skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: please share your favourite firewall/loadbalancer failover setups
I am looking at expanding our deployment infrastructure for high availability (pivoting into the B2B market, negotiating a second contract with an SLA), and will need to make a hardware purchases soon. I am trying to find sources of good information regarding the various failover configurations possible, and their pros/cons. Looks like running two *BSD machines for the firewall/loadbalancer, with failover provided by CARP, is a pretty simple solution. The Linux side of things looks a little more neglected. Are there any decent linux firewall/loadbalancer failover solutions?

A redundant, scalable back end is a topic that has been documented extensively, and there is no lack of information or options when it comes to scaling, in this case, a Rails application. However, I am failing to find good information on best practices for redundant front end load balancing. An example question I have: since we are on a budget, is it "acceptable" to dual-purpose the redundant hardware on the front end? Being able to run our cluster of background workers on the firewall/loadbalancer failover would obviously save resources, though I am not sure if it's a good practice.

If anyone has experience in this category, please speak up! Anyone with relevant links, I would love to see them.
Yeah, I haven't encountered much in the way of compatibility problems since 10.0 was released. (I'm on OpenSUSE x86-64.) It does have a habit of crashing and/or freezing for some time, I get the impression the latter is connected to sound (ALSA). Modern browsers survive the former quite well, luckily, and everything but Firefox recovers from the latter quickly, too.

One thing that seems to reliably fail is full-screen video, though.
I see a lot of comments critical of the generalization, which I suppose is fair, but misses the point.

Generalizations and stereotypes are usually based on a truth. Simply pointing out that a generalization is in fact that does not make it untrue, and it most certainly does not provide enough of a reason to discount the concept in a meaningful way.

You guys are caught up in the fact that 90 is not 100 and extending that to assume that 90 is either not true or not important.

It is on both counts. It matters little whether 90 is 70, 80, or 100 in matters that aren't exact science. If you have some sort of point to make that 90 is in fact 20, then please, make it (I've yet to see one).

Otherwise you add little as a counter to this article.
Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus?

No.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...
The data is squarely under Facebook's control. They are allowing other people to buy into their platform in the way Microsoft allowed third parties to develop for Windows. Microsoft gave developers the ability to make programs that ran on Windows with the Win32 APIs. They didn't open things up so that developers could write their own Windows-compatible operating system and compete with them.

It's still closed in a way that they hope manages and minimizes the competition. "Don't build your own social graph. Use our's which we'll give you a little access to." It is very closed in that you can't friend people across services and it all has to be Facebook mediated. It's a strategy to maintain their control over the barrier to entry and extend their barrier to many applications developed by third parties.

Being open means that you're on the same footing as everyone else.
Someone might work at Google for a while to get both experience in working at scale as well as some nice bootstrap funding (basically, save your bonus each year).
Early Onset Alzheimer's Diagnosis
Do they give out enough Founders' Awards to make their base salaries irrelevant to people who would otherwise be launching successful products at a smaller company?

This seems like a highly speculative question.

What percentage of potential employees that would have begun a startup would be "successful"? How do you even quantify this?

What's different about "working for Google compared to a startup" versus working for any other company rather than being your own boss? Why do you ask about Google only?
Nielsen: Bing Passes Yahoo To Become #2 Search Engine
The genius behind 'Xe' is that some people will say 'zee', others will say 'ecks-ee'. If someone hears something bad about the organization by mouth, they won't know what to type into Google to read about it, and even if they do know how to spell it they'll get hits about a noble gas and a currency exchange site.
Let's make a 2d matrix with 4 cells. The X axis is small company, large company, and the Y axis is successful product and failed product. Products hop about these boxes all the time. Large companies sell off divisions or spin off products, small company products vanish and even large companies have turned around failed product lines. This piece seems to assert that the transition from small company / successful product to large company mostly results in failed products. Are there any numbers to suggest a higher failure rate than any of the other transitions?
It wouldn't be that bad until i read in their other post this:

"It is exciting times right now in Russia. After long history of existing on resource-driven oil & gas economy, the country is making strides to leapfrog its way into high technology powerhouse. The press is abuzz with talks on technology parks and fostering a start-up culture.
...
Like everybody else, we got excited hearing the recent news from Russia."

In PC-language it is called "PR".
That's true. But a significant portion of our customers will see savings of 33-67% for their use cases. Single-leg is more popular than I think people realize.
I can see the problem from both sides but really Heroku had some more more to gain by just crediting it or most of it in what you would say about them. Clearly by the rules, you should have to pay, but that does not mean that a business should not do the right thing and work with a customer.

