skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I mean that the implementation is not a true feature, but a quasi-bug in disguise.

This definition sums up my use of the term fairly well (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/misfeature):

>A feature that eventually causes lossage, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation that has evolved. Since it results from a deliberate and properly implemented feature, a misfeature is not a bug. Nor is it a simple unforeseen side effect; the term implies that the feature in question was carefully planned, but its long-term consequences were not accurately or adequately predicted...

At some point, someone must have thought that allowing JavaScript access to the clipboard would be a neat idea. And on a whiteboard, it does seem like a neat idea. But in the extremely hostile environment of the Internet, where every feature will be abused in the most user-hostile ways possible, it is a liability rather than an asset.

The Internet has a long history of such features: the ability of a page to spawn new windows, which led to popups, is the one of the most glaring to casual users, but Usenet's CANCEL messages and the ensuing Hipcrime debacle is IMO more to the point.

The prevailing attitude when developing desktop operating systems, which provide tools to developers under the assumption that they will be reasonably careful with them ('with great power comes great responsibility'), fails completely on the Internet. On the desktop, you can assume that obviously flawed, hostile software will get eliminated by the market -- a few people might get burned, but then nobody will install it, problem solved. On the Internet, this doesn't work; if you release a browser with a "feature" that can be exploited to take advantage of users or even to merely annoy them, it will be used, and it won't just be used a few times, it will be used over, and over, and over ... until the feature is hardened or removed (e.g. the BLINK tag, early ActiveX).

I am very concerned that the rush to provide desktop-application-like capabilities to web apps will open a huge can of worms in terms of the new avenues for abuse that it allows, and the overall effect of this -- when the abuse happens in spades, which it will -- will be to cause users to disable those features globally, and distrust web apps in general.
To be clear, I intended to help, not to judge! I think the site is awesome. I should aspire to make something so nice in 24 hours.
"Now you have two problems."

Seriously, I can't think of a single good reason why you would want to check whether an email address is "valid". What you should be concerned about is whether or not the address works (and usually, can/does the person who just signed up actually read and reply to email to that address).

Hypothetically, if an invalid address works (due to bugs in mail systems) -- then it works, and the only problem with accepting such an address is that the bugs might get fixed. If an address is valid, there's no reason to assume that it will work or that it belongs to the person who signed up. It isn't even a good way of detecting typos; transpose two characters in an email address and it will most likely still pass your validation.
Not to mention she's focusing on one experience within Microsoft. Its a big company and not every team is like that but the blog post would lead you to believe that every team is.
Ask HN: Using 5-drive RAID 0 array as another cache layer
I recently started using Intel Matrix Storage RAID solution that allowed me to use my 5 1TB drives for two RAID volumes. First one a 1TB RAID 0 striped across all 5 drives and second one a RAID 5 across the rest of the free space on all drives (around 2.85TB usable space).

The RAID 0 I use for OS, applications and games while the RAID 5 I use as a more-permanent type storage (photos, projects, etc). Now I do realize that running the OS and applications on RAID 0 across 5 drives is very dangerous, which is what brings up the following question.

Is there a reliable freeware realtime backup application that can backup a set of folders from one drive to another drive (no online backups needed)? I've already tried a few (Mozy, Yadis, Comodo Backup, GFI Backup, Idoo, Crash Plan) but none meet my requirements:

- Low CPU and RAM usage.

- Realtime Backups: as soon as a file is modified in the source folder, it is added to the backup queue which will be processed with the lowest priority when the CPU is idle. This backup queue should persist in cases of computer restarts and crashes (ie: the source and destination folders should always have the same set of files, except for the ones waiting in the backup queue).

- Incremental Backups: if only 10 bytes changed in a 1GB file, the app should only copy those 10 new bytes.

- Ability to back up locked and opened files (some apps, like Yadis, can't back up critical files like browser favorites).

- Ability to run as a service (no need for any user to log-in to have the app started).

Optional requirements:

- Compression of the destination into a well-known format (RAR, Zip) that can be directly read without the use of the application.

- Preset source folders (such as Browser Favorites, Game Saves, Application Settings, etc).

The idea is to use RAID 0 array as "semi-persistent RAM-like" storage which in case of a failure can be quickly rebuilt by reinstalling the OS, apps, games and copying over the settings, saves, favorites from RAID 5. I'm also thinking of taking this RAID 0 as RAM idea to the extreme with SSDs (as soon as we get some nice 6Gb/s SATA III SSDs out there), where a couple of SSDs chained in RAID 0 will work as yet another semi-persistent cache layer sitting between the RAM and the HD and serving all file requests for the OS, games, apps, etc.

