skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I just want to note, as Brown grad (he specifically points to Brown rather randomly), that unless your parents are "rich" but won't give you any money, you will never have 100k in debt from Brown or any "elite" school. That's just not how it works. Now I'm not saying you don't leave with debt--most of my friends have 20k or so in debt. I have about 9k, but that not the radically high number that is being quoting. The only person I know who has a huge amount of debt is from a family who has the money to pay full tuition (retirement funds, home equity, savings, etc) but would not pay a dime for their child's education. Now, maybe that's their right, but that friend (and former roommate) is the only person I know who graduated with such serious debt that they'd go to San Jose state for grad school (although he ended up with the mindset that what's the difference between 100k in debt and 250k and is getting a masters in Great Britain before likely going on to to law school).

The problem is not the ultra-elite schools--Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Williams, Brown, etc--with large endowments and need-based financial aid. The problem is the private schools in the middle, places that charge 50k a year but don't have generous aid programs. If your choice is between your state's university and Lehigh or GWU and you don't have money, by all means take his advice. But if you don't have money, and you can get in to Brown et al, then go. It is a deal. I grew up in an incredible working class family, and I had to pay Brown $650 a semester, my father had to pay about the same amount, and I graduated with 10k in debt...I did alright and hadn't won any fancy college scholarships.

As for his larger claim that graduate school trumps undergraduate in employers minds, I think that is true only up to a point. The rankings of graduate schools across subject are radically different, and graduate school can have a lot more to do with circumstance. My wife is working at X, so I had to go to Y, I choose to do Y part-time because I love my job, I wanted to be a lawyer in Iowa so I went to Iowa state even though I got in to Harvard (know someone who did this), etc. But, the signal of what undergraduate school you went to is pretty clear and strong in most employers mind. I'm not under the delusion that Brown taught me much, that I could not have learned anywhere else, but the school you go to sends a strong economic signal about your abilities merely due to the admissions gateway itself. Now, there are special cases where you find yourself in your 20s and all that, but to many employers, being organized and "smart" enough high school so that Brown, Yale, Williams, UChicago accept you, is a relative indication of your abilities, even if you went somewhere less prestigious for grad school.

Most importantly, though, on this second thought, is that the cases are not as clear cut as the author suggests. Signaling and employment are complicated, and they don't boil down to any simple formula like undergraduate reputation < graduate reputation or vice versa.
I had seen this before in Ogilvy's book "Ogilvy on Advertising". I had not however, seen the blog copyranter which is very informative and damn funny. Thank you for posting this.
It would depend what the scalability of your service was - if your service set up one server, and 3 days later I need 40 more identical ones up in the next half-hour, without having to manually re-enter all the settings, would your service be able to handle that? I think that would probably need to be in the minimum viable feature set.

Even with that said, I think that I would normally prefer to vertically integrate that type of work into a startup (incremental adjustments to the deploy script during dev, technical founder uses the deploy script during early days, when the business grows, a dedicated sysadmin will be required anyway) - but that does depend on the price and exactly what is offered.

If you pitched it as:
* Our core business is to license common deployment scripts (i.e. the scripts are commercial software, and you sell a license to use them).
* For a small fee, you can use our web interface to help you generate a customised version of our script - or you can edit the script yourself.
* For a small fee, we can also keep track of all your deployments and deployment scripts, and run your deployment scripts for you on demand via a web interface.

then the value proposition might make it worthwhile if the price was right.
Totally fine here.
Yep, we had this one win before: http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-an...
The Future of WCF Is RESTful
Did you have fun? Did you still have time to chase girls, take part in any clubs/intramurals, or pursue hobbies? Not that it's awful it you didn't have time - I just want to understand the trade offs required with this strategy.
Would be cool if it were javascript (it's OCaml), with nodejs I guess...
Maybe that is where the analogy breaks down. But the argument is misused a lot to imply that the desires and needs of students are irrelevant, and that students' complaints are without merit, even if they can't understand their TA.
I understand the business argument. I just think it's a poor marketing decision.

But then again, I'm HN's resident marketing ignoramus, so what do I know? ;-)
Sure, why not.

http://github.com/holman/facelette
Is YouTube Play A Sign Of Things To Come?
YouTube Play is some artsy partnership between YouTube, HP and the Guggenheim Museum in New York that highlights 25 most creative YouTube videos in something called the Biennial of Creative Video.
my facelette style stupid project project for the week: catmapper.com
> Try working with the Windows API in C#. Lack of default parameters means that for every API call I have to explicitly set about 30 options (29 of which I'm usually not using).

Both APIs and UIs can be poorly designed. I think the point is that UIs have an additional constraint -- that of being interactive. At least filling out the poorly designed Windows API signatures only has to be done once, at design time. After that, the application does it for you and never gets tired of it.

