skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the comments. I can't tell from your user name who you are and what free software package you're referring to: can you post a link? I'm always interested to read a regular expression implementation.

1. Fair enough, changed linear in X and Y to linear in X and linear in Y.

2. I wasn't trying to highlight the caching so much as the flushing. The Dragon book algorithm does not cache. It generates the entire DFA ahead of time. This may be appropriate in a lexer but not in a grep. Ken Thompson's Plan 9 grep, which I do link to, does the same caching, as does the tiny DFA in regexp1.html, but neither can flush. Being able to flush the cache is the big deal, because it lets you bound the memory usage. I changed the heading from "Use the DFA as a cache" to "Be able to flush the DFA cache". More generally, I try pretty hard to give credit where credit is due, both in this article and in the previous two. This is well trodden ground, and I don't think any algorithm in RE2 is original, though many are unfairly ignored. If you know of other specific citations that are missing, please let me know. I'm especially not trying to steal any thunder from Ken.

3. The entire cache is flushed and then rebuilt as needed. I'd be surprised to see an fast implementation that can flush individual cache entries. The cache is storing a very cross-linked graph. If you wanted to flush an individual state, you'd have to keep all the backpointers for the arrows in the graph so that you could invalidate them when flushing that state. It is far easier (and I bet simpler and more efficient) to flush the whole graph and start again. But hey, it's open source. Try it and see.

4. The inner loop is many many lines of code but the common path through it is a small number of instructions, due to a bunch of big if statements that rarely run. I think you'll find that it's not too far away from 12 or 20 instructions per byte (not character).

Thanks again for the comments.
I am sure it did. I do not see, however, what that has to do with capacity/patronage?
So is it essentially "indexing" point data like Google indexes content?

As someone mentioned, this makes me think animation or changing stuff in real time would be difficult (since the indexing part of it is slow) but I don't have much background in this area.
It's easy enough to tweak the parser (re2/parse.cc) to add it. Please send me an email (rsc@swtch.com) if you do run the tests. I'd be interested to see the results.

Thanks.
Innovation, Schminnovation – Welcome to the Boring Age
The problem with your reasoning is that we have actually have lots of historical experience with what it is like when we don't license doctors. It was awful.

Yes, but lots of things were 'awful' in that same era. Science and medicine were cruder; people were less educated; people were poorer; communication options were slow and limited.

Now we know more, are richer, and have instant worldwide communication and deep searchable public databases. Lots of the old paternalism, even if once justified, can now be discarded.

But also: even the welfare gains we might think were from licensing, because they occurred after the licensing was introduced, may have instead been from the same rising wealth/standards/awareness that triggered the demand to "do something".

Consider for example the trend in workplace deaths, before and after the creation of OSHA to improve occupational safety:

http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/004409.php
Oh man that looks cool I can't wait to try it. I'm a hedge fund accountant and I would love a way to keep a trail of calculations open like that. A lot of times when I'm doing tricky Sherlock Holmes reconciliations a spreadsheet is total overkill and too confining.

Thanks for posting, swombat! New item on my TODO.
As I reread this, I hoped someone would try to take this out of the relational paradigm. :)
Classist.

There.

I've seen and experienced my fair share of sketchiness on public transit, but I think it's something important enough that I cannot imagine supporting a tiered transit system.

I can afford to drive - I choose to use public transit for lifestyle reasons (and the big bundle of cash it saves me sure isn't burning a hole in my pocket) and to support what I think is one of the great remaining equalizers in our society. I will gladly and willingly pay higher fares than poor people if it means increased accessibility for them to a system that, in all honesty, they need more than I do. When I walk into work 20 minutes late because the bus broke down, nobody yells at me - for people in less fortunate positions in life, it can mean getting fired. An effective transit system that is affordable, accessible, and reliable is an absolute requirement if you want to even begin fixing the poverty problem.

And none of this can possibly occur if we create multi-tiered transit. All you will get is super-effective transit that only connects wealthy areas, and a barely functional lower tier that subsists on government handouts, and can't even get poor people to work on time. It will simply become a gaping money-hole that serves no one - it will make taxes higher for you, and make transit much less effective for the poor, and worsen the poverty situation in your city.

Transit is one of those issues that is close to my heart, and one where I'm willing to tolerate a lot of imperfections, because IMHO it's bigger and more important than me, or you, or wealthy people in general.

Hell, even just as a simple reality check public transit has benefited me greatly - I find that tech people are paid well, and many seem to lose touch with reality "on the ground" after a while - I've heard some truly idiotic and insensitive words uttered by my coworkers about the homeless, for example. My nightmare is becoming yet another pretentious, arrogant upper-middle class suburbanite tech worker, and I think riding transit daily at least does something to keep that in check. At least it won't let me dehumanize people poorer than I am like so many wealthy people seem to do.
William Shatner starts social network
We really need to stop putting Calacanis discussions on here.
According to our data, 98/145 or 67.6% of companies we funded in s2009 or before are funded and/or profitable and/or acquired.

