skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's not quite true - all they buy from BT is the "last mile" between the telephone exchange and the customer end point. Everything else is on the ISP's own (or rented) infrastructure.
I really think it's one of those harder things to quantify. I've seen a very low amount of defects in code that I've written in a pair; how many bugs would have been in there without the pair? How much time would it have taken to fix those bugs? How serious would they have been?

Preventative measures are always harder to quantify.
Mancoosi International Solver Competition
Do you think Tudor knew he had a good idea - or did he just believe it?

There are countless businessmen with the qualities you pick out - "amazing will and fight". Most of them end up in ruin. They all at least believed they had a good idea.

If Tudor isn't different in that he knew (in the epistemic sense of a justified true belief) he had a good idea, then we also have to acknowledge that he was damn lucky. We have to acknowledge the extent to which entrepreneurs are playing out a process of trial and error.
I wonder if the LoC keeps dumps from Wikipedia (in relation to the other frontpage story). I would think that the full 5.6TB Wikipedia dump would probably contain more useful information on average than 20TB of tweets.

[ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1265138]
Pray tell, what is it exactly about the conditions described in the article that is "inhumane"? I don't see anywhere that people are being forced to work more than 8 hours, on the contrary it clearly states that overtime is optional. Most of the points that are made in the article are standard practice in factories here in Western Europe, like timed bathroom breaks, can't use phones while working etc.

The photos are misleading too, at least the ones with the people sleeping on the assembly line. While unusual in the West, in my (admittedly limited) experience with Asia (and China in particular) it is much more normal and culturally accepted to take a quick nap during breaks, while waiting for a train/bus, .. anywhere where there are a few spare minutes. This article makes it seem like these people are whipped to work until they literally fall asleep on the assembly line.

I'm not saying that there are no cases of abuse of factory workers; I'm pretty sure there are, and I in no way want to defend those. I live in an area where there were documented instances of people being whipped if they didn't cut coal fast enough, as little as 150 years ago, and that is a black spot in our history. However if this article describes the worst factory they could find, and if the situation that is described is the worst possible description of reality, it seems to me that capitalism has given these people something that they could only have wished for 50 years ago.
How to use Microsoft Clipart files on Linux/Unix
shouldn't this graph be controlled for traffic? if traffic has grown, that's probably where a lot of the extra comments came from.
Well spotted. This has great possibilities for education in the 3rd world.
MobileMe is one, but that's kind of the obvious one in the room. Looking for more obscure stuff. More Cappuccino apps would be awesome too.
No, it still is kinda sucky for scrum masters and product owners.

I was always happy using it as a developer, though.
Yep, anyone who's ever owned a blackberry knows about opera mini and how great it is.
Yes that is what I meant, should have formulated it better.
So forget Apple and Dell and stick to "Made in Japan" stuff.

I think most Japanese companies still build at least their high-end stuff in Japan since the Japanese market can be picky about this kind of thing.
I could have sworn their accounts used to be free and then they took away the free accounts in 2008. http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/7019/N...

I remember because we were using assembla for some stuff and then moved away when they started charging. I guess that move didn't work too well for them.
After reading http://highscalability.com/ for a while I've happily found myself using some tips from there from time to time. I've only used these methods a few times, I usually just push large database changing changes at night and try not to do anything that takes longer then 20 minutes.

One way is to use two tables and have the application logic read from both and write to the new one. This can't always work easily but for tables that don't get a lot of joins its not that hard. Deploy the code, migrate the data into the new table and then drop the old table. I've used this once to update a user_profile table for a busy forum.

Another way to mitigate downtime on table changes is to have lots of tables. I believe one of the larger Chinese social networks was reviewed on the HS blog and boasted that they found it easier not to have more then two columns on a table (pk and value). That's a little crazy imho, but I have see it working with smaller column groups.

You use a lot of 1 to 1 relations and each column or logical group of columns gets it's own table with a foreign key to the main object. This way you can modify a column without restricting access to most of the object at the cost of more joins. I worked on a django project where we had a users table and any user information (there was a lot) was a different table. The data models were related to the user model and handled all the lookups. (User.profile, User.contact, User.reporting_prefrences, User.support_requests, etc.)

I've never used mongodb or couch, but with a nosql you can just have the app logic take care of upgrading records on read. Run a script to upgrade everything. Drop the app logic.
I'd guess it has to do mainly with 7z being able to use a larger block size, while bzip2's is 900kb; and possibly being able to do something better with large runs of repeated text. There are large articles with hundreds of revisions in a row that leave most of the content unchanged; [[George W. Bush]], for example, is around 180kb per revision, and is edited a lot, mostly with minor changes. So bzip2's block size means it can only squeeze 5 revisions per block: so in the degenerate case where 100 edits in a row changed only one character each, bz2 would be storing 20 or so basically identical copies of the article.

