skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Don't conflate different concepts. Rational basis review is a whole 'nother beast.

The ruling correctly states that, due to the nature of Proposition 8, strict scrutiny would normally be the appropriate level of review. It concludes, however, that strict scrutiny isn't needed because Proposition 8 doesn't even survive rational basis review, and goes through each proposed rationale:

1. Heterosexual marriage is traditional. As Judge Walker points out, this fails as a rational basis since "the state must have an interest apart from the fact of the tradition itself."

2. Overturning Proposition 8 would phase in a social change. But California has already, in the past, permitted same-sex marriages, so: "The evidence shows that allowing same-sex couples to marry will be simple for California to implement because it has already done so; no change need be phased in."

3. Opposite-sex parenting is better than same-sex parenting. This fails because California already permits same-sex couples to adopt and raise children, and because "Proposition 8 does not affect who can or should become a parent under California law."

4. Proposition 8 protects the free-speech rights of those who oppose same-sex marriage and want to teach their children to be opposed to it. But Proposition 8 is only concerned with permitting or forbidding certain marriages, not with allowing speech or education concerning marriage: "as a matter of law, Proposition 8 does not affect the rights of those opposed to homosexuality or to marriage for couples of the same sex."

5. Homosexual and heterosexual relationships are different, and must be classified differently. This fails because "same-sex and opposite-sex unions are, for all purposes relevant to California law, exactly the same."

There's also an alleged "catch-all" interest. I'll just quote that one in full:

Finally, proponents assert that Proposition 8 advances “[a]ny other conceivable legitimate interests identified by the parties, amici, or the court at any stage of the proceedings.” Doc #605 at 15. But proponents, amici and the court, despite ample opportunity and a full trial, have failed to identify any rational basis Proposition 8 could conceivably advance.

The important thing to remember in reading the above is that rational-basis review, while not particularly demanding, is not the same as no review. "I say there's a rational basis, therefore there is" doesn't hold up in court; you'll have to make an argument and it will have to actually make sense. The arguments advanced for a rational basis for Proposition 8 failed -- they either did not assert a valid basis for legislation or were contradicted by other established law or by Proposition 8 itself.
As far as I can tell, succeeding in a startup that you own, even if you're a founder and make out pretty well, largely boils down to the rule of pinball:

Win, and you get to keep playing.
Very important point. This will also help people to easily transition between online / offline working with tools that they already have. Especially, since such charts often include collaborative input.

Collaborate with that exec who uses MS Project, and work from your netbook with this web app on the go.
Stink Bug: VW Beetle Powered By Human Waste Makes Debut
Looks pretty good, I should have a chance to properly try it out when another project starts up for me in a few weeks.

One minor issue: the horizontal zoom is a little counterintuitive.

The + button increases the number of weeks shown, effectively zooming out. The reverse for -.

Not a major issue, but it could throw someone off, especially because the vertical zoom behaves in a standard + to zoom in and - to zoom out fashion.
Five "Easy" Lessons to Beat Apple's iPad
Whatever you may think of the iPad – whether you believe it to be the savior of old media or simply “a big iPod Touch” – there is one thing that cannot be denied: the thing has been a massive success.
Their original business was typewriters and tabulating equipment. They should have stuck with that :)
Pentagon Orders Wikileaks to Delete Classified Documents
Thank you for the screen shot. This is a great point we had not thought through all the way yet.
Investors don't like trying to predict which startups will succeed, but increasingly they'll have to.

I'm puzzled because I thought investing successfully was all about doing exactly this.
Everything on Mixergy is very info-commercial like, IMO.
Generalization is growing exponentially harder as every system becomes more complex to administer well. IIS 7 vs IIS 6. SharePoint. Apache with SSL. DBA. Then there's Rails, VMWare, W7, OS X, iPhone, etc.