We don't focus on that number, though (I had to write code to calculate it) because the big returns in startup investing often come from outliers that look very risky at first. For example, Drew Houston of Dropbox, who was a single founder when we funded the company, or Sam Altman of Loopt, who was only 19. If we focused on the ratio of successes to failures, instead of the absolute number of big wins, it would make us conservative, and only pick companies we knew would be safe bets to get follow-on funding.
Actually, I'd love to read a roundup of non-RDBM ways to address this.
Excellent use of "as it turns out" (reference to a post on HN in recent days about how PG uses "it turns out" very effectively)
"Idle hands are the devil's workshop".

"That government is best which governs least."
-- Thomas Paine

It seems to me: Politicians with idle hands are often the architects of inanity of the sort complained about in the article. Once you "hire" them, they have to spend their time feeling like they are accomplishing Something Really Important.

Sigh.
I'm kind of ambivalent on that point. Part of me suspects that bad things happen when good people just stand by and watch.

I also think each of these is another data point in a Google discussion, more than about Jason.
Paul surveyed the YC founders a while back to find out what surprised them about founding a startup, and when he collated the answers he realized all the things that were surprising where things he'd already warned people about.

It's an old saw that wisdom cannot be taught, it must be experienced.

I have found this to be true.
ARM sees over 50 new iPad-like devices out this year
Outcast's graphic system was particularly interesting because it wasn't just voxels: It was a voxel system for the landscape and polygons for actor-class things and structures (since most voxel implementations can only render heightmaps and thus are perfect for landmass features if little else).
How The U.S. Census Can Make Your Software Better
If you mean "Can you make hard decisions?", sure I can. Does that mean I am superficial, manipulative, and into playing people? No.
It shows the name and destination of the next three trains, and the stations that the next train stops at. Not sure why we don't have these in the US.

The LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) does; it shows the final destination at top and all the stops along the way underneath. If the sign only has one line, it scrolls to show all the stops. Most trains even have a sign in the car that shows what the destination and next stop are.

I'll take some pictures tomorrow when I pass through it.
Yes, I remember reading that the "off" button in the rental car required depressing for 3 full seconds and evidently didn't have logic to recognize e.g. several quick presses in succession.

In general, if there are indeed flaws in whatever in these Toyotas and not all these incidents are operator error, there has been a serious failure in human factors design. E.g. Toyota is now programming the system so that pressing the breaks will disengage the throttle.

Of course, any one of a number of problems might pay no attention to the off button and so on of an excessively "fly by wire: design.
So, let's badger Matt Cutts, Googles mr. anti-spam until he gives an official position on this instead of discussing the same stuff over and over again.
The Declaration of Location
I read some. I found Rand trashing libertarians, but I did not find her trashing minimal government. Do you have any source on Rand not being an advocate of minimal government, as you claimed she is not?

Here is a source where she does advocate minimal govt:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html

> The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman
Single founder here who thinks the emphasis on co-founders on HN is overrated. Investors may see it as a credentialing and stabilizing mechanism, but once risk is taken out of the picture and a product has revenue it only makes sense to bring someone else on board if they'll more than cover their costs and a co-founder is the most expensive hire there is at that point.
Franklin meant Us, not Them.
Out of curiosity, what is an argument for straight marriage which doesn't logically lead to polygamy?
He seems to follow the wikipedia licence.
I agree with you, more Matt Cutts stories as opposed to Calacanis ones. He doesn't deserve the press, negative or positive.
Which got me thinking, `vote-up sites` have the same view for each user. It would be interesting to see how user preferences could be detected and mixed in (like a personal ranking system), though I'm weary of a self inflicted echo chamber.
Present returns are not indicative of future returns.
That's a very neat hack.

Someone once wrote they were trying to turn a bunch of cheap webcams with some nifty cooling into a large baseline telescope, I always wondered what became of that project.
>You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do.

This is another problem that is very similar to what Jeremy wrote about. I see this quite often, mostly in local news. Someone makes a statement that people don't like, and, regardless of their previous standing, suddenly everything they stand for has to be bad.

If I had one wish for the world, it would be that everyone becomes just a little more rational. We have to look at the big picture, get around all this maddening nonsense.
I believe there is such a market, but you'd have a hard time serving it given the power that MUNI and the cab industry have over municipal transport regulation.

Cabs are a 'luxury' option costing 3x-15x MUNI for similar trip lengths -- and incumbent cabbies already politically limit the entry of new cabs. So, they would hardly sit still for the creation of another cost-competitive transport category.