IIRC from some tests a year or so ago, Wikipedia hasn't found any significant improvement from 7z over bz2 on the current-revisions-only dump, which looks more like just normal English text; that's why it doesn't bother to provide a separate 7z version of that. It seems to only be this pattern of [200kb article][almost the same 200kb article][almost the same 200kb article again] that 7z kills bz2 on.
Would make a neat combination with newly-re-available Wikipedia data dumps: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1265138
cool. can't wait to see more reviews and see this book evolve out of beta. I used their original release to learn rails and was happy with the results.

I've been on merb for the past 2 years, basically boycotting rails. It looks like I can stop the boycott for new projects in a few months as things smooth out.
What Startups Can Learn From Pivotal Labs
The comment to which you are replying offers a bit of reasoning as to why a cartel against Google would fail even without regulation: any defectors would have a big advantage in the marketplace.

Against that, you offered an assertion without reasoning -- "some sort of regulation is necessary". Your assertion is wrapped in vaguely dismissive filler words -- "honestly sounds like" and "maybe?" -- that suggest you think your assertion is so self-evident no one could contest it.

Perhaps that's not what you meant; but the second possible reading is that you're not taking any stand at all, just repeating (5 levels deep) one contested opinion, "maybe". Either way, it's not adding info or novelty... which can draw downvotes.
Their API is very simple (just HTTP POSTs) so we just built our side from the ground up.
I think you can say the same about TDD. Enthusiasm for TDD seems inversely related to perceived cost.
I tend to use it to process files and run perl scripts (yes I know) on selected text. Here is a link to some videos:
http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak235
http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak236
and a site:
http://www.macosxautomation.com/services/index.html
Croon My Tune - Create A Singing Greeting Using Mechanical Turk
The graph is designed to illustrate that heavily controlling comments still generates a lot of comments.

That said, it would be interesting to have a graph that shows the engagement rate for users; something like Comments for every 1 Million page views.
According to the rules:

> When the manager arranges overtime, employees are not allowed secretly or openly to avoid overtime if they do not have permission.

Not exactly "voluntary" overtime.
I suspect the brand awareness and popularity numbers (50 million users or whatever) are helpful when it comes to negotiations with manufacturers or carriers who might want to bundle the browser with phones out of the box. I expect Opera gets paid decently for that.
Avoiding the biggest problem with A/B Testing
The iPad is far too heavy for cats. What were Apple thinking?
This is a good reason not to use assembla ever again. The same thing happened to me.
ABC Sees Success in iPad App
PluginQuery - Search for jQuery Plugins
Wikipedia is anti-competitive.  Should open source be similarly so?
Ah... I see. Nginx likes to install itself to /usr/local/nginx which isn't correct per FHS. It should install to /opt/nginx.
Ripcode, Server Side Flash for iPhone and iPad
does anyone know if this can be replayed again afterwards? i missed the early part
This must be why international release has been delayed...
>> "Security guards search workers' bags and pockets
>> as they leave the factory."
>
> Same in the USA, especially in warehousing/supply
> chain jobs.

You're also forgetting casino workers. The people in casinos that handle money are all required for to have whatever purses/bags they bring to work be transparent (usually plastic). I've seen the same thing for workers at airports too. [ I was sitting at Newark in the middle of the night once and a ton of workers came into the terminal from an employees-only door and all of them had clear plastic purses and backpacks. ]

{edit} I was sitting at the airport waiting to talk to an airline rep about getting on the next plane out. I was caught up in this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6... and missed my connecting flight (since it was cancelled due to the terminal being locked down).
As I understand it, every website you visit goes through Opera's servers to be compressed + processed. Isn't this a privacy issue? When Chrome came out and started doing query suggest (and sending your typing to google, etc.) people got all uppity about privacy, but I haven't seen one person mention privacy issues w/ the opera browser.

Additionally, as a website owner, wouldn't this skew your user stats, since the request would come from Opera's servers and not directly from the phone (not 100% sure about this, but that's how it seems like it would work).
News flash: Opera mini has made a name for itself on every phone that runs Java. Opera at one point (perhaps still) had the largest market share on mobile platforms (edited to specify mobile):
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-200910-...

Opera mini is in beta, so it's supposed to be buggy. But searching for text within a page, significant speedup on EDGE (and if you're on AT&T's flaky network this is a plus), etc are all very good reasons to use this.
Traditionally, I think of Opera as the browser not afraid to be truly standards compliant, even if it means little differences between FF/Safari. I have seen examples of this, sorry that I can't find them now. Personally I'm happy to have Opera in this role, because I think it's an important role.

If something does need to be fixed "for Opera", it's generally only a tiny CSS change, as opposed to the kinds of structural overhauls IE will make you wrestle with.