I love being a generalist. It's what keeps me in IT. But we are a dying breed.
(1) Hand each student $20-$50.
(2) Tell them to go to any store they want and buy something that they can sell for more. Give some examples (flowers by the side of the road, cupcakes at the local hospital, etc.) The only restriction is that they can't do whatever it is that their parents do for a living.
(3) Tell them that you want your money back plus $10 within the next {interval} - they get to keep the rest.

If they decide to do a web-based biz, great. The important thing is doing a biz.

They can worry about accounting and the like after they've demonstrated traction.
Why minimalism is good for the web:

Making something overly artistic with excessive eye candy might be timeless for a historical chapel or castle, but looks horribly outdated in 5 years on the web.

Remember all of those painfully cheesy flash intros for restaurant websites? I bet they thought they looked so futuristic and the coolest ever at the time.
Can't see it on my Nexus One. Too bad
Your first claim is false: if MS isn't big, what is?

Second, if MS ever wakes up, they will most certainly be scary. That isn't likely to happen with Ballmer, but if Bill was ever to return (or even appoint a new CEO) Microsoft may return to being scary.
In most deployed configurations, you use memcache in a distributed fashion (so N machines can connect to a pool of caches), so you usually have them bind to a public interface. One that you stick behind at least one firewall.

Exposing memcached (or riak or whatever) is operational malpractice.
Fuck godaddy
enough said...
Looks like a great idea. I'd love to be able to see more how it works from your site, ie. a tour, screenshots, explanations etc... before I go and get the app.

Or why not let me take the lessons online?
Other - I'm in a small glass room on top of Mount Davis in Hong Kong. The place I'm staying at is a half-campground half-hostel half-barracks type area, and this is the only room with air conditioning and internet access. It's 6AM, I was watching the lights over the harbor at night an hour ago.
Byte-Sized Books
This is what I thought. I wasn't going to pay attention until they specified the client protocol (Wave needs an Emacs mode). Most of the complaints I've heard about Wave stemmed from its AJAX-heavy user interface. How many people had new enough browsers to even use Wave?
I doubt very seriously that they "don't get it". What's Ballmer supposed to say?

"Hey guys, we completely missed on this. Apple brought out this really cool device that we have no answer for. Our bad. shrugs"

No, I'm sure that they firmly understand what's going on. The question is, do they still have the technical expertise to actually do anything about it? I'm not really sure. They remind me of Nokia actually.

Little known fact: Nokia was working on a touchscreen device LONG before the iPhone came out.

The problem was two-fold: they didn't understand how to innovate the interface. Their attempt was largely click based. Your finger was supposed to be more or less like a mouse.

Second, when the iPhone did come out they lacked the technical competency to respond. Their base operating system, S60, was a poorly engineered mess and at the lower levels everyone knew it. Trying to bolt on a next-generation interface was a dead-end, but that didn't stop them from trying. To this day, the engineering culture at Nokia shows little ability to actually keep up and compete.

I fear Microsoft is in much the same position. Do they know they're getting their butts kicked on tablets (and mobile for that matter)? Yep. But unlike previous times they've gotten beaten up (think netscape/Internet) they just don't seem to have the ability to respond. In the past they'd hire their way out of it... but Google has already snatched up and incredible amount of mobile talent (like Matias Duarte). Not that it matters, because the culture at Microsoft appears to have become frozen. I'm just not sure that they have the will, as a company, to respond in any meaningful way.
As an alternate to expanding a task group, you might consider a drill down that just shows the sub-tasks. In the video you were able to make them fit, but that not be the case for a more complex projects.

From both marketing and SEO perspectives, I wouldn't limit the product overview to a video. You should add a page with screen shots, features, etc.
Sure, but they rarely go to #1 and I've never seen one leap frog a pg article as quickly as this one did. Could be perfectly normal, but it just seemed anomalous to me.

