteries died after 5 years of use, I opened up that sucker and replaced the two standard AA batteries with new NiCads. I had to cut the wires and solder in new ones, but I didn't have to pay shipping and I didn't have to wait more than a day. I was actually shocked to see that inside were two generic NiCad AA's. The shaver has worked fine ever since.

I don't buy the thicker and less rigid argument. It's simply not good enough to justify the cost in monetary terms or especially environmental terms. Battery covers are a millimeter thick and plenty of devices have replaceable batteries. If Apple can't build a strong enough case to allow batteries to be replaced I'm flabbergasted.

I see no evidence to support your hypothesis, definitely not enough to justify the design decision.
I love the idea of turning this into a book, yet the problem with a book is that due to how fast rails moves, the actual content would eventually become outdated.
I was just writing a defense of your thoughtful, nuanced comment, about how preposterous it was to downvote it when the parent, which contains nothing but ra-ra-team ideology, was sitting at +6. But then I noticed the charming addendum you put at the end. Come on Andrew, please don't do that. Not only does it violate the rules and spirit of the site, it undermines everything you wrote. In fact it totally spoils it (and changes the subject into a big distraction).

Edit: PG said he didn't want to let HN go down without a fight. It's our reponsibility to fight for it too. You've been around here for a long time and made many valuable contributions (definitely including this one, if that noxious bit were excised; there are so few comments on Venezuela that aren't 100% determined by ideological agenda).
I'm approximately as Anarcho-Capitalist as one comes... and I wish I would stop seeing mises.org info on HN. It may not be the "wrong" venue, but it's decidedly inappropriate.
IMHO, you are over analyzing. Other countries are doing similar things right now (Iran, Russia, etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

When the oil runs out, the clow.. politicians will stop making trouble with foreign countries so they have external enemies [edit: which makes all opposition close to treason; most of the troublesome countries are oil countries today]. That is because the politicians will need to make the internal economy run well, so there is anything worth stealing for them. (Just hope they won't think they are too unpopular to keep earning and take off the velvet gloves, North Korean style.)
Thanks for responding with a useful link. Unfortunately, recordMyScreen is a bit ... "slow" in terms of video quality.

I think I'll stick with screenr, it limits me to 5 minutes per video anyway!
Functional HTML templating with Clojure+Enlive+Compojure
I keep bugs and do email/support via FogBugz, but when it gets down to crunch time I always end up back in Pivotal Tracker for my weekly to do. I work alone.

FogBugz email integration is top notch, but the time tracking and staying on target for a release is definitely tuned for a larger team. In "list of cases" view there isn't an immediate visual cue to what you can get done in time for a release. Going into reports you get nice graphs with confidence curves for the finish date of a release. Entirely overkill for a small team; possibly a life saver for a larger one. A side note, I was able to show a non technical person how to use FogBugz to work with email with surprisingly good results. The person found it a very natural transition from plain email and appreciated the case tracking capabilities of FogBugz.

Pivotal feels much more natural to me and always helps me stay on track. I can immediately see what I can get done this week and what I will have to push back or revise. I also find its 3 point system for estimating remarkably accurate. The tool has actually driven me to get things done as well, which is more than I can ask of any tracking system.

So,

FogBugz: a formal bug tracking system with excellent email integration and fine grained estimation and tracking.

Pivotal Tracker: a "to do" tracking system, with coarse estimation and tracking that works better for fast iterations and small teams.
Not necessarily. They could just charge $99 for a new battery and sell them in the store like they sell laptop batteries which are around the same price.
Why not? What is your beef with posting interesting articles from mises.org, even if it is the most radical libertarian website as they come?
Yes. Teaching others can definitely be a good marketing strategy. I think that Obie Fernandez made HashRocket really popular through his book, "The Rails Way"
I would have up voted you, if you hadn't used the term "cunt".
For years, I have "compiled stuff by hand" of OS X - not a bad approach, but it takes time. If I was just a software developer I would probably run OS X most of the time because I would have my tools built and installed once and no repeat time wasting work. For me, I also write on tech a lot, and sometimes I get some consulting work fitting people's projects to technology stacks. As a result, I have the perfect excuse to try just about everything and installing "everything" is simpler on Linux.

If Homebrew develops into a great system in the future, I might boot less to Ubuntu.
Bike Directions now on Google Maps
Do one small part of something, and you'll soon start doing the others.
Think about this for a moment. let's say that a vendor, Apple in this case, agreed to service your iPad but it is a one day turnaround.

Under what circumstances would you give them your iPad without backing up all of your data first? Under what circumstances would you trust them with anything sensitive?

When I take my MacBook Pro in for service they make me sign a consent form acknowledging that I can lose all of my data even if they're just replacing a broken key cap. Given that Apple provide iTunes and Time Machine, there's really no excuse for not having everything synced and backed up. The trust issue is something else, of course.
I cover scraping Hacker News and the New York Times. The templating examples show how Enlive keeps a clean separation between HTML and code. Template inheritance is just function composition.
So I guess personalized engraving is out?
That's interesting. Some people find it hard to learn by watching a screen cast. How much value do you see in these rails screencasts ?
The fancy HN dup checker doesn't look at #'s in the url.
It is not within the purview of HN. I almost always completely agree with everything posted at mises.org. That doesn't mean that I am interested in "converting" the denizens of news.ycombinator.com.
This sounds reasonable, but wouldn't I look like another "idea guy" if I keep bouncing off a list of different ideas to other entrepreneurs or VCs?

Wouldn't they would like to see me being passionate about one market, one idea, have detailed research about it, being committed about it?

It's very easy to bounce of bunch off ideas with VCs or entrepreneurs - if they are your friends. But it doesn't seem to be very logical approach for first time entrepreneurs.
About fair price: I'll reach you by IM, several things to share with you on that topic.
agreed, its not a motivated by design decision alone, the nexus1 kind of proved that.
Thanks to the power of mechanicalturk, I think I could pay them to transcript the videos.
The textbook writers need to hire the guys from the "Dude, What Would Happen" show, where chewing gum is "epic". It's an awful show, but my 9 year old likes it.