Imagine how big a raving fan you would have been if they had credited the entire thing. That is a tiny cost compared to acquiring a new customer and turning them into a raving fan.
Baking powder has baking soda as an ingredient.
Actually, one needn't extend anything in order to accomplish this sort of device.

There already exist link element relationships for next and previous, a user agent need only keep track of those and render the URI bar accordingly if it was desired.
Yes. Every request we make to you includes the 'From' number, which you can check for in your code, and return a <Dial> with the number you want to forward them to specified. http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2010-04-01/twiml/dial
The iPod touch is cheaper than you say. Mine was 169€ (around 175$ I guess).
Archos has several nice players which also run apps, but their primary attraction is being able to play virtually any type of video without re-encoding.

Negatives: poor support for older models and charging extra for codec packs.
Hi, I work at Twilio and wrote that FAQ. Clarification; Canadian customers can definitely get toll-free numbers that US and Canadian users can call. However, Canadian callers often will get misreported in caller ID, which is a deal-breaker for many use-cases. But these numbers are available and functioning for Canadian customers.
I don't know what Flashblock you were using but the ones I have used do not behave this way. Maybe Flash was in memory because you clicked one of them and allowed it to run?
I for one am relieved that SciDB will be supporting bulk load rather than the "single road insert" that we have been saddled with all this time in other relational database products.
Been using them for years on Linux, can't live without them. I use three 1) email + timelog 2) journal + coding 3) reference + browser. With the help of the virtual desktops and keybindings, any app or desktop I need access to is a key combo away.
>Apparently many normal people feel that they saw a major change for the better after this power redistribution.

I would attribute the uptake of smartphones to the standard, endless evolution of technology. And while they fell behind, there is absolutely no doubt that Blackberry blazed the path after Windows Mobile faltered.
Ask HN: Why doesn't Amazon manufacture an MP3 player?
I would love to have a low-cost, no frills MP3 player that easily integrates with the Amazon MP3 marketplace.

It appears that the Kindle has limited MP3 capabilities, but I don't own one so I can't speak to it directly.
Also, our US toll-free numbers accept calls from US and Canada.
I play driving games. In my case I should be more relaxed, and much more consistent than I currently am.

It could work for you.
Just a thought, but how is drawing them white ethnically neutral? It seems like something more beige/brown would be, seeing as how most of the world as tan-skinned.
I think it's handy to have an LLC set up for a number of reasons, but the point raised in this blog post isn't one of them.

Corporate protection from personal liability is extremely valuable for contracts, and especially to protect you from your company's creditors. It does not however automatically shield you from liability to negligence claims, and, more generally, from tort claims of all sorts.

One reason you don't hear about this very often is that established businesses tend to maintain liability insurance, and in practice people sue with the intention of recovering money, and what they're targeting with those suits is the company's insurance.

This might be a good argument for buying professional liability insurance --- and, indeed, all contractors should (and probably have to, as a contract term). But for your open source side project, it's a moot point; use any well-known open source license and your users are already conceding a disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability as a term of using your code.
If all gigs were fixed price or piece-work projects, I'd buy into your argument. In the real world, you've got to deal with timelines and time+materials budgets. Do you really expect to get repeat business if your customer perceives that they're being billed for your time on Facebook?

All I'm hearing from your comment is "You're lucky that I'm working for you. You need to work around MY work habits." The problem with that is that only 20% of the people who say that are rock stars. The other 80% only think they are.
At least Sendgrid didn't gain a negative review on HN and the consumer is still there, paying. That is good for both parties.
A XP Team Room
I think your last point is probably closest to the mark, that the iPod touch has much lower margins that are made up on app store sales.
There is no harm in talking to the right people at anytime. It does not mean you have to raise money right now or that you even find the right partner but you will learn a lot about the business and yourself along the way. If the question is should you take money, you are in a much stronger position when you have traction (however you want to measure that).
I live in an European country and I think especially since the eighties Europe have much more changed than America did. We had a very deep transformations of our society towards the American life style and we copied the American way to put 'market' everywhere. Good ol' European counter-capitalistic socialism is nearly dead.
So I think the main thing that has changed for America is the number and the power of it competitors.
Copyright has put such a serious restraint on the public that we have become prohibited from ever owning our own culture. I'll die long before the public owns any work created in my lifetime.

Was bootlegging immoral? It certainly could be, but prohibition created such an oppressive environment that it was necessary. The same goes with Micky Mouse copyright law. Decades old TV shows lost to time, no name bands disappearing from the shelves at Walmart, and Wedding Photos aging beyond the point of restoration require we infringe out of cultural preservation.

