skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> 2. These distributed databases like Cassandra, MongoDB, and CouchDB[3] aren't actually very scalable or stable. Twitter apparently has been trying to move from MySQL to Cassandra for over a year. When someone reports using one of these systems as their primary data store for over 1000 machines for over a year, I'll reconsider my opinion on this.

Are there facts to back up what he says about MongoDB for example or is this just FUD.
Seriously, why do you still have an iPhone?
In fact Paul may be one of the reasons why "startups", as a subject, is such a tender one in the Metalab scene. You can talk about "startups" for years without actually starting one.

It seems that there is a particular brand of arrogance required of anyone trying to get something new done in the world of The Mob Mind, and that Mob Mind may well already be on its way to agitation in the Metalab scene, with regards to startups .. However, that arrogance persists in the Metalab scene, in the form of others, in the wings, preparing their new ideas for delivery.
GC isn't required to be safe, and it doesn't guarantee safety, but it does makes safety a whole lot more likely.

Boehm is the best garbage collector given its constraints, but that doesn't make it a good garbage collector overall, or even one worth using. I agree that good GC requires language support; what I disagree with is the attitude that people should use C anyway and forget GC because Boehm isn't good.
It's not more marketing, Zed, it's years and years and years of evidence that poorly-managed memory is a major source of error in design, and folks in the application development and security fields trying to pass along a message to avoid it if possible. State is also a major source of error in design, which is why stateless dogmatists keep hammering on it. You can get good design without them, and some people do. But everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Picking technologies that help you avoid making them isn't marketing, it's just good sense.

People have a bad habit of calling any received wisdom they disagree with "marketing". There are people out there far smarter than I am, and possibly smarter than you are (though I'm not in a position to judge), who disagree strongly with what you say, and they're not marketeers. No need to go down that route in this debate.
the wrong part is starting and then backing out when you've got other people depending on you.
My desire to do this though, causes the problem that I feel like I can't stop working and constantly increasing my savings.

The idea that if I take time off for a while to work on something at a loss, the damage will be too great due to the long time effects of compounding interest etc and the desire to build a prosperous life for my family.

So I think I have the opposite problem. I have a hard time stepping off the gas pedal to pursue things that would probably be more beneficial and enjoyable.
Excellent idea! Remove not only spam but morons as well!
You could actually do it as a bookmarklet, though.
Perhaps not, but I think I've learned from mistakes faster when people have warned me beforehand about them.
JavaScript Blacklist - Safari
How can you mean that? Tapping is a much more lighter way of interacting with the touch pad. Way more elegant than a click with force.
I just don't see the reward of extra effort anymore. Once I have found the right mailing list (which is not that hard), I can invest exactly the same effort I invest into posting a nontrivial question on stackoverflow and usually I can get far better answers without any extra effort, without having to handle any kind of karma-politics.
I had to smile, when I read the head line and later the article. During my first year of university, I wrote a verb conjugation engine and a very simple webserver for the UI (I wanted cross-plattform compatibility and it was easier than learning GTK+).

I, too, choose bstring for strings and used valgrind a lot. It's nice to see I'm not the only one writing C code this way. (Although I don't write much C anymore.)
Its my data. I should decide where to keeo it!
As a single data point - supporting the idea that your own experience is far more valuable than listening to me talk - I continue to get massive value from this (under-rated imho) essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
If you're a rational person, you can learn a lot from other people's mistakes.
Google is basically a Python house

Google is basically a C++, Java, Python and Javascript shop :) ref: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html

Be interesting to see if Go sneaks into that list.
for (var i=0, node; node=parentElem.childNodes.item(i); i++)
{
// iterates over an element's child nodes; 2nd statement in for loop returns undefined when out of items
}
Sorry but Oscar Wilde was the original troll. If you've spent any time reading him you'd be extremely reluctant to quote him on something like this.
The best advice is:
Relax, it's going to be ok.

Everyone takes their own path in life.
Listen to others but find your own path.

When you wake up in the morning ask yourself are you happy?
If yes keep doing what you are doing.

If no, ask yourself if you could do something to change that, if you can then do that, rinse wash repeat.

If you can't do anything about it be happy anyway.

In short, just be.
That's startling. What makes it so?

Do you think that the converse is true, that boyfriend material is the same as husband material?
Too bad we're not rational
Through The Looking Glass
This one makes me wonder: "The first thing they noticed was that when R2K did polls that tested how men and women viewed certain politicians or political parties (favorable/unfavorable) there was an odd pattern: if the percentage of men that rated a particular politician favorable or unfavorable was an even number, so was the the percentage of female raters."

