skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you've been "backgrounding" jobs (for async tasks for example where the client wants to fire and forget) Gearman has the option to have a persistent queue. There're a few options for persistence...

1) You can use a local SQLite file. Fast and fine for jobs you don't mind losing once if your entire box goes down. (Cache busting comes to mind)

2) You can use MySQL. If a job server dies, you can restart it and point it at the same MySQL instance. If a job server dies and the entire MACHINE is down, you can spin up another gearmand instance on another machine and point it at the right place.

If you are submitting "foregrounded" tasks, meaning your client requires a response, Gearman's way of handling failure is pretty simple. When gearmand (the server) dies, the client will see you lost a socket connection. It is then up to the client to determine what to do in that failure scenario. It sounds like in your case, you just want to resubmit it. This should be pretty easy to do.

As an FYI, I'm currently the maintainer of the python-gearman 2.x series API. We (derwiki and I) have been using Gearman in production for the past few months now and it's worked out pretty well for us. Implementation's a snap and running the daemon's pretty trivial.
Lucene's lucky that Solr merged with them :)

-former Solr committer
I have an account but just have no idea what I am doing. I am taking a Linux class right now to try and figure it all out.
I know a few non-profits who get tens of thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft software and Cisco hardware for mere pennies on the dollar. Every year.

What would they be using if these large companies weren't so "generous"? Probably lower-cost alternatives, free, and open source options. And then they'd tell their non-profit friends about it. Not a good idea for Microsoft's bottom line I bet.

For companies like 37s and BingoCardCreator, on the other hand, a non-profit discount probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
A better-formed statement would be something along the lines of: if this movie does well in the mainstream, then there will likely be a surge of interest in web start-ups.

The self-promotional prefix is irrelevant.
Parallel Prefix Notation
I disagree. I would say I've learned about 40% of what I know about programming by typing stuff in and seeing if I like it. The other 60% I've learned by reading other people's code and stealing the techniques I like.

For example, I learned C by myself when I was in middle school. The memory management technique I developed independently was "the library allocates, the application frees". No errors in valgrind, and my app works.

Then I started reading other people's C code, and switched my technique to "the application allocates, the application frees". Now C is a lot easier to write!

Assuming that you're the smartest person on Earth only gets you to a local maximum. To get to the global maximum, you have to interact with other people.

The way you interact with programmers is with source code.
You can't begin to understand something the size of emacs before you've taken a bunch of steps in between, and looking at 'toys' makes you understand how toys are put together as well as gives you the skills you need in order to appreciate what makes stuff tick one 'level' up from there.

When I was a kid my 'toy' programs would be a few hundred lines of assembler or basic, rarely beyond that. Then the first time I hit a thousand lines (a score editing program) I realized that my old techniques didn't work any more and I discovered structured programming. This worked well for a while until the limits of organization for a single file were reached and I had to start splitting up the code in to large chunks that 'belonged' together in separate files and so on.

And that's just the organizational stuff, never mind the actual code or data structures.

To throw someone in on the deep end of that and saying 'Swim!' is not going to work except for a very few people that are genius level. The GGP might be one of those but for the rest of so (let's say ordinary mortals) that's not how you learn the fastest.

Of course, once you're ready for a 'big' program (say 50K lines and up) it really will be a great step forward, once you've mastered to read (and work on) a program of that size it will be a huge achievement.

I've never met someone that learned how to code out of the gate by studying emacs though.

And don't underestimate how much you can get done with 'toy' bits of code, libraries are so easy to tap in to that a few hundred lines will go a long way if all you want to do is solve some problem.

Check out some of the more involved 'R' programs that float around here for good examples of that.
If that's everything then it's pretty poor
ITunes a Major Platform for Phish Scammers
I'm not clear what your point is here. Perhaps you're referring to the common misapprehension that serif fonts are harder to read...
Google New: One place to find everything new from Google
Or, you know, a standard case of price discrimination (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination). Non-profit vs. others isn't a perfect measure of willingness and ability to pay, but does have some correlation. Rebates and coupons aren't perfect at identifying those with higher elasticity either, but they are still in common use.
It's funny you mention Excel. Without actually meaning to, that's where I started programming.

I ended up building all of my reports using MVC, before I even knew what a design pattern was.
I've been using http://www.gliffy.com/. It's browser-based, and pretty robust.
the title should probably read "(the tweets so far)" because, as we all know, opinions and articles delivered via twitter are not always "facts."
That is tough, been trying the part time route for almost a year. Realized, if nothing else, the delays in implementing would obsolete the idea.

A year ago when I started, there were just 2 major competitors to mine, after a year of working on it part time, now there are half a dozen more good competitors. Not trying to be a skeptic, and I also had other factors against me.