In short, in the name of standards, I think it would be nice if FF etc did things exactly the same as Opera :)
For 6 usd/month, unlimited git and svn, trac and webdav and automatic backups, I'm a happy RepositoryHosting (http://repositoryhosting.com/) user.
Near as I can tell, this would drive up the price of rentals quite significantly. Any landlord would need to factor the risk of getting caught being a landlord into your rent.

Fail on my part. I meant to apply this to ownership without renting, with the intention of kicking out the damn speculators.

By the way, a more realistic way to lower rent prices would be to end rent control.

The original rent control regime (where rents couldn't increase with inflation) turned out to be a huge disaster. It left a bunch of well-connected non-productive rich white people with an arrangement better than ownership, at the rest of our expense. The concept of rent control I don't have an issue with, but the original implementation was awful.

I don't mind government interfering with the rental market if all tenants benefit. In a city like New York, government meddling is necessary because the free market fails catastrophically, as we see in these four-digit rents, but I do think the 60+ year-old sweetheart deal that some people have, just because they've been here forever, needs to be ended.
Mozilla Bespin now uses it as their framework (they render a canvas on top of its elements).
That's not the point. The point was that a large number of people thought it not HN worthy. Your individual dissent doesn't matter. Sorry, democracy sucks.
"Sure it does - it provides a legal footing for denying apps based on Flash. That pretty much prevents Adobe and Microsoft from establishing a mobile platform that would"
A legal footing? Do they really need more than they already had? They were already arbitrarily rejecting apps they didn't like, why couldn't they continue doing that?

And games are a killer app for many people, and Unity3D is potentially affected by this. So while you personally may not care, don't assume other people don't have legitimate reasons for caring.

Is it possible they will only selectively enforce this? Of course! But if they only intended to go after flash apps, why bother with the clause at all? Why not just reject all Flash apps?
I sense a new startup... heck, have you seen how much people will spend on their pets, so why not develop apps just for their pets?
Ask HN: Do you use mind-mapping software ?
Does it make you more productive ? Do you know a good introduction to mind-mapping ?
NEWS BULLETIN - North Americans benefit from trade practices that reap the rewards in taking advantage of other countries less protected workers. YUP.

For those of you that are complaining about how the article is merely story spinning to target Microsoft, I think you're de-sensitized.

Comparing the worst places to work in North America to the average place to work in China may make yourself feel better, but it's just dishonest thinking. If an American wanted to buy a Computer Mouse would you not think it easier and cheaper to buy one locally? Of course not, because there's too many other countries with unprotected workers to take advantage of that make it cheaper for US..... doesn't this basic concept lend any understanding that there's something wrong here? It does to me. If the treatment norm were that same as you're own country then the product cost would go up.

The playing field isn't level and that's ok, but that doesn't mean we should feel good about taking advantage of them. I know, I know - we're helping them right? Give me a break. There are ways to help them while not taking advantage of them.

Don't buy from countries that don't meet the treatment norms your own country has. It raises the bar for them, and they will to get our business. Meanwhile it's not like Americans couldn't use the work. Yes product costs go up, but so do local jobs increase and quite frankly maybe inflation is the cost of being ethical, maybe North Americans should be a little less wealthy and little more honest.
Maybe he means exciting?
s/Exicting/Exciting?
I used assembla when they had the free private accounts, since then I moved to Unfuddle.
I don't like companies that do yo-yo on their policy.
On the original post revealing Opera Mini for iPhone, there were pages and pages of people debating the security implications.

Long story short: it does break end-to-end SSL, but unless you distrust Opera as a company, it's more of a theoretical issue than a practical concern.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear -- I found the two sentences from the I quoted from amusing because the both descriptions are technical, while "in technical terms" a touch moreso, but the former doesn't strike me as layman friendly.
Sure, that's fine, but he was the one claiming the iPad was more powerful in the first place. I was debunking his claim. If it doesn't matter, why bother claiming it at all? And yes, IPS is nice.
Hopefully they'll convert the short urls to long and make some arrangements to download pictures from twitphoto and their ilk.
Why the hippies? IMO, Github is a really useful tool.
Every website you visit on your laptop goes through your ISP. Every website you visit on your cell phone goes through your provider. Yes, it's a potential issue. Yes, there is trust involved.

Any stats package worth its salt would record X-Forwarded-For information, which is set by the Mini proxies: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-request-header...
Register for free O'Reilly webinar "Introduction to Apache CouchDB"
In this free O'Reilly webcast on April 21 Chris Anderson, the co-author of "CouchDB: The Definitive Guide," will provide a technical overview of CouchDB and will describe some of CouchDB's production use cases. Chris promises plenty of time for audience-driven questions and answers. Register here - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1588
Here is a video of a 2.5 year old using one. http://laughingsquid.com/a-2-5-year-old-uses-an-ipad-for-the...
It's not as mainstream as we all might like, but I think the case of Firefox (over 30% usage share currently) makes it pretty clear that it's more than just tech nerds who care (at least a little) about browser choice.
How an Automotive Differential Works
The clear implication is that racism has adaptive value for primates, or at least did in the period when we layed down this trait.
Your Personal Cloud Disk - Mount your folders on remote computer as local drive
+1 best this actually does point out something important.

