skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Right now, on Debian you can do

# apt-get install oracle-xe

And get the free version of Oracle, as easily as you can get MySQL. You can't do that with DB2. Oracle has a public Yum server too: http://public-yum.oracle.com/
Hm, well, this thread doesn't appear on the "ask" section of HN, only in "new", so I think I may have missed something if there's a way to control that.

Rationality can definitely lead to pessimism if you're not careful, but I think most pessimism is actually quite irrational. Rationality can also be used to support optimism (for example, it's rationally possible that I become really successful). So I try to live by what I call "optimistic rationality" (if that hasn't been coined already. :) )
With the numbers involved, it's almost impossible to not have sex with people that are essentially strangers. It's a new partner every month. Whether or not its fun or "moral" if you are having sex with that many people you are an STD vector, even moreso if you're not using protection as evidenced in her abortion comment.
I don't think so. Look how many people are talking about it on twitter: http://twitter.com/search?q=kik

I also know Ted and he's not the type to make up numbers for attention. Keep in mind that they've been working on some variation of this for over a year, so while they took off virally very quickly, it's not an "overnight success", it's a "hard work finally pays off" one.
Not really that a great product is mandatory, but simple, easy to pronounce names when combined with simple and easy to use apps usually equals success. It's also important that the name can be attributed to the people using the app (Kiksters, Tweeters, Googler etc), and the actions can come from the name as well (Kiks, Tweets, Google it). Also leave room for apps using your api (if you have one) to take advantage of your name, (Twitpic, etc). Combining all that when picking a name really helps.
The first 40% of the article started out OK actually.

Then it goes to pot and turns into some sort of political rant which some point I don't understand.

Also, what BS about worker-less automated factories. Has he even seen high tech factories? They will still need workers for many years to come. And anyway, these factories are more likely to be in the BRIC and other low cost countries still.

A flurry of these factories firstly are not coming to the UK and secondly (if they did) are not likely to bring the UK back to relevancy.
That makes sense, but people really like to see a future before investing (money or sweat).
strange

quoting the blog post "We re-launched Kik Messenger 15 days ago with 0 users"
Please to elaborate on these "other technological factors and social trends." If there's too much panic on one side by those who are losing their jobs, there seems to be a great deal of hand waving and talk about "other factors" by those who are less affected by these "trends".
I'm a Linux user. This is just my work machine.
Just a word of warning, be careful about making such comments.

I know someone who was visited by FBI at their workplace, and at home, because of what they said on a message board. They speculated about how a terrorist attack _could_ happen.

Then there is the recent case of Yasir Afifi. FBI were tracking him because his friend made a post that caught their attention.

Unfortunately our law enforcement and other government agencies don't interpret "freedom of speech" like most regular citizens do. And it certainly doesn't guarantee protections against harassment and embarrassing bullying that accompanies such "investigations"
I've also posted questions and read responses on SO, but I believe I still haven't figured out how to "use" StackOverflow.

My first experiences with the site weren't too good: I tried to upvote a comment (I mean, there's a big fat arrow to the left of the comment!), and then I tried to answer the question and I believe it didn't let me either...
Offtopic but how did you get your twitter feed to display itself like that: http://twitter.com/borud/
Indeed, the picture does look a little different... it looks like people will not be "given work," either.
Because it is essentially Blackberry Messenger for all smartphones.

Many people only use Blackberry because of the speed and D/R status of BBM regardless of how they feel about the device.
If I were you I'd make in InfoPass appointment with USCIS and ask them. Personally, if you have European bank accounts and the money just goes there, and you're not developing new apps, I doubt there would be a problem, but I am definitely not a lawyer, and J-1 visas are rarely treated with the benefit of the doubt.
This reads like an argument analysis answer choice on the LSAT or GMAT. In a good way.
It seems to me that Demand Media is the realization of the original dream of "The Mining Company" (later became About.com). They've created an efficient marketplace for generating content in direct response to user's search queries.

But how does content specifically designed to answer a question, make more money showing contextual ads than it costs to produce the content in the first place? If the content is answering the query, what ads are users clicking after reading it?
If I had to guess, software is probably a custom build of OS X that can run on 3rd party hardware, or the normal version and custom EFI firmware for the hardware.

For hardware they probably buy off the shelf parts, although a custom design ala Google's wouldn't surprise me.
What the hell? American McGee has large eyes like a classic angel: http://american.mcgee.usesthis.com/

edit: Look, I'm not dissing the man. His eyes are angelically beautiful. I must admit, probably not an insight into what tools he uses, but I just hadn't noticed before.
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Albert Einstein
So when Oracle monetizes it's products it's slimy, eh? What about when hackers do it for their apps?
I'm not the author...
Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books).

