skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We've been running hundreds of instances on EC2 for a couple years, and have never seen one just "go down." However, we will get notifications of "degraded instances." When an instance is degraded, you have some window (generally a couple days) to move the services running on that instance to another one. Even at the aforementioned scale, this happens maybe once every three to four months.

Can you use this as a VPS replacement? Probably. My guess is that your uptime will be no worse than some VPS provider. However, if you're storing information on the ephemeral storage, the onus is on you to get it to the new instance. I imagine that isn't generally the case on a VPS.

You may be able to mitigate this by using EBS (required in the case of these micro instances), but I've only used EBS a handful of times, and am no expert on the subject. If I understand their layout for these micro instances, it would simply be a matter of spinning up a new instance and spinning down the degraded node.
You have to make it a bit better/different and then they can't argue it's duplicate. You can say, oh we can't compete now. Only 3 car manufacturers are allowed?
Google Instant could be a brilliant stroke -- or another flop
You'd be surprised how much MS code is getting released under OSS licenses these days. That just leaves hell freezing over...
Dangerous Adobe Reader zero-day raises the bar
Wait, is that a fair comment? I understood Intrinsity to have designed the chip we're calling the A4, and to have licensed it to Samsung. Apple later bought Intrinsity. If that's the case, there's nothing shady about them branding the A4 as a house design; they own the house that designed it.
> Apparently, you need to flush parts of the cache as new data arrives. Unfortunately though, you can't as memcache is a strict key/value store.

Huh? You can delete keys in memcached just fine.

> So you change how you name the cache keys and make them dependent of, say the max(timestamp) of your hugetable.

Or you could use memcached's existing expiration support.
I guessing that you'll be much happier with your apps written in Objective-C. They will be snappier, they will have instant access to new APIs as Apple releases them (as opposed to being tied to Adobe's flash engine update release cycle), they will probably consume less power and thus will make your users happier, and I'm not 100% sure the user experience is as good with flash apps in general. But, it's great to have a choice and it makes it plausible to "just get it out there" and then rewrite in objective-c if needed/required.
>This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.

In other words - you (still) can't use this list to see if your app will be accepted. Only whether it will be rejected with certainty.

This isn't unexpected, but as long as apple works hard to make this the only way to install your apps, it is still unacceptable.
I can't tell from here, but I think is is the same thing as was previously submitted here (to a thunderous silence):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671141
They are very fickle! Anyone want to talk about how fickle they are? I guess not...
What points? That Android itself being open doesn't guarantee that every piece of software, every piece of hardware, and every carrier is going to be totally open?

That's an asinine, utterly idiotic argument. It's a juvenile strawman ("Gosh, and I thought Android was open...but look I can't install Skype on my Sprint phone").

MG Siegler has seldom said anything that had any merit or added to the argument in any meaningful way. Which isn't a suprise, as TechCrunch is a trollbait emporium: They know that posting such asinine nonsense gets them hits, so they'll keep doing it. It is, absolutely, feeding the trolls.
When planning becomes a crutch – The woes of reaction and inaction
Unlocked Nokia N900 allow you to do that. Available on Aamazon for $400. It runs maemo, but people are trying to port android over to it. I myself own the N900 and I am quite happy with it.

On a side note, I like the Nokia's hardware over Apple's.
"I had no trouble hacking my EVO 4G, deleting the stock OS with HTC and Sprint crapware, and installing a build with 100% open code."

100% open code? So this means your not running any of the gmail/gtalk/gvoice/g... ? None of those are open code, and quite frankly, they are the most used applications on my android phone.

I would also argue that the android OS is one of the least 'open' open source mobile OSes available. When you compare android's development practices to companies like Nokia with their N900 and Intel with Meego, both companies who are actively concerned with making sure their changes get back upstream, and then you'll see that the openness of android is more of a facade.
An "education bubble" has been discussed on quite a few sites in the last year - the problem is that if it bursts, what will that mean? No one that I have seen has presented any ideas about what a "bursting" education "bubble" will look like in real world terms. So, if it can't burst, is it really a bubble? Or is it just excessive price increases, that may keep rising or that may stop without any collapse?
I like learning about tools other people use because sometimes someone'll say, "I really love this tool", and I'll give it a try and, hey, what do you know? I love the tool too.
4 out of 5 hacker angels invest in Locately
I upvoted you, but on the flip side, we currently have a large number of students who are coming out of college with low real-world value degrees and huge amounts of debt.

It's probably unsustainable to have 175,000 psych and history majors[1] graduating every year with 10-20,000 dollars in debt[2]. (Not to speak of all the business/marketing majors)

I'm not saying that colleges should turn into work-training programs, but there's a huge impedance mismatch between the cost of college, the skills conferred by the degrees that most people get, and the rewards for those in the workplace.