Also, the audience for APIs is developers, who are far more tolerant of necessary complexity, especially when considering an infrastructure to build off of. I mean, intuitive APIs are nice, but I appreciate a proper design (respects orthogonality, minimize leaky abstractions, etc.) even if intuition is sacrificed.

Users have neither the luxury of automation (i.e. no application layer on their side that can "pave over" any warts or tedium) nor the tolerance for violated intuition.
I'm a big advocate of gradual deployment, both in terms of features (limiting your changelog) as towards userbase (not deploying it for everybody at once if it's a sensitive update). Not really too concerned anymore about what time of the day, I think OP has a few valid points there.
I don't think the credit card is meant to reduce spam. It's meant to let them seamlessly charge you for overage.
No, I'm using enough of AWS that I really wouldn't notice the free usage quota. It's the optics I care about, not the $s.
Microsoft Sold Over 240 Million Windows 7 Licenses in First Year
Windows 7 was released on 22nd October last year. Meant to be the real successor to the extremely successful XP, Windows 7 added features like Superbar (overhauled taskbar), multi-touch support and better networking.
We use the latest MS APIs (DirectX 10.1, DirectCompute and .NET 4) to get the best native performance targeting modern Win7 PCs. Overall our product is aimed to simplify the complexity in applications like VVVV or PD, which are very powerful however have a high learning curve and less inviting that a nice vector based GUI system.
AT&T: Subscriber #s mask margin pressure
Nice post, but the phenomenon of being witty that he describes is not solely the domain of being a nerd.

There exists a class of people, collectively known as "smartasses," who exhibit these same tendencies. Being an engineer is not a prerequisite. I personally know many smartasses, most of them are not engineers.
Can you explain your last sentence? I don't understand how you serialize a process into a 0 on 1 interview. (Or is it a 1 on 0?)
Ask HN: Best emacs / git integration?
The git wiki lists no less than 6 different ways to integrate git with emacs: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Git . Fortunately, I haven't picked one yet so I hope to benefit from your collective experience.

Here's the current list:

* Magit
* Egg
* egit
* Gitsum
* git-emacs
* GitDwim

Which is better maintained, easier to use, feature complete, makes common things easy, etc.?

Which plugin do you use for git integration for emacs?
> if there were a move to make the App Store the only way to get apps for the Mac

Why does everyone think this is unlikely rather than inevitable? We already know not only that they can get away with it successfully, but their staff doesn't even feel it's an unethical way to treat their customers or the industry.
Why not? They could have said so in the rules if they wanted to forbid it. They forbade deprecated system components, not bundled class libraries.
Or are they planning to keep iTMS on Java 6 forever?
Approaching Optimality for Solving SDD Linear Systems
"about twice the quantity seen in the Sahara Desert"

Ok, surely there has to be something better to compare this to than one of the largest deserts in the world.
Link to actual paper: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~glmiller/Publications/Papers/KoutisAp...
I think there's going to be a minor explosion of tldr services in the coming months. So many people are working on it, and the technology is just about acceptable.
We submitted our site this morning and have received really good feedback, which we are going to implement on our site. I also reached out to the team with feedback and received a quick thoughtful response. I understand there is a danger to a free product, but people, it's free and you get rapid feedback, you don't have to use the feedback. I definitely think some sort of scoring to get top feed backers up to a higher level (which people could pay for) could create a value proposition.
Define "several". I've installed it within the last couple of years and gotten an uncensored clip.
Note the coincident announcement about the Mac App Store... I bet the software you can get there will run snappily enough.
> this strikes me as in the same class of uncivil moves that the FSF complains about proprietary software vendors pulling

Why? Did you buy a copy of GCC?
Here's one data point from a $270M exit:

Joined post-series-A at 0.2%. These initial options eventually got diluted down to 0.05%. I did get "re-upped" with more options over the years, so when the company exited seven years later, my total was about 0.085%.

I ended up with an extra $227K for my efforts. This was on top of an above-market salary. Not too bad, but did fall short of my expectations.
Oh, do you think your original comment was thoughtful and helpful? Looks like pure snark to me.
Apple don't really have much of an interest programmers, other than those who are developing for their platforms (OSX/iOS).