I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days.
But heritability expressly excludes non-additive factors so I don't think that should be a problem. I agree that non-additivity affects the overall variance.
Intuition and rational thinking are most powerful when you get them to agree. If I reason my way to a conclusion that doesn't feel right, that's a good indication that I missed something or discounted some aspect that I shouldn't have. And if I have a gut feeling, I won't act on it until I can rationalize it.*

* Of course, rationalizing a gut feeling is far from objective. But at least it makes you think things through.
It's there now. Sometimes it takes a minute.
This is really bad idea. Java and the JVM can still be greatly improved. Closures, fixing generics, tail call optimization, module system, faster startup, etc.

JavaFX will be a nice improvement once it's integrated with Java.
Firstly, this is awfully impressive. Kudos to the Kik team!

I'd love to know more here. Out of these 1,000,000 users, how many of these are actual activated users? After 15 days, what's the retention like? Where are all of these users coming from, and how does the origin of the user affect activation and retention?

One lesson that we've been learning the hard way is that it's one thing to acquire users, and it's another thing entirely to convert a new user into a long-term, engaged customer. I'd love to hear how Kik is approaching that, given their success in acquisition.
Logic is great for answering life's questions; intuition is great for knowing which questions to ask.
I think that would be true for testing, but not for actual development. When I'm working I want to marginalize anything that might slow me down. You did mention the build machine should be fast - but don't most people build locally first before pushing out?

I guess it also depends on what you're building. I mostly work on stuff that isn't used by a consumer. It's going to run as a service on a machine or network of machines far more powerful than my PC. I imagine most people developing for consumers though are building websites or mobile apps. Mobile apps should be tested on a variety of devices, and it would take a pretty intense website to start bogging down most people's machines I imagine.
Yes, you can go buy name-brand hardware (Dell, IBM, Sun, HP) in a special configuration not used anywhere else in your infrastructure and install an OS on it which you don't run on any other system, all just so you can have the honor of paying Oracle. That was my point.
The fee is for the JDBC connector, not the db.. regardless of edition.. Bummer, that.
Most people do indeed consider it slimy when "hackers" package up something that used to be open source and start selling it. And, hackers generally don't have the power to turn off the free and open source versions of the project, or start suing people, like Oracle does.
The key point that's missing in this headline is that it attains that speed 'directly downwind'. Going crosswind is easy to attain speeds like this. The confounding 'magic' is that it can do this directly downwind.

As a mind experiment to explain why this seems impossible, think about what happens when the vehicle gets up to exactly the speed of the wind. At that point, there's no net wind pressure on the vehicle (if you were on the vehicle, there would be no apparent wind on your back or on your front), yet the vehicle still continues to accelerate!
IPads Become Light Source for Professional Photoshoot
The author wrote the joke article he cited, himself, so I’m pretty sure he knew it was a joke. [Doesn’t invalidate your broader point that his reasoning is sloppy and (I find) his writing neither insightful nor funny.]
(i don't know how to quote stuff you've said above so assume i have :))

I think that pessimism and rationality are close cousins. In that modern terms like 'be rational' tend to really mean that we should 'be skeptical'. Which tend to mean that we should 'be pessimistic'
You say that the dig about the wardrobe is "un-needed and unclassy" and then go on to say the writer is an "idiot". I think you need to look in the mirror and see that the pot is just as black as the kettle.
It’s Alive: Xmarks Back From the Brink
IMHO all law suites over patents in software are slimy. This my opinion as a programmer. If you are indeed a programmer, please feel free to look at this and tell me if you see any of the stuff mentioned in the lawsuit not fairly obvious. http://www.theserverside.com/report/The-Oracle-Google-Patent... . I do not think algorithms should be patentable as this stifles innovation. Oracle vs. Google lawsuit would be fun to watch -- if you like the "SAW" movies.
I think MySpace still qualifies as large -- perhaps not as large as at its peak, but the peak number is all that should matter...

http://highscalability.com/myspace-architecture
EU proposes online right 'to be forgotten'
All of what you mention already exists - MDNS is quite common, Linux can read/write HFS+, and netatalk supports the current versions of AFP.

OS X Server is basically a custom set of packages over OS X client that provide the various server functionalities, and tweak the kernel for server use.

What Linux and most other open source products lack is the smooth integration of all those server bits - in most cases the biggest directory (LDAP) integration by default. While you can do that integration on your own, it takes much more effort.
I couldn't find meaningful explanation of how they do it. The only explanations I could find sound like "Flux capacitor" explanations from "Back to the Future" comedy.

