skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I thought it would be fun to watch these when I had some downtime during a flight I'm taking next week. Two problems - they stream them and they are real one files. No idea why they make it so difficult.

Solution for .rm files -> VLC [1]

Solution for streaming -> tweak the url [2]

http://mfile.akamai.com/7870/rm/mitstorage.download.akamai.c...

to

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/hs/godel_escher_bach/OCW_7.01.07_...

References

[1] http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[2] http://all-streaming-media.com/streaming-media-faq/faq-downl...
Totally missed it. Thanks!
I wasn't aware that the law has an exemption for short-term lets if the owner is present -- which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?
Ah, I found my answer. Sets are stored in both a skip list and a hash table. So the overhead is indeed high.
I do think they did a more respectable job of releasing this information than they did with the Iraq Apache guncam footage. It's unedited, relatively unbiased, and they did go out of their way to redact specific irrelevant but potentially damaging information (names of Afghans). I think the involvement of "real journalists" probably helped a lot.
depends on your IQ / determination.
"At the USENIX annual conference last month, Gmail engineer Adam de Boor surprised the audience by noting that the company's Gmail service was written entirely in JavaScript, and that all of its code, around 443,000 lines worth, was written by hand."

Ignoring the inaccuracy regarding Javascript, what is so surprising about writing code "by hand"? Am I missing something?
This law only bans absentee rentals. If the owner is not present what keeps the renter in sync with the other families living in the building?
error 500. maybe its unrelated to them not using postgresql.
Jack Thorpe vs. Jim Thorpe, Pa. - The Legal Battle Over an Icon’s Remains
"everybody in this whole thread agrees.." I didn't get that memo and I am unanimous in that.

I was never arguing what to call 'short term rentals' or whatever you want to call it. I am questioning why it's unsafe and why the FUD (in the article) and where is the proof.

If you have lots of friends and you let them visit often, does your apartment become unsafe? Or is it really when you start charging them money that it becomes unsafe? (I am NOT referring to trying to cram all your friends into your apartment and having a wild party. I mean 1-4 friends visiting at a time.)
Notice how this 'valid point' has nothing to do with all the other 'safety' red herring nonsense. Forcing the owner to be present cripples the opportunity to sublet, which is exactly what the hotels want.
What do dynamic linking and communism have in common?
7 years or so I built my computer for around this price. It was fairly nice and could play most of the modern games at a mid range resolution. A year or two ago i got a new graphics card, and some more ram, and it still seems able to play the Sc2 demo, and run everything else fine. So, I've had no complaints. Someday there'll be a lot more programs to take advantage of multicore systems, and when that day comes I'll wait a bit longer before buying a new computer. :D
> which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?

That's more Couchsurfing's territory. There are plenty of shares on AirBnB, but whole apartments and even buildings are commonly listed too.
"Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption"

And you were free to do that already, why force everyone else? (what is that again hotel lobby?)
I am bothered that Rob Pike's name can't carry its own weight, and instead he is referred to just as a "Google Executive".

People wouldn't be super surprised to find out one of the members of the UNIX team, a designer of Plan 9 and the author of editors like sam and acme dislikes aspects of Java and C++. Oh well, I guess "google executive" gets hits.
I agree that people organizing events should be more welcoming, but really, its everyone's own responsibility to be proactive in meeting people.
Google has an open source product that compiles Java to JS.
It would be kind of interesting to reformat this as it originally appeared -- line by line as IRC messages in mIRC on someone's plywood shack or tent operations center.
I think he meant someone picking up your card and duping it while you sleep (since it's not a hotel and there's shared access).
Here's an old Reddit post about visiting SF. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b9f4m/my_girlfrie...
Thank you for all the comments folks. I have posted an update to this post at http://blog.rootein.com/2010/07/an-update-to-for-gods-sake-f...
- Amit
A lot of the JavaScript at Google is written in Java and then compiled down to JS with GWT[1].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit
" ... but really, its everyone's own responsibility to be proactive in meeting people."

Oh, exactly, that's the point I'm trying to make. Don't leave it "the people in charge"; they can't be everywhere greeting everyone.

If you're less a newbie than someone else, then it's your job to help them out.
I'm familiar with GWT, but I'm not sure that really answers my question.
This is what New York is like in all social aspects, not just tech meetups.
In my deals, I usually take $Well-Justified-Price and then tack on $Extra to swing the deal far in my favor. Usually $Extra brings the price close to where I think the buyer would walk away.

You must have missed this. If a buyer is willing to pay my seriously inflated price, then I think I'm making off like a bandit and the buyer thinks they're getting a discount (assuming they were going to offer more than my inflated price). Easiest deal ever.

