skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Metafilter's $5 sign-up fee is incredibly smart. I imagine it brings in a decent amount of income and it really keeps the community top notch.
No, there's still a lot of research to do to make it a reality, but some of the work has been done.
It's patched now.
If it really is the CIA, then Siemens might actually be in on it. Bonus for them if they can charge the Iranians to patch the holes that Stuxnet has exposed while continuing to feed the agency with new ones.
Measuring "Good" in Good Enough Software
Cameras attached to birds: peregrine falcon and Goshawk
The forever recession
Canonical Demos Physical Awareness Prototype
Beyond GDP
The first comment in the OP also tries to make the point that it's impossible to tell just how good a teacher is. I claim this is all crap.

The same problem exists in almost any non-manufacturing job; certainly in the field of software development. We've got piles of bad metrics, like KLOCs (about which, the less said the better). We could count bugs, but different systems are prone to different levels of bugginess, and when we're all teaming up, it's not necessarily practical (let alone advisable) to "blame" someone. Yet by and large, we do a pretty good job of determining who are really good, and who aren't.

You mention that the standards themselves are, in some cases, bad. That may be true, but you should be trying to get out of such a district ASAP. The fact that they can't get good teachers, and the fact that the parents are hammering on the door because the kids aren't learning, should force change -- but for the fact that the system now gives parents no alternative.

It seems like the teachers' unions are hanging onto a fig leaf of rationalizating, but it's really a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. We could do a lot better than we are, but we're not allowed to go that far because it may fall somewhat short of perfect.

But look at the bigger picture. What's a more serious failure: (a) not giving a teach a raise quite commensurate with what he/she deserves; or (b) not educating a whole classroom full of kids because they're stuck with a lousy teacher?
No luck on that, I checked and there was in fact a graphics update but that didn't affect the behavior. My next step is to try to figure out what is causing it to make a bug report.
Who signed Jmicron's and Realtek's certificates? That cert authority may be in on it as well.
Court Relief For Impotent Husband
Ten of the Best Reasons to Start a Business Now
I don't think we have to be ashamed of being egoistic. We don't care about the wellbeing of the Earth, but at least we can care for us, for our quality of living, the short term effects, while they are short on geological scale, are not so short on human scale (our children, grand children, etc).

I don't know if all this about climate change is a real threat or not, but I don't feel that the argument "it happened already" really hits the core of the issue.
Heya, I'm one of the other two mods at mefi, along with Matt Haughey and Jessamyn West. I go by "cortex" over there.

A saner way to do this will be to trust people to do the right thing, but verify that they are not doing anything malicious.

Absolutely. And Mefi's definitely been of a size for a long while now where trust-but-verify has been an essential part of keeping it working. Our approach these days is pretty much the same as Matt's approach years back when it was just him running the place: welcome people in with the benefit of the doubt but keep an eye out for trouble -- whether of the malicious or the clueless variety.

And we see both: keeping spam in check (even after the $5 speedbump) is a daily project, though thankfully not a high-volume one (we probably ban a couple of spammers/linkfarmers/astroturfers/SEO-marketers a week), and we're daily working with new users who are varyingly conspicuously not getting how the place works or what it's for or what the local tone and community expectations are.

One nice thing is that we've been able to take long experience with dealing with spammy behavior in particular and use that to build a pretty decent local toolset to keep a close eye on problem areas with a minimum of effort, so what spam does actually try to manifest these days tends to get spotted and nixed with quick turnaround. Which by itself is good news but doesn't say anything directly about the community, but the implication is important: because we can get on top of one of the major sorts of bad behavior very responsively, it leaves us free to continue to let everybody else on the site have the sort of general community freedom that Matt talks about in those guidelines re: trust. Because our small administrative team can effectively and promptly corral the problems that do occur, we don't have to clamp down on the basic posting and commenting rights of the vast majority of users acting in good faith.
When I last checked about 2 years ago, Twitter had woeful session management.
Yup, that's basically what I'm looking for.
The white upper middle class are always doing fairly well. Yet poor whites are the ones that are double screwed.

