skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
50 cores! I thought Sun's Niagara chip was crazy... With Intel pushing even more cores now Concurrent programming paradigms are going to continue to grow in importance.
Yet Another Identity Stealing Bug. Will Creeping Normalcy be the Result?
Here's a fun one:

http://www.gonegoogle.com/presentation/63a3f4b2b8a546a481447...
They didn’t accept that their pizza simply wasn’t as good as that of established pizzerias.

I actually remember this incident. In blind taste tests, McDonalds pizza was judged as BETTER than competitors like Dominos. It certainly was not worse.

However if you repeated the taste test and told people where the pizza was from, McDonalds lost. It turns out that branding strongly affects our perceptions of taste.

Which underscores the challenges of trying to swim upstream against your brand identity.
There is also Gordon: http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/
It does:

http://www.google.com/search?q=10+fifth+avenue+nyc
Wait, you're saying you came by your principles on this issue through a McSweeny's article about a couple who knowingly stated an income 12x their real income to buy a house that they could only hope to afford if the housing market continued to appreciate stratospherically, and who then blamed the economy when their completely untenable loan blew up?

You do realize that it's perfectly reasonable to be disgusted with the mortgage originators, the Wall Street financiers, the CDO managers, the CDO manager's clueless investors, and the feckless homeowners who got into bed with them, right?
How are you coming up with the constraints and what fills what needs ?
This is not puzzling at all. It's just yet another instance of conflating startups with newly founded companies. In fact the former are a tiny subset of the latter. All the Kauffman Foundation study tells us is that people aren't starting as many barber shops and landscaping companies in Seattle as in the other cities.
Second that. I loved their pizzas, and was disappointed when they disappeared.
It's very common. The purpose is really twofold: they want to make sure they aren't going to waste their time hiring you for a $15/hr job when you've made double that for the last 5 years and are likely to leave when something better comes along, and also to give them a leg up in the salary negotiation/offer phase.
I've read advice articles saying not to answer the question, but when we were hiring people, refusing to answer would have been a HUGE negative.
What's next? Will they start blocking Planned Parenthood's Facebook page for the bible belt? Blocking the democratic party in red states and the republican party in blue states?
What are the footprint differences between the two? I assume FLV is compiled and optimized for running in the flash plugin...
An excellent point about oxygen, that had slipped my mind.
More precisely, he's starting to hate the sort of careless people he emails with on a regular basis. It reminds me of when people complain about crap on Twitter, but fail to realize it's down to following the wrong people.
Does that mean my ISP owes you money for sending me a copy of your content for a profit?
I always end up trying the others, but usually by the time you need to use kill at all, only -9 will do.
Wow, is this ever a load of partisan tripe. Anyone expecting private insurance companies to go out of business in America anytime soon is delusional. They wield too much influence. Not to mention despite his 'poor insurance companies only have a 4% margin', they make a crapton of money as is. Without a public option, that profit is here to stay.
The article I linked to is not fiction. Do you have reason to believe that the attorney who wrote it was lying?

And yes, I think the homeowners there pretty awful. But the banks didn't determine that they were awful before they acted in bad faith; they acted in bad faith from the get-go, for everyone, whether or not their actions merited such treatment.

And from where I sit, it seems like the banks and servicers are the ones who completely failed to do any due diligence and then blamed the economy when their unsustainable loans proved, well, unsustainable. The average person is functionally innumerate. They are going to make poor decisions regarding quantitative matters, especially quantitative matters couched in ways that are deliberately obfuscated. This is not true of the average bank. I expect better from them.
None of the demos they show that I saw playback FLVs, where are you looking at those?

Also worth noting that in one of their demos they say that it only supports up to a "sizable subset of Flash 8" for playback currently. From: http://smokescreen.us/demos/intro.html
I would love to see this on a desktop. Why? Because that would generate a powerful incentive to parallelize desktop software. Number of cores will do nothing but increase for the foreseeable future and per-thread performance will not go up much.

Even if they release an 8-core part at desktop processor prices, that would be great.

OTOH, if parallelizing of desktop software improves much, there will less reason to go x86 when compared to multi-core ARM-based designs.
>I used to be a big offender in this area, but am a true convert that if you can say something on the phone or face to face, then you should do it. Only use email to communicate when you need some kind of record, or cannot deal with it verbally otherwise.

You always want "some kind of record". A record isn't a "ha ha, told you so" thing, but it keeps communications accurate and accountable. We've all dealt with situations where FUBARs happened because verbal communications were misinterpreted, or people simply lied because they knew there was little accountability.
That's not the type of leverage I was talking about.

They can leverage skills they learned on the job to get more pay. Either because their current company is willing to pay more or they can move on to another company that knows the value of a trained workforce.