At some point you at least need a price in your head where you say "yea, I'd be happy exiting for $X and $Y would be icing on the cake"

Everyone's happy with the terms, sign the papers, deal's done, go pop the champagne.
Thanks, that was a really great response. =). Love HN.
Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking
This is a horrible quality article that should be below the standards of news.yc.
conclusion:

"Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up
to a thousand. It's far less romantic than spending money at
the start, but it's the reliable, proven way to get to scale if
you care enough to do the work."
I put together a Linux computer this week based on an Atom D510 (dual core, hyperthreaded). It came to $250 with a 500gb HD, 2gb RAM, case and DVD drive, though I could have saved $30 by omitting the opitical drive and installing from a memory stick. It has the added benefit of being passively cooled -- it is almost silent, the only noise being what is emitted by the harddrive. It's even quieter than my Macbook Pro.
I have stayed in a few hostels with lots of people... met lots of fun and interesting people. Never once had any issues.
You need to un-ask your question. I already stated my opinion on renting out an apt on holiday, in the comment you originally responded to, and it's totally irrelevant to the point I'm making about how legislation happens as well as the larger point about people running a hotel out of their apartment.
Since you and buyer already agree on bottom line impact (i.e. profit, not revenue), I would recommend estimating the intrinsic value of the business using discounted cash flow analysis as a baseline. Make a reasonable assumption about the product's lifetime - let's say 5 years - project out those 5 years of profit, discount each year using a reasonable rate of return for a similarly risky investment (maybe 5-10%), and add up all discounted cash flows. The negotiation then becomes "how much of the business value should each of us retain?" instead of "how much are you going to give me?"

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dcf.asp
http://ruty.rubyforge.org/

Ruty hasn't really been maintained, but it is pretty close to Django's templating system. Apparently, there's even been a little work to get it together with Sinatra (http://github.com/eladmeidar/sinatra-mvc/blob/master/app/hel...). I haven't used Sinatra, but I have played with Ruty and it's pretty nice and supports things like Django-style inheritance. It's a pity it never took off and this isn't a complete answer to your desire, but it might be an interesting place to look around.
Your post seems to bear a mistrust of government regulation in general. Actually, certification and licensing are standard economic solutions to many market problems. The argument isn't over whether this is true or not (AFIAK, in the economic world, only Mises-wingnuts think it's untrue) but whether it's applicable here.
Yep - I think Paul Carr's schtick since he started there has just been to take the most outrageous position possible to try and shock, awe, and offend his way to page views. It's probably working to some extent, but at the end of the day there isn't any substance to it - it's just a cheap trick.
It turns out, actually, that there's a very large body of regulation regarding cars, and you have to be licensed and provide proof of insurance in order to drive them.
You're right of course. So if it was done in say multiples of 15msec. The first window for a response is at 15msec. The second window at 30msec. The third window at 45msec and so on.

And I agree it's difficult to keep the balance between an acceptable user experience and keeping the crackers at bay.
here's the correct link: http://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Quora-use-PostgreSQL

HN must have stripped out the ' from the link when I submitted it
> Wikileaks editor Jullian Assange told CNN yesterday that the 39 minute video is "everything we have. It is a continuous take except for one 20 minute interval." So, Wikileaks did not edit the video themselves—their source did.

That's what Andrew Breitbart said too.
0.9 to 1.6 multiplier seemed really low to me too. I'd love to hear some more opinions of "common" multipliers.
grrrrr. apparently HN always strips single-quotes from links. There should be single-quote in the link in doesn't.

Here's a bit.ly link :-(
http://bit.ly/9iQWn8
There was a very clever hack that econ professor Robert Shiller (of housing-market fame) came up with to avoid having to deal with secondary markets like futures trading.

It goes like this: there are a pair of ETFs, with equal amounts of outstanding shares. Each share in an ETF represents one portion of a claim on $120 (for example). But the exact amount that each of the two is entitled to seesaws based on some external variable, such as the future market for crude oil. So if a barrel of crude is priced at $40, one fund (the "up" ETF) will be valued at $40 per share and its paired fund (the "down" ETF) will be valued at $80 a share. The shares come into existence in pairs and can only be redeemed at the end of the fund's lifetime.

As you can see, this offers a nice solution to the horrendous problems seen in the article. However, when this idea was actually turned into a real product (MacroShares), it ran into real-world problems again and again.

Their first oil funds had to be closed early because it was actually based on that $120 figure -- and when the price of oil shot up close to that level, it triggered an automatic termination. And when they got their $200-a-barrel-max follow-on running, it had lost a lot of the momentum of the earlier funds.

But their major problem was that their complexity was all in full view of the traders, and people found it hard to really understand. Because even though its current asset value was based on the price of oil on a commodity exchange, the "up" version often had a very large premium over that price (and the "down" ETF a discount). That was the effect of contango -- people were figuring in the rising future value of the oil. So in fact, it was actually providing a more accurate price than the commodity market for the storage-free value of a barrel of oil!