At some point, the average decent public university degree (in a non hard-science) will cease to pay for itself over the long term. Then the only people doing the humanities will be those of a class privileged enough to afford them, which is an outcome that I don't think anyone wants.

Even when you take into account the often generous financial aid packages in the US, costs are still spiraling compared to benefits, especially in the less lucrative degrees.

1: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/figures/fig_15.asp
2: http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/general/2006-02-22-stude...
1- semantics matter. Names should neatly describe what they refer to.

2- avoid mutable variables. Using the same name for two things is just another way to get tripped up.

3- if you're going to ship it, try to stay in the lower (50%) range of your abilities. This is how to get things done lightning fast in my opinion. Work on your skills and improve every day, but to produce something functional and enduring you should be technically conservative and produce something you thoroughly, thoroughly understand.

4- Your abstractions should be accurate, precise, and cognitively manageable.

5* Non-programming organization skills matter. Identify stakeholders, gather requirements, set priorities, PRODUCE, get feedback... repeat.
With the nature of the app store, it won't really be noticeable unless you specifically search for it, or it actually has some merit.
Isn't California bankrupt?
There's no such thing as a free lunch. You're getting paid for the work you actually do; wages will shift to accomodate the market for an hour, day, or week of productive work regardless of how "vacation" is divided up. Similarly, many European countries have a "13th month" paycheck; any high school student can see they're not actually getting paid more, though.
Uh huh, but what does that have to do with hypocrisy? For that matter, what do you think hypocrisy means?
In what way was this a tutorial? Seemed more like a parable meant to drive home the line about how "When they have questions, they ask the mailing list or read the faq again."

Each problem poses different challenges, and it doesn't seem fair to attempt to invalidate a given example by theorizing about hypothetical complexities the original authors never alluded to.
Shih also brought up the example of the competition between video tape formats, pointing out that the open VHS standard won against the closed Betamax format.

So, to paraphrase, "stick with Acer because the best man doesn't always win"? :)
The Killing Zone.
I disagree with that, and I was very solidly on the other side when they had their previous set of rules.

The list given here shows 'intent'. Now you can go and interpret it to the letter as if it is a kind of legal document, but that's not the right way to approach this, just as it isn't very clever to try to live by the letter of the law but to ignore the spirit of it.

Apple has clearly set a bunch of rules here that indicate what is the desired way you should develop your app and how you interpret these rules is up to you. If you're going to do your best to squeak by the guidelines they're warning you up front that they may amend the guidelines and ban your app anyway, just in case you decide to go 'legal' on them.

Is's a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do.

I'm surprised at the magnitude of this about-face, anybody with a clear conscience can take this list, self-validate their app and have a very good idea of whether or not it is going to pass.

No doubt there will be smart asses that will try to abuse the fact that the list is now published to find loopholes and Apple has pre-emptively closed those.

All (or as far as I can see it) of the dealbreakers are gone and I would imagine they're gone for good.
I agree, these are only vaguely related issues.

An undergraduate gets into Univ A and Univ B. Which one does he choose?

A highly promising young researcher is recruited as a faculty member by univ A and univ B. Which does he choose?

The difference between these questions also explains why some ratings place large, public research universities in the top few spots, and why in others (like us news), none of them crack the top 20.

Of course, top faculty and research can be a draw for undergraduates, so they aren't totally unrelated, but grad (especially phd) students are far more influenced by the second question as well.
Isn't the lack of GC on the iPhone's Obj-C runtime a much bigger hurdle than 3.3.1?
In praise of Econ 101: Learning to question your intuition
Nope—Leo. But I just read the description of Sagittarius and, wow, it sounds a lot like me. ;-)

(I'm also a Phlegmatic, and we're a naturally skeptical bunch.)
I have been horribly burned and disfigured following this advice. It's important to keep in mind that just because it's unlikely the spot price will go above the reserve price, there's nothing from preventing that. It has in the past, and it will again.

The important take away: Don't use spot instances unless you are 100% okay with the idea that your machines will disappear without warning at some point. Let that sink in.
As a counter argument, from the wikipedia article on Richard Feynman:

Feynman gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood.
Chesapeake Bay impact crater
> doesn't have the reputation that a top tier school has

Thats the problem:
The deal isn't go to university and learn stuff.
The deal is go to university and you will get a better job, the extra salary you make will pay back the tuition and lost years of income.

As more people go to uni the more the market segments - it becomes go to Harvard/Yale, you will pay 10x as much in tuition but earn 100x as much in salary. But go to nowheres ville U and your extra salary is 0.

