skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's the problem with Scott Adams' article: it doesn't lay out exactly what the problem is. He says that "the system," by which he means the Constitution, no longer functions because it was designed too long ago.

His proposed course of action is to redesign "the system."

This presumes that "the system" as it currently exists reflects the original design. Which it manifestly does not. Not only was the Constitution amended 27 times, vast parts of the federal government are not even close to constitutional in a way that the Founders would have recognized.

And if the system no longer works as designed, that doesn't actually pinpoint what the problem is. What is causing it not to work? If a system no longer produces the desired outputs, is it because the system is broken or because you're feeding it garbage inputs? As George Carlin said about American politics, "garbage in, garbage out" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk&NR=1

So, Adams is calling for people to design a new system that will accept garbage inputs and produce desirable outputs. Moreover, he ignores that the current system-as-is-operated is not a reflection of the system-as-designed. Asking for a redesign of the original spec and blaming the original spec, when current practice flouts with contempt the original spec, simply misses the point and will produce an embarrassing misdiagnosis from which an embarrassingly incorrect solution will be derived.
Remember that I started this discussion off by saying "This author makes compelling arguments for implementing application level paging." I'm down with his arguments - people have actually made them before, and I thought they were good arguments then, too. But I can't say "Yes, I agree, what you have done improves performance" until I actually see performance comparisons.

But that's only the first level point. The second level point is: are the optimizations worth it? That is, if you only improve performance by less than 1%, then it's probably not worth the hassle. These are the sorts of things that experiments can tell you.

If it sounds like I'm being pedantic: well, yes, I am. I do systems research. This is the same standard I hold myself and my peers to. If someone asked me to review a systems paper that claimed to improve something, but had no results, I'd reject it. I recognize this is a blog post and not an academic paper, but my standard for "do I accept that this is a better approach" has not changed. And I have seen plenty of blog posts with experiments.
Only time you would run into issues is if you were using something like ZFS that keeps an in memory ARC cache. If you want to run X11 apps, just get a linux computer.
No offence to the above - but it's the same reason you don't find knowledgeable people working in the Software section of the bookstore.

Go into the english-lit / history section of a good bookstore in a university town and the odds are the people working there will have degrees / PhDs in the topic.

Go into the engineering section and the guy on the till is unlikely to be a pEng/CEng.
There's a backup parachute, they've had them since the beginning.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok1.html

The main parachute deployed successfully, however the backup chute came out later as well, but deployed with some delay. As a result, Gagarin approached the Earth surface under two parachutes.
As far as I see the Zorn's paper is about mallocs vs garbage collector (moreover, specific mallocs and a specific GC), whereas the main article here is about just allocating from VM versus managing your own cache with your own file read / write.

And as others already noted, "'just' allocating from VM" can be better (less copying) once you can organize everything right and know how to manage the threads. And the main argument of the main article is "if you can't access it with different threads, VM access can block you everything" (that's the two clients complaint). That much both are right, as long nobody tries to make some too general statements like "just use always X."
The article failed to offer a model of what a cold is, how it starts, spreads, etc. You're right about Zinc.

In general the article's point was about a one sentence insight, spread into a long fluff piece with the hook of a counter-intuitive zinger.
I think if the startup has to do with helping bands survive independent of record labels, there's plenty of room. Once the secret formula to finding success as a musician without a major record label is discovered, all bets are off for the suits.
Why Right Aligned Buttons Work Best on Long Forms
If WM7 is so important, why is it that Microsoft explicitly does not support syncing with 64-bit Outlook? This has led me to conclude that they've already given up, and when my PocketPC dies, I'll be looking for an Android.
From a recruiter e-mail I received this week:

The position is based in Bucharest but
extensive international travelling is required.

Umm… thanks, I guess.
Vlad, Right or wrong, it's still a stereotype, and I'd appreciate that it be kept off the air.
Signed: Arrogant Frenchman ;-)
Dan
maybe he ment the 'Mediterranean Time'. Lets meet at 2, usually means around 2:10 2:15, or whatever. This will be done in 30 mins, means 45, 1hr, etc.

Just the nature of the cultures, where they take it chill, drink a lot of coffee, and never rush for things, work to live, not live to work. Maybe that's why they have lower GDPs compared to the northern ones.
I haven't yet quite concluded that he's a scumbag, but it did raise my suspicions that he never mentioned what his business was or what the exact nature of the complaint was.
Isn't this like taking out a giant ad saying win7-mobile is so technically poor - we have decided the only way to compete with Apple and Android is in court with software patents?
Good luck. You would convert a lot more visitors into subscribers by making the subscription method front and center.
Thin Device Computing
I was almost sure that I should have mentioned "at least in Romania". Here, students joke about this when they're late, although it's still not a rule, it's more like a (bad) custom.
What about borrowing some ideas from new twitter? I really like the way the official ipad client works. Maybe a listing with a short quip/headline under each picture/name and then a slide-out pane with more in depth info on the person.
"bringing guns in a spaceship sounds like the opposite of safe"

After the millions of pounds of propellant spent on getting them to and from orbit, you're going to sweat a few grams of gunpowder? Everything in space is an explosive if you consider the kinetic energy involved. The gun is one of the few things in the spacecraft we can honestly say we have centuries of experience with; if that even shows up on your top 100 list of risks and concerns, you've got a pretty damn safe space program.
The "pro" that I am is sysadmin, and I'm asserting that evaluating all three is a waste of time.