Now, that's fascinating and all, but investors wanted a product based on the commodity market value, so it made things annoyingly obscure. Add to that the really complex situation when factoring in the possibility of early termination -- in which case the future price doesn't matter at all because the funds are paid off according to the commodity price at the point of termination -- and things just got to be too much.

MacroShares ended up closing their oil funds in the middle of last year, replacing them with a pair of US city real estate index (yes, the Case-Shiller index) ETFs which seemed interesting but were wildly unpopular. It looks pretty bad for the concept right now, but they are probably just waiting in the wings for the next opportunity since they can provide a way to invest in things that otherwise would never be feasible.
You say this, yet the submitter has been here over 1000 days, and over 100 longer than you. Evidently at least some of the long-timers, from when this was a much more closed environment, do indeed see this as interesting news.

So the question becomes: what's the definition of "hacker news", if not a user-submitted aggregator? And where do you define what is and what is not HN-worthy? It's apparently not age-related, nor precedence, nor community, and I don't know how you'd define what's hacker-related and what's not, barring strict, literal "hacks" (and then how about circuit bending to make music?).
oh very cool thanks for the link.
ROCK ON!!!
Dude, I've been following since a couple of days after you launched.
CONGRATULATIONS on this great milestone!
I look forward to using it more! =)
Thanks for all the work!
Here's an entire website dedicated to this topic of "pushing ideas to reality" and execution: http://the99percent.com
The iPad need not support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, or Windows Media Player by default; I believe that Quicktime is supported through the Video player. But it should be allowed to be made to support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, and Windows Media files if desired.

"... cede a portion of control over their platform ..." I can't help thinking that if Microsoft had restricted Quicktime from Windows machines, with the excuse that it's utter crap and no good, there would be an intense amount of lawsuits pending from Apple already.
Is Android Leaving the Door Open for Microsoft Windows Phone
Members of the military absolutely can be prosecuted under the UCMJ if they commit crimes, including murder of innocent Afghan civilians. There have been numerous prosecutions -- in fact, the "guncam" footage from Iraq was actually recovered, allegedly, from JAG, the legal arm of the military, which was reviewing it to see if crimes had occurred which would need to be prosecuted.

The standards for use of force in a war zone are different from other places, but fundamentally, members of the military must obey the rules of engagement set by the military (at the direction of the civilian leadership, i.e. the President).

There is a much stronger argument about contractors, especially in Iraq from 2003-2006, using unlawful force and not being prosecuted, than military.
@frog: They use it entirely for Wave. That's it though.

And I really don't think that they use JS on the backend for GMail. I figured it was Python or Java.
I was planing to build a robot, but I found this beautiful peace on every HTTP post:
"Thanks for not scripting during out open source release"
Got the point dude :)
It sounds like they may not have really wanted you to begin with and used your high number as their out. If they really wanted your tech/app/whatever they would have come back with something closer to what they wanted to pay.
Do I get paid more for more productivity? Releasing two good-enough products in the time it takes for one excellent product means I get twice the money. If no one sees source code, why be a perfectionist?

I used to clean slicing machines in a deli. It wouldn't have been too bad daudling around being absolutely perfect... pleasant, actually, but they pushed us.

Perfectionism is a luxury because it costs productivity. It's nothing to be proud of.

If your boss cares, he might schedule you some time to clean-up code.
For me Hash+coding is great (relaxed energy), but Weed+coding = miserable failure (attention span = gone). Coding on Sour Diesel, my hat is off to you!

Although I am a big fan of better living through chemistry ( low dose 2c-i & aniracetam), here are some reliable non-drug suggestions for the OP:

1. Change your location. I get easily distracted and waste time at home, but am super vigilant if coding at coffee shops even though there are technically more people talking and more distractions. Physically go somewhere to work where you arent used to procrastinating and train your brain to associate that place with getting work done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory

2. Turn your internet off. Most laptops have a physical switch to turn your wireless on and off quickly. If the internet is your primary distraction, simply turn it off when you aren't researching or deploying.

3) Organization: Here are some ideas: use timers on your computer such as WorkRave, make lists in a pocket notebook, talk to yourself or record audionotes, express the intention for your next actions in language by writing or talking somehow. Minimalize your desktop and browser home page as much as possible, so you start of by doing what you want not whats in front of you.

Psychotherapy is great for reducing the misery of the severely depressed people, but it won't help you with general 'distractability'. That's a learned behavior you can only override with practice.
I see this as somewhat more targeted at Enterprise Software type readers, or even non-tech people, where it makes a little more sense to pitch it that way. Something like: executive at big-but-iconoclastic company Google says the way other big companies write their software sucks.
Where do you live/work? I've heard from several lawyer friends and friends in similar situations that those broad non-compete clauses are effectively invalid in California.
Fellow Geeks of Santa Barbara: We're Creating a Hackerspace
So far there's 2 of us. I'm a software guy (web and mobile app dev, Linux sysadmin, infosec) and he's a hardware guy (self-taught embedded electronics, builds robots, etc). We're looking for others.