They are discriminated against in many countries ("black economic empowerment") and they are loathed by upper middle class white people. A white person with the same economic situation as a black person is screwed.

So, poor whites became the punching bag of society. By upper middle class who dislike them (and like someone to pay for their sins) and disliked by black people.

Here is a solution: How about removing all legal economic disadvantages from poor white people? (e.g. they are not viewed as "white" on application forms for employment equity purposes), and applying it super hard for the white upper-middle class?
If you build yourself a new python, what's the point of virtualenv ? Compiling python is of course possible, although quite a chore if all you want is to configure some software.

Concerning the need to obtain a new python if you want to use a newer python: yes, it is more or less evident, but that's Zed Shaw's point, not mine. Where he has a point IMO is about the brokenness of the installed python - many distributions make too many changes w.r.t. upstream without understanding the consequences. To distro's defend, the python packaging solutions are so poorly thought out that python itself is not helping the situation.
Sounds a bit like the old exploding Siberian pipeline trick to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage
Actually it is a perfectly adequate analogy.
1. You probably didn't read the linked article. It was essentially a complaint that people don't own licensed software and that since licensed software interacts with hardware, when people violate the terms of the license they lose the use of the software and consequently the full use of the hardware that interacts with the software.
2. The analogy with hotel rooms is the core of the article's point of view. By using the hotel analogy it revealed the weakness in the article's complaint. The fact that you don't like it either means you agree that having a license doesn't mean that your own the thing, or, that you are making a separate point, that people don't understand what they are buying, but that is not the point of the linked article.
Building Load Resilient Web Servers
Tumblr CTO Marco Arment Steps Down
Lost me at "Even great designers don’t exist."

'Great' is a relative term, and so unless everyone is exactly the same, there are 'great' ones and 'horrible' ones both.
How can I sell my software for people to own without giving them right to pirate it?

Honest question. I can only think of adding such user-friendly provisions in a EULA, but wouldn't that still be licensing?
Good post, may I add one tip,
Always try to distribute you task to 3rd providers.
Emails: google emails, rackspace emails.
Support: online issues service.
etc...
Anssi Vanjoki says using Android is like peeing in your pants for warmth
Not every distribution ships ancient versions.

RHEL, meanwhile, does not ship 3.1, 2.7 or 2.6. And to be perfectly honest, if you're seriously distributing Python software you have to take RHEL into account -- "Fedora ships something newer" doesn't help.
It's often good to remind yourself of just how fortunate you really are... Those lines are so easily blurred.
> The ethnic make-up of Canada is similar to that of the U.S. as we're both immigrant countries

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat..., the US is over 15% Latino and over 12% black (as of 2008). Canada is listed as 1% Latin American, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada, and blacks aren't even listed (implying less than 1%) (as of 2006). Since blacks and Latinos seem to be among the worst performers in US schools (citation needed?), your attempt to paint Canada as having a similar demographic to the US seems pretty bogus to me.
At first, I was going to comment that they probably missed an opportunity to change the venue and have a large venue sponsor the event and have a good party and maybe make some money. Then I read the article and see she's 15 years old, and yeah, that must've been kind of scary. But me, if I accidentally did this in a big city and 20,000 people RSVP'd, I'd start calling nightclubs and ask if they'd split the door charges with me and provide a cool atmosphere, and then change the address.
Loud Music Doesn't Affect Hearing as Much as Previously Thought
Twitter Status: XSS attack identified and patched
Twitter Worm
This is one of those rare occasions when I wish I could actively vote down an article. Seems more like a "get off my lawn" post than anything. Also, his reasons for disliking Scala are completely arbitrary.
I am new to programming and emacs was the first editor I was introduced to, so it naturally became my favorite. I switched to and am starting to learn Linux and in the class we use vim.