Maybe Flash-based gantt charts are the new hotness. ;-)
As long as bandwidth is a scarce resource, something will happen. Either there's a well thought out procedure, or it's random. I think we can do better than random.
ASk HN: How would you make $25,000 if you had $25,000?
Here's a brain teaser for all you smart people. You are given $25,000 free and clear, and your goal is to make $25,000 more, for a total of $50,000. You have 1 month to accomplish your goal. How do you do it?
Legally, they're obligated to protect shareholder value

People regurgitate this all the time, but there is no such "law."
I am at home but opened this thinking it would be a discussion of "where are you in the start-up process right now: concept? launch?...(etc)"

Lots on my mind this (4-day) weekend.
Damn. Why didn't I ever think of that? I'm doing that tomorrow.
Ask HN: How do I find a job in Switzerland?
Hey HN,
I am wondering if anyone can give me some insight into finding a job in Switzerland as an english-speaking(States) developer. Is freelancing an option?

I currently work as a web developer at a large media corp in NY and will be moving to Switzerland in the next month or two, but, any sort of tech-job-seeking advice would be appreciated. I actually have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and would take a shot at nearly anything that might interest.
Thanks in advance!
I voted it up because its a pain point that I experienced recently. I suspect anyone who tries to map out a schedule for a project has in the past searched in vain for something like this.

I ended up buying OmniPlan. But maybe that's not necessary anymore! Good luck to the team, it certainly looks useful and promising.
The typewriter business was an acquisition! (Electromatic was the name of the previously independent typewriter company.) Time clocks and scales were the other original lines besides tabulating.
I think AdStruc is a clear win. Billboards are a mess, but can be really effective (frighteningly effective considering most are viewed from cars).

The vacation home guys seem like they're on to something as well. That's a really nice business and they're touching on a bunch of pain points. Hell I'd like that service as a general property manager replacement for a full-time rental that I have.
> As the article makes it clear there have been plenty - well I can only think of google maps and ok maybe Android whatever that is - successful products

I already know a couple of companies with paid subscriptions to Google Apps, which IMHO is an awesome service.

If I were to keep only one or two services the Web has to offer me I would keep Google's Apps (+ Wikipedia).

I installed the free version on 3 domains I have ... on your own domain you get an email service with the awesome Gmail interface (many people take that for granted nowadays, not remembering how much Hotmail or Yahoo's Mail sucked and still suck). Before this I can't count the number of times the email provided by my ISP was down.

Calendar is also super-useful ... coupled with Gmail it can replace Microsoft Exchange in small to medium companies and doesn't have all the suck. I also use it for my personal affairs, and one feature I like besides the overall usability is that they even send free notifications by SMS messages (in Europe) for my appointments.

Google Docs is also cool ... it's like a wiki with which you can collaborate on docs / keep notes, but with an interface for normal people. Most of the time that's all you need, and it can also work with the Word format.

Coupled with App Engine ... you've got everything you need in one little package.

And for more than that, Google Apps even has a market-place ... http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/

I'm actually intrigued they couldn't create a competitor to Facebook when they've got all this infrastructure ... they definitely shouldn't give up on Buzz and just improve it incrementally.
This was a product worthy of being spun out into a standalone company, free to pitch at the corporate market
I've Waited So Long For This Moment
"Invaders" here is plural, and that's important. broadcast.com and youtube were on the same "side" of that particular battle. The invaders won, broadcast.com just doesn't benefit from that.
Very similar discussion a little while back:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563021
This is also pertinent:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/How+does+concurrency+wor...

Note that whilst a write blocks all other writes, the time you need to wait is the time it takes for the in-memory data structure to be modified; you don't have to wait for the write to hit disk. (Writes are only persisted to disk every so often.)
That's nothing, you should see what rabid Erlang fans can do when they're bored.
Thoughts on the X10 Programming Language
pretty sure the headline here should say "Extremist group succeeds in gaming Digg"
I run http://www.hackernewsers.com - I'm actually working on a similar feature right now
I know no math classes really allow calculators but plenty of math intensive classes require calculators to do exams which is something a phone can't replace.