Splunk, given its cost and complexity, is almost never right for startups.

Non-ng syslog is, on the other hand, so simplistic that it's not worth the effort of fancy configuration. Is there some kind of compelling advantage that I've been overlooking?

I never quite understood the conceit that every environment is a precious-and-unique snowflake requiring careful evaluation of any given tool.
Flying Robots Provide Wifi After a Disaster [video]
Most of these are downright ridiculous... I mean damn it's like they patented common sense...
from the article: "90% of their desktops running Ubuntu"

It's on the workstations too.
Fellow Free Spirit
Also academic quarter is not 15 minutes, it's 15 minutes divided by year of study ;)

At least i Poland :)
Microsoft used to say that Linux TCO was lower than Windows. Clearly that argument it totally inapplicable to consumer phones. Their choices are very limited at this point, so I expect the patent shakedowns to continue. So far, it is working like a charm... Amazon, Salesforce, HTC, etc. I see no reason why they'd stop.

Oh sure, they could try competing based on the quality of the product. But I think they realize this is too difficult for them to pull off now.
This is definitely true for me, though it varies based on the situation. I do find it somewhat rude/annoying to wait for people when meeting at a restaurant, mostly because it's somewhat awkward to wait. But if we're meeting at a coffee shop, I don't really care if they come on time or 30 mins late; I have plenty of stuff I can do in the meantime.
Bummer. And there don't seem to be any services like BoltBus or MegaBus who are dirt cheap, offer wifi, and I'd think probably are more comfortable. (One of them was offering $2 fares between Boston and Philadelphia a while back. Right now it's $29. Not quite as far as SEA-SFO, though.)

My bad. As you were.
It's exactly the same in Belgium, and in my 6 years of going to university it happened exactly once.

It was very helpful to decide that we should no longer wait and could assume the lesson was cancelled, instead of waiting around for an hour and a quarter not sure if the professor was coming or not.
Windows Phone 7 is a really good vapor-ware. And ridiculous patents + broken patent system are the key to success
> At 8:05, as I arrived at the restaurant,

They were both late.
I prefer not to step on toes so strongly, so I would be diplomatic and say something along the lines of "I did not anticipate dinner taking so long, so I cannot stay."

Variations include "I am on a tight schedule. I'm sorry but 20 minutes in without even ordering is too much." If texting, I have found word choice to be crucial in delivering how upset you are since there is no tone of voice.

Inclusion of an actual reason and/or "maybe next time" is completely optional.
The parent link was just updated by TOSBack/EFF. Looks like the versions were accidentally flipped (it was showing the reverse of the revision). In fact the new TOS adds the clauses which prohibits app producers from selling your data.
Central America taps volcanoes for electricity
vapor-ware? seriously? The OS has shipped to OEMs already. It actually does exist.
Was it necessary to write an article in WSJ about this, and style it to be a nation wide phenomenon? If your friends being late annoys you, tell them, or stop meeting them.
Bring back Geocities (yea it sucked, but it's part of the history of the internet)

Bring back their own branded search (kill the Bing contract)

Bring back Yahoo Shopping APIs
This makes me consider:

1. Being able (or expected) to enjoy your work is a relatively new thing in human society.

2. There's a set amount of people who will be passionate (or not) about their work no matter what, and for these people it's more about personalities or culture. I am thrilled to do software development, but I would also be thrilled to work in a coffee store. I'd also be thrilled to make pizzas all day, every day, or to push carts around a parking lot all day and help old people load their groceries. I've loved every job I've ever had, from landscaping to tutoring. How do the "Me's" factor in to this percent?

So I wonder two things:

How many people would say they are passionate about their work 100 years ago? 200? 300?

What are the bounds that it can reasonably be? In other words, whats the least and most it could reasonably be in a population? Even if everyone were farming serfs, whats the % going to look like? Will it be around 82%? More? Less?

I have a strong suspicion (cultural?) attitude and economic conditions (are you being taken care of? good food/healthcare/places to go?) has a lot more to do with it than anything else.
s/effectively/ineffectively/
No. It is more like taking out a giant ad and saying we own lots of patents and rather than sit on a wall with a plaque we intend to extract value from them, because that is what our shareholders demand.
Your premise, that U.S. government structure was designed, is wrong, and analogy to computing buzzwords strenuous.