I don't type well so I don't have the proper form that might lead to the discomfort you mention but I am starting to appreciate the intuitive functionality of vim. Like I wrote, I am new to all of this so I don't have any priors or strong feelings about either editor. I find people espouse the virtues of the editor they were introduced to.

If you like emacs and it works for you, all the advice written here is helpful but from what I read, vi avoids all the crazy multi-key typing and really might be, ultimately, the best solution.

Then again, I don't know much.

EDIT:I forgot to mention, I learned Google uses the vi commands to navigate gmail and more webapps are incorporating that functionality, so it might be something to consider.
I don’t care about earth. I care about humans.
Tell HN: I like DuckDuckGo
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=spirit

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=spirit&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CWA6HVrqYTOvJMY_KMvPqgfMLAAAAqgQFT9DHdGE

I like the disambiguation; and I like that it is easier to read the result; each highlighted with a green shade and with more white space between each result.

Google results page looks like classified ads of a newspaper.
Limited meetings to 15 people or less? How is that agile? In comparison with bloated corporations I guess.
I mentioned Django as a counterexample; the conversation seemed to be heading toward using the single specific example of Mongrel to demonstrate that there either is not a problem here or that it's not particularly serious.

Meanwhile, anyone who depends on Python for much more than a config-file parser knows what a genuine and large issue this is, and that "just write to the lowest common denominator" is not really a reasonable solution.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=spirit

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=spiri...
Oh yes, I forgot HN doesn't like humour. I knew I shouldn't have taken maternity leave.
A $5 registration fee is one of the things that killed kuro5hin.org. God, I miss k5.
Google Earth 3.1 for iOS gets its ocean layer
Write it together.

Grab a cup of coffee together, in person, or each on Skype and brainstorm over several hours. Talk talk talk.

If your developer has any experience, his inner architect will come out and he will know what needs to be done.

Ask him to help you write a draft, go over it together with Google docs, each highlighting in a different color, and presto. There is your specification.

If the developer is a freelancer, compensate him for his design and time; 4x the hourly development rates is fair for arch/design.
It would have been interesting to see some benchmarks here.
Looks like they've fixed it. The URL in your tweet is now escaped.

From the photo it looks hilarious though. Nice job.
Just Me and My Pessimism in the ‘Race of Truth’
Er http://www.ksplice.com/
Surprisingly, this is the first time this article was submitted to HN.

It's quite interesting. Some of these things happen in all developed nations, but quite a significant number of them only happen in the US. For example, it did not realize just how fucked up health care is in the US prior to reading this article.
Interesting. Your response is enough to make me unsubscribe from your blog.
Ask HN: Looking for a GKrellM like tool based on KDE4 UI
First of all: No, I'm not interested in Plasma widgets.

In my case they are useless because I never see my desktop's background. My desktop is full with windows...
I'm looking for a nice small tool like GKrellM is, but based on KDE4's UI. GKrellM runs in it's own window, this is why i like it to much.
It is wonderful but it is a bit outdated and does not really fit into my shiny new KDE4 desktop.
I should have precised that we only optimize modules where performance is critical.

Otherwise, our #1 priority is that code should be beautiful (concise, readable).

A nice side effect is that sometimes "nicer" also means more efficient (the JVM likes small methods) :)
Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.

Most of them are about being financially poor, but this one is about emotional poverty and can happen to the richest of us.
The solution to distros which are bundling three year old software is not to halt your progress for three years, that should be obvious.

