skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A dreamhost ad? Well, I guess reddit users are a bit different than the usual guy looking for webhosting. I've been actively un-recommending Dreamhost at Reddit for very bad service I endured for two years and many others regularly do so too. Redditors might have a bad impression of Dreamhost so they might be less inclined for it.
I thought the "Linux on PS3" was just a scam Sony pursued to avoid a video game tax treatment in the EU. If I remember right they got sued about that (that the EU wanted to tax the PS3 as a video game) but I forget what came of that.
Eh, I am old enough to remember when SQL was the new kid on the block and received nothing but disdain from "database experts" as it was considered toy-like and not suitable for efficiency and large data sets. I distinctly recall meetings with DBAs where SQL (and the RDBMS platforms) were ridiculed as PC-weenie toys for kiddie boxes. That no way could accommodate mission critical enterprise production systems.

Now, ~20 years later, it's the SQL advocates playing the same role as those grizzled old champions of mainframe fare hierarchical and VSAM-like structures.
This is my experiment using Comet, Faye, Sinatra, and Redis. Let me know what you think. I keep it open all day and watch stories move up and down without missing the ones that fall off the front page.

If you mouse over the items they will highlight, other users can see the mouse over as well. More Info is on the About page http://toseeitlive.com/about
I did that and documented my experiences with short comments over several months. Unfortunately I used XFCE's notes plugin, reinstalled my system and cannot find the text anywhere on the old system's disk. :-(

My experiences have not been so great. Sometimes yes, but mostly not.
Adobe Not Worried About the Future of Flash
Thanks a lot for your feedback.
I am no designer myself. I've redesigned the home page according to your suggestions.
Wow, what a difference from here in Sweden.
While cats are are about 70% fixed for dogs the number is MUCH smaller, 7% for females and 4% for males.

But we don't have a wild-dog problem here, leave a dog out unattended over the winter and it's pretty much guaranteed that it will be dead come spring. Cat's seem to do much better somehow.
Individual versus Conforming design
ASk HN: Best small business banking practices?
Basically, which banks do you use and why? What services or perks do you look for? How do you manage your ramen profits? I'm in the bay area, so if you know of any gems let me know.
Lately I'm into reading Biographies of Entrepreneurs.

Reserved "Founders at work" at the library, but currently reading "Match King" the biography of Ivar Kreuger. After failing a bunch of times, he figured it out: put on a show and pretend you're successful then other people buy in. Problem is he took that too far.

Surprisingly, good to read as an entrepreneur, both inspirational AND _cautionary_.
Logistic for Entrepreneurs by Steve Blank
So is the "War of Art".
'Selfish Gene' was very influential for me. It was interesting to observe mine and others behaviour through this theory.
Seeing mouse overs of other users seems pointless and the faint change from black to gray made me a little dizzy. Also the "Users Online" doesn't seem to load, but it sounds interesting. I like the idea though, just seems like it could be presented better (I almost missed the green arrows).
I enjoyed it, but if you want epic Nabokov, check out ADA. It's a HUGE book, but very rewarding if you have the patience.
Down arrows in red would be good.
I hate to be cynical but I can't see the lean in $700.
Ask HN: How do you feel about affiliate links in comments?
I've noticed that when linking to a book on HN, people often directly note that it is not an affiliate link.

But if you recommend a good book to me and I buy it, I have no problem with you getting a kickback. Especially if you use that to buy more interesting books.

What's your take on affiliate links?
I will blog about this later
I've been running "lean" startups for years and never needed a day job to support it. you don't need to go to conferences to do it, you just need common sense and balls.

the $700 admission price is ironic. go to conferences to network, not to learn - personally I'd get more out of a book or two than any number of these conferences.
> PS3 linux lets you do a lot of Cell hacking on inexpensive hardware.

This benefits mostly IBM, who sells Cell-based blade servers. Sony sells PS3 consoles at a loss. Any use that does not include buying a couple games means a bad quarterly report.
The main problem with software 'engineering' is the fragility of software. In a structure you know there will be cracks, so you choose a material that is ductile enough that a crack can't grow to dangerous size in the lifetime of the component. The problem with software is that generally a single bit wrong is a total failure.

I was involved in a case with a turbine blade fracture. The user claimed that there must have been a flaw, and yes the crack must have started at a single atom sized crystal flaw in the meta. But the choice of alloy was such that the crack would have grown at a rate which means it was under the failure size for at least twice the inspection interval - where the customer missed it.
Yeah The Users Online will update every 5 minutes, and I will improve the presentation, just kinda doing it for myself and wrote it in a few hours so haven't put much style into it. Thanks for checking it out! I could have it update every minute and the arrows would be noticed earlier and maybe I should move it closer to the number of the article.
They should add a 1024x600 line to show the fold for most of today's netbooks.
Most Valley startups use a one-page "letter offer" type of agreement, which works well and which need not set a wrong tone of "we don't trust each other."