U.S. government is not all that different (in the big picture) from most other governments and the reason is because it's a result of a long evolution of a system whose basic blocks are not that different from those in Roman empire.

Sure, if you go deep enough, there will be plenty of differences between U.S. system, French system or German system, but they all share the attributes you mentioned (local governance, various checks and balances in the system, a way to modify the laws).
Thanks.

I thought the block quote in the first paragraph was in-your-face enough but I'll definitely listen to this advice as I have very little experience trying to convert users. Most sites I build already have a defined audience.
i was in this business for many years with sources of supply in taiwan hong kong and china. how to find good factory in my experience really comes down to your relationship with your counterpart on the other side. how can we know which factory is good for specific product? we cant. we would have to guess. so in other words in my opinion to find good factory you need to know someone over there ... and *they can find it...
I think it's implicit that we're discussing the China of the present, not the past. Arguably, the fact that the government was smart enough to change course and get out of the way (somewhat) is evidence of sound decision-making.

(My opinions regarding China are neither strong nor well-informed, I'm just playing devil's advocate.)
This is my experience as well. the amazon site seems to make it look like I'm buying through amazon, though it's actually sold by 'some company in the small print'

I agree with the OP that 15% is pretty high for selling commodity stuff, but amazon seems, ah, sub optimal for lead generation because they make it look very similar to just buying from amazon. Like you, I've never gone from buying through amazon to buying direct from a merchant.

I think in some cases, the 15% might work out. As far as I can tell, when you buy in small lots you can often get a better deal than larger, more "reliable" lots, just 'cause someone further up the chain from you took a loss, (like someone bought a bunch, then went out of business and liquidated the lot at below-cost prices.) or because corruption is such a large problem (the larger the corporation, the more kickbacks are expected, as far as I can tell. If I own the company, kickbacks aren't going to get me to choose an overall more expensive vendor, it's my money, either way.)

either way, from what I've seen, often smaller lots from smaller resellers can be had cheaper than larger lots from more reputable resellers, even after you amortise out fraud/misrepresentation losses, so it's possible that the guy who sold me the cheap ESD wristbands on amazon really has more margin on the product than amazon direct would have.
Actually, I suspect that you and the author might be in agreement. Your "quality monitors and computers" would be considered "top notch" by many companies, not because they actually are, but because said companies don't care about treating their developers well. My home office is basically an Ikea Jerker desk, and an Aeron chair that I bought used on craigslist for $500 (CAD). I think most employers would consider that a top notch setup for a developer. :(
Analytical content covers different topics. Not product launches, deals and executives moves. It is about opportunities, trends and introductions to the new areas. E.g. should the next wave of startups start from China market? How? What is the potential of sell-to-government market? What is a 5-year outlook on TV business?

Here is an example of content (my own writing) that is an analytical alternative to tech blogs: http://bit.ly/PublicGood
Yes, I understand. I meant that as in contrast with the apollo craft which had 3 parachutes but could still land safely if one of the them failed.

Here, with the backup parachute 'undeployed' until needed you'd presumably have a window where the craft was too low to deploy another chute but high enough for the occupants to suffer injuries or worse.

Anyway, I'm not trying to second guess the engineers here, they obviously seem to know what they're doing it's just that I found the contrast between the two strategies remarkable.
That's just one studio. It'd be interesting to see how widespread Linux usage is.
If you find this interesting, you may be interested in this as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_height_problem
This really seems doomed. Yes, Android's "free" status got it traction. But it appears that people like it. So if Win7 can't surpass it on that measure, manufacturers are still going to want to use what their customers will buy.

I mean, even if there are patent fees, that just means the phone is a bit more expensive, right? And you'll pay more for something you want than for something you don't want, right? Price does not seem to me to be the driving factor in the handset market.
What are the alternatives, though?

I quite like the three column browser for quickly finding music even if I only have a very fuzzy idea of what I would like right now. It scales quite well, even if you have a library with several thousand songs and a few hundred artists. Together with the hybrid cover view it doesn’t even look very much like a spreadsheet.

Then there’s the grid view which also has its uses. I especially like to display albums by year which gives me a nice chronological overview. Coverflow is pretty worthless, though.

I think that while iTunes gets the big picture somewhat right (at least as far as its audio library functionality is concerned) it gets many details spectacularly wrong. The UI for tagging feels ancient. Oh, and it’s modal. iTunes forces me to play column jockey. I don‘t want to change column widths just so I don’t get vertical scrollbars. iTunes should keep it all nice and tidy for me, kind of like Mail. That, and many other small details.
I usually use Firefox, and I just hit the registration wall. Out of curiosity I tried the same site with Chrome, and was allowed to see the article.