Finally I have decided to quit my job soon and focus on the start up full time, Otherwise I am sure the one I am working on now won't even have a sliver of a chance at success.
I disagree; you don't need to understand all of Emacs to read the source code. You type "C-h k", press a key, and then the source code for the key you just pressed is displayed. It's written in a simple procedural style. Now instead of guessing how that works, you know.

You might be adventurous and read the rest of the file. Now you know how a whole major mode works.

Before you know it, you are applying those techniques to your own code without realizing it -- and now your code works like the rest of Emacs.

Show me any Emacs extension on the Internet, and I can tell you exactly how the author learned Emacs Lisp -- that's how different "I learned everything myself" and "I read the Emacs source code" methods of learning are.
That reminds me of the idea of mailing a GPS logger. How practical/legal is this? Are functional electronics likely to get through the mail with no problems?
An average of 5 requests per second from a casual game's client is a sign of a poor design. Realistically you very close to 1 user action = 1 request. Now, a top tier starcraft micromanager may average pull 300 actions per (ed: minute), but an average user should be somewhere around 1 action per second to 6 actions a minute.

PS: The key to pulling this off is running the same simulation on the client using the same random seed.
User clicks attack blob with fork. > Client says: attacked blob at (timestamp, with fork) > Server says: blob took X damage at (timestamp) random seed at (value) > Client shows: A long string of actions that adds up to that value and or requests a new game state if something does not add up.
This is pretty obscure, but in Hungarian, the 'gy' letter makes a sound very similar to the 'dge' sound at the end of the word 'edge.' I read the domain as 'redge,' as in the beginning of the word register. Obviously, that will work for almost no one else (statistically).
One possible good application: effectively banning trolls and spammers
AFAIK Lynx does not download images, Javascript or CSS files, leading to significant reduction in total download size.
Arguably correct spelling and grammar and punctuation matters more in business where it actually affects credibility, rather than a silly letter grade between you and your teacher.
I know several people that started their programming career in excel spreadsheets, it's actually quite scary how far they got with their stuff before they ran in to the limits of excel. The natural follow up to that was visual basic and then more and more 'mature' environments.

One of them got so successful with his VB program formerly spreadsheet that he ended up making a very impressive fortune with it.
This is a great guide that goes into exquisite detail but it is, unsurprisingly, not a great fit for the web. I lifted a few guidelines from the site (and added some detail) to give a better overview of what is most often overlooked and easily corrected in web typography. The ones I most wish would find a wide adoption:

There should be between about 45 and 75 characters in a single line. If there are not the user should at least be able to adjust the number of characters in a line.

Don’t justify without hyphenation. Never justify monospaced typefaces.

Use a single space between sentences.

Don’t letterspace lower case.

Pick an appropriate line height. The default is nearly always too small, especially for body text. Increase it but don’t break it.

Use the non-breaking space for mathematical and numerical expressions (like 4 cm).

Use hyphens, dashes and quotes correctly. (Not on the site and not a common mistake in the past but today it is everywhere.)
In the original post, he described not being able to scrape together $300 for a test to go to college at all, and "not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids". Sounds like exaggeration to me.

Minor correction: the $300 for college story is from a person called Soni in the comments, not in the original blog post. The bit about not taking a job, I can easily see being observation of his parents; that's how I interpreted a lot of the items in the list, as things he saw his family go through as he grew up. He himself has obviously done pretty good, but that's not to say he couldn't have shared at least parts of these experiences.

In general I agree with the superiority of reason over emotion; but there are a lot of people out there who can't be reached easily through reason, for whom statistics just sit there, meaningless. I think it's useful to have these emotional appeals out there, as it hits at a different level.
pg@ycombinator.com
Computing at Chaos Manor, September 20, 2010
They could respect their own guidelines a little better but the content is great.
How to Make Methodology Chapters for Dissertations
The methodology chapter of the dissertation provides the reader with an understanding as to the process that was undertaken to come up with a set of results. The credibility of the writer is substantiated with a good methodology chapter. Therefore, it is vital that you learn how to make methodology chapters for dissertations.
Looks pretty, but honestly I'd rather have all text to be able to scan quickly. Is there anything like that around?
Munger. Come on, it's right in the link.
I'll have to try a couple teas - I've never liked the standard though. Mind you I'm a 16 y/o male so stereotypes against teas are my second nature ;)
This is really neat, although still a work in progress. I'd thought about doing this for ages, at least for my own purposes, but now I see it like this I think he should open it up as a community effort, or at least encourage comments and contributions.
Depends on the niche. Have a look and see what typical keywords you expect to wind up on your site garner on AdWords; if you can attract eyeballs for less than, say, 40% of that price (to allow for Google's margins) – including your time or cost for content generation – then you might make some money.