Speaking as Django's release manager: Red Hat's continued use and support of ancient 2.x Python versions has been a factor in the schedule we're developing for migration to Python 3.x. We can't simply pull the rug out from under anyone who's using Django on RHEL.
They're designing and building fighter jets, not deciding what color to make a website.
If you know html/css, create the mockups with sample data he can play with and go from one page to another.
My point is that the lowest common denominator is higher for users of something like Django because Python is a central component of what they do, thus it's reasonable to assume that they are not using an 8-year old Python environment.
Is it really necessary to change one's password? I've logged out and logged in again to make sure I invalidated my old session cookie. Hopefully that's sufficient.
The Video in the article is a great example! "This Video contains content from UMG. It is not available in your country"
I like duckduckgo, but I find it's results harder to read thwn google.... With google it is clearer to me what is a result, and the results are more differentiated.... With ddg it takes more effort to parse the results page.
I like/use Amazon Cloudfront. Do you know this size of the plugin and your estimated downloads? Both Rackspace and Amazon will get the job done. You just have to decide on price and which system you want to depend on.
Web2py cheat sheet
Avocado - Self in a Browser
I might recommend shaving sideways for your second pass. Maybe your third, too. (That is, perpendicular to the grain.)
How so? People weren't willing to pay it?
What can we do to help people who are this kind of poor? Having given a decent bit to charities in the past, I somtimes feel a bit odd not knowing where it really went, or even if it really helped anyone. Or is this just me?
Hmm.. Don't use either but I don't see how indinero (which I just looked at) is useful at all. Say goodbye to accounting? With this? Really?

Just use a spreadsheet if that's all you need..
There is a tendency in society to trumpet up ideas based on early evidence, especially when the conclusions sound logical, even if they aren't scientifically valid. For instance, another example isvsecond hand smoke. Much of the smoking perception comes from coroners saying smoking is the cause of death in smokers, even when it really wasn't... Eg: heart attack or old age in a smoker is called a smoking related death.
Hundreds of Thousands of Germans Opt Out of Google Street View
Most Inspirational Young Musician Justin Bieber’s Biography
Justin Bieber is a 16-year-old singer,who gained notoriety after posting videos of himself singing on YouTube in 2007. Bieber’s YouTube clips accumulated a substantial amount of buzz, and because of his make-shift performances the young singer was signed to Island Records in 2008.4 In 2010, Justin Bieber performed at the MTV Video Music Awards.Bieber performed on the outdoor stage and entertained the crowds with a medley of songs including “U Smile,” “Baby” and “Somebody to Live”.6 While this was Justin Bieber’s second time at the VMAs it was his first time as a nominee. Bieber won the Best New Artist Award.7
To expand the image resizing example:

Most web gallery requests go like: (ignoring caching)

Browser -> PHP -> Database

When you upload an image you could simply handle it in-line in the server:

Browser -> PHP -> DB -> Resizer

That means the next page refresh is waiting on that resizer to finish which means long page latency to the most latency-sensitive component imaginable (the fickle user).

So you really want that resize to happen asynchronously, i.e. not wait for the result before showing the page. The roll-your-own method is to put a row in the DB that says "Hey I need to be resized" and have a cron job or somesuch that does the resizing:

Browser -> PHP -> DB

Resizer -> DB

This of course puts all the load on the hardest thing to scale (the DB) so you grow out of it fast. Hence message queues. RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Redis, etc are all variants of the queue, so now you have:

Browser -> PHP -> DB -> Queue

And the Queue holds all the resizing jobs that need to be done. You could just modify your cronjob to check the Queue instead of the DB of course.

Octobot (and Celery) is a queue runner that connects to that Queue, reads in the jobs that need to be done and runs them. So instead of a cron job you write your resizer in a way that your queue runner understands and the runner will manage some of the plumbing for you.

So you have

Browser -> PHP -> DB -> Queue

Queue -> Octobot -> Resizer ( -> DB to say it's done perhaps.)

Now that you're decoupled you can add more resizers, webservers, distribute them across multiple systems, expand to EC2 to handle overflow load, etc by leveraging what your queue provides.
Visual Transistor-level Simulation of the 6502 - in Javascript
Stuxnet worm may have been built to attack Iran
Hunters Blast Google Aerial Fiber Cables
Many people would be offended at the statement because it seems as if he's calling "white culture" (whatever that means) degenerate. I took it the way you did. I assumed he meant it as a bad segment of the all encompassing white culture...lol.