If you are incapable of forming biases about your environment, you are blind to the environment input that generates racial bais in most people. As pointed out earlier, this trait is also fatal in the wild, as blindness would be.
This book blew my mind back in 2006. I have purchased every version since. Great book.
Ubuntu One Music Store
wow, great call. thank you!
Even fairly rich Indian families often use bucket baths rather than showers.

I know of a a wealthy stock broker in India, and his estate is unusual in that it has a shower. He never bothered to hook it up to the hot water since no one uses it.
Yes, all the video is archived and clips will be made for each talk. We'll post the clips here later.
Summary:

A fictional Apple press release written from an alternative reality in which the iPad was released before the laptop.

About the author, via Wikipedia:
Guy Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is noted for having brought the concept of evangelism, initially focused on creating passionate user-advocates for the Apple brand, to the high-tech business[1].
Kawasaki is a former Apple Fellow.
With respect to Apple, they annually publish a supplier responsibility report. You can get access to it here ... http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/

I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if Apple's professed claims make it better than what is depicted in the OP's story.
A market where one market participant can, well, force other market participants to carry their content free of charge sounds to me like a failed market. That’s why I asked whether regulation might be something to counter that.

I don’t know whether it is. I don’t even know if my assumptions are correct. Maybe this is no failed market at all and it’s just normal and good that ISPs have no-charge peering agreements with Google.

Sometimes a question is just a question and not some veiled attempt at taking a stand :)
Who’s Not Happy About a Falling Maternal Death Rate?
I think the big question is if sweatshop labour still does do this.

AFAIK most of this work is now done via sub-sub-subcontractors and goes on in special economic zones. Workers are usually employed for the short term and the work may randomly migrate to a SEZ in a different country to take advantage of "tax holidays", periods of no tax for when a company first sets up in a SEZ. There are no permanent factories or permanent jobs. Wages don't rise because it's easy to just go to some other place where people are desperate for work, literally shipping the workshop to the new location.

So what ends up happening is that the workers never work at the same thing for long enough to acquire skills or wage rises and that they don't make enough money for a proper education. And the assembly lines are so ephemeral and set apart from normal society that no infrastructure or know-how ever accumulates in the country.

So this ain't your parents' kind of sweatshop. Literally.

(Note that I'm talking about the kind of sweatshops that assemble consumer goods in general here, not specifically the one in the article. I have no specific insight about that one, but this is the general trend - this is where the west gets its clothes and gadgets from.)
What Business Entity Should I Choose?
Unfuddle has been doing this for a while.
Of course, cats have been using advanced AV equipment for years.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2o5j1_sony-c6-betamax-adve...
Observing the red/blue (doppler) shift is in fact how retrograde orbits relative to a star's rotation is determined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossiter–McLaughlin_effect

You can't actually visibly see the planet travel across the star, however. What you measure is the periodic dip in the number of photons collected by the CCD.
I hope they have gift cards come x-mas
I wrote up how we attack this problem a couple of years ago:

http://kylecordes.com/2007/01/20/web-app-swap/

including how we handle schema changes.
Ask HN: what SaaS do you currently pay for?
My list.

/mo.

Basecamp
Backpack
Campfire
GetExceptional
GitHub
Tender
Lighthouse
DropBox

/yr.

MobileMe
Flickr
Vimeo
Pandora One
My mother-in-law worked in a factory in Taiwan in the 1960s. They didn't believe in providing ear protection to their workers and the loud machinery caused her permanent hearing loss in both ears that she still suffers from to this day. She can only hear out of one ear with a hearing aid, and her family has to shout at her just to barely communicate.

Apparently you have no idea how bad it really is there. Here in the US we went through the industrial revolution in the 1800s, when they used to have child labor in factories, letting thousands of children get harmed or injured by unsafe machinery, sending children on suicide missions into mine shafts, chimneys, etc.

We learned over a hundred years ago that those labor practices are barbaric and unnecessary to provide a healthy economic condition for our country.

Why shouldn't we expect the countries we purchase products from to treat their workers with a modicum of respect and humanity?
Ugh fields (things that make your mind flinch)
What's wrong with ambitious?

Also - I'd thought real-time capture of video sources was something the DVR solved a long time ago... if you can talk about it, what's different about your project?
I'm guessing it was flagged by a bunch of curmudgeons thinking "too much iPad!" I do not like the trend of flagging things for reasons of frequency rather than appropriateness, and I'm happy this made it onto the front page.
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