skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I suspect part of the reason for not allowing uneven flattring is because they're really pushing a level-playing-field thing. It'd be pretty easy to handle multiple clicks, but they don't, so I strongly suspect it's a fundamental design decision.

I'm of a mixed mind on if I truly want them to change, or if it's something I accept as a positive aspect of the system. As a geek, I deeply desire control over what my money does. As a human-studier, I recognize at least some of the benefits of not having that control (enforced simplicity being a big one, as this must reach critical mass to succeed where quite a few have failed).

edit: oh, and a correction to my other post: it does not in fact cost them for you to withdraw money. It's still a useful thing for bringing more people into the mix, and this kind of system only exists if it exceeds critical mass.
A conflict of interests
SauceLabs do something like this, but for Selenium scripts.
Room service for a city
Jeff Hammerbacher (Cloudera) talks about analytical data platforms
Specifically: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492686
Excellent point, I have updated the blog post to quote you. (If you are uncomfortable with that, I'll remove it immediately.)

I interpret the waves vs. particles like you say: they're just models, neither is. Was that not clear in the post? What did you perceive, instead?
Etherpad Online
Check out Rapidlibrary, they managed to turn a search engine into a top 1000 website. You have to be careful with taking the "creating pages around latest searches" approach, have a look at the latest searches on Rapidlibrary to see what I'm talking about.

Like another commenter pointed out you will need to create static pages for the search engines to find & index. You can do this by creating them automatically from the last x number of searches, if you were able to aggregate some other sources into the engine you could create custom landing pages showing all results rather than people clicking straight off to Amazon & having no dedicated page for each book title.
European banks have arrangements which make that economical, but transfers between e.g. Japan and the United States or the UK and the United States cost about $60. Also, American banks put consumers through a wringer to actually effect a transfer, since it is one of the highest fraud risk operations a bank is capable of and typical American consumers do international wire transfers very seldom.
The big mistake they made was that pre-order. It was a great marketing move in the start, but when things went wrong, it became their biggest enemy.

Moral of the story: Don't collect any money at all from people till you can immediately send them what they paid for.
I suspect that'd be vulnerable to a smear attack from rich, interested opponents. It's your (two) word(s) against their patent. Better, certainly, but not iron-clad.

Sans getting it notarized, of course. But that costs time and money too.
Have you thought about integrating these similar features into Chrome via a plugin?

Would be fairly good to be able to search Wikipedia by typing w: in the URL bar.
Ah the beauty of making up concepts.

Quantum is a word that get's used a lot. So now we also have quantum psychology.

And from that an entire literary category will be established. Without substance, without actually being based on any hardcore facts, but with plenty of storytelling.

Easy to fool the human mind is.
It's an interesting addition to their security model.

However I don't like how a number of their examples use useragent as a 'secure' way to provide secured elevated privileges on an object via a specific app or location.

user agents are fungible and should not be used for security permissions. I'm surprised Amazon used these in this way in their examples.
http://BuyersVote.com

Chicken/egg problem with reaching critical mass. My plan was/is to grow it organically with long tail keywords once Google starts indexing all the pages. But they haven't done that yet because the site doesn't have enough incoming links to warrant indexing 1000 pages (another chicken/egg problem :)
Amazon Payments was created for this use case. I would suggest thinking long and hard about doing this as a poor college student, though: this business model will complicate everything you do, and for a first business you have plenty of things to worry about without the extra complications.
This is awesome. The funny just doesn't stop.
I'd also recommend jumping head first and start looking at analytic solutions while going through blogs and books. I'm assuming you have a website already that you want to start crunching data from — beyond the obvious analytics.google.com, I'd recommend:

http://www.clicktale.com/ (watch actual browsing behavior/generates heatmaps)

http://www.crazyegg.com/ (another heatmap generator)

http://ethnio.com/ (less about analytics but usability is good too — this helps recruit users for usability testing straight from your website).

http://www.kampyle.com/ (get feedback from your users from a little widget).

http://www.kissmetrics.com/ (track and optimize conversion funnels)

http://mixpanel.com/ (more of a general analytics solution)

You don't have to use all of these solutions, but start playing around with some and pulling in data.
What surprises me here is the Apple spokewoman's suggestion that "users whose accounts had been misused dispute the charges with their card companies" rather than initiating action against Mr. Nguyen and issuing refunds at his expense.

Apple's developer agreement requires that developers refund the total price of the app, despite the fact that Apple only pays out 70% in the first place (details: http://news.cnet.com/apple-refund-clause-bad-for-developers). The company makes it painfully clear that application developers are entirely liable in the event of customer complaints.

It strikes me as unusual that the company would urge customers to request a chargeback, which would be filed against Apple at significant cost, as all billing runs through iTunes. Can anyone offer an explanation for this?
Google awaits China license approval decision
Of course it is dialects of English.