The problem is that for this (and the previous) generation the extra salary no longer pays back the costs.
I think this could be very useful. If not for the general public (except perhaps fans of celebrities) then at least for people that professionally need to keep track of them. Reporters, showbiz-professionals etc.

Also: I don't care (at all) about the badges but would be interested in it as a research tool. Furthermore I'd like to have a software like this that is not limited to people but also to concepts, ideas and topics in general.

For example I'd like to be kept up to date on subjects like "Life on Mars" or "A.I.". Better than Google alerts and websites like HN already help me be it.
Google doesn't let you release an app that allows wifi tethering without rooting your phone. I'm sure there are other examples. Google/Apple = the same. They all bow before the carrier gods.

Edit: I can't reply to the child for some reason (too deep), but I just wanted to let you know that you're wrong: 2.2 as distributed by Verizon does not have tethering unless you use their carrier replaced version which bills your account for additional fees.
US overtaken by Sweden in WEF competitiveness survey, slips to fourth
The concept owes a lot to Harvest Moon, but let's not kid ourselves, those are very different games.

FarmVille is a well-oiled machine designed for virality, keeping people playing through social obligation and fear of loss, and monetization. It has its own peculiar kind of beauty to it. You're a 40 year old woman and your aunt, who you always keep meaning to talk with but never find the time to do, needs help with her cow. Not helping her with her cow says you don't love her. That is genius. Evil genius, but genius.

Harvest Moon, on the other hand, is a fully single person game with a story which optimizes for good reviews in magazines, because that drives box sales and that is where they make their money. It can afford to take twenty minutes until you get any control of your character, because you've already bought the game and can be assumed to wait it out. Any designer proposing that at Zynga would probably be shot, thrown out of a window, or shot after they were thrown out of a window, because it would kill the viral coefficient.
I’m a Female Y Combinator Founder and You Can Be Too
the iTunes/iOS death grip on media playing

Which death grip is that? I have one app that synchronizes .avi videos through iTunes and another that plays media streamed over the network on my iPad right now.
Gah, I was about to say that Opera beats Chrome at Sunspider on my machine, but then realized I was still running Chrome 5. Just upgraded. Here are the Sunspider numbers on my machine:

Chrome 5: 315

Opera 10.60: 287.2

Chrome 6: 279.2

Point taken.
A mathematical theory of communication
I used this site starting around February of this year. I thought it was really helpful and I ended up losing close to 30lbs in 10 weeks because of it (I've also kept it off since then, too). It wasn't really the money that mattered - I guess I saw it as sort of a game and it was fun to try and beat the goals from week to week. Also, having my friends cheer me on helped a lot (you have to have a couple of friends sign up with you to keep you honest). Perhaps I could have done it on my own without this site but the idea really worked for me.
ah, I get it.

from apple's perspective: they dont have to document everything. they covered the majority of stuff that the majority of developers/users care about. this is pretty much affecting almost nobody.

from my perspective: god dammit I wish they documented the goddamn provisioning system. I know the only people that need to care are carriers, but that would make my job a lot easier.
There are two sides to a price calculation - the supply and the demand side. The price for teaching is low because the supply is huge - there is a vast pool of people who want to teach literature, and are willing to do it at very low prices. If a literature adjunct quits, the college can immediately go to the waiting list and find someone else willing to take the job for $5k/class.

In contrast, if I (a programmer) were to quit, my company could probably not find someone willing to take the job for $35k/year.

It would be very shortsighted if society overpaid for college teachers, just as it would be shortsighted if they overpaid for military contractors or the stock of bankrupt automakers.
Where does Seigler say that it was Google's fault? Let me quote:
"Maybe if Google had their way, the system would be truly open. But they don’t. Sadly, they have to deal with a very big roadblock: the carriers."

At the end of the day, Siegler understands that for end users, it doesn't matter whose fault the whole mess is, all that matters is that users are once more being herded into operator-controlled ghettos, much as they were pre-iPhone.
12.3 Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a
collection of links, may be rejected

Does this mean you can't just wrap your website in a native app and try to charge for it? What about feed readers?

Also interesting, they say the more you charge for an app the more thoroughly they review it. Maybe you can sneak things through if you make it free. :b
While I understand all the initiatives to simplify ebook publishing, there will never be anything easier than just use HTML5 with all resources included in one single file. No need to zip/unzip. And if there is any shortcoming in that approach, just ask the W3C/WHATWG to include any extra feature to satisfy that need.
World's oldest share
Some of the app review guidelines seem weird:

Apps larger than 20MB in size will not download over cellular networks (this is automatically prohibited by the App Store)

Don't many games cross this threshold?

Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript

Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.
Very neat project! The flavors.me for developers?