Similarly, the same political force (and romanticized vision of public transit) that insulates MUNI and its employees from much accountability can also work to insulate them from real competition. "Don't license this new 'luxury' service! It'll destroy MUNI, leaving the city with bigger transit deficits and the poorest with even fewer options."
Outcast had voxel grass, Worms 3D used voxels for destructible scenery, and most recently Crysis used voxels to create caves and such in the terrain.

Although I'm pretty sure point sprites and voxels are two different things.
So does every other wikipedia clone site. But that's besides the point, he claims that mahalo is built with their users' content, clearly that is not the case.
Wow. This is disgusting. Even I create my own content and o own a small social network (2780 members). Unnacceptable. I'm speechless. http://www.thirdie.com
there are plenty of "business class" intercity bus services around the world, but do you really need that "luxury" for a 30 minute commute? it might work intra-city, but it will sure be hard sell, especially on such small scale...

maybe you should instead work to make public transit in your location more bearable to you?
When you stereotype women, don't forget that you're talking about your mother, and your grandmothers, and your sisters and aunts and any good female friends you have. That's all my point was.
for as much as he rips on Jimmy Wales, I'm sure Jimmy would love to make a spectacle of this
Cooling the Data Center
Another Brick in the Wall -- An Interview with John Taylor Gatto
IPhone OS4.0 has Background Apps...Finally
My startup does this.

It uses total upvotes like HN, but mixes in your past preferences for similar material and a bit of Bayesian magic.

The idea is to provide a site that is able to scale better than the usual up/down vote sites.
Sure, but using Wikipedia content in manner permitted by its license is not 'stealing' it.
That logo looks like something from the psychic unicorn appreciation webring.

That said, at first I didn't like the narrator, but I actually don't mind him in a Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw sort of way.
This.

One of my developers is crazy about GWT, and has shoe-horned it into a number of apps that he's primed, and it's proven to be problematic for a number of reasons.

The main problem we have is that a lot of our apps fit into a larger portal, so we have to worry a LOT more about JavaScript and CSS collisions, and generated JS/CSS just doesn't work well for that. Outside of a portalized environment, it might not be THAT bad, but for us, it's proven painful.

In the event that you find yourself duplicating your server side code and client side code, or writing excessive form validation to match server-side constraints, something like GWT is probably the way to go.
I am imagining Calacanis as a zombie rummaging through the web, looking for new content to replace the old content, while being hunted by Matt Cutts who wears those peril-sensitive sunglasses from The Hitchhiker's Guide.

In some ways this is hilarious.
> We are not talking just simple "outdo the master" type of manoeuvrings. We are talking about lying, maliciously spreading rumors, destroying other people's careers, while keeping a "friendly and smiling face", and dropping people like a rock once done with them.

I try to do this as a hobby. (Diplomacy..) But it would piss me off mightily at the work place (or anywhere outside the game).
Add "frequency of occurrence" to the argument and it works.

Smoking is disgusting every time it's done near you.

But someone with a dangerous pet is not very common.
Academics aren't particularly beuracratic in my experience -- most of them hate doing paperwork. In any case, your views on this are obviously based on considering what "ought" to happen given your stereotypes, rather than looking at the facts. A vast amount of research gets done in academia.
When I was living in the SF Bay Area, I took a class on 'Homelessness and Public Policy' from an SF college. My recollection: There were about as many homeless people in SF at that time as in NY and NY is quite a lot larger, population-wise. That is probably part of why you see so much crap (literally and figuratively, I guess) on SF public transit.

I would be all for improving public transit in the US. I currently live without a car and I don't want to ever go back to owning a car or driving one. Yet I basically don't use public transit because, where I live, 'you can't get there from here'. (Ex: There is a bus stop maybe 15 minutes from my apartment and a bus stop maybe 10 or 15 minutes from my office. You can't get there from here by bus, except possibly by going an hour downtown, changing buses, and coming back. I can walk it in less time than that.)
They did away with the first class metro wagons in '91 in Paris and unless they've reinstated them since this summer (when I was there), I think you are mistaken.
I guess it depends a lot on the field. I'm funded mostly by my department and there aren't any restrictions on what I can work on. I don't find the standard of published papers to be particularly awful, and my colleagues seem to be getting on fine.

I agree that the emphasis on publication volume is a pain, but it's not so easy to find good alternatives. In principle, it's all very well to say that one good publication should count for more than ten mediocre publications, but it gets a little tricky to make decisions that way in practice. It could well have the opposite of the desired effect by making the process even more cliquey that it currently is.

In general, I'm a bit bemused that people seem to hold academia to such absurdly high standards. Some people seem to go in expecting it to be a bullshit-free paradise of open and free enquiry. Well, it isn't -- academics are human too. But it's really not as bad as all that.
Fair enough, that's a misleading title. 'Lift' instead of 'Steal' or maybe 'copy' would be better.
Review my website (http://boardlite.com)
Boardlite http://boardlite.com is basically a lightweight bulletin board website very similar to stackoverflow.com. The difference being, the aim of Boardlite is to handle discussions instead of questions and answers. You can also see a list of FAQs on this page: http://boardlite.com/faq/
I think it's pathetic.