Describing it as theft, or a crime is not relevant. The infringement is necessary.
Amazon Instant - AJAX search for Amazon Electronics
Worth noting (again, assuming this is credible): Version 2.0 of HDCP is likely not affected.

According to their FAQ: http://www.digital-cp.com/faqs
"HDCP revision 2.0 uses industry-standard public-key RSA authentication and AES 128 encryption. It also supports protection of compressed content, making it feasible to use relatively slow 50 to 200 Mbps interfaces."

... and ...

"HDCP 1.x technology offers protection for uncompressed content transmitted over several common wired interfaces including DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. HDCP revision 2.0 adds strengthened encryption..."
It's called a preference, dude. Having a preference doesn't make you weird. I happen to prefer chocolate bars with over 75% cocoa content. It is just what I prefer.

Blindly consuming anything put in front of you is weird.

Also, chocolate as a drink originated in Mexico and they didn't mix sugar with it. They mixed ground chili peppers.
In norvig page, norvig.com it is said that a good method to increase the power of the team is to choose someone that is better that someone at google. The author did a statistical simulation to show the positive effect of this strategy compared to another one. There is someone working at google that was working at apple and is good at social blogging (I don't remember now his name) but he didn't pass the test and he is working remotely (a exception). Also someone said that if you go before seven p.m. you are looked down, I am only remembering things I read on blogs.
Yeah, I don't know how it works. She's actually also allergic to Canola oil, so she's basically a walking litmus test for packaged foods.

She's not allergic to any fruit, but is allergic to potatoes and onions (which made bringing her home to meet my Irish family an interesting experience). Oh, and beef and dairy.
Twitter Insights
Those three are all the same piece of research.
Yahoo toolbar crosses the line - its a virus now, or at least mal-ware.
Hart's argument is basically the same as Sheffner's argument, at least the part he quoted:

I just have a hard time getting too worked up about what label we attach to copyright. And I suspect most non-philosophers agree. Consider this thought experiment: Go to a studio head and say, "I've got a deal for you. I'll give you your copyright wish list: repeal first sale, make Justice Ginsburg's concurrence in Grokster the controlling opinion, delete Cablevision, Perfect 10 v. Amazon (and a few other Perfect 10 cases while we're at it) from the law books, and codify a "making available" right. But here's the catch: From now on, you are forever forbidden from referring to copyright as 'property,' and must instead call it a 'set of social relationships.'" Or go to a copyright skeptic, and say, "I've got a deal for you. I'll give you your copyright wish list: reduce the term of copyright back to 14 years, expand fair use, eliminate the derivative works right, and repeal the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. But there's the catch: From now on, you must refer to copyright as property; no more of this 'set of social relationships' mumbo-jumbo." I'm confident both the studio head and the copyright skeptic would take those deals in a heartbeat. Ultimately, it's the substance, not the label, that matters.

My question is: why the hell do you think the "studio head" and the "copyright skeptic" are arguing about terminology in the first place?

The way I see it, Hart is basically saying "If you were offered to have things your way, but had to give up terminology, you would do it in a heartbeat, so why do you argue about terminology in the first place?" Which, to me, sounds naive.

The reason people are arguing about legal definitions of terminology in the first place is because legal terms have certain definitions which govern how decisions are made in court.
Chrome extension: opens multi links 
A google chrome extension that allows you to open multiple links in one quick go. Use your mouse to select all the links you want and they will open up in new tabs.
They sell blades, not razors. Well, they do sell razors when there isn't a good enough one to sell blades for, but it isn't their primary concern.

For MP3s, there's already great players to sell music for.
On Quora, this question would probably be filed under "Questions That Contain Assertions".

There are competitors. They either don't get it, don't have the talent needed to produce what the marketers would like to produce, or some combination of the two.

I wonder why there aren't more competitors, though. I think the main reason is that Android device companies are more focused on getting the phone right.
There's also this "Pimp my spectrum":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KegY8YIzQ4
Wal-Mart: America's superstore and wireless service provider?
It's pretty clear to most people that the smartphone app market that exists today is qualitatively different than the one that existed before the App Store. I think that's the point the parent was trying to make.
For me, monitor size is dependent on real estate needs. If I'm doing work that requires a lot of high-res visuals I can make use of two monitors; but if I'm working with plain text, an 80x25 character display is usually fine. I do not generally use monitor space to view things I am not working on - at most, I'll have one chat window going. In the past I felt an improvement from more monitors, but now I suspect that they are mostly band-aids for a lack of concentration.