Ideally, I need an application (or a loopback driver) that would convert any disk volume into a write-back, read-through cache backed by another disk volume as permanent store. If such an application doesn't exist, I'm thinking of writing one.
If you liked Star Trek: TOS, or perhaps any Star Trek, you should not listen to this man. Watch the movie at least once. Although heavily flawed and not particularly novel (just like Star Trek) it will strike a chord with some people. It did with me.
The real question is "why do people who give advice
always do so in such black and white terms?"

My guess is that many people want to hear their personal hopes and biases confirmed. Hate to go to meetings? Sweet; I just read that meetings are toxic! These guys are brilliant!

Never mind the lack of context or backing evidence for various aphoristic claims. The folks who read what they want into such things don't care.

When you hear what seems to be simplistic black-and-white advice, try flipping it around to the opposite, and see how hard it would be to rationalize a belief in that point of view. TDD is good - TDD is bad, OOP is epic - OOP is toxic; Stay small. Grow large.

It gets to a point where such proclamations are little more than grammatically correct sentences, and all meaning is provided by the reader.
We should make a Tiny Fork Day.

A day where X people fork, make at least one contribution, and request a pull.

Set up a cool site targetting people who are interested in coding, but haven't yet gotten the courage to contribute, and you could have something.
My intention was quite the opposite from trash talking. As a commenter articulated, this feels more like something forced on him by acquisition hungry VCs than of his own design.

Digg was in a way one of the best external things that could've happened to reddit: it did all the work of educating people to the concept of "social news" and provided a Goliath to our community's David.
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After reading this article I went ahead and forked the Konami-Unicorn-Blitz project (the same one this article references). Added a hideAfter property that autohides the unicorns after 30 seconds and submitted a pull request. We'll see if the change is accepted :)

GitHub is neat.
You're acknowledging that RSS performs the same general function as Digg v4, that you can't identify any concrete differences between the two, and that RSS readers ultimately didn't "gain momentum". How does that square with an argument that Digg v4 is going to be "game-changing"?
Did you even READ the post, or are you just commenting on the comments?

I thought I laid out the argument pretty clearly.

Let me know if I am mistaken.
Open vs. Fast, Good vs. Evil, Google vs. Facebook
Ask HN: Any time do you feel  tweeting more than 140 characters?
Many times i used to feel 140 characters in twitter is bit of constraint when tweeting stuff which are great than 140 characters.

140 perfectly suited for status updates.
but i feel twitter is much more than status updates !!!

What do you people feel?
I soon as I saw the video I recalled Terminator 3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpYJg5obUkg
Ask HN: How does the economy of bandwidth work in the era of Web 2.0
I should say in advance that while I am pretty savvy on low level software, I haven't been paying much attention to the Internet for many years (like over 8) and I am trying to understand the way things work today.

I am having a hard time understanding how it's economically feasible to run a high volume Web 2.0 site. What I mean is, take for instance a cloud based provider like Rackspace, which offers bandwidth for 20 cents per GB. Now say you have a default home page that is roughly half a meg in size, which when you account for all of the doohikies in the Web 2.0 era, is not totally out of the question. With those 2 variables in place, you're spending 20 cents for every ~2050 visitors.

Do the current online advertising rates cover the costs or would this be losing money in terms of bandwidth costs? Put aside all other costs for the moment. Perhaps the better question is, what kind of advertising scenario would be needed to even break even in such a scenario?
It’s hard to tell what they’re actually saying here other than that a newly popular, relatively open platform has some bad UIs. Why’s it gotta sound so grouchy?
I do this too and I think its the same part of my brain that likes the bounce of the window on the iPhone after an inertia scroll. I pull the window down over and over when I'm bored. It's like bubble wrap.
She does have a good point; I've always found that people that like those mindgames are never really very good at programming. Something about wanting to find the right answer to a specific question seems to conflict to finding an answer to a vague set of requirements, programming.

A better interview question might be "draw a picture of anything that comes to mind".
On http://github.com/vasili/FSharpBinding is an FSharpBinding
that works with MonoDevelop. Please read the README to under-
stand current functionality. I have tested with new F# projects
plus existing F# projects like Mandelbrot sets, Stephen
Wolfram's Rule 30, etc. There is still a fair amount of
polishing that needs to be done. That is a work-in-progress.