English is not my mother tonge and I don't live in an English speaking country, so I really get angry when someone equates "world" to "English speaking countries". To start with, there is much more people in the world that do not know any English that people fluent in this language.

That was my point.
Clojure and D are the two languages of the newer wave that I'm most likely to end up using. They each have a combination of elegance and practicality which are pretty rare among new languages I think.
I'm amused how (presumably) Hong Kong's leading cable TV provider is actually branded "Cable TV".
First impression is good: clean, professional looking, I like the color scheme.

Small things to change:
- The contrast is too low on the sub-heading that actually tells what the app is about.
- A screenshot of the application would be useful.
- I'd give more padding between the elements Signup/Signin and About/Contact/Blog. Give them more room to breathe. Additionally, the yellow pipe is more distracting and noticeable than the links themselves — making the pipes dark grey instead will keep the visual separator without overwhelming the links.
It's a marketplace, not a money-transferring service or anything like that. Thanks for reminding me to clarify that.

Paypal is definitely very easy to set up, but I keep hearing stories of accounts getting frozen. If I do opt to use it to hold the earnings of sellers, and that account got frozen, it could be disastrous. The second way would be far less risky because it would just be the site's cut frozen, but splitting up payments doesn't seem to flow well with Paypal (maybe I'm wrong about this?).
Anyone who wants to mirror can try downloading the video from http://media.river-valley.tv/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth....
Strong second.

You would have a very difficult time establishing a proper merchant account as the fraud risks are incredibly high. While many might be willing to discuss it, it is unlikely that the account would be approved by the processor's sponsoring bank in the underwriting phase.

Amazon's FPS service, while far from ideal in that it requires all parties have Amazon accounts, and requires the transaction occur off-site in Amazon's payflow, is very well-suited to this use case. It's the only quick, affordable, easy to integrate service I can think of that allows for a merchant to broker transactions between two parties (while skimming a percentage).

If you push forward with this, I'd definitely recommend launching with FPS rather than plunking down a large personal guarantee with Authorize.net or Braintree.

Good luck!
I don't find these comments entirely fair. Sure, the Register brings a tabloid voice to tech journalism. So do lots of media outlets and blogs.

Can you guys point to past journalistic errors or malfeasance on Vance's part (misquoting or otherwise)? Genuinely curious: Does he actually have a history?

I seem to recall I've read articles by him in the Economist that were insightful in the past year or two, presumably written to (or edited to) the voice of the paper. That said, I don't closely follow Vance's work.
How is your data backed up?
...
[X] I use Tarsnap
...

Where's the "I am Tarsnap" option?

Somewhat related: Are the responses to this going to be made public somewhere? I'd love to see what they look like (for obvious reasons) and was thinking just last week that maybe I should post a survey to HN and Reddit.
I think a slightly customizable version of this would be useful, though too much customization can lead to people developing instinctive defenses against the scheduled shutdown (like I sometimes do with maxvisit/minaway by opening enough tabs all at once to occupy me for the minaway duration).
I think what he might be referring to is when you run an in-memory SQLite database in your unit tests (which is common practice, for speed and convenience). If the test server runs in a separate thread to the unit test, then they use two separate in-memory databases and you cannot populate the server database from your unit test setUp.

This however does work in Django - presumably by somehow passing the same DB connection to the test server.
I recently took the PADI Rescue Diver certification, had been a lifeguard in my youth and currently participate in long distance swimming events (1 - 2 miles) and triathlons. I can tell you that according to the Rescue diving course the correct order of btilly's recommendations would be 2, 1, 4 and possibly 3 (while implementing 4).

It should go without saying, but your immediate course of action is to call for help and/or designate someone to do so in case of an actual drowning situation.

Your preferred choice of action is to stay out of the water entirely. Do not get in the water unless you must. Use any means at your disposal from lines to poles to thrown floatation devices to safely assist the victim. Keep eyes on the victim, assign someone to do so as well - in case you need to gather emergency equipment (above or swimming aides like mask/fins if they are available and if you are going in).

Next would be a wading assist, again, waist/chest deep wade into the water with a line/pole/floatation device.

Finally, if you must enter the water remember that YOUR SAFETY is above that of the victim. If you allow the victim to overpower you, you will become a victim yourself. The most powerful tool at your disposal at this stage is your voice. Talk to the victim, reassure them, let them know you are there for them and everything will be ok. Reel them back from the edge of panic. After that, the next powerful tool at your disposal if you are overtaken by a panicked swimmer is to dive and push the victim away from you while under water - the victim will not follow you down. Rinse repeat until the victim calms down, you get a hold on them from behind, or they pass out. Having the victim pass out is not the worst thing that can happen. It may require rescue breaths and/or cpr once you get the victim to shore/boat.
Flick your eyes back and forth between the two lines as fast you can. The brain is very good at detecting changes that way.
I've done this many times -- fun, or maybe pleasant is a better word.
I'm not a lifeguard -- I'm not even much of a swimmer -- but I am trained in First Aid. One of the things we were taught is not to just rush to be a hero when you come upon an apparent trouble situation. You first need to assess the situation and area with respect to the safety of yourself, and any bystanders.