Seems their lottery is not based on IP addresses.
> syncing with 64-bit Outlook

How is that even a problem in the first place? I really will never understand some of the situations Microsoft gets themselves into.
Check out Youtube-Links.com you will enjoy it! :)
Linux is precisely as Gooey as you want it to be. So's FreeBSD, as a matter of fact.

This isn't Windows. This isn't MacOS. Each PC Unix variant offers you precisely as much choice as far as your UI goes.
"I think this is semantics"

Of course; semantics refers to meaning of words; obviously disagreement between two parties will be about the meaning of words. Probably, you mean "polemics."

Physicists are professional doctors of philosophy; by tradition; they own the right to define any theoretical subject and they defined physics as the fundamental science defining nature; which is not correct. Physics is just one way of looking at nature.
Proof by reputation doesn't cut it here. He needs to demonstrate either that it is impossible to reasonably configure Squid to do very little paging or, in the alternative, that a non-paging instance of Squid performs unimpressively compared to Varnish -- at least to support his stated thesis. This is not to say either Squid or Varnish is better, only that his criticisms of Squid appear to be unfair or naive or very poorly stated on their face.
BMI Calculator
The body mass index calculator, along with ideal body weight calculator and daily calorie calculator provided on this site is an excellent place to begin in evaluating the overall health of your body and lifestyle.
> Since this was before 911 - the 'terrorists' in question were presumably the IRA, not sure they had much of an online presence back then.

You do know that 9/11 was not the first terrorist attack on the US by Islamic extremists, do you?
I was working with a business partner on a startup a while back, and what really impressed me was their prototype, consisting of a 'database' of static pages, and updates done manually using the forms-to-email system.

The fact that they had a functional prototype, regardless of how horrible the technical implementation was, showed me that they were serious and I'd be able to communicate technical aspects to them much easier.

The takeaway is that you don't even need to learn to code to get that far, even WordPress with the right plugins can build a convincing prototype and quickly show a proof of concept to a technical developer that can take it from there.
I like the Meebo design, pretty cool. I can't imagine scrolling through each person though, just too many. Might be better functionally for a smaller group.

My company is working on a group blog style page for our profiles. IE, letting each employee take a turn at posting. The topic of the blog is what we do during our down time, weekends, etc. Again, might be tough to manage with a large group but if it's smaller, it might be a cool idea for you.
(I don't have a sample for you, it's not built yet.)
I've gotta say I really do disagree, the reason we do business/idea/marketing is because that's what we ENJOY and are PASSIONATE about. I believe that that's what's most important, being passionate, and enjoying what you're doing.

And frankly, I can only code for so long before getting bored, and losing interest. But when I'm marketing, brainstorming partnerships, and discussing potential leads with a company -- i'm in my element, and loving it. I never get tired of it.
This is a new way to youtube.
Claiming forgetfulness concerning the key would give you a way out unless they could manage to crack it - at that point you would have dodged the self-incrimination bullet but could not be legally bound to simply "decrypt it."

I agree though - the entire thing is an absurdly mucky business. Apparently however the English law doesn't have much like that in the way of loopholes, or he simply refused to decrypt it outright.
Very poorly written and yes I know who max levchin is.
I don't know if it was just me growing up, but music changed dramatically right after Napster was forced to kill itself.

Perhaps someone else can support this: "Music" has never been the same since then. It seemed so much more available, so much more pervasive, more frequently invasive to my life; better than it is now.

Like I said, I've grown. But it seems that as the generation behind me moved online in a major way, the music didn't quite follow. Its not that you can't find great music these days, it's that - ironically - it is so much more difficult to do so.

I don't see this ever changing really. The blip that was the 20 century music industry is dead and gone, replaced with essentially a long tail market of grains of sand of that - occasionally if you look hard enough - has a couple of diamonds hidden away in obscurity.

But then again, maybe I'm just getting old.
Not really; because mincore() does not generate events you'd have to poll to find out when the page-in has finished, which seems pretty wasteful. If I was doing disk I/O from an event-driven program I would rather use the Flash approach of using a small number of worker threads to perform blocking I/O. PHK says "I consider this a deficiency in POSIX standards, not in the concept of VM.", but you have to go to production with the kernel you have, not the kernel you wish you had.
Ideal Body Weight Calculator
The body mass index calculator, along with ideal body weight calculator and daily calorie calculator provided on this site is an excellent place to begin in evaluating the overall health of your body and lifestyle.
But isn't it a tautology? Its a "micro opportunity" if it doesn't take long; its quick to do because its a "micro opportunity".

I mean, there's no guarantee they exist at all, right? Depends upon your space I guess.
Exactly! Idea guys are pretty good at getting mockups and stuff done, showing off the ideas. They can pitch it and make it impressive.