In addition, there is always an "inventions and confidentiality" type of agreement that: (1) clarifies the employee's confidentiality obligations; and (2) makes clear that all IP generated by the employee belongs to the company.

In purely technical terms, under California law, you could actually skip both these documents because the default relationship is "at will" and normally can easily be terminated by either party if it does not work out and because the law automatically says that inventions conceived by employees in the course of performing their duties belong to the company and not to the employee.

Why not keep it simple, then?

Of course, any company can choose to do so.

But:

1. If compensation is not in writing, you can get claims of the "I took reduced pay because I was promised x percent of the company" variety.

2. If an employer does not take prudent steps to show that it is keeping its trade-secret information confidential, the law can find that it is not really protectable trade-secret information after all, thereby potentially jeopardizing the company's right to protect it from theft by any employee.

3. Usually the employee is given an option grant and any promise relating to equity should always be hedged by statements like "this is subject to approval of our Board of Directors" and "terms of the grant will be governed by our option plan and standard option agreement" - and followed up by a signing of the formal stock option agreement (among other things, if you don't have such documentation, your ISO classification of incentive options is jeopardized and the employee will miss out on whatever tax benefits such a classification provides).

4. People do make things up when disagreements arise and it is very prudent to have at least a basic document that specifies exactly what the relationship was in order to avoid problems (perhaps this could be solved by the globally posted employment policies that the articles alludes to).

5. Finally, some forms of compensation are incentive-based, e.g., commissions, and it is a serious mistake to agree to such arrangements verbally without clarifying such basic issues as "to what does the commission apply," "is there a tail on it if employment terminates," etc.

The above are basically random thoughts but they do suggest that you do not want to scrap routine employment documents unless there is a pretty compelling reason to do so, and I don't think the issue of wanting to avoid an atmosphere of mistrust is by itself necessarily compelling. Indeed, most employees that I know routinely accept the idea that basic documentation and "legalese" is in order and do not interpret this as some sign of mistrust.

I don't think this is an issue of letting lawyers run a company's life. It is just basic prudence and common sense.
Yeah I will make that change good point. Done
There are plenty of volunteer moderators, that's not the problem. The problem is that there are a few people that will go through great (!) efforts to drag certain members through the mud (using other websites) and even threaten them physically, which in Colombia (I live in Colombia) is something that I take more seriously than if I were to live somewhere else.

So yes, I feel responsible for that, and don't want to run a website that somehow produces a result like that... Crap.
There's only one homeless man left in Times Square
Hmm, if you are a developer just writing against thrift I can see your point. But if you are also involved in the sysadmin side then you need to be familiar with all the little java bits and bobs.
I can recommend Zamonia series by Walter Moers:

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures
The City of Dreaming Books

Awesome fantasy books.
It'd be neat if there were signed or invariant web documents. Perhaps naming things as their own checksum? This way, if it were ever changed (...) the document name would change and the reference would break. The client could check at retrieval time if the checksum matches the label?
That is certainly true - but on the other side, if you do it too much (and kids/teenagers tend to overindulge in everything they find good), it can lead to under-development of important social skills, losing focus on actual studies/work, and in more extreme cases, complete disengagement from the real world.

I've read tons of great 'escapist' books when I was a teenager (it all started with Lord of the Rings consumed ecstatically in 3 days of almost non-stop reading when I was 13). However, before I started doing that, I was really into technology/hacking/programming, and at the same time sports/social interactions. Then after a while, it was books/D&D/Magic the Gathering and almost nothing else.

Of course, everything is good in moderation and harmful if you overindulge, but by its nature, escapist fiction is incredibly easy to get into and hard to get out.
That was Yabasic on the PS2. And they didn't get away with it.
So... What will you do? Buy an Xbox 360? ;-)

It's not like you have a whole lot of choice...

And yes, it sucks.

I would like an inexpensive non-x86 desktop. A Cell-based box would be interesting, as would be a SPARC or a many-core ARM thingie. I find this x86-only world boring.
Provided that they're not currently being played by some intelligence org that fed them bogus data. A huge increase in visibility leading up to a huge flameout could set them back years.

-----

This whole saga seems to me like WikiLeaks is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they style themselves as the intelligence organization of the people, doing serious and valuable work releasing information in the people's interests. On the other hand, they get upset when other intelligence organizations try to bully them, and they play the "mean CIA detained a 17 year old kid" card.

Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but they need to tread carefully. Releasing the wrong information could get some of our spies killed. If that happens, I suspect the CIA "bullying" will get much more severe.
david foster wallace: oblivion
Some good comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834817
I think people can go to the Apple website themselves if they are interested in the iPad.
Will you post an affiliate link?

If you recommend a good book to me, I'd like you to get a kickback.

How do others feel about affiliate links? I've created an Ask HN on the topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227196
Books about Richard Feynman, or essays, etc. by him. "Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman!" in particular. I guess, this is unfair, as eventually he did get into software/hardware, but....
Tim O'Reilly on The State of the Internet Operating System
I was gonna say I knew Michelle Trachtenberg was smart and cute, but developing a speed-mental-math system would put her squarely in Winnie Cooper territory.

I was kind of disappointed to discover it wasn't that Trachtenberg.
My thoughts exactly. This is just the sort of subterfuge needed to level the playing field while the US catches up. The MBAs can spend the next few decades pillaging the Asian economies, and in the meantime we will lead a relatively peaceful and prosperous existence, free of the Lehmans, Bears and AIGs.

Well, one can wish anyways :)
A.E. Hotchner: "Paul and Me" (founders of Newman's Own)
I got a notification this morning that mine shipped ... but the tracking number is not showing up in UPS's system yet.
Awesome! Another buzzword bingo card to put in my resume: "Proficient in Aspect-Oriented HTML/CSS Programming"
Very unlikely, but then he should tell me why the idea is unlikely to work.
Most of the evidence used in the article was focused on MBA's attempting to get into China. Is there a serious demand for MBA level jobs in India/Vietnam, by non-native MBA grads? I mean, going to Vietnam after dropping 100K on b-school would a pretty big risk IMO.
Well I'm glad you feel entitled to be the moral police officer of HN :)

I should remark that I feel my comment is witty and appropriate and happens to employ a useful bite of sarcasm/satire to the issue.

Furthermore, I don't think that posting a comment that you deem inappropriate constitutes inappropriate "behavior". The comments have clearly received lots of upvotes as well, but have ended up a few points negative after a few days.

I am far from anti-google. In fact Google is one of my favorite companies, but its one vice is its tremendous willingness to get involved in politics (first Eric Schmidt's schmoozing with politicians and now Sergey's neoconservative anti-China posturing).

Wikileaks occupies the uncomfortable space of being a subversive element right in Google's back yard. And, as much fun as it is to throw stones at China, there are still important issues of censorship and corruption right here in the US that could use exposure.

The worst aspect of politics, by the way, is the way it leads people toward an "us vs them" view. Google's approach on China reinforces this. Being anti-China is the new livestrong bracelet, and it's dangerous to our society and will result in war.
- David Marr: "Vision"

The foundations of computational neroscience - and lots of practial demonstrations of how your eyes and brain work.

- Daniel Dennett "Consciousness Explained"

How the mind works?

- J.E Gordon: "The new Science of Strog Materials" & " Structures, or why things don't fall down."

How is 'stuff' strong/hard?

- Steve Grand: "Creation" & "Growing up with Lucy"

The programmer behind the game 'Creatures' and his adventures in artificial life.

- Joseph Campbell: "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

Never look at Star Wars in the same way again.

- David Deutch: "The Fabric of Reality"

Many worlds or mad as a box of frogs?

- Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin: "The Sixth Extinction"

We're doomed - maybe

- Braitenberg: "Vehicles"

Emergent behaviour from simple rules

- Ian Wilmut, Keith Cambell & Colin Tudge: "The Second Creation"

How Dolly the Sheep was made. Takes you through the background such that you can read & understand their paper which appears at the end.

- John Brunner: "The Shockwaver Rider"

Snowcrash - hah! - 1975 and this dude got it already.

Other general authors:

Martin Gardner, Greg Egan (lots of free stuff on his site).
Plato's (Socrates?) position derived from his belief that cultivating a moral republic meant eliminating fiction. See The Republic. I don't know if we're really supposed to take it seriously as prescriptive advice, but it's quite different than most other approaches.
Perhaps the problem with software is that, after the original QA process, there's seldom a regular inspection except adversarially.
Focused Email Flowchart
Tell HN:  Being anti-China is the new livestrong bracelet
discuss.
Does DDG have a cognate to the google "site:" keyword?
there's nothing cynical about it. Everyone who goes to the conference is going to learn the startup lesson: "don't pay $700 to attend conferences about (essentially) how to bootstrap a company". personally i could only justify that cost if it were extremely good PR for your company.

and forget servers (you shouldn't be paying that kind of money for servers when there are things like app engine/aws/azure). if you've quit your day job, $700 could be food on the table or a roof over your head for a month or two (depending on where you live).
Stephen Pressfield is fantastic. Besides "Gates of Fire," I've read "The Afghan Campaign" and "The Virtues of War," two novels about Alexander The Great. Very highly recommended.
I find that much of the advice out there on sales and networking is focused on the former case, where the goal is to maximize the chance of a win in the first contact, even at the risk of making an enemy.