The background photographs need to be a little larger. Both the project's and your personal site's backgrounds are 200px to thin for my 15" screen.
You seem to think that these are independent issues. I.e. if we just throw more money at basic literacy, road-maintenance, and policing, then society will be better. If we throw money at art and cultural education, then we're losing out on money for the above.

The fact is that a lot of social problems stem from cultural problems. You can keep throwing money and teachers at those kids down the street, but it won't get them to read. Instead, you need to change their culture (and their parents') to one of scholarship.

I find this "don't spend my tax dollars on anything that doesn't directly benefit me" attitude to be mean-spirited, but more importantly, to be one of the cultural problems that helps to foster the ills you cite.
IMHO, this is shortsighted. Art is of almost zero practical use. Investing a tiny fraction of society's resources in art is a sign of a society that has evolved beyond the starvation stage.

Are you saying that all art should only be commissioned by rich private interests? No investment in art by the public? You would demolish the National Mall, Statue of Liberty and other such art works?

Or do you draw the line at hoity-toity works (as decided by whom?).

IMHO, it is super important that societies develop the "refined" sides of the brain to control our atavistic instincts.
I'm glad you brought it up -- I figured it was bad form to do so personally, and was even ashamed of posting the comment you responded to here.

That said, I didn't see Max Klein's response, so I'm quite glad you pointed that out to me, as it was curious; However, I don't feel I was dismissive in the slightest. In light of the correction, I can see how others could view my stance as at odds with reality, but I personally didn't see cause for concern. Again though, my reading / interpretation of the statement was clearly not what was intended, so my logic is predicated upon a fallacy.

I feel I understand it much better now that you've brought it up, because I was honestly dumbfounded at the time.

Still, so as not to betray my Irish stubbornness, it _was_ mathematically correct. ;-)
Gosh, Her Majesty The Developer! Er... th-thanks for a-answering...

;-)))))

Jokes aside, thank you very much for developing SearchYC and making it available.

What would you think about adding a FAQ section where - among other things - you explain the "quoting issue" has indeed been considered, but dismissed because of difficult implementation? I guess every web-surfer has got used to quoting in searches, therefore not having it leaves him baffled.

Cheers.
Ethical considerations aside, this seems like a solid management strategy to me. They have the brand to push through large mass of users , who are not so much into gaming as they are into socializing. If I were an investor in Zynga, I would be very happy , although I would probably use a part of the 10x ROI to buy a sweet gaming rig and play real games.
VLC can do client-server streaming from another copy of VLC.
So your desktop machine can stream your dvd/avi/mp3 collection to the iPad
It seems they didn't benchmark the network speed and latency, which is the big change from the rest of the instance types.
It quoted me at $54/year.
The pros are are happier developer community.

Apple is many things but it's not a developer tools company - I doubt it even covers costs on the developer programme if you include XCode development and so on. It produces those so people can write software to allow it to sell it's other products.

The only way this move weakens it is if, as a result, the quality of apps declines. I'm guessing that they'll look to head that off by pushing non-XCode apps that little bit harder, at least in the short term, to ensure that they're up to spec.
I'm always surprised by how prevalent this personality test seems to be in the US. I had never heard of it before arriving here and it seems that almost everybody took it at some point in their lives.

A friend of mine said he had heard of it in France (where I'm from), but it's clearly not common.

Is it an American thing?
I can tell you from experience: people making upper-middle income don't get much aid from the ivies. If you're poor, it's free, and if you're rich, who cares, but if your family's income is in the low six figures, you're looking at big loans.
There are a lot of items worded like this:

> Apps that do not use the MediaPlayer framework to access media in the Music Library will be rejected

That sounds like apps that don't access the Music Library at all will be rejected.
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/

Go get a light sweater.
You need a differentiator. You've done a lot of work to get to this point, but why would somebody use this when they are used to going to Google News or TMZ or whatever? You have to create something that is extremely compelling in some dimension or another, otherwise it will be tough to rise above the noise. Best of luck.
Rails Batched Finder
ITunes app total downloads to overtake songs this year
> Don't many games cross this threshold?

Yep, and they don't download over cellular networks - you have to do it over wi-fi.

> Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.

It seems to get round it on a slight technicality. It goes via the Opera proxy server and isn't actually reading HTML (the stream is compressed and encoded) so you could argue that it's not strictly a web browser. In a sense it's closer to something like Instapaper - it takes a chunk of the web, encodes it and passes it to the app to use.
The Eucalyptus app could still be banned under the current rules because it makes it possible to download sex books of project gutenberg.

It isn't mentioned directly, but combine the protect the children with no obscenity (which I personally find Obscene) clauses and you can ban anything.
My Jung type in this afternoon is
ENFJ
Strength %
Extrav. Intuitive Feeling Judging
1	62	38	33
Students loans have been securitized for quite a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-backed_security#Student_l...