And Matt Cutts doesn't seem to be doing much hunting, it wouldn't take more than one 'shot' to take mahalo out of circulation.
> Given the number of cultures in the world that still practice polygamy, and how historically some cultures in the US did as well, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of "closeted polygamists" started popping out of the woodwork if polygamy were legalized along with same-sex marriage.

Polygamist have basically the same rights as gay people: They can't marry (in most countries), but nobody forbids you from screwing around (or even loving) multiple partners.
...an activity that measurably reduces the life of unwilling bystander...If you want to smoke indoors, work from home.

How are people who chose to work at an office which permits smoking unwilling bystanders?
What about for rendering 'virtual reality,' Quicktime3D type environments? Like to give people virtual tours over the web.
Zappos CEO details plans, changes under Amazon
There is absolutely nothing new in this movie compared to the one which was submitted a couple days ago. Even the description that supposedly goes into more detail about how it works is cut and paste from the Unlimited Detail site.
The receptionist as endangered species?
Which is why I said that he is wearing those peril-sensitive sunglasses: if I remember correctly, they would prevent you from seeing anything that could disturb you.
We too have learned the hard way about 5.: customer acquisition is tough.

5.1. We'd read it before but hadn't quite internalized the cardinal rule: Cost of Customer Acquisition < Lifetime Value of customer (CCA < LV).

5.2. It's easy to think "hey my product costs me only $1, and the competition charges $100: I'll do great by just charging $10". But when you're charging $10 you won't be able to pay $30 per ad click, and so will (continue to) lose customers to your competition.
I was wondering if anybody would catch that ;)
According to the Wikipedia article about Outcast:

Although Outcast is often cited as a forerunner of voxel technology, this is somewhat misleading. The game does not actually model three-dimensional volumes of voxels. Instead, it models the ground as a surface, which may be seen as being made up of voxels. The ground is decorated with objects that are modeled using texturemapped polygons.

From what I see it was not a true point voxel system, but rather a ray tracing algorithm that was only used for the ground. Animated objects were still rendered using polygons.
No, they're so that you can maintain your cool attitude in the face of extreme danger. (Because you can't see it).
Or even 30c per click when 1/100 click-throughs convert to a sale.
Amazon Shrugs in Colorado
The wireless future of medicine
Really excellent to know. I didn't believe quite how much disruption gets caused by raising money. Keeping on selling and working at the product while that's happening is desperately hard.
The animation UI at 1:45 looks very austere, with the typography resembling a DOS app. I wonder why would that be.
Emacs is more than the sum of its parts. Using find-and-replace in emacs compared to find-and-replace in any other software I've ever used in my entire life (except a 90s-era hex editor for DOS called xe and that was only good for searching through hex) is like eating with real, quality, polished silverware compared to cheap plastic party utensils.

I use find and replace routinely with emacs, for tasks of many sizes, almost without thinking about it.
What’s Our Priority for Aviation Infrastructure? Safety (Not Efficiency)
NASA perplexed by galaxies heading in a particular direction
Calacanis' fantasy all along was to own Wikipedia but fill it full of ads. He used to rant endlessly about how much money they'd make if they monetized Wikipedia. Mahalo is his attempt to make a seedier low-brow version of Wikipedia that's ad-laden. This move should not be a surprise. That's just my opinion though.
I'm still in my fulltime job (see http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2010/02/part-time-entrepreneur.htm...) but I can see the benefit of having the "sink or swim" pressure.

Everyone close to me, including my co-founder, keeps telling me to stay fulltime until I have a replacement income from GridSpy. It sounds like there is contradiction on this from the HN crowd.
> I don't know where you are exactly, but I am in Vienna and I haven't really encountered those unpaid internships much at all, at least not among the computer science & mathematics crowd.

The grandfather-post's observation applies more to liberal arts students (Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften). With a math degree in Germany I never had a problem getting a paid internship during my studies. Some of my friends in the liberal arts, however, have to do unpaid interships even after finishing their studies.

Of course the media perception is dominated by liberal arts guys, because they are the ones who complain loudly and in a matter sympathetic to journalists. (While the more technical minded people are too busy making money and enjoying themselves.) Hence the "Generation Praktikum".
> The idea that all porn actresses are clueless feather brains who were tricked into this trade and continue to be victimized is condescending.

That's not what I'm saying at all. You are not a realist if you think a resume that includes porn or other sex work will not very much damage a woman's life. Find me one instance of a factory worker facing these kinds of consequences:

http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2009/07/08/mzberlin/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/08/31/2009-08-...
It said right there on the page I looked at that the information was from wikipedia.