What kind of asshole is going to become an enemy because you asked for an introduction?
Ficciones, by Borges

Very imaginative short stories bordering on the philosophical, some of them hilarious.
Risk: the science and politics of fear. By dan Gardner

I've recommended, and reviewed, it here before. Basically it is a pop-science look at how humans react and view fear. Brilliant read with lots of good referecing to scientific papers etc.

It was almost as revelatory to me as the selfish gene.
The basic idea of enriching interpersonal relationships by making the relationship a net gain for the other person is a great idea, but the "emotional bank account" analogy isn't the best.

If you view this in the naive sense of being owed more favors than you owe other people, you have to be the only one employing this strategy. If I have a positive "emotional" (favors) balance with you, you must therefore owe me favors and have a negative balance with me.

Unless you're the type of person, or in the type of relationship, that keeps track of favors owed, then the zero-sum bank account analogy falls down. A functioning relationship, working or personal, is built out of a series of positive-sum interactions. The kind of things the OP gives as examples of "deposits" (signs of respect, really). In that kind of relationship, once you've reached the level necessary to ask, and win, serious favors (the manager relocating to Orlando), that manager might have had more trust and respect after moving to Orlando, if only to maintain a consistent cognitive model (I must really trust and respect this guy, I moved to Orlando for him).
Sony is just buying time. Sooner or later someone is going to hack the PS3 and users will be able to install whatever they want.
MyISAM, InnoDB, and PostgreSQL
Real trend, silly framing: if power bills hadn't been the limiting factor, progress would have accelerated to the point where something else was, and solving that "would have saved the computer industry".
I also found quality/features to be an odd distinction to make.

Then again, I've never been a real fan of 'cheap' either.

Experience has shown that there are very real upper-bounds on the effectiveness of throwing resources at projects.

And, particularly when you're having these late-cycle meetings, it strikes me as flat-out disingenuous to imply that throwing money at a project is a reasonable or even plausible way to hit an expanded scope on an existing schedule.
The downside is that they're selling tweets -- you have to wonder about their followers.
Testing is not a Replacement for Static Typing
I'd imagine they go by if it's not in the spec it's not a bug. They can't do something not in the spec. It was a known limitation, not a "bug".
On the whole efforts to move homeless people to various sorts of housing seem like a good idea, but don't the ones in this article come across as a bit unnecessary? I mean, visiting him every day, memorizing his walking habits, etc.? He clearly seems not to be posing a threat to anyone, and if he's the only homeless person in the entire area, it's hard to say that homelessness is causing the area a major problem or inconvenience. Why not just leave him alone, or at least inquire less often than daily as to whether he'd like to move in somewhere?
If his reason for turning you down is "it's not my thing," that implies it may be someone else's "thing." Perhaps that someone else is known to him. Not sure why he'd be bent out of shape for an entrepreneur following up with the obvious question: who?

He'd get a lot fewer people asking for referrals if he flat out said "I don't think the idea/team/market/whatever is any good," in which case it would be illogical for an entrepreneur to ask for a referral (or for him to give one, since doing so would cost him credibility).
Don't Let Your Business Happen To You
Chrome extension to disable HN comments (and other sites)
Prototypes offer no contract, so it's up to the consumer to ensure that the object received is acceptable. Classes offer a contract, so if an object is an instance, it's guaranteed to work (Liskov, etc.).

Basically, the idea of OOP is information hiding and polymorphism, and prototype-based objects throw both of these concepts away. The result is more complicated code in general.
A perfect example of the dangers of differently sized graphs. The graphs were clearly sized to imply that the increased use was almost all gaming, as they sized them to line up nearly perfectly with the 10-hour charts. Note that the computer-voucher side has roughly 2 hours more non-game, non-homework use, and that in both, the majority of the time is still non-gaming and non-homeworking.

What was it used for there? Browsing? Youtubing is not so useful, but there'd definitely be some educational-browsing, and that's not testable in the classroom. Giving someone a tool doesn't guarantee they'll use it properly, but some do, and they're the ones who are more likely to try get out of poverty, instead of getting stuck where they are.

As to the decline in grades, I'd definitely argue that an improvement in a cognitive test - usually based around learning skills, not whatever is taught in class (typically rote memorization) - is far more valuable in the long run. The ability to learn is invaluable and persistent, they'll probably forget most of what was in the classes at that time anyway.

Scaled size comparison of the two voucher-charts: http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/9271/clearedup.gif
I must say you really sold the Musashi book to me. Definitely going to buy it next time I buy books. Thanks.