How could they produce such results? Even if the results are 100% fake, they certainly did not do it on purpose.

Take men's results and add a random multiply of 2 to produce women's results? Naah.
> It's naive of you to believe you can learn from our past naivety.

Firmly disagree. You absolutely can learn from others' past mistakes - that doesn't mean you'll make no mistakes, but you absolutely can make less mistakes and recognize and correct them faster.

> You will have to do your own mistakes and learn from them.

True. But the more you can listen to and apply good guidance from people who've been there, the better chance you get there faster, more easily, and with less pain.

I wish someone had taught me to lift weights with lower weight and perfect form instead of trying to be superman - from that, I tore some cartilage in my knee doing squats with too much weight and bad form. I've showed a couple people how to lift since then, given them a stern admonition not to try to look powerful, but to focus on steady, safe gains. As far as I know, everyone getting this stern admonition with relevant stories about physical therapy and assorted misery listens to them and lifts weights in a safer, more healthy way. You can learn from others' mistakes, often refrain or minimize the mistake-making in your life, and be much better off for doing so.
I submitted it because I like reading about your experiments with your blog, and I thought others would like it too.

A person hacking on his own stuff, just to try out things, is hacker news to me.
I believe the wyclif was referring to rather quite the opposite, that a former naive belief of his was that girlfriend material is the same as wife material.

This is in spite of my former belief the only thing that would ever come out of wyclif's mouth was "dollar dollar bill, y'all".
Buttered Toast and Other Patterns
Don't believe everything they tell you. If you listen to too many people too often, you will be average at best.

Have the conviction to be better. If you can't convince people of your ideas, it doesn't mean the ideas are bad, it just means they didn't think of them first.
Evidence so far says C makes good web servers.

What does "good" mean in this context?

I suspect that technical matters such as deployment and integration with other components is of greater concern (though I also suspect that the kind of language fetishism which looks balefully on the use of anything other than C as a system programming language has some effect).
That you never regret the big fun adventures that you decide to go on.

When faced with the decision, it can be really hard to take 6 months off to travel to the destination of your dreams - but in hindsight, these are the best times of your life and you usually don't regret them.

I recently sat with a 96 year old man, and his stories were about his trips to his hometown in Europe and to the United States, not about the job that he took or the project that he completed.
Man, forgive me for being blunt, but there's a lot of loser talk in this thread. "Oh you can't learn from others mistakes, you'll make them, blah blah blah..." - no, this is how people feel better about themselves for having not listened to advice and getting wrecked in their own life because of it. Sure, you'll make mistakes, but you shouldn't just accept wandering blindly through life dealing with stuff. This is what most people do, mind you - wander blindly through life. Like, there's tons of literature on good parenting. How many people read it? Like, none. So then they justify their bad parenting by saying "well, we all have to make our mistakes" - bullshit. Bullshit lazy talk. This is like the "you've got to earn your stripes the hard way" thing - sometimes you do, but sometimes you don't. But people who got their stripes the hard way often hate people who get them an easier way. Ignore those people.

Okay, that said, this thread was really good:

"Ask HN: What streetsmarts have you learnt?"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1366217

I'll paste my comment from that thread, it's absolutely true and I learned it the hard way. Also, I admire you for being proactive and looking for advice to build a smarter, better life with.

--

Track record, track record, track record, track record. Look at the track record. Track records don't lie. Track record, track record, track record.

Someone fired from all their jobs is probably going to be a menace later in some form or fashion.

Someone who ended all their relationships on bad terms is going to end on bad terms with you.

Strong starters/non-finishers are going to start strong but likely won't be able to close it out without extra help later... which you might be oblivious to, because they'd started so strongly.

Track records don't lie. Unless you're really good at spotting diamonds in the rough, don't grab someone with a bad track record for an important role in your business and life. I've learned this one the hard way too many times. I still get tempted with, "Wow, this guy/girl is so amazing, the problem must've been the other people..."

I'm trying to not do that any more. Once? Quite possibly a fluke. Twice? Maybe... Three times? That's a track record. Also, people will always say they've changed. It's probably a bad idea to be the first person to test out whether it's real or not.
http://i.imgur.com/wKKV6.jpg
I think that he just wasn't very literal. In this case he's right: you have to learn everything yourself, you can't really be taught; "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

One of my favorite quotes is from Oscar Wilde, "Life is too important to be taken seriously".
Good point. Reminds me of Mary Poppins where Michael tries to get his money back from the old banker and the resulting kerfuffle causes a bank run. I guess that is part of Posterous strategy to cause a bit of havoc and generate publicity and an exodus as a result.
You created two different hacker news accounts to post two stories from a brand new blog. Why the different hn accounts?
Why the brand new, all anti-posterous blog?