I doubt programmers make up a huge % of Mac sales either to be honest, with the success of the iPhone breaking Apple into the mainstream, I don't think it's that difficult to find casual users making the switch to a Mac
I'd probably just hire Sir Ken Robinson to put a team together and come up with a solution.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...
[Disclaimer - I work on Windows Azure]

Microsoft also offers a free promotion to all new subscribers (click "view details" link under "Buy Now" button): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/

From the site:

Included each month at no charge:

* 25hrs small compute instance

* 500MB storage

* 10,000 storage transactions

* SQL Azure 1GB Web Edition database (3months only)

Any monthly usage in excess of the above amounts will be charged at the standard rates. This introductory special will end on March 31, 2011 and all usage will then be charged at the standard rates.
I'm not stating a point here, just describing how some people view things. If you want to argue with a right-wing American, find someone else.
Here in the UK, we do not have a failing healthcare system, I would like to see corporations not waste their money paying people to do utterly non-productive work (like finding and exploiting tax loop holes).
Have you ever tried to stream a full-screen movie on Netflix using an MBA? It can't keep up, it's very annoying. I thought there was full-screen GPU acceleration for Silverlight, but it wasn't helped in my experience.
First, there isn't a clear line between "the common person" and everybody else. Every first-time user, whatever their age, is a potential power user, if they aren't taught to be subordinate to a remote corporation in the control of their own hardware.

Second, many "uncommon people" are the sons and daughters of "common people" and will learn to hack -- or not -- on their parents' computers.

Common thread: helplessness can be taught and learned. It's convenient for Apple and an inevitable state anyway for many users, but it keeps other "users" beneath their potential.
API complexity - just as much as UI complexity - represents a host of different code paths in your software that you need to manage.

You need to make sure all these code paths work; and you need to make sure they don't interact in unexpected ways. You need to test not only the well-used paths (which your users will test for you - you'll find out quickly enough if commonly-used functions fail!) but also all of your less-commonly used paths, which will bit-rot if you're not on top of them all the time.

The art of good API design is entirely different, but just as hard, as good UI design. Bolting on a bunch of new features does not a good API make - you need to ensure that you add features sensibly, orthogonally, and matching your user's expectations.

Expanding your API also means you need to make sure you have a good understanding of the load profile of all your API calls, both individually and in combination.

In short, I think the OP is underestimating the complexity involved in designing and managing an API - just because the problems arising aren't the same as those in UI design doesn't mean they're not there.
Two hundred and fifty million dollars is a lot of money, especially for the "social media" space which I'm starting to think might be starting to reach the end of its boom phase. I wonder what sort of companies they're expecting to fund.
Plus, the AppStore is the only way for iPad and iPhone - so why not Macs?
Like the application? Head on over to http://railsrumble.com/entries and vote for us!
I agree. It's also brilliant marketing. If you hadn't mentioned bacon, steak and whisky in your headline I never would have clicked and become aware of your product. And yet, here I am, discussing bacon, steak and whisky.
A customer without credit card data is not worth $400 in credits.
Best Practices for Software Selection: Tips and Lessons learned
Thanks... although I'm not really sure how this code does facelette :-)

I really should do a more non-trivial RoR project, so I can more easily read other peoples RoR code.
I will attend!

- Martin

http://openlife.dk
I guess I'm being downvoted for stating the obvious.
In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.

What would be the best water extraction technique?
I've been a FreeBSD developer since 2003 and I'm on the FreeBSD core team. I know the history of Yahoo and FreeBSD. ;-)
Incredibly easy to game that requirement at a very minimal expense, but still.
I have a better idea:

1) Populate Australia and Siberia first.

2) Convert some oceans into land (or cover oceans with land).

3) Colonize Antarctica.

If you still have not enough land to play with -- consider spending money on playing with Moon, Mars, and Venus.
On Venus? Still won't get you close to habitability. I'm not sure how long it'd take it to radiate its excess heat away, but it'd be a long time. And then you've still got an atmosphere which is horrendously poisonous and corrosive.

Besides, once you've got the technology and materials to build a solar shield which is an appreciable fraction of planet-sized, you might be questioning whether a planet is really the best place to live. Why not just live in your giant space stations?
Because it would be an insanely irrational move that would destroy the platform?

They were up on stage yesterday talking up the new AutoCAD port. The new AutoCAD port which is utterly incompatible with the posted App Store rules. The AutoCAD port that would in no way benefit from the exposure the App Store would give it, and which doesn't need and would never accept the 30% sales overhead for payment processing.

Locking the platform to the App Store would be a great way to kill Office, MatLab, Photoshop, Lightroom, AutoCAD, Steam, and a bunch of other software the platform needs if they want to keep anyone using it. To assume that it is inevitable that Apple will do it is to assume that Apple has a death-wish for the Mac platform.

But if we're going to assume that, why not just assume they'd kill the platform in the most straight-forward way possible: by discontinuing it.
It's not REALLY a priority, but a tactic for fundraising. Mint bought their domain from a VC by saying he could be the only investor in the NYC area and that would stroke his ego. The same thing needs to happen in Boston.
Lawyer stuff aside, what can I do if I don't want to exceed those limits? I could monitor everything myself and stop the services when the limits are reached, but I would prefer an automatic solution offered by Amazon. I don't want any credit card surprises while I'm still learning.
This is different at every school, and I've never heard of the system you described.