Who else around here would be interested in co-founding a hackerspace?
http://www.iklimnet.com/hotelfires/case.html

MGM Grand Hotel fire, 1980.
Why would non-tech people be interested in Java, C++ complexity?
Which specific actions in this set of documents do you think were incidents of indiscriminate or careless killing?

There were definitely a bunch of cases of needless (in retrospect) killing, but those were generally mistakes, vs. conscious policy. Given that it is a war zone, and information is imperfect, but that inaction would have its own costs, I haven't seen a lot of cases of seriously bad activity. There is also a gray zone between illegal and unjustified; the few genuinely illegal actions have generally been prosecuted and punished by the military. There were other cases where "bad" things happened which were not illegal, but where the policy was changed as a result to prevent those things.

For instance, due to the incidents such as the madrasa night attack in J-Bad, special operations night raids were sharply limited in 2009 (per GEN McChrystal), and the rules for the use of airstrikes and artillery fires were substantially tightened.

Internal to the military, people don't really cover up this information -- it feels into the process of changing policies. Compared to most companies, lower ranking military people are fairly willing to report bad news up the chain of command (still not perfect, but more so). Almost all of this is "hidden" behind security classification, maybe too much so -- which makes people outside the military assume mistakes are intentional and not being corrected. There is a compelling argument for aggressively declassifying information as quickly as possible, positive or negative.
What the heck is NSFW about this?
A Guide to Using Authority & Social Proof in Fund Raising
imho, arguing that java and c++ both have the same deficiencies is not totally accurate. java seems to be no where as complex as c++ even with generics. however, java to me seems more complex because it is verbose. and it is verbose because it is too simple. when the language is made simple, the complexity gets pushed into the user code a.k.a the "waterbed theory of complexity".

not sure if Go programs would still read like "quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague" in a decade or so of some real world usage. a fine line to walk between increased sophistication & noise...
A lot of that is because no one cared about Afghanistan from late 2002 until maybe 2008; Iraq was the focus of all attention, even by the military.
Read pg's post above - Linkbait!
Probably not the languages specifically, but possibly interested in the general narrative of, "the two programming languages all the big companies use are too complex, and Google is doing things differently". But I could be wrong; PC World probably does have more software-engineering readers than non-programmer readers.
Hit two restraunts in the city:

Taqueria Can Cun at 19th and Mission. You'll be tempted to get something else, but get the veggie burrito--you won't be dissapointed.

Shalimar on Jones between Geary and O'Farrel. Authentic Pakistani food that's awesome.
What NoSQL Store Should I Use? The Right Tool for Your Use Case
Just over a year ago I got a dell mini 9 with linux for my dad. There was no way he was going to use linux. It just confused him and nothing worked without first taking some action or involved explanation. It was all just too much for him.

I installed OSX 10.5 [1]. I told him the only rule is no Apple Software Updates (until I had a chance to patch it). It was my nth attempt to get him to leave Windows and it finally worked. After some massaging by me - Everything just worked. Maybe not the same way - but it worked. And it was more productive than using his old borked windows install. When linux can provide a similar experience they will gain (more) traction. I don't agree with Dell dropping Linux but I understand it. I can just imagine all the confused users calling in because they can't install some windows game or windows program.

There was another reason the Mac didn't happen sooner. Price. There was no way he was going to shell out for a mac. He had the money. He just couldn't justify spending 3x to get a Mac. We'll see if price is still an obstacle now that he's a daily Mac user. And this is another (obvious) strong point for Ubuntu. In my opinion they've done a good job leveraging "being free" in the netbook market where 25% of the cost can be the OS (/cough Windows).

[1] http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/mac-os-x/
Ask HN: Working on my own stuff while working at a startup
Hi Everyone--

I'm interested in starting a quasi-legal, but obviously not discussed by legal minds, discussion about work-related, free time projects.

I work as the lead developer for a startup. I love to code, I love to solve problems and very much love & enjoy my job. From time to time, though, I work on projects outside of the office. The company owner has made it clear that as long as it doesn't negatively impact the job, there isn't an issue. Any agreements I have signed don't have any restrictions on not working outside of the office.

So here is my question: Is it "kosher" to go about working on semi-related projects and putting them under my name? For example, a "graph data format" for use with ProtoVis <http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/> for passing graph data from the backend through to the JavaScript graph generator. Did I build it for work? Not directly. I see the need and am developing it. Will it make my life at work easier? Most likely as it so happens I have decided to use ProtoVis in a work project.

So, HN'ers. Where and how do you draw the boundary line for working on projects related to your work? Aren't so many businesses built on the idea of seeing something that can be made better and doing that?

Thanks!