I'm no posterous fan but this reeks of astroturfing.

From wikipedia:

"Astroturfing denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but are disguised as spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach", "awareness", etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual promoting a personal agenda, or highly organized professional groups with money from large corporations, unions, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often, the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research. Beneficiaries are not "grass root" campaigners but distant organizations that orchestrate such campaigns."

Hiding ( poorly ) behind two newly created hn accounts just smells.
There are different kinds of knowledge, and advice targeted at different kinds of mistakes.

Errors of technique, like you describe, certainly can be learned from without needing to experience them yourself - though the lesson might not be learned as well, it may be learned well enough to avoid the problem.

But other kinds of knowledge, particularly relating to emotional maturity or social interaction, are very hard to acquire from a book, as it were. You need to live the experience to properly appreciate the lesson.
So worst case they will be doing 4 req/s instead of 2.

I know what you're trying to say, but at Quora's numbers, as OP said, it truly is irrelevant.
Your example is not bad but I like this one better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo
True, but almost everyone who is not into combinator calculus is just going to see:

YCombinator. BCombinator. Wait. They are not associated despite just a single letter difference?

It is a similar problem as with ESL, ESL-Radio and ESL-TV. Sounds like they are an esports league, a radio reporting about an esports league, and a video streaming site about that esports-league? well... wrong. ESL-Radio has almost nothing to do with ESl and ESL-TV and is a video streaming site about ESports, while ESL-Tv streams some subset of the Esports league ESL, and the ESL is a big esports league.

So... please value distinct names to save us all a bunch of confusion.
How about the .-operator

while ((calls.moveToNext)() && (count < howMany)) {

or

while ((calls.moveToNext()) && (count < howMany)) {
I have a similar problem with transcribing my thought processes into little diagrams that other people can follow, yet it's the easiest thing in the world to explore the ideas with code.

Not sure why that is.

Are you also self-taught, by any chance?
13 Funniest Help Wanted Signs Ever
First, what we want an what's good for us are two different sets of things. Especially when you don't have total information.

Second, programming does not always mean tinkering stuff "under the hood". Advanced spreadsheets are front-end and programming at the same time. Even that:

$ cat * | grep "groceries" | sort

is a program (though a rather trivial one). "Real" programs will still be professional and hobbyist stuff. But scripting can be everyone's business.

Third, computers are fundamentally different from any other device: they are general purpose. They can process any information you care to feed them, in any way you care to program them to.

Finally, when our moms want to do something the computer can't presently do, but could, they have 3 alternatives: give up, acquire a program that does the job, or program it themselves. For many many jobs, acquire a program is the only viable solution. But for small, specialized tasks, the existence of a dedicated program is less likely. So if our moms want the damn thing to "just work", they have no choice but to program it.

Knowing how to use computers (and the internet) is becoming as important as knowing how to read. Because computers are general purpose machines, knowing how to program them is an important part of knowing how to use them. It's a big investment, but so is reading.
A slight change in wording can change how people think about their answer
In Faulty-Computer Suit, Window to Dell Decline - Yahoo Finance
I've got an idea. Since the government is probably going to keep on giving existing players legislative help to keep competition out anyway maybe what we should do is pass an "Innovation stiflation act". That is, if you come to the government asking for a law to keep out your competitors then they assign an assessor (the same guy who values my house 40%" above what I could actually get for it) to evaluate how much revenue you're going to get by not having these competitors and we tax that money at, say, 80%.

If we're not going to get the benefit competition would bring at least we should get tax revenue out of it.
Does this imply staying in your comfort zone? Is this not counter-productive?
it seems as though you are talking about something different from the OP. you are emphasizing building wealth, the OP is emphasizing restraint.
comes with a command line so you can configure your router :-)
Want to be a mentor or an advisor to a startup? [Google Docs]
It's not about _what_ he says but more about _how_ he says it. I'd rather read something like "Other companies don't take these things seriously" than "No other company gives a shit about things like this.".
Results: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmPJqmiFQCPEdGdQS3VO...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
That persuasion is about rational explanations (it's not).
Forgive me also for being blunt ... what if the person who has the poor track records is yourself? I'm of course referring to myself and others who don't have as a tough sounding username as lionhearted.

I think we give the benefit of doubt to people that we could relate to, who have had the same disadvantages and flaws as ourselves (after all, to not do so is to reject ourselves).