Example scenario (based on a real life occurrence, as related by my instructor): You approach an indoor pool, and see what looks to be a child floating face down in the water, and an adult also floating similarly nearby. Your first instinct might be to dive in to save one or both of them, but a subtle clue is present: while the child is in swimming attire, the adult is in street clothes. In actual fact, a live wire has somehow come to be in contact with the water -- the adult had dived in to try to save the child, but was electrocuted.
Not just that. You also end up with the knowledge that those 2 paths were actually dead-ends. It's important to know solutions that will NOT work.
I love doing this.
Wow - had no idea Amazon owned all those companies. Bezos has made some really solid bets over the years when compared to his counterparts at those other companies.
I interpreted your comment as "Quantum psychology sounds like bullshit, because I've never heard of it and I can't conceive of a way for quantum mechanics to relate to psychology." This may be a poor interpretation as that may not be what you meant. Can you please help me understand, Yoda? Also, if you disagreed with any of the explicit points, please elaborate instead of engaging in evasive platitude-laced rhetoric.

P.S. All concepts are necessarily invented. If you disagree (perhaps you subscribe to Plato's theory of "forms"?) then your perspective will be challenged if you read the post. (shortcut for the lazy: ctrl/cmd-f, "Does wood really have a wood-ness")
What IS your point then? Making arguments about who did what first sounds like the basics of a middle school browser holy war argument. Ask a coherent question, and I'll give you a straight answer.
I don't think the first statement is strictly true. One of my favorite HNers uses F# for his startup. Microsoft is on DropBox's radar out of necessity. Chrome was first developed for Windows and still performs best on it.

The statement doesn't use any qualifiers. It uses the word "totally". One of the most common ways to take someone's opinion out of context is to make it sound black and white.
Disagree - I actually thought that was really useful to capture a big picture view of the data.
remember: steak & strippers don't come free, even if code can
Lol. I knew it was you as soon as I saw "I use tarsnap" as the only one checked.

I love Tarsnap. I use you for a lot of very-critical-yet-small files.

My personal pain point is that I'd like to back up a few TB of data but can't afford to--it would be nice to back up an entire workstation. I'm interested in seeing if that's a sentiment that others share, or if it's just me.
My personal pain point is that I'd like to back up a few TB of data but can't afford to--it would be nice to back up an entire workstation.

Why do you have a few TB of data on a workstation? What sort of work are you doing?
Ever tried blowing bubble rings? It's not too hard, but it takes a bit of work to make good ones (and good capacity & patience, swirling water destroys them).
Sign up for a course today, in fact, do it right now, it is probably just a few mouse clicks away?
White House CIO Vivek Kundra and His Beliefs About the Cloud
Enjoyable? That covers both, and for me the experience roughly covers both. It's relaxing and, yes, fun.
Though then you may as well use a sprite atlas, as you're introducing a new HTTP request anyway.
I attempted something similar in the past.

Quick summary of my experience:

1. Billing credit cards is easy, paying people through an API using direct deposit is pretty hard to find

2. Lots of companies won't know what you're talking about. The ones who do will say you are an "aggregator" and high risk.

3. BrainTree payment solution is a possible exception to this. They "get it" but they also have rejected everyone I know who has applied. They rejected my app also. You need a mil in sales and a track record.

4. I finally stumbled upon AchDirect.com. They are a two-bit no-name processor in Texas, but they approved my app, and give you an API to do direct deposit. Their customer service was incompetent, documentation was sub-bar, and generally didn't seem like they knew what they were doing. But i did finally get the thing to work.

I had to write a custom ActiveMerchant plugin for AchDirect (if you want the code get in touch with me).

I think WePay is using AchDirect too (not sure).

Anyway, Amazon FPS is much simpler. But your customers experience is much worse. It confuses people because they don't think of Amazon like they do Paypal. And (at least when I tested it) there were too many screens to go through to complete a simple transaction.

Anyway, that was my experience.
+1 for Things. The iPad and Mac OS X versions of it are even better.
And for many of the ideas he snubs there was probably a startup that made it happen or helped it along and sold the shovels, and ended up also making somebody rich in the process.
Doing AJAX from Acrobat: Tips, Tricks, and Travails
I had mine locked. I'm pretty sure it's routine.