I must beg to differ, the last time I took a math class that forbid calculators was high school. Now, many math classes I have taken restrict the type of calculators you can use, but that is different.

Of course, a calculator will do you little good in a class on theoretical math, but they have been allowed at least in the math classes I have taken.
No. TV is great (Not in US).
Oh yeah, totally, but does that make it OK for Apple to rip off an image?
I am certain a left leaning group is doing the same thing. Think moveon.org (in a different medium). They just negate each others extreme views.
How Algorithmic Trading Works
or "one of the many groups gaming digg has been caught"
Adventures in Algorithmic Trading
can you give us your url?
Did you read what Ballmer keeps saying though? He flogs Windows as the answer to everything, and points at the existence of pen-controlled laptop/tablets with flip-around screens that can run some special tablet-designed software (on top of stock windows) as evidence that Microsoft “gets it”. He talks about how wonderful the MS Surface (the giant table thing) is. Etc. Etc.

Microsoft’s strategy would be completely different if they “got it”. They would’ve taken their billions of dollars in the bank, and hired a team of people who could get a new platform built. They’d have set internal expectations high, and kept a tight focus on meeting real needs with an interface that could delight users.

I think the individual technical expertise probably exists somewhere inside Microsoft: they do all kinds of neat research, and employ plenty of smart people. Evidently, though, the institutional structure of Microsoft, with competing teams vying for resources and squabbling over areas of perceived overlapping expertise, has prevented them from executing.

In my opinion, everything Microsoft has done over the last 5-10 years (if not forever) has been a game of catch-up, trying to copy competitors when they see those competitors as more successful, and seldom if ever really innovating, at least not in shipping products. The Microsoft product vision seems myopic and incoherent.
In your analogy, the only discrimination is against asians

He's implying that non-drinkers are being financially discriminated against in a way analogous to single people regarding marriage financial benefits. Regardless if it's subsidies for drinking, as you mentioned, or otherwise the non-drinkers are being burdened.

What it comes down to is which is worse: A specific group being denied a right or a burden which that particular right imposes on the population that does not participate in it. Where you're running into trouble, in my opinion of course, is conflating these two issues together. Gay marriage and your problems with the financial aspects of marriage aren't an either/or thing, they're a completely different battle. Based on your comments I believe that the subsidy issue aside you really have no problems with gay marriage itself. So be happy that some people got more rights and gear yourself up for the separate subsidies battle.

Regardless, thanks for taking the time to single-handedly take up an unpopular opinion here.
I'm paying the $25 and it's well worth it -- even if it was just about showing support for what he's doing, which it's not. Many of the ideas and info that I've been exposed to I would've never discovered by reading books or blogs. It's literally changed how I think about approaching projects or problems (Oh wait, there's a Mixergy interview where they tried this for X situation. That might work here.)

Also, I've been introduced to many extremely bright entrepreneurs that have a lot to teach; I would've never discovered all of these people by myself.
I've come across unprotected Memcached deployments in a couple of pen-tests. On one engagement in particular someone poking Memcached would be able to (temporarily) increase their account balance and even access CC numbers from recent transactions. :(

As far as I see it, this is one of the unintentional side effects of "hosting in the cloud". If you had co-located servers you'd whack up a firewall and only allow your internal IPs to access non-HTTP ports. Alas everyone now just spins up an S3 image and palms it off to Amazon.
Because the value of encryption is significantly reduced if you don't know who you are talking to. How do you know you're not talking to a man in the middle?
"But even if you’re fine with that, how about this: one of the diagrams in Apple’s patent application for a travel app is a direct copy, down to the text and the positions of the icons, of an existing third-party app that’s been available on the App Store for years."

he wrote that 'one of the diagrams' was a direct copy. not the entire application. i don't think it's easy to dismiss apple taking the home screen and including it in their patent file. apple may have different functionality beyond the home screen, but they have nonetheless downright copied the home screen.

edit: updated the title, amended 'screen' to the end to clarify
I installed 1.6 on my laptop today, but I will wait a week before starting to update servers. Anyway, I have never had data collections large enough to need sharding, but replica sets look like a much better alternative to frequent snapshots to S3.