Does your statement imply that we should try to align ourselves with those who have better track records than our own, and vice versa for those who are inferior? I'm not trying to be facetious, but trying to get you to elaborate applying what you said in a real world context.
I don't understand the price argument. I happily pay more than that for services core to my workflow, and I'm not even a company, this is just for contracts I pick up every 2-3 months.

If this expense is too much for a business you are not bringing in enough cash. 45 minutes of my time pays for 1 month, it's nothing compared to the value I get from it.
A couple things from this forty-year old:

1. If you want to have kids, do it sooner rather than later. The sooner you have them, the better: they grow up so fast, you'll still have time in your 40's to enjoy life with them as teenagers, if you're lucky. If you leave it too late, you'll be pretty disconnected from their teen lives, and hell .. what 40-year old doesn't enjoy the odd jaunt with their teenage kids, eh? I know I wish I'd had my kids a decade sooner .. and don't let anyone tell you its hard, either. Its not hard, if you love them enough, to keep your lives together and do well as a family. Family units are the strongest groups you will ever find or belong to, if they are indeed a unit ..

2. The wisdom of the Mob. It doesn't exist in nearly as palatable a form as most people might desire, and there is also the ugly truth that the Mob can be downright stupid. Collective truth is often full of lies. You would be wise to exercise your ability to disassociate yourself from collective thought as often, and as early, as possible. This means, always question "what everyone else knows to be true" four, five, six times, before you use it as a basis for life decisions .. The Mob wishes to Eat you, Individual, and Never Forget That!

3. Save. Save, save, save. 10% of your money saved on a regular basis now is a huge relief in the future. I wish I'd enforced this on myself a bit better in the 20's .. you simply cannot avoid the fact that if you save during your most productive years, your least productive years will be better off for it ..
Well, they are magic, in a sense: you scribble weird formulas on them, and that makes them do stuff. In every other way, it is not. Computer obey understandable rules. You don't need aracne knowledge to grasp the basics. It's not dangerous to know a little of the thing without dedicating your life to it.

Way less scary than actual magic.
Keep in mind that defining a representative sample is also fraught with differences. How you you determine if someone is a likely voter (are they registered? did they vote last time? other or some combination of the above?), for example, or ensure what you believe is a representative sample of different ethnicities?

Because a sample of 200 - 1200 is used and multiplied out to represent the population as a whole, tweaks in those definitions can lead to different results for the same questions.

I definitely second the www.fivethirtyeight.com tips, as well as www.electoral-vote.com for regular outside analysis of polls and discussion of methodological differences among the various polling places.
"at any point in any any negotiation, you need to remain willing to drop everything and just walk away".

That is the key to getting a good deal and something that my father always taught that I had a hard time learning as a shy introvert. Taking it a step further, a person ought also to learn to not care what other people think. If they're being assholes to you, don't let it influence you.
While there is truth in what you say I can only quote (or rather paraphrase from memory) Michael Mcintyre:

have you ever noticed with ATM's, you go up to it and it says "no, I have no money for you, go away". So, like a good citizen you turn round to the man behind you in the queue and say "it is out of money". And he says "thank you.....", and then steps up to try for himself anyway. "thanks, but I don't believe you, it will work for me".

So, no, you don't have to "learn things the hard way". But most people nod sagely when you give them advice and then do it anyway :) (and that is a good thing IMO)

(I agree with your track records thing; it's too easy to imagine you are giving a "last chance" and that it will really work out this time).
Oh. He says "concurrent" to talk about data parallelism. (Bayesian update in progress…)
You could use one of those stamps automatically counting one up when used.

I'll try this. What hinders me from scanning is that you flip through paper much faster than through a bunch of pdf-files.
I have this question about a lot of sites. I've heard very few good things about MySQL and lots about PostgreSQL but MySQL seems to be used more and get more press.
It is very unlikely that you will always be in your comfort zone. When you ask yourself this question ever day, "Are you happy?", sooner or later you will find yourself replying back "no". Then you will need to change something to make yourself happy, the action of changing something will take you out of your comfort zone.

I try it often, it works, but you will need to be honest with yourself when you answer this question.
Depends; if you like being in your comfort zone and can maintain that indefinitely whats the problem?
There's definitely room for a bronze package there.
Not only is life short, it's shorter than you think.

Make your time count.

I don't mean a life round-the-clock serious business, just be mindful of when you are pissing away your time.

Every single person I know suddenly finds themselves thinking, Holy fuck, I'm [40|50|60|...]? How in the hell did that happen?

And you will do the same.
"Like, there's tons of literature on good parenting. How many people read it? Like, none."

I think that's a really bad example. There's a lot of bullshit in the parenting literature. In a way I find
it very disturbing, that we need to learn how to parent
our children.