But you'll need quite a lot of traffic in a reasonably high-purchasing-intent niche.
That doesn't suprise me, I was running a network for 150 computers while in college and one of the computers was always doing a crazy amount of download and upload (order of gigabyte a day). Our IDS flagged it and I started investigating what was going on. I finally figured out that the users was using a flash game site. I couldn't believe a darn stupid game could cause that much traffic but we asked the person to stop for a day and it was exactly that.
Interesting. Are you just providing graphed data or how far are you taking this for your users? Moving averages and derivatives? Regression analysis?
I run a non-profit organization; we aren't yet in position to need much in the way of software, but when we get there, it's gonna be open-source all the way unless it's clear that doing otherwise is in the best interest of the organization.

Non-profit pricing is nice, but my general approach is that if I'm not willing to pay full price, I'm probably also not willing to pay the non-profit price.

Conversely, if I'm willing to pay the non-profit price, then I'm also usually willing to pay the full price. If not, I make do with free alternatives.
what a meaningful comment to upvote!
Yes, teachers have an extremely stressful typical workday, particularly if they have a subject that involves grading papers or if they have to deal with parents. I don't think anyone is disputing that they should be making decent money. However, that gives them no right to automatic discounts just because they happen to work for an educational institution. Obviously patio11 would prefer his own job. What does that have to do with it?
What no hits counter?
While I know that article is US centric, in Canada, it's a good idea to incorporate. A lot of companies and subcontracting agencies won't talk to you unless you're incorporated.

Has more to do with the government perceiving you to be a full time employee from a taxation perspective (looks like a duck, quacks like a duck) and liability related to that (a contractor at one of the big banks once sued for medical benefits and won, setting a nasty precedent).
> 300 actions per second

You mean per minute, right? Either that or I'm way worse at SCII than I thought.
Screen readers are only part of the problem. A colorblind user might not even notice that something changed. :)

I'll definitely cover some tips on how this works. I have a chapter in http://www.pragpub.com/titles/bhh5/ that shows how to use HTML5's ARIA support to alert the user to feedback.

(edited - fixed link)
When I taught, I was working 10-12 hour days (some of this was due to my own inefficiency, and some of it was due to the massive inefficiency of the school in which I taught) and pulled in about $30k/year. Our salary schedule was such that the most I could earn without a doctorate was about $38k (after 20 years of experience).

That said, there are plenty of grant programs within schools. At least two of the districts in the city in which I live now have foundations set aside for things like this.
Review of the Cheap ZT1 ePad I Bought off eBay
Instant Burning Man
You can change this now to be about a single small module in emacs, but originally you wrote:

> Is Emacs bugging you? Open the source and see how it works. Web server crashed? Read the source and fix the bug.

Both emacs and web servers are major programs, and analyzing them 'from the source' for debugging purposes is a different thing than analyzing how a single minor module works in it's normal environment. Debugging can have you rooting around in the basement fairly quickly, which is more than likely to overwhelm a novice.

Sure, emacs is built that way, but Lisp code isn't quite as easy to understand and debug as you make it out to be (judging by the number of people that hack around in emacs vs those that don't) and you have to keep in mind that you are very good at this, so it may be a bit hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone just starting out and maybe not at your particular level of genius.

What's easy for me may not be easy for you and vice versa, and hacking emacs as a start - at least to me - seems to be a bit much.

Plenty of people have trouble getting slime working, let alone hacking around on the guts of emacs without an experienced hand around to guide you.
Nice timing on exploring this topic. The DoJ just finished a round of title III revisions to the ADA, they've been exploring expanding the mandate for accessibility to more websites. (If anyone has a good analysis of the final rules wrt the web, I'd appreciate a pointer. I'm under the impression that any changes aren't very broad-reaching.)

"The Department has consistently interpreted the ADA to cover Web sites that are operated by public accommodations and stated that such sites must provide their services in an accessible manner or provide an accessible alternative to the Web site that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The final rule, therefore, does not impose any new obligation in this area. [...] The Department intends to engage in additional rulemaking in the near future addressing accessibility in these areas and others, including next generation 9-1-1 and accessibility of Web sites operated by covered public entities and public accommodations." (fedreg pp56236-56285)

They use an example of online ticket purchasing as a common hardship. (eg by losing timely access to popular events due to the need to use another method to purchase the tickets.)
Only very loosely related, but this is one of the cooler bicycle hacks I've heard about: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bichain-fixed-free.html.
A Gentle Introduction to CouchDB for Relational Practitioners
let me add a little something

programming is about languages and tools, whatever is your anger or need,
some are more approachable than others

my dark beast for 10 years have been C and by extension C++,
got this kind of stupid idea that to be a "real" developer you have to know how to program in C

and true for 10 years I tried to learn C/C++, just learning it for fun or curiosity, and for 10 years it went nowhere, could not wrap my head around it

