skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you run a startup, do NOT do this -- reply to some guy with a stick up his ass. By creating a controversy the only thing you accomplish is raising the SEO of the blog article as it relates to your startup. Ouch.
Then you should explain how you're drawing your conclusions.

What I'd like to see in the post (and is missing):

- what motivated this "mini-research"
- how you verified that the problem exists
- how you got to the cause of this problem
http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/

Works like a charm!

Only hitch I had was that the prebuilt libraries are 32bit, and if you want to link something to a native library under Snow Leopard, and said library happens to be available only in 64bit, you're out of luck. Case in point: I tried to customize XMonad under X11.app/10.6 with a custom xmonad.hs. Running straight XMonad worked fine, but trying to use the recompilation failed... -> Would be nice to have a 64bit Haskell Platform build.

But that's probably a more exotic usecase as you'd usually either stay in Haskell-land (which compiles in a compatible way), or link against *nix style libraries, which you probably fetch via MacPorts, and there you can control the compilation as well.

A big thank you to Don for the packaging effort, it's very much appreciated by newbies (incl. me).
This is the kind of e-fighting that I think we at HN try to avoid.

I mean, this overall attack is just childish. Mr. Lowell was being proper and honorable by privately asking "why". I think as a businessman, a personal note asking why is a great idea rather than '5 short questions from 1 to 5'

And he gets spat on, and publicly at that. No thanks.
Ruby is in Grave Danger
Dear Friends,
I have received an ominous message from the future. We should take
this seriously, as it could determine the fate of our Ruby lives as we
know them! Decrypted future-message below:
I've always thought that the problem with the drug war is that governments simply try to regulate the usage instead of regulating the desire. People use drugs because their lives suck. People drink because their day sucked. People use drugs to change their state of reality because they do not enjoy the state they are in. I think the funny part of it all, in some shape or fashion, government is the reason why people do not enjoy the state they are in. Taxes, rules, and regulations are created for every aspect of your life. The government controls every part of life and when you are high, there is no control. You get to be free for as long as the high lasts.

To the decriminalization, if I can grow it in my back yard, the government should have no right to say what I can do with it. If I have to create it in a lab setting and plan on selling it to someone else, then there should be some control. I've never heard of weed killing anyone, but I've heard of all the rest killing people. So when it's possible to kill someone, there should be roads to justice available.

2¢
Somehow the takeaway from all these posts seems to be to stick to JRuby. Am I reading that right?
I did find many articles with original content on your site. But the density is less, you are perhaps focusing on the article count? Maybe bringing the count to say 100 but with the same content will save peoples time trying to wade thru the site. And this can only increase traffic to the site.

As per your own theory smart people cannot solve their own problems, so instead of taking the "C'est la vie" stance, try "I see, let me see what I can do about it" attitude.
To me, hack is a word for a modification you could make that 1) takes only a short time to master/implement, and 2) shows immediate desired results

Thus, learning to play guitar is not a hack, since it satisfies neither criteria, but learning to put some TP into the toilet first when you do #2 in order to prevent splashback is a hack.
Ruby programmers rallying against Cobol is slightly ironic.
I quit long ago. Unfortunately, you're missing the point that Facebook's entrenched power comes from a vast population of folks that enjoy it. To them, Facebook is the internet.
Would you really say intellectual freedom is truly achieved only once the material has been achieved?

I would argue that there is a threshold for this material mastery. I don't think is necessary for it to be exorbitantly rich. I can look at researchers who enjoy their work, and are working on problems interesting to them. They usually don't have a big monetary profit. Just a thought
The content of the article was ok. One opinion in an ocean full of them. The pop-up even before I've even read a single line is just so glaringly ill-timed that it kinda ruins the whole experience before the actual experience. IMHO.
"Find a boy/girlfriend who natively speaks the language. Its best if they cant speak yours."

Now that one would be a tricky one.. Starting a relationship when you can hardly communicate with eachother? ;-)
Wait, I never suggested that software patents could be avoided by cleanroom implementations. And I don't see how anything I've said has anything to do with the difference between patent infringement and copyright infringement. But your laying out of Google's options is very useful.

My point is just that it's a little weird to say that Dalvik couldn't protect Google from a patent suit, because building it created the suit. It's a little like saying that playing Russian roulette can't protect you from getting shot.

But I've belabored this point enough I think.
The author is begging the question, rather than creating a false dilemma.

Begging the question: the premise assumes the conclusion, e.g., "that's illegal because it's against the law".

False dilemma: you present two possible options as the only options, when in fact there are other alternatives, e.g., "either you're with me or against me"
Check out shopify.com. Their entire service is built on rails.
If your frame of reference is an economy coach ticket, if you say "it's more expensive to fly private", you'll almost never be wrong. (Your economy coach ticket is heavily subsidized by the first-class and other full-fare tickets.)