The two grad schools I've gotten a 'behind-the-scenes' look at work like this:

- a team of 3 will review applications

- the applications are split into 3 piles, one pile each

- they rank their pile in order

- the group reconvenes, and they make an argument for their favorites

The one prejudice I've heard of involves the reputation of your undergraduate school. If you weren't from a top-tier place, it would be tough to get onto the top of certain professors' piles.

That part sucks, but I can't corroborate your account of race-based admissions at all. I should also mention that I'm specifically talking about admissions to a graduate research program.
Google should pay their taxes like everyone else. Charges of tax evasion aren't good for public relations.
This is a cost-value calculation and neither approach is "best" at all cases.
Does the cost of developing the tools and procedures exceed the cost of planned downtimes during the next X years?

Often you build some tools that mitigate some of the risk and plan deployments at a less active hour to mitigate the rest of it.
Dell marketing makeover simplifies brands, kills off Adamo altogether
Beta website launched - Biznus TV - Feedback please
"Please do not go elsewhere for software"

Just to be clear, no one at Apple is actually saying this, are they?

The irony of this article's title is how many hackers and programmers swear by their Macbooks.
that was me saying thank you, and i get minus points, come on now guys
this is my thought/fear too, as I'm in the same space.

Now, I tried 'free' before and I just about lost my shirt. I got a bunch of jerks signing up with fake names and then running up my bandwidth bills with torrents, then at the end of the month, nobody, ah, "converted" so I am not going to respond with 'free'

One of my responses could be to push my larger domains (which are quite a bit cheaper than the competition) or continue focusing on the international market. (I haven't read the fine print of the amazon offer, but I'll eat my hat if they give free accounts to, say, Brazilians.)

So yeah; my current attitude is "wait and see" - as of today I'm still selling out servers as fast as I can put them up... if that changes, I'll change something.

As for slicehost/linode, my personal guess is that they will both tout their substantial customer support advantages over amazon.
Nothing, Nokia has come along way with it. It the latest (Qt 4.7.0) they are slowly getting things closer and closer to native look and feel. There are carbon and cocoa versions for the mac. The Cocoa version obviously integrate better than the carbon version will. There are also Qt classes to integrate Qt based widgets into cocoa based containers etc. Is it perfect, not even close. Is it pretty darn good, yes.
Calgary's new mayor: "Politics in full sentences"
Cool how he recommended iWantMyName.com Has anyone else used it?

Have been looking for a good domain registrar to move my domains from GoDaddy for a while.
Private Equity for Business Startups:
So you don't mind degrading an entire community, but you do mind people posting non-relevant links (which you could've easily ignored).
When I was at Google working on web search, we didn't push search infrastructure during peak hours. I think this was mostly due wanting to make sure we had spare serving capacity to failover to, in case the push was broken/had performance problems/crashed/etc. Note that "peak hours" isn't the same as "working hours". Just a few hours when we saw our highest traffic.

However, we also had a strict policy of no pushing in the middle of the night, Fridays, or weekends, for all the reasons the article listed. Most problems on a relatively mature system occur when you're changing stuff. When stuff breaks, you want to have the people involved be fresh and thinking clearly. You also want everyone who might be needed to fix something available, in the office and in front of their computers if something goes wrong. Lastly, it's not sustainable to have your engineers/operations folks regularly giving up their nights and weekends for routine operations. You should save that karma for when everything goes to hell.

This is all predicated on having pushes not negatively affect production traffic when everything goes according to plan, and minimize the impact as much as possible when something does break. One of the best ways I know to do that is to increase the amount of traffic proportional to increases in your confidence that the change is good. The idea is that any push starts off by only affecting a small part of your infrastructure/traffic, and the longer you run it without problems, the more traffic/infrastructure you push it to.

At Shopkick, we do this by pushing first to a single machine, watching it for any errors for a few minutes, then gradually pushing it to the rest of our machines. If anything goes wrong, only a portion of traffic was affected, and the portion is well correlated to the probability of having a problem.
What are you expecting to find on an asteroid which is valuable enough to make the trip economically viable?
It is the same problem, but you just don't deal with it at the same point. With UI you are forced to make it simple or users won't be able to figure it out. With an API, you can make it complex, but you will end up having to support that and a 1000 features within an API, no matter how simple, will always be harder to manage than 10.
Online censorship news belong to HN too. Any entrepreneur with user-generated content can face this problem. This might become the norm, just like with music/video and copyright.
Free PNG Credit Card, Debit Card and Payment Icons Set (18 Icons)
If a user is looking for a resource that is not available via the community, the service can offer a commercial alternative.

I have built a first version of a service for sharing physical stuff (yet unreleased) and monetization seems like a no brainer.
MacBook Air 11" Model A1370 Teardown
Time will tell, and until that point, this is just a rant without any evidence.