I was just giving up after a couple of weekends, losing interest,
and that was to blame on the fact I was just trying to learn it for the sake of knowing it,
I didn't really needed it

and then on a somewhat big open source C++ project I found a little bug (really a shit of bug that can be fixed in 2sec), I could compile the project but not really write C/C++, but still could fix that bug

that's what I would call "anger", knowing that this stupid little bug can be fixed in no-time by someone like me (being a total noob)

but from this "anger" came a very unexpected thing

on my day to day work, wether it's ActionScript, Java, PHP, Python, etc.
I can code it in my sleep, sure there are still some bugs and complexities,
but still nothing that I can consider impossible

because trying to add features to that big C++ code base, was something very hard to do for me and to some extend "impossible" or "how the hell I gonna do that", it ended up being
extremely rewarding and a kind of an obsession

so my little contribution would be to add: it's not only about the anger and the need,
it is also about how hard it is for you to do it

yep, hard is fun

the harder the better ;)
that is its biggest advantage.
Hopefully Twitter's lawyers are taking notes…
How to win a political chart war
* You only get the GAE database, no RDBMS, not even alternate nosql things like Mongo.

* Doing geo stuff on GAE is pretty infeasible.

* You can't run other commands, e.g., shell out to git.
* You can't connect to any services except HTTP (on port 80/443).

* While you can use the database instead of a filesystem most of the time, it's often harder. Even simple things like using a library that does file-based caching adds challenges to code reuse on GAE.

* There are no C-based libraries on GAE, including things like lxml, image processing libraries, etc. GAE slowly adds new GAE-specific libraries for some of those operations, but slowly and inconsistently.

Often an app won't need these things, but maybe at some point in the future it will -- with GAE you are kind of stuck at that point, or you have to setup external services to augment your core GAE app (removing a lot of the operational simplicity of GAE). And because Django Zoom uses individual virtual servers there's no point at which you can't somehow accomplish what you want to accomplish, even if it's not something directly baked into the service.

In practice it's extremely uncommon to develop an application then move to GAE -- people always develop for GAE from the beginning.
If one of the principal reasons for choosing your product is an opportunity to maximise profits, then an organisation that doesn't actually have that motivation arguably derives less value from it and logically ought to be less willing to pay market price. Same applies for discounts "for academic use" etc. Price discrimination isn't just about assuming a particular entity has less funds, period.

Whilst nonprofit != charity it's also perfectly reasonable to make the value judgement that it's fair to implicitly subsidise social goals at the expense of other clients' shareholder returns. Provided no laws are being flaunted, I can offer discounts on a service I provide to people for virtually any whether its because I believe in their mission, like them on a personal level, respect their OAP or veteran status or just desperately want their money. One of my local curry houses gives discounts to Arsenal season ticket holders. Nobody should feel _obliged_ to make these concessions, but when many companies do makes sense for nonprofits to ask the question. I bet 37signals get plenty of emails from startups and small businesses asking for a dose of sympathy and lower prices too.

Sometimes, where you have a high margin business and close competitors that will discount, it makes sense to give them what they ask for too.
The Terrible Truth About Tax Cuts (The Question of Richess is Irrelevant)
Excited to see it. I just hope the real life facts dont get in the way of my enjoyment. At this point, if they try to make Eduardo out to be the good guy, I'm probably going to walk out of it. In every report I've read about the early stages of that company, that guy sounds like a real douche-bag.

Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House was a good read, but it sounded very embellished / made up. I didn't trust it as a read of non-fiction. And the movie 21 was just a complete piece of crap.

However this movie is directed by the guy who did Fight Club, so I'm sure it'll be turn out (and be reviewed) pretty well
It is a personal record. Very much on the honor system. It is used during interviews as a culling criterion. Must meet certain minimum hours and so on.

Would you care to help me build an app as j* suggests?
It's the beginning of the end of yet another bubble as far as I read the tea leaves, and I'll be very happy when all those throwing silly money at unproved concepts have gone away to lick their wounds for another decade or so.

The current bubble is powered by the success of the likes of facebook, twitter and mint, everybody that has a $ to spare wants to be in on the action.
Convertible notes allow founders to close angel deals one at a time with varying valuations. It makes it much easier for small angels to compete with big angels. The old practice of stock issuance required a big angel to make the whole deal happen, and they could dictate terms. Now, big angels are losing their advantage over small angels.

I understand why they're unhappy, but I encourage them to compete fairly on their merits rather than anything anti-competitive.
I now have a goal. Thank you.

...Now what?