If your frame of reference is a first-class or full-fare business class ticket, I can often beat or near the airlines on both cost and door-to-door time. (If the keys to the plane are in your pocket, there's no getting there an hour ahead, dealing with the parking garage, the TSA theater, maybe a delay on takeoff for crew or aircraft availability or ATC/ground holds, perhaps changing planes, waiting at baggage claim, etc. Plus, I can often start and end the flight much closer to the "doors" I want to be at, leave my shoes on and carry 4 oz of gel deodorant in my bag if I want.)

As to "that's worth it", I bought a Cessna 182/Skylane (4 seat, single-engine, 160 mph high-wing) a little over 12 years ago, and have flown it for business travel as well as most of our in-US, east of the Mississippi, personal travel, as well as a few trips west of the Mississippi. It costs me under $2/mile on average, and the direct operating cost (aka marginal cost: the cost of an incremental trip within a year) is just under $1/mile. If I had to, I'd pay 2x what flying actually costs me without thinking about it.

If you want to travel in your aircraft (as opposed to just going flying), I'd suggest you take the traditional route and go all the way to the private pilot's license. Far fewer restrictions, and if you enjoy flying anyway all of the "extra" time is hardly wasted. IMO, there are too many restrictions on LSA/recreational pilot's certificate to make it usable to actual go places with 3 friends, etc. It's nice to be able to fly into BWI for an Orioles game, or fly up the Hudson River at night, cross Central park and Laguardi tower and head out on course over the Whitestone bridge. I think it's great that the FAA created the easier licenses, but I don't think they are practical for travelling.

Used airplanes are reasonably cheap now, and loans and insurance are easy to get. (Most airplanes are made of aluminum and have nearly infinite lifespans, with avionics, engine/props, interior and paint being replaceable items over the life of the plane. Think of a 30-year old airplane as much more like a 30-year old office building than a 30-year old car in terms of "acceptable to rely on". They're inspected annually [or ever 100 flight hours for rentals/commercial usage], and no reason a 30+ year old plane wouldn't be perfectly reasonable.)
Maybe so. I've lived in the Philippines and it's not a developed country so this isolation problem is not much of an issue there (yet). But their culture is becoming more and more 'American' and gradually losing the closeness of friends and family and I'm afraid of what it's going to be like years in the future. I hope it doesn't become another USA but it very well could, or even worse.
The death of the JVM would most definitely be a downside.
I'm just saying: it's questionable whether web application would've succeeded this quickly if Microsoft application/desktop development hadn't been impeded. Perhaps it would've. But it's also questionable whether Linux would've supplanted BSD in popularity, if BSD hadn't been locked in a legal fight.

Whether or not these are good for everyone or bad for everyone is hard to judge. But as stated, software patents are a spur to innovation (Linux isn't necessarily better than BSD, but it is its own innovative phenomenon -- the same with the web) by being an antispur (causing stagnation) to greed-touching systems (Oracle, Google, Microsoft, etc., all have parts of their business that are motivated by capitalistic desires or what Gordon Gecko, etc., called greed).

I probably shouldn't have said these were the 'best' things to happen to those respective technologies. But who knows how important they are? Certainly it's easy to overlook them -- as the larger frame of reference in which technology develops is often overlooked.

So that was my point in responding to the last sentence in the article proper:

If you still think software patents are a spur to innovation, you're not paying attention.

But, I understand the signal/noise ratio is a big concern, so somewhat argumentative claims are usually discounted. But whatever -- I think it's important not to forget the larger contexts if we can...
You could make the exact same argument for art. Certainly a lot of supposed 'hacks' aren't. But someone creating a clever way of doing something in almost any field that makes me think "cool hack" still counts as a hack in my book.
Phishing LinkedIn Messages - first one that fooled me into clicking in years
I think many of you will find a fake message from Timmy Cortez. The only real giveaway is the return address, which GMail obscures.
Energy Conservation Works
The popup saying "you're new" is in practice equivalent to saying "go away".
I was aware of the $100 hamburger, but from that article I found the link to 'Fantasy Flight'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_flight

"Fantasy flights are charity flights operated by a host airline for locally disadvantaged and terminally ill children to fly to a fictitious destination."

I'm still mulling this over, but my initial reaction is very mixed/slightly negative.
That's certainly going to be Google's strategy. The chances of Oracle receiving an injunction on this appear to be near zero. So Google will simply try to stretch this out for years. In the meantime Android will carry on business-as-usual. By the time the whole mess is sorted out, the whole mobile landscape will likely be much clearer and much more stable.