* You get a large number, or high transaction value
* They lock it until you verify bank details/contact details etc
* It's unlocked

Mine was unlocked in a few days and has been fine ever since.
oh like I would list them here in a public venue

(switches back to other tab and back to hacking away wildly)
Please post your mirrors here.
You can already do this in Chrome. For example, I hit ' to search Wikipedia and hit ; to I'm Feeling Lucky Google.

Preferences -> Basics -> Manage (Next to Default Search)
Right. I actually did not spot the gCaptain article, but I did see that the domain and the author matched. Thanks for pointing out the first half though!
people being able to override the pingback url.

Why is this a problem? Someone overrides the URL; an IPN gets lost; they don't get what they paid for.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?
[My First Aid training tells me that] although brain death occurs in just a few minutes once the brain ceases to get oxygen supplied to it, if CPR is applied to a casualty, and the casualty can get in an ambulance and into a hospital within an hour or so (the "Golden Hour"), he or she stands a decent chance of surviving. The CPR would provide some oxygen to the brain and the rest of the body (while the ambulance makes its way to the scene), so if you can bring the casualty to shore within 2 or 3 minutes of them going unconscious, there's still reason for optimism.

As such, I would say it's not unreasonable to wait for the drowning person to lose consciousness if you aren't confident you could prevent or deal with him or her dragging you down.
Are you going to post the survey results on HN?

I bet a lot of people would find them interesting.
Prince: "The Internet's completely over,"
Getting Started with NoSQL and Data Scalability
I grew up near a lake and always used to hearing those drowning stories. One of the guy I met told me about a similar story. He was trying to rescue a kid who was drowning and he started to grab/climb him as soon as he reached him. He said he had to punch him into unconscious then rescued him.
I just went for my Cavern Diver Cert and am not ashamed to say I had to withdraw, washout as it were.

The odd thing was that the place I was taking the Certification allowed fun divers with only an Open water Cert to dive the caverns (with guides, of course). After my experience, there is absolutely no way I would ever, ever, ever advise anyone to ever go cavern/cave diving without the appropriate instruction and cert level. If for only the reason of exposure to cave(rn) panic inducing situations. It is the lack of exposure that will bring on a massive panic attack at the absolute worst moment that can kill not only the diver, but the entire group.

Personally, I had a weighting issue. As in I was too heavy. the instructor told me to use 10% bodyweight + 6 lbs. as the weight. 175 lbs, head to toe 7mm wetsuit, one AL80 tank @ 2500 psi, fresh water - anyone know the algo for figuring weight with these variables? Haven't done my peak performance buoyancy yet... My trim was off, we went over a cliff with an overhang, I was in the process of calling the dive at this point as my trim was positioning me vertically. As soon as I hit vertical my belt slid right off into the 150 ft abyss taking a fin with it and I started ascending quicker than I would have liked. At that point my self rescue brain kicked in with my Rescue diver training. I absolutely made sure i was breathing, put my right hand above my head to protect from the overhang, made sure my reg was in my mouth, my mask was on and tried to deflate my bcd but could not get the proper positioning. I was also tied up in the line. The safety instructor saw all this, was able to hang onto my leg and flaire out to increase drag on the way up.

Needless to say, I made it out alive. I have a new respect for diving and the cardinal rules that you learn in your Rescue class that are the key ingredients in what makes an accident an accident.

[edited for buoyancy variables]
We are using the Concurrent Mark-Sweep collector now, but this doesn't solve the problem completely. You still get pauses when Full GC occurs.
Less than 10% of fliers are logging onto Wi-Fi in the air
What do/don't you like about the NYTimes.com front page?
You're always going to be at the mercy of a third party with any e-commerce system unless you happen to be a major financial institution.
To prove that this new policy was harmless, one of the Blizzard customer service employees posted his real name. Within minutes, people had tracked down numerous private details about him, including his home address, mother and father's name, the fact that he still lives with his mother, Facebook profile, pictures of him out drinking with friends, a Google street view picture of the front of his house, his home phone number, and tons more information. The thread is over 5 pages long and continuing to grow.

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games...

What boggles the mind is that the employees are going to be using their real names to post. I have seen the hate and rage that can be spewed on the forums when a class gets nerfed in a patch, and let me tell you, some crazed teenager is going to go postal on a Blizzard employee because of this. After spending thousands of hours "ganking noobs" in Stranglethorn Vale, when little Jimmy gets nerfed, he might decide to take out his rage in the real world.

This move proved to me that Activision/Blizzard cares more about profit motives than the safety and privacy of their customers. This is really all about becoming the next Facebook for gamers. They want to create a social graph across all of their servers, and all of their gaming franchises so that they can map people to their contacts and data mine it for advertising. They've already announced that targeted ads will be displayed in loading screens on Starcraft II and World of Warcraft's expansion. This is the next step.

Unfortunately, Bobby Kotick and Activision have begun to destroy Blizzard. It is a sad day indeed.
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