They can leverage their income to do all sorts of things. A simple rice cooker can save time, or you save up for 2 years and they can get 6+ months of living expenses and or start their own company. Or use simple compound interest to retire comfortably with minimal risk.

PS: While collective negotiation may not amount to much in that part of the world, getting enough capital together from 10+ workers to start a competing company is very possible.
Your analogy to native vs. byte code is apt, but the question is not whether we can JIT-compile byte code to run as fast as native code (we can). The question is, what instruction set allows us to write the best compilers. I would argue that the answer is RISC.

Every time Intel adds yet another instruction for doing the same thing, it makes every compiler's job harder. Intel's C compiler is faster than most others because they know their overly convoluted instruction set best. Simpler instruction set means more resources to focus on the few instructions that exist both for the chip manufacturer and the compiler vendors.

On a somewhat related note, Java byte code uses a very-Reduced ISC, a simple stack machine.
I once used this algorithm to solve a word box puzzle: given a dictionary of words, construct the largest possible square of characters where every row and every column in the square forms a word drawn from the dictionary.
His analysis is too simplistic.

There is no question that the value of each individual piece of content for each user will drop. However there is also no question that we get more utility out of the content we have, and therefore there is no question that the value of all of the content we have is greater.

The important questions are what fraction of that utility gets captured as income by various providers along the way (a smaller slice of a bigger pie can still be more), and how much an individual provider can capture.

Data from the music industry indicates that musicians who share their music freely make more money in the long run from increased concert sales, and memorabilia sales. (The Grateful Dead are an extreme example.) Data from http://www.baen.com/library/ shows that putting books online increases sales. So we have two examples where more free content translates into more money.

However for now it appears that the search engines, particularly Google, are in the best position to capture value out of the utility of content. But Google recognizes that it is in trouble without content creators and is actively trying to help. Here is hoping that they succeed.
A huge one I learned: You can't convince someone to change their mind over email. It has to be in person.

(I'm talking about strongly-held decisions or beliefs here. Not the sort of thing where a simple presentation of the facts will do.)
It's a low hurdle. Here's a front-pager written by a guy whining that his friends send him email with unpleasant fonts and colors.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395410
I love email and I let everyone know.

I don't chat, text, or tweet. I don't have a land line any more. Only a few people have my cell phone #. My office phone goes directly to voice mail.

But email is a different story. I don't have instant notification, so it doesn't interrupt me. I check it when I'm ready and I respond quickly, sometimes immediately, almost always within 24 hours. Modern spam filters have made this a breeze.

I bet about half the people I know I have never met, I don't know what they look like, and I've never heard their voice. But we have conducted so much business by email that I feel that I still know them well.

I remember that before email, getting something done was as much a matter of managing interruptions as focusing on the task at hand.

But email has helped me to once again become the master of my own time. I can't imagine getting much done any other way.

[I love hearing from all hn'ers by email. You will get a reply. And you can sign your email any way you want.]
It's not fiction. But it's McSweeney's. It wasn't edited for accuracy or logic or fact-checking or bias; it was edited to make it read well. I like McSweeney's probably almost as much as you do, but would hesitate to cite it in an argument about economics!

Your other two grafs don't actually rebut anything I said. Yes. Banks bad. Very bad! Also: require Thomas to sit on hold to wait to talk to someone in Bangalore about mortgage. Ridiculous fees, too! Bad! Unfortunately: still not OK to defraud them. Contracts with bad evil banks? Still valid.
I randomly stumbled across these when channel hopping at 4am a month or two ago and was captivated. It's a great series and the format of having a panel of experts discussing a subject with only casual prompts from Rose is great (a format that works well with the BBC's In Our Time podcast too).
Yeh seems that gogoogle would be more appropriate. Also, interesting that they chose Flash for this.
Interesting that you mention placebo, given the criticism it has been receiving lately (e.g. placebo studies often rely on patients stating how they feel, rather than measuring chemical levels). The study published in Nature essentially opens the possibility to study acupuncture without relying on patient-reported data.
How is that worse than having Apple tell you that they're pulling your app altogether?
It depends on the corporate charter. Shareholders have the right to have the corporation act in the manner described in the charter, and for most corporations this means maximizing shareholder value.

But not always. Google shareholders do not have the right to have google act evil even if it would have increased their value. A charity is obligated to serve whatever beneficiary group is listed in their charter and can't serve other groups (i.e., no redirecting anti-malaria funds to save the dolphins).
Startup idea MyNeighborIsADrugDealer dot org 
There are a lot of people that are trying to do their best to raise a family. Having a neighbor that is a drug dealer is really frustrating when you just spent 200k+ on your new condo or house.

I think having a website that easily allows people to report drug dealing activity and browse would provide a significant amount of traffic.