It's really a non-story from a practical strategic point of view for anyone involved (including application developers).
VPs
True enough. But for this to truly happen you need to have a device with a battery that you can feel confident will last all day with regular use.
Gambling geniuses.
Ever since I read 'Bringing down the house' by Ben Mezrich, i've been curious and amazed by guys who game gambling. This forum is populated by people who fit the intellectual profile. Has anyone here ever done anything like that? Just curious.
I thought Mike's response was useful and honest. Steven did ask for "So… Feel free to let us have it! We can take it".

Have you read Steve's comments on the post? That's where it falls off the rails.
Good article, and true for me as well.

Let me just say though, as a developer of a compass/GPS app for the iPhone/iPad/Android, and as a serious hiker, I do not take my Garmin GPS with me anymore. I bring paper maps and a compass for back-up, but I never use them. My iPhone is plenty good enough for me.

On the other hand, I'm also a serious enough photographer that I prefer an SLR to my iPhone camera, and even though we built a camera into our app, I never use it personally.
I have a Brunton battery pack and a 6W solar panel. My devices stay charged in the back-country :)
Is there some kind of character expansion in Asiatic language systems?
If you use C Ruby, you'll need one Ruby process per core, managed by something like Passenger (mod_rails) or Unicorn.

If you use JRuby, you'll need one Ruby process per machine (for N cores), managed by the JVM.

For boxes with a lot of cores, JRuby's larger memory footprint is overtaken by the ability to share that memory across a number of cores.

This story is also somewhat complicated by Ruby Enterprise Edition, which adds copy-on-write semantics to Ruby's GC, and is built by the same guys as Passenger, making it possible to share SOME memory between processes.

With all that said, we're really talking about marginal amounts of RAM. The real takeaway is that if you're running 6 processes per core (very common), you're doing something very wrong.

FYI: At some point in the future (1.2?), Rubinius will also be able to run a single Ruby process per machine.
True, but you can go at it backwards too. I met my wife in grad school and decided to learn the language afterwards; probably better route IMO. The hard part has been using English as a crutch - it has always been hard to go all out in Japanese.
Time to swap Dalvik for v8? I saw a presentation on how you could swap out the Dalvik VM for something else. Has anyone tried it?
Looks like a bug, errr feature.
For the first time in 20 years, he no longer clips every newspaper box score
Seeing someone build an amazing house for $1mm is interesting, but I get a bigger kick out of reading tinyhousedesign.com -- where people build very very small houses for a few thousand bucks. Something about the DIY nature and anti-consumerism of it all really excites me.
Yeah, same with doctors being not allowed to treat their own relatives. Solving other people's ailments are easier.
Ok, dumb question--I'm a bit naive on process forking. On Linux with Ruby, if I fork a process, must the new process stay on the same core? Forked processes begin by sharing memory initially in Ruby, correct? Can anyone enlighten me on the mechanics of forking and if there are scenarios where it helps with utilizing multiple cores (maybe relatively independent workers that just read shared settings?).

Forking seems...a little weird to me coming from my previous Windows background.
Trusted Sources
Ask HN: Advice on starting an outsourcing webdev company
Hi everyone,

I moved to Poland in October of last year, and thought that after a couple of months of settling in, I'd be fine getting a job locally. That's proved to be an issue: I've 12 years of development experience, but don't have a university degree, and most importantly my Polish is at a basic level (although I'm taking lessons to improve that). Viewing things through an employer's eyes, I'm not surprised that I haven't had a single callback.

I've been earning a modest income via my first experience of freelancing. I've started this via sites like RentACoder, and have gained a lot of follow-up work from my clients.

About once every couple of months I have /way/ more work than I can deal with, and this makes me think about hiring computer studies students locally. I've investigated local rates, and I could hire a single student for around $1,000 a month, taxes etc., included.

I would aim to take a mentoring role, specifying how a given project (or subset of a project) should be coded and what should be avoided. I would also expect a high turnover of staff once every year or so, although I'd be delighted if anyone wanted to stay on longer.

Is this is a viable business idea? What advice do you have for me going forwards? My main concern is regularly gaining enough work to keep paying the bills and earning a profit. Whilst I haven't struggled as a freelancer, this is my main paranoia.

Thanks for any input you can give me,
Tom.
It looks like it has to do with the http://t.co shortening system. Try viewing it with a mobile client.
I'm not sure why this is notable. You've long been able to post updates longer than 140 characters. They get truncated in the feed, but not when viewed individually.

Edit: icodemyownshit's explanation is likely correct. (I hadn't realized the tweet was just one big link.)
Just because a suit is created doesn't mean it has merit.