Kind regards,

Vasili I. Galchin
I can't give details, but in my experience your view of Microsoft is incorrect.

If anything, the converse is true: core business teams offer less opportunity to do something great, because they're bigger and less flexible.

I didn't choose Microsoft, but I had an overly simplistic view of things.
Oh, I totally understand, and thanks for pointing out the problem.

I just know the reflex when this stuff happens is to say "oh, I shoulda done this better." I wanted to point out I didn't think Aaron deserved any criticism, even self-criticism, over it.
It's almost like a flash mob.

I like it.
Is it time to give BP some competition?
its time a bounty was offered for getting this spewing oil well shut down. BP has failed. They ought to be made to offer $100 million bounty to whoever shuts down that well first.

surely there is someone out there that knows how to do this or who has the will to forge a new solution. an underwater "Red Adair", if you will.

what do you think? Are there smarter people out there? Or is this idea half-backed?
I may be cynical, but you can't always build something for everybody. Apple sell devices (laptops and desktops) with keyboards and other usability features. It's like complaining that a Ferrari isn't usable for people on a wheel chair. Just don't buy that car. Nobody complain with pasta brands cause they didn't pass the usability test with celiac disease people.

Disclaimer:
I'm an avid supporter of usability over the web, I'm actually working on a project to help designers/developers building more usable websites.
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You could find a CSE student or a hardware engineer looking to switch focus into orthopedic surgery or medicine; the idea being you two would learn from each other and pass on valuable connections and resources gained from past experience.
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Funny, I put together a script just yesterday that allows you to do pull requests from the command line (via git): http://gist.github.com/415266

Improvements always welcomed :)
I suspect that a combination of advertising and freemium can cover those costs. Also consider that most hosting providers have huge markup on bandwidth, which costs $2-5/Mbps/month wholesale — that's more like one cent per GB. If you're big enough to buy wholesale you can afford to have a much richer site.
Disclaimer: My FC internship starts on Tuesday, so I can't promise complete impartiality.

I had the chance to contribute to Chromium as part of a class project. It was super bitching. I got to communicate and ever have discussions (virtually) with some brilliant google guys and put some code in. Even got my name on the AUTHORS list.

My biggest contribution was changing the way they did metahandles in sync. You see, when a 'synced' bookmark item is updated in a transaction, it must be marked 'dirty' so that it can be pushed to the server when the cycle comes around again. This was an O(n) operation, as they scanned the whole set of metahandles to do this. I just added some things to the WriteTransaction class to add it to a much shorter list and spare the effort of the whole scan at the end.

Now, I haven't worked at Fog Creek yet, but I have (coincidentally) built a bug tracker before (high school internship; I have no idea why I was given that task, in retrospect). Granted, I was a high school student so I did an awful job with it, but I did learn a lot about how to make software (I'd hope) and it was pretty cool. One thing in particular comes to mind which is that I had to add multiple-parameter sorting, and so I figured out how to do that (I had no idea libraries and even successive merge sorts would accomplish the same thing) and they were happy with what I made.

I guess my point is that a feature is a feature is a feature. Most of the REALLY boring stuff is present in ANY software project, and a lot of the REALLY interesting stuff is present in almost anything (COBOL and banking applications aside).

(Chubby, BigTable, etc are super sweet though)
I agree, EY's writing is simply brilliant. He would probably love to be an SF writer, but he's doing what needs to be done. See my comment here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1301534
Everyone does this sort of thing! The first time I saw it named (as "One Free Interaction") was this blog post:
http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/01/one_free_interaction.h...
I just realized I totally mis-read your comment! I will look at open-sourcing parts of the application (parts of it are already open-source in fact!) but I'm not sure I want to release the whole thing!

The parts that are already open source are here:
http://github.com/aarongough/

At the moment it's only really the comment system that is open source...
The GitHub homepage had support for the Konami code with the commercial launch, IIRC:

http://github.com/site
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There's a joke on the old saying: if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, don't be deceived, it is a duck. Smart people have a tendency to overcomplicate things and be so suspicious of "superficial" indicators. The assumption is that it really can't be so simple, you can't make snap judgments based on how they run interviews, you need to do some sophisticated analysis or something to really know. They end up being deceived by not wanting to be tripped up by naive conclusions and trying to look deeply, so they miss what's staring them in the face.
I didn't think anyone was being critical or negative... I appreciate all the kind words though!