Of course this would also allow drug users to find new dealers, but I think it would do more good than harm. Besides, if people want drugs, they are not hard to get if you ask around. It would make sense to design the site to emphasize recent reports, not 3 year old reports.

I know a lot of people use greatschools.org to help decide where to buy a home. MyNeighborIsADrugDealer.org would be helpful in the same way.

The reason I thought of this is my carpool buddy just caught one of her drug dealing neighbors (girl) urinating on her condo door mat. They must think my carpool buddy is reporting them. A site like this would put pressure on the police and elected officials to do something about her neighbor.
I agree with you: branding does affect our perceptions of taste.

As for the statement, "their pizza simply wasn’t as good as that of established pizzerias" I should note that Domino's wasn't the company I had in mind. I was referencing the little pizzerias where the pizza is almost always better than the fast food equivalent.

Heck, even Domino's admits that theirs isn't so great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag
Eric Schmidt And Founder Collective Giiv Mobile-Gifting Startup $3.35
AuthButtons: Free and Open-Source Web Logo Icons
doubleTwist is looking for Android engineers in New York and San Francisco. Feel free to email resumes to chris at doubletwist dot com

http://doubletwist.com
I agree. Marketing anecdotes are always fun to read, but it seems like nearly every marketing expert that comes through these pages is suffering from a serious case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc with a side effect of confirmation bias. The nature of business competition is such that this author, or Malcom Gladwell, or whoever happens to be trying to find a thread of causality that they can build a strategy out of, is nearly always going to be able to find a dozen examples that bear out a given strategy, and a dozen that clearly argue for its opposite. But 'differentiate yourself early with a product that fits the needs of the market and low overhead, grow steadily, and once you become big enough to sustain multiple operations, devote some resources to experimentation in order to keep your brand vital without diluting your core message; also, make friends with governmental agencies' doesn't roll off the tongue, and doesn't seem to the be cutting insight we're looking for.

The only one-sentence business strategy I've heard of seems to be 'Work hard, even if you don't see any immediate payoff, and get a little lucky.'

Of course then again the fact is that most business authors are not as good as the people actually working at MacDonalds and their ilk. The author sees the way things are and can only conclude it's because they're following a natural and immutable law: MacDonald's pizza failed because it didn't conform to their natural state. But as you point out, Coffee (and biscuits) are just as unnatural if you assume that your 'one thing' is what you are right now, which is a burger stand. The reason that nearly all businesses succeed is because they have been shrewd—or lucky—enough to decide on their own form. Paring down to your core competency—which is tacitly assumed to be the thing you're best at RIGHT NOW—is sometimes a part of this process, as is experimenting with new shapes, as is finding previously-undetected connections between the two.
Nice piece - jacquesm made an analogous point the other day in a nice write-up chiding founders of small companies for their sometimes pretentious use of officer titles, sparking a lively discussion (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382657 - "You Are Not the CEO").

At the height of the bubble, it became common wisdom that startups somehow were not real startups unless they distinguished themselves from small businesses by staking out a grand vision and promoting it relentlessly in their business plans, in their marketing materials, and in their company presentations. It was at that time that everybody and his uncle suddenly became a "leading provider" of this or that, even when the claim obviously lacked credibility. Such claims always sounded phony and, even if an occasional company eventually lived up to them, were almost sure to be discounted as empty and meaningless by the customers who counted.

So it is refreshing to see a direct and sincere style aimed at early adopters as opposed to the large buyers who will tend to shy away from large commitments to unproven startups no matter how promising the products or services.

One can be sincere without overdoing it, however, and too much emphasis on "three founders in a room" and the like is perhaps too casual.
RFC1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths
McDonald's still offers home delivery overseas (at least here in Montevideo, Uruguay, and I believe the same is true of Argentina).
FlareVideo - Open Source HTML5/Flash Video Player
I've never heard of books being online for free. I would guess you'd only find maybe the top 100 bestsellers on bittorrent, or limewire. I doubt most of the books people want are shared online.
Are those of us who got denied on a waiting list if spots do open up?
BP Promoting Oil Spill with Facebook Ads
If you enjoy this series you will love In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel the co-host of this series.
I changed that sentence, thanks. :)
The other thing that drives me nuts are emails that aren't actionable. I have enough trouble keeping up with email where it's obvious what's next...
Six Ways to Tell When a Vendor Survey is BS
So, with a long enough record of the wobble at hand, could we tell the exact moment any recording ever made was made, much like Dendrochronology?