What he's saying is that clean room reimplementations (Dalvik) side-step copyrights, but not patents. The fact that it was created to circumvent something, just not this particular thing, could lead to a lot of confusion for a lot of less savvy readers if this wasn't cleared up.
1) Brings the issue of software patents to court in a big way

2) Opens a massive opportunity for new enterprise technologies to emerge

First reaction was anger, but after consideration I'm quite glad it's happened.
Take advantage of Facebook's negative brand image, and run attack campaigns discussing their history of privacy gaffes. Make sure that alternative service distinguishes itself in nearly every facet and doesn't merely copy Facebook's usability and functionality. No small task, but the correct approach.
you can just upload to S3 and use AWS Elastic Map Reduce, fire off 10 nodes, and have this done in minutes. No need to start EC2 instances
I've always thought that it's a shame that between Groklaw's interesting and insightful paralegal analysis, there's a lot of unnecessary ideologically-driven "free software" evangelism that helps to undermine the credibility of their arguments.
I live in Poland and have been trying to learn Polish for the past 10 months. And failing - a lot.

There are two main reasons for this (in my mind at least):

1) I haven't been fully immersed in Polish; it's too easy to speak English instead.

2) I don't understand English grammar.

If you have an analytical mind, I think point 2 is very important. The amount of textbooks I've read and failed to understand because it's like they're written in a different language. I think it's a bit like when discussing programming terms with a non-techie.

Anyway, I'm now spending my time learning about nouns, adjectives, verbs and what object and subject are in relation to a sentence.

It's a crying shame that I've got to the age of 28 without knowing this stuff, and a damning indictment of the English educational system (and myself!) /but/ I think it'll be worth it ;)
Given that this was sent via the web, I'm guessing there was a trick or bug involved.

It is true that on twitter you can send more "data"/bits using unicode multi-byte as the twitter limit is 140 characters - regardless of byte length. But looking at this tweet, there are over 2000 characters.

Maximum status length, I thought, was 420 characters and max message length 140.
I would second "Remembering the Kanji" (RTK) I finished over a year ago and find that kanji is so much easier to handle after RTK.

Some might want to try the Listening-Reading approach once they have mastered the basics. I am currently reading Harry Potter in Japanese using this method. Easy way to cement kanji readings.
The process will be scheduled by the OS just like any other process. I think fork() is similar to CreateProcess() on Windows, but I haven't done any Windows programming that needed to create more processes.
The linux kernel will schedule the new process on whatever core it wants.

Forked process in ruby have posix semantics, ie, NOT shared memory. Linux uses Copy-On-Write pages to conserve the amount of memory copying when the new process is created.
But what percentage of their user base feels this way? It's probably pretty small.

A lot of normal people are wary of the security concerns, but I wouldn't say they despise facebook itself for them.
I have the same issue with the kindle v iPad on page turns. The iPad even seems slow.
I just put mine in the washing machine every weekend. Kept them semi-fresh for the past three years.
Forking creates a new process, initially "sharing" memory via copy-on-write semantics (and therefore being eligible to run on another core). However, C Ruby's default mark-sweep garbage collector touches pretty much all memory immediately, eliminating the typical memory savings of a forking model.

As I commented earlier, Ruby Enterprise Edition (made by the same guys as Passenger) ships an alternate GC that doesn't actually write to the memory space of the original objects in order to mark them.

As a result, some memory (but not necessarily as much as you'd expect) can be shared between processes forked from the same parent and running on multiple cores. Sort of a middle ground between totally separate processes and shared memory via non-GIL'ed threads.
I just rinse them out in the sink after a run. And I sweat a lot.
Rubinius wise, I'm actively working on making in concurrent. Yes, a future release will incorporate that work, which allows one Rubinius process to fully use as many cores as a machine has.
The -T option especially helps if you have more than one hard drive, and you're sorting a very large file where disk I/O is the bottleneck. You can use a second hard drive for the temporary files.
Reminds me of this article recently posted on HN:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/we-are-all-talk-ra...
I agree entirely. This needed posted.
They signed a CA=YES cert for Akamai. Lovely.
Saturday fun: See Calacanis lose $100k
Illumos's response to Oracle killing OpenSolaris
You can post messages longer than 140 characters? Oh No! We're doomed!
A site with a best relation with developers (that was one of the MSFT advantages in the past). Facebook often change APIs specs AND if you exceed their API calling limitation there is not space to buy more "credit" for small companies.

I think the companies embracing the facebook ecosystem and helping them to grow are in risk of future policies changes.
This article is absolutely awful. I've never read anything more factually incorrect.

"Free Press is concerned that Google's deal with Verizon to secure special internet privileges on its broadband will lead to other internet providers brokering deals with major companies. First Verizon and Google strike a deal, then AT&T and Microsoft have a deal ... here comes Comcast who cuts a deal with Yahoo"

There was no "deal". It is only proposal. And it would grant no special privileges to either party.

That being said, it is good people are beginning to reorganize in favor of net neutrality and hopefully will make their views known to their Congresspeople.
It's always nice when you finally understand "magic".
This one gives an error when I try to bring it up within his feed. I think it's different. Also, for that reason I wouldn't recommend retweeting it; you'll just break your friend's feeds.
You know them, but are you friends with them?