My intermediate conclusion is that it's some sort of hoax.
The airline situation seems more and more analogous to the email spam problem. Right now the government is still in the blacklist phase. Hopefully soon they'll come up with something more like a bayesean approach -- training people to recognize terrorists and bombs on a case by case basis instead of blocking broad categories.
BingoCams coming soon
I happen to have this kettle and like it, so for me this is very reassuring :D
Intuition is very often a direct result of experience--- I still remember my math professors all chanting various mantras about training my 'mathematical intuition' and over the years, I'd have to agree with them. I don't think in terms on one versus the other, if you are not using both, something is wrong. Easy to understand if you don't have any intuition, but if you do and you ignore it for the sake of 'rationality', I'm not sure that would in fact be rational! We get our ideas from a lot of different places, some more off the wall than others--- once we have them we can examine them and proceed or discard based on some presumably rational evaluation. Is intuition as valuable as rational thinking? You betcha!
"other factors and social trends" is completely abstract to me. can you give me concrete examples?
I did some research earlier. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=downwind+faster+than+wind is a good start. It's not a hoax.
it took me a few minutes to realize i can get different results each time i click the button.
Bookmarked. I will read it later.
This is true and it's a good point.

But... if I had to guess, I'd say there are probably a hundred times more sexual assaults that go unreported versus false reports.

Sexual assault is, unfortunately, very common. False reports of sexual assault are relatively quite rare. These two things do not have parity.
Don’t Drink Your Own Kool-Aid
Ddos? server misconfiguration? hmm
doesn't seem to be working in many countries and isps. anyone have some insight to share?
NoSQL and RDBMS are not competing tools occupying the same solution space. It's not an either-or, and anyone who thinks that it is has no idea what they're talking about.

NoSQL doesn't give you a tool that scales better, it gives you a different tool that might fit what you're trying to better.
Okay, I changed "wind" at the end to "downwind" to imply your point.

I wonder if this technology could be used on cargo ships to reduce fuel use.

Some of them use sails now but this seems better.
I've found that there is a trend in software development to throw out both reason and intuition, and rely upon a form of retarded "test driven" empiricism. You can't possibly be smart or experienced enough to KNOW how your for loop is going to work, it has to be thoroughly tested. The same goes for product development. We can't possibly come up with an idea that people might want, without first taking a few polls where we ask them what they want...
They are two different tools for different scenarios. Intuition is only valuable when you are experienced in something. Rational thinking, however, can be applied to areas where you have no or little experience.

Say, if a person doesn't know programming, his 'intuition' in programming would just be wild guesses and unlikely to be useful. However, he can still gather facts on programming and think rationally on it, no matter how slow and painful.

So in your original context of your post, I would suggest that we should only use intuition when we have extensive experience in that market or working with the target users. Otherwise, stay close with rationality.
We passed 600,000 users around midnight yesterday, after launching the product from a user base of 0 two weeks ago today.

From Thursday, 3 days ago. I looked around the blog, it seems they "went viral" around November 1st. I also found a claim they're getting 3 new registrations per second. Very strange, but also fantastic if it's real!

I don't have any of these devices it supports, but I get the impression the cross compatibility is what caused the popularity.
MSP430 LaunchPad toolchain for Mac OS X
The Flynn effect trend seem to indicate that the population is getting smarter over time. However, it would probably only slow down the loss of jobs. Unless, IQ increase dramatically.

Than there's the emerging invisible economy in which everything is determined by supply & demand, but also contracts that are per se, not "enforceable", and where reputation matters. That where people can find jobs in spite of the structural deficiency in the wider economy that forbid the price floor for labor to drop to where it needs to be. They are happening now.

But there's the past record in which new jobs are created out of jobs being eliminated by robots. There are demands for humans to program them, probably repair them, and so on.
It might happen again with this process of industrialization.

There's another factor: prosthetic that effect a superhuman attribute or merging of humans into machines. It seem to take forever right now, though. This could be simply be our linear point of views, but not the actual development rate.

But then again, whether or not we have jobs in the future is not determined by what arguments I make, but of the facts.
Looks like work-in-progress.
Their HTML is a mess, and the homepage doesn't even have a title tag.
Its bait and switch-- thats what makes it slimy. With Sun at helm, you never had to wonder if your JVM was intentionally crippled.

I stayed with Java because it was write once run everywhere (on the server side). Oracle is making it into write once, renew your license annually on every platform for every CPU.
Part 3: A vector type in lua (with code)
Amazing how little that matters when you're making billions of dollars.
Anyone in Sydney attending?
Build an awesome product that everyone wants?
It's easy to forget that in many ways a 30 year old only has twice the experience of a 15 year old. There are brain development issues, but talented 15 year old is often significantly better at their specialty than the average 30 year old.

PS: You can stagnate at any age, around 25% of Americans did not read a single book last year.
The alternative to being taken advantage of is not-working. If it's illegal even to be taken advantage of, it's illegal to work.