A year ago I was equally enthusiastic about MongoDB, CouchDB, and Cassandra. However, at least for the modest scale work that I do I don't really need Cassandra, and MongoDB is so easy to work with. I still really like CouchDB but I have never had a customer request its use, so my experience is limited to just using it for my own stuff.
Yes, Perl is a great example of a language that enables maintainable clear code.
Forward only parsing is not only faster, it's less complicated which should translate to fewer bugs. It's worth noting that the HTML parser isn't used only when initially rendering the page, it's also used when rewriting the contents with JavaScript.

The bug report has a perfectly reasonable workaround you can use, and you can always put your JavaScript in a separate file or escape < >. It's a good idea to do this even with the current generation of browsers, because if you don't, you sometimes get strange bugs... often bugs that are not reproducible in all browsers.

Honestly, allowing unescaped </script> inside inline javascript wasn't a good idea to begin with.
I think if you delve a little bit deeper, you'll find it might be a stretch to call these activities democratic. Falsely reporting and accusing users in an effort to squelch their viewpoints, for instance, may be normal for politicians but bears no resemblance to any honest democratic process.
Their core market today is still mainframes for large businesses.
I understand (and agree to some extent with) your larger point, but my concern was with the specific term "whistleblower", which is usually associated with someone who identifies a crime occurring within their own organization. Whistleblowers are often protected because of the recognition that publicizing a crime is usually in the public good.

In this case, I hesitate to use the term "whistleblower" because I think it implies circumstances and motivations that do not apply. At this point we are all speculating, but it appears that the alleged leaker made classified information available to another party, knowing that it would be made public, because they disagreed with US policy. In my mind, revealing privileged information because you do not agree with a policy is not the same thing as "whistleblowing". Would you classify Kim Philby, or Robert Hanssen as "whistleblowers"?
I dunno, I took 8 semesters of math in college and never used a calculator in any of the classes. Didn't really use it on exams in other classes either - everything was all variables. I did use it for homeworks. I'd be hard pressed to replace it with a iPhone app though, for one thing my calculator is a lot bigger and it is still pressed for space for buttons.
To say 'preferred NoSQL' is far too generic, it is as if users have an option between SQL or NoSQL. I would say that MongoDB is becoming the preferred document-based data store - but that has nothing to do with key value, graph, column-oriented, etc. stores that make up what people refer to as 'NoSQL' (which is a loaded term)
Using that heuristic, I'll predict a couple more things. One is that investors will increasingly be unable to wait for startups to have "traction" before they put in significant money.

To an outsider, this sounds like a small-scale version of the events that caused the Dot-com bubble: Investors race to fund ever-shorter rounds of companies that might someday be valuable, but have nothing right now but a sales pitch and a website. This arrangement would benefit a company like YCombinator, who seem to successfully fund companies based on little more than gut feel. But taking away "success as a predictor of success" from the VCs' playbook, would they have another strategy that beats random guessing? The Dot-com bubble suggests "no." Hopefully the small average investment really does turn the math on its head!
Gantto sounds "Ghetto".
Ask HN: List of companies Google bought
Is there a complete list of companies google bought? This week they got Slide (http://tcrn.ch/d3Z7UC) and Instantiatoins (http://www.instantiations.com/). Not a long time ago, they got Metaweb (http://www.metaweb.com/). Wikipedia has a list, but some are missing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google).
Well: over half of all doctors in the US find that their smartphones or PDAs are essential to their work[1], so it makes sense to start using them in med school.

[1]http://www.contracostatimes.com/bay-area-news/ci_15678222?nc...
Great point, I think we can reverse the horizontal Zoom and hardly anyone would be annoyed. We would love to hear about your experience and take your suggestions for improvement when you get to your next project.