EDIT: I mean that white culture is such a broad-sweeping statement that it loses meaning. Sorry for the lack of clarification...
This sounds like a semantic quibble. It sounds like you purchased a "license." It's not a software rental, it is a license. Rental implies temporary use.(look it up) Versus, when you purchase a software license you can generally use the software forever. What you can or can't do is spelled out in the license agreement. If you don't agree, don't purchase (the license.) Also, Rentals don't necessarily include the licensor including "fixing all the problems" one may encounter. For example commercial real estate rental have practically none of the hand-holding that residential rentals have. "I posses as much right to re-sell or give away anything I purchased in digital form as I do to re-sell or give away my CDs, cars, home, motorcycle, or whatever else." Perhaps this "right" is a moral right in your philosophy of the world but it is definitely not a legal right. If one doesn't like a law then one should work to get it changed.
Inuit already bought Mint, why would they need inDinero? Mint has way more users, and already does the hard part - syncing with banks securely and categorizing expenses. Mint/Inuit could add a cash-flow module to their product and be done with it.

Depending on how Jessica decides to position it, I could see it exiting to a buyer like Freshbooks, where the combination product makes a suite of small-business finance tools. Like a mini-Microsoft Financal-Office (except in the cloud).
Yes. I've always thought the advantages a local shop could use are killer product, free wifi, and great ambience (third place, friendly baristas, local art, etc). For some reason many local shops serve mediocre coffee. Now Starbucks has free wifi and by corporate mandate they work hard on ambience. Hopefully this will push the local shops to improve their coffee and barista training. The 18 cents for very good beans stat, if true, doesn't leave much room for excuses.
A Common Lisp Web Development Primer, Part 1
And yet, the second i state that i have no interest in a flame war you suddenly pop up to start one, bravo.

P.S.: Every single design issue i pointed out is still present.
I wouldn't put it past Siemens to be in on this. After all the most profits are made by playing both sides.
Please clarify, a great example of what?
Tool of the Day: Blungr: Domain names remixed
CentOS is on 2.4
Well, that and their top notch moderators! Jessamyn is exceptional at breaking up arguments, for example.

Metafilter is quite an outlier in terms of online communities that have survived, thrived, and kept a high signal-to-noise ratio.
This sounds nice, but as a potential user of JavaScript frameworks, it is feeling like there are just way too many of them and they are undifferentiated enough that culling a set to evaluate is so difficult that i've just out it off for the most part... Or will simply default to whatever apple ships in their next major web product...
That the whole copyright thing is getting out of control, soon words will be copyrighted... Just now some german newspapers plan on copyrighting the stuff the use in their headlines, yes the sentences/words in the headlines.
Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

Plus knowing that your kids are likely to ignore your guidance and follow your example, making the same mistakes you did, no matter how much they know it's a bad idea, and that it will be your influence at fault when they do. I mean, everybody deals with this, but I imagine the worse off your situation, the worse the fear is.
As Facebook-privacy scary as that sounds, many accounting start ups ask for this information. Xero, inDinero, Less Accounting, and Mint all do.
Tell that to the many, many people I know who are using Django on RHEL. There's a reason why we just (as of Django 1.2) got around to dropping Python 2.3 support...
A Defense for Digital Advertising
Giant Spiderwebs Stronger Than Kevlar
It also has no real support, even at the enterprise level[1]. At MacWorld 2009, the entire Mac IT speakers track agreed that their best move had been switching all of their servers to Linux, hands-down, simply because Apple isn't interested in being a serious player in the server space. If you're a small design shop, yeah, an XServe is probably going to be fine but if your needs are any more serious this is a lot of risk to take for generally more expensive servers.

[1] Simple example: 10.5.2 broke NFS permissions so non-owners could not write to files. The phone support could do nothing about this and we had two choices: wait months for the next fix, patch darwin ourselves and run with a custom kernel (i.e. completely unsupported), or use a different server. The situation's not much better on the hardware side.
Angie's List scores another $22.5 Mill investment