Definitely helps me out when it's 2am here and I'm fighting fires!
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tldr: I interviewed at Google two years ago, I didn't get an offer so now I'm writing a blog post to explain that I didn't really want to work there anyway. Psych.
Do a thought experiment: imagine somebody who knows an insignificant amount. Say, asdflkj. Would he be willing to trivialize matters without offering any reasonable arguments? My guess is yes, and the reason is that I know he's already digested a multipage article and decided that he can imagine someone rejecting something by labeling it.
Good quote, but to be fair humans have known that the earth was round since 300 B.C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth
You're way off the deep end here. An SSD would probably be faster and more reliable as a boot drive than your RAID-0. In fact, your RAID-0 is probably no faster than RAID-5 in most cases, but it's obviously more dangerous.

For your backup needs, it sounds like continuous data protection is what you're looking for.

There are two (announced) SSD cache drivers for Linux: http://github.com/facebook/flashcache and http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/4/30/496
OK, so if I understand you, the 20c/GB is not what you'd expect to pay for a site that does good volume and buys the bandwidth by the bulk, so to speak? Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but who provides cloud services with better bandwidth rates? Or is it something that Rackspace might negotiate over?
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I agree, I think I might actually go back to digg and try this out. If they gave enough intelligent filtering options + other extremely useful features, this could even draw people away from HN theoretically.

While they're at it, screw diaspora, digg should go after facebook as well, I'd trust them more (which isn't saying much.)
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Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson write the way they build websites. And that's not a bad thing. They're the authors of REWORK, the latest book
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Yahoo Acquires Indonesia's Koprol
Fair enough, but there's nothing overtly weaponizable about communication technology.

Reliable and secure communication technology is what enables the military to function. Without it, all the weapons technology in the world wont do you any good. So on a moral level, if you are against war you should actually find working as a researcher on communication technology more reprehensible than working on weapons. On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that the real world isn't as simple as "a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to [robots]". You're making a simplification because it's convenient, but that simplification is morally inconsistent with approving of DARPA's work on the Internet. The fact that technology has a dual use is something we all have to deal with as researchers. But I don't think it helps matters by treating the issue as a binary.
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I have to agree with this.

The reality is that testing everything before you even write it locks you in, emotionally, to a certain design. ("If I clean up this module, the bar goes red! Ahh, fuck it!")

You end up writing the code to make your tests pass, not the code to solve your problem in the best way. Without any iteration during the design phase, you're not going to get the right design. At that point, you don't care if you get the right answer, you care that you have the framework for getting the right answer. Once you like the design, then you can worry about making sure it works (sure, use TDD for that).

Now, the reality is, people that are forced to use TDD weren't going to come up with a good design anyway, so at least they have some idea that their code works and can change it would losing too much sleep. Fine. But when you aim for 75%, you get 75%. I like to set my sights higher.

(I use TDD approximately never, and I have hundreds of thousands of lines of code in production that never give me a headache. They are tested, but they were designed first, not tested first.)
Amazon has volume discounts so the price automatically decreases from 15c/GB to 8c/GB as you transfer more. I don't know of any clouds that let you bring your own transit; you'd probably have to move up to a rack or cage (which may also make CPU time cheaper).
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No it doesn't, at least, not any more :)

Chrome 6 on OS X, triple-clicking on the word "WebKit":

http://grab.by/4DKh
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Really cool application, I wanted to do something similar leveraging another app we built.

Usually when a client ask for such a rich mockup we build it in html and then we point an app that is a simple webview module. We use iScroll for the fix positioning of tabbar and nav bar and jtouch for the sliding windows.
Kudos for taking the time to check. :)
A good first step may be to have a standard way to show the gestures that are currently enabled (e.g. pinch, swipe). That way, you at least know what is significant to the current app in the current mode, and don't have to try a bunch of things.

Though in some respects, it is unfair to criticize touch technology based on its initial use in phones, because those screens are small. Some of the article's goals aren't practical on a small screen, e.g. GUIs have "discoverable" interfaces because of always-visible menus, but a phone can't do this without seriously reducing usable screen space.

On the other hand, the touch screen of an iPad probably should fix more of these problems. For instance, an iPad app can probably have a discoverable "menu bar" like a Mac app does, and not really hurt usable screen space.
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