Strictly speaking, there is always more work to be done.
Good Web Typography Is Easy With Type-a-File
I severely doubt that anecdote.

See for yourself:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=8jZBksh-bUMC&lpg=PP1&...

I had cited it from memory. It wasn't paint; it was asbestos.

Nearly every government decision (e.g. where to build roads) involves calculations that put a value on human life, never mind the more obvious ones about what drugs to provide via socialized medical services.

Great, though my point still stands that scientists are often the only people who can grasp a particular issue, and should perhaps consider advocating it.
chuckles
Taxonomy of Rap Names
Hmm, this might be a good way to look at it (or it could be wildly inaccurate!).

1) Assume for the sake of argument that your friction through the air is the same as your friction of sliding on the ground (this isn't very accurate, and is variable, but shouldn't invalidate the basic thought experiment).

2) instead of the two mediums being air and land, consider them to be two parallel conveyer belts, going in opposite directions (i.e. moving relative to each other).

3) Your vehicle is straddling the two conveyer belts, a set of wheels on each belt.

4) Couple the set of wheels on one belt with the set of wheels on the other belt, along with a transmission to engage/disengage the wheels from each other.

5) Lock the wheels on one belt. This is effectively "going the same speed as the wind".

6) The wheels on the other belt will be spinning furiously. Engage the gears appropriately so that you make headway on the belt that you're relatively stationary on. You're now going 'faster than the wind'!

Ok, it was easier to understand in my head :)
Brad Feld on Solving Venture Bias Pt II [video]
It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition that we invent. - Henri Poincaré
Is intuition as valuable as rational thinking?

At first glance, yes.
Upon some reflection, though...
In some places an evil bureaucracy won't be above using its intelligence services for a couple of "false flag" ops. They'll have them plant a bomb or two every 5-6 months. You know, just so to keep a healthy dose of fear running through everyone's veins.
The wheels are powering the fan blowing rearward I assume at a 1 to 1 ratio into the wind. The cart requires an initial "push" from the human. The wind pushes both the fan blades and the cart. So the net push from the wind > net drag with the wheels powering the fan. The faster the cart goes, the faster the blades spin, so the cart is being perpetually pushed by the wind on the spinning blades no matter how fast it goes. The spinning blades appear to be stationary from the perspective of the wind.

The blades spinning tax the speed of the vehicle, but the payback is that the spinning blades are stationary relative to the ground.

This cart would not move if the ground was moving at the same speed and direction as the cart. First law of thermodynamics has not been violated, the cart is simply using the energy from the wind on a virtual stationary object to power itself.
> you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days.

I'm more productive and make much better-looking documents with emacs+xetex than with Word. YMMV.
Though doing it the other way around makes for more interesting cocktail parties.
I met Mitch recently at Noisebridge and we discussed the idea of a Linux LiveUSB dev environment for people starting out, but not familiar enough with linux to self set-up.
Do you use blank lines in your code?
I for one am waiting for the breast implant bomber.
screenshot for those who can't see it: http://i.imgur.com/KMcfc.png

the left hand menus are mouse-driven hover menus (how 1997!)

edit: ugh, and you actually have to click the text - clicking the white background near the text doesn't work. I hate it when menus do that!

edit2: another screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/e58gx.png
Hey Guys,

Those are actually real accounts backed by unique emails. We haven't expected such a viral growth ourselves but.. we don't complain :) Other than complete lack of sleep due to the scaling needs.

Hence my question: are there any brilliant server developers looking for a job with Kik? :)
I've definitely found intuition to be valuable, in the sense that my own intuition has been correct more often than otherwise. But intuition is basically the result of my unconscious reasoning based on lots of past experience, so it absolutely has to be trained--it's worthless without that background.

However, if I've made an important choice intuitively and it turns out right, I absolutely dig back into it and try to discover why it was the right choice in a rational fashion. Understanding that choice rationally lets me learn how to apply what I learned later, and sometimes helps me see second- and third-order effects which I can't see intuitively.
How much did you pay for the domain name? Afaik a 3 letters .com is really really expensive...
Agreed. I am a little concerned that as soon as I signed up, it sent messages to everyone I might know. The key word being "might". I didn't know too many of their suggestions.
...however prohibiting printer cartridges poses a few challenges … mainly that generally printer cartridges do not have their ink or toner volume readily listed on the cartridge its self.

Not a problem. I'm sure people can buy/make stickers that say "15 ounces" and stick them on the cartridges.
I find that 90% little hard to buy. Based on my experience, I would guess they all (Mac/Linux/Windows) have roughly 1/3rd share, the trend being rising for Mac and downward for Windows. (Okay, my view may be Western centric.)
Right, but as it turns out they didn't just make $80,000 in a month. They made ~$800,000 over a year and a half, and clearly said they have had dud apps as well