And also locate the recording, due to the independent grids?
Zipcar files for $75M IPO
On Android Fragmentation
Hmm... the fact of the branding making it less desirable is interesting... do you know that in some parts of the Third World (Uruguay for example), McDonalds is pretty upscale? (at least in the sense that it is expensive and considered "dining out" for an important swath of the population)
Also see the IBM song page (http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_clips...)
RIP: lala
How about a version built with the Adobe tools for the iPad the way Wired released their magazine. I'd also prefer to pay for 12 issues at once.
Because suddenly dropping support for an app reflects badly on you and your brand. But supporting something at a loss is even worse -- it has a financial cost, and it has an even larger opportunity cost. It's many businesspeople's worst nightmare.

But if Apple orders the abrupt discontinuation of your product you have a face-saving way to wash your hands of the affair. It's Apple's fault! Don't forget to make a big public show of how Apple made you drop the product - and not by degrees, but cold-turkey.
How can talking aloud help you learn and remember better?
sloooowly.
Yeah the only thing that found that is close for Mac is Changes - http://connectedflow.com/changes/
It actually won't work for me at all. `git difftool` does not exist anywhere, and I can't even pipe a normal diff to it like `git diff HEAD | ksdiff`
A site like this would also be an enormous legal headache with libelous claims and counter-claims flying around like gnats on a summer day.

If you are building it to sell to police, then I can see the value. However if this is just a community board, then you are going to have trouble I think. Do you have any idea how you would handle this?
And it's a required field so there's really no way for me to not answer.
You're right: companies can add new products/services to their offerings, so long as the additions work within the values and vision of the brand. So, coffee works, because it fits with the morning menu. (My guess is that onion rings would probably work too.)

The same logic might have seemed quite sound when they introduced pizza at McDonalds, as pizz is seen by many as a fast food. The trick here, was that pizza and burgers actually seem to live in quite different "families."

It's good that McDonalds tries different things, and as you've noted, they have one of the best testing environments for doing so. The cost and scale of this blunder makes it a useful example to consider, though.
Code for America Fellows Application
Its amazing that Apple has caused innovation by banning flash. I wonder if this is sustainable, maybe an example of innovation?
It looks amazing. I'm trying to figure out the best way to read this. The printed option looks good.

This is definitely something I want to sit down with and soak in.
Just ran one of the demos on my iPhone 3GS with no problem.
An aggressive campaign of trademark infringement suits against product knockoffs
Major Linux.com Updates, Hear Directly from Web Architect Dan Lopez
Hacked together Iron Man VR suit simulator
Beethoven May Not Have Died of Lead Poisoning, After All
Agreed

Except my 5 person company could save $46,000!!!! and regain 279 hours!

Numbers like this would make most managers BS detectors go off they're almost worse then no numbers at all.
Have you checked out the Web Inspector, built into Chrome and Safari? In my experience so far the only place it falls behind Firebug is in CSS editing, in every other way it seems superior. I'd be interested if you disagree.

More info: http://webkit.org/blog/829/web-inspector-updates/
IT Managers: Good Ideas Need Guidance
People who stay in their homes prevent squatters from moving in...

Squatters living in a home owned by a bank prevent squatters from moving in?
What does the dotted line on the statcounter graphs represent? All the colored lines with large circles are browsers, but there is also a dotted gray line that drops slightly then rises again and has no data points that you can hover over.
That's a bug, not a feature.
Thanks for pointing this out. I found a related post on Pink's blog: http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/01/raises-do-matter
I develop Django on Windows, and I deploy on Windows as well. You can use PowerShell to script all of your deployment and server management operations, and you can remotely invoke all of those scripts as well.

I tried RoR on Windows, and it is a second class citizen IMO, so I switched to Python/Django, and I've been happy since. Python/Django are pretty blissfully OS agnostic.
> 2. Thanks for repeating something you read on the internet in a patronizing way

You read it here first, since I composed it. Google it.
Sadly, I doubt Sunoracle will be able to top that with a 16-core Niagara III running 16 threads per core. In the meantime, Niagara II is shipping and this Intel piece is vaporware.

I would also like to remind the more overly enthusiastic (me included) that this family seems heavily targeted towards scientific (read FP-heavy) computing and I would expect more x86-controlled/GPU-based solutions in that space in the future. Niagara is more of a general-purpose animal targeted towards web and database workloads.
> ... that hardly means the value of content approaches zero. To the contrary, if you're able to search vast amounts of content for what is most interesting to you, the value you receive from that content increases ...

The value of which Mr. Adams speaks is economic -- i.e. what is exchanged for the content:

> And so, as our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.
Accessing the App Engine Datastore - Compojure on GAE
Did you run Smokescreen with the same SWF you used in FP? How long was your test, and what was the battery drop in both?

Tell me you're not comparing the decompression and rendering of a video against a simple animation.
The tyranny of best practices
And in Brazil. You can order from Mcdonald's for almost every part of São Paulo.
Also see item 019 above which makes what looks like a good first cut at figuring out a properly adjusted "normal" suicide rate to use for comparison.

The whole page is worth skimming/reading, BTW.