I generally recommend to people to get smaller sized laptops because the lower bulk will help to absorb bumps and drops.
Also, given how verbose they are regarding their success, it would be decent of them to be more transparent about their mistakes. For instance, there was the fact that they store passwords either in clear text or with the possibility of decryption available on their server:

http://blog.jgc.org/2009/05/can-you-trust-37signals-with-you...

The 2 year lag on that deserves some explanation.
Dense; meanders; does it have a succinct point? I missed it.
Try in private beta a new tool for Agile Prototyping
Justinmind invites you to take part in its beta testing program of Justinmind Prototyper 4.0. Lots of improvements have been made in the dynamic data grids, the workspace, keyboard shortcuts, tooltips, and many more. The beta has already started but you can join us anyway!
If there were no internet, I would subscribe to magazines and visit the library.
I'd say this particular should is more a question of enlightened self interest, rather than fairness.

It is in our long term interest to have as much control of our "digital assistants" (which includes both smartphones and personal computers) in order to ensure that they assist us, and not some other party.
I think the problem with Blu-Ray, and AnyDVD has this issue as well, is that every disc has a slightly modified copy protection scheme that requires additional hacking to make a copy of it. I believe this requires a company like Slysoft, that makes AnyDVD, to constantly release updates for every new movie that is released.

For this reason, I doubt we'll ever see a public domain solution like DeCSS arrive. It's too bad.
Are you up to the challenge? Dropbox wants to know
A Memory Aid: Consistent Brain Patterns
Maryland, Australia, Spain: Traffic Cameras Beset With Accuracy Issues
Easy. It is an iPod. It is just a music player. Nothing to see here. Move on competitors. Move on.
You wrote as if Heroku were taking advantage of their customers. They don't, you pay for what you use. The poster should not even post such a self-centered post on HN to tell people to sympathize with him. He screwed up and he is a whiner. I don't want someone like that becomes an "evangelist" because all he'd try to do is to get everything his way.
I seem to be the only one on the Internet that likes Coke better with high fructose corn syrup than sugar. I will say that most of the "sugar" coke I've had is from Europe, rather than the Mexican coke (which seems to have a label listing "sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup"). I would describe the corn syrup coke as smoother.
I emailed you guys about a terms of use question but never heard back. I'd love to know if your "no unsolicited calls" line would apply to non-profits and political organizations. Call through voter lists where it is legal under current law. I got an app ready, but am hesitant to market it if it is going against Twilio terms of service.
Yeah, I should have mentioned that for many use cases, this would effectively be a price decrease. I was just expecting a drop for SMS when I first read the headline.
I don't think this is Heroku's business model and not all the evangelists are born from gifts.
Personally, I find that it's the same mental filter I apply to just about any discussion outside of academic subjects. Very few of the people I know bother to use qualifiers like "usually," "often," etc. Those are just understood.
That suggests his successors weren't very good at finishing the job he started. It's only natural for governments to become more and more corrupt as decades pass. When someone like that appears on the scene and reboots the system, their work should be acknowledged and refined before the corruption kicks in again.
Free idea here. Create an add-on that monitors your load and tells you when you've probably got too many workers and dynos.

Credit goes to the guy who got stuck with the $1300 Heroku bill... he inspired this idea.

link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1688904
I hear you, but it seems to me that the market for MP3 players consists of two groups:

1) High-priced, high-quality devices (iPod, Zune)

2) Low-priced, low-quality devices

What I am suggesting is a low-cost, high-quality device (like the Flip camcorder).
hmm... Creativity loves constraint - end
Maps and visualization of Afghanistan Election Data
Earlier HN thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629082
James Watson: Cure for cancer could be found in 5-10 years if more risks taken
Never had a green card - but going in and out of the USA on a european country passport with an H1-B was always a hassle.

Especially one return from a conference where the minimum-wage-moron on passport control didn't understand the concept of visas (to be fair he had a limited understanding of the concept of passports or even other countries) and allowed me in for 24 hours which I spent queuing at LA's delightful immigration office downtown.

Still, well done to him for protecting the USA from another foreign Caltech physics prof.
Do you have an alternative idea? Or are we doomed to police-statism? Serious question.
Great designs manipulate.
The base model probably has low margins, but there's a big markup on the extra 16 or 48GB of memory in the more expensive models.
English is 'open source', French is 'the cathedral'.

It shows in their proliferation patterns too.