skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Word for Mac has improved a lot in the last years. They are getting closer and closer to really fitting the Mac. It has finally become at least somewhat hard to find places where Word is still decidedly no fitting the platform. (One example would be that they still litter the Applications folder with crap.)

I really recommend anyone to give the newest version of Office a shot.
sigh

Not to continue this off-topic digression too much further, but a Mac Pro running OS X Server is in no way a replacement for an "enterprise" XServe deployment.

For a full explanation, see this TidBITS article:

http://db.tidbits.com/article/11735

tl;dr version: The Mac Pro takes up 4x the rack space and lacks hot-swappable power supplies and drive bays, making it an awful fit for most 24x7 server environments.
Using Firesheep on Campus, Caltrain and beyond
The software mentioned in the article has functionality to take random breaks.
i actually tried. i couldn't get enough interested parties and had a cofounder that wasn't very motivated.

it would take your game history logs, analyze them, and let you know where your most common mistakes were based on context (i.e., ICM for SNGs)

i still think its a good idea, for various reasons, i've just moved on.
I think it speaks to the character of YC to promote Harj based on the job he has done; when I think a lot of others companies would have kept him where they hired him in at.
He strikes me as being, for the printed word, what Jeff Koons is for sculpture and portraiture, all buzz and little value.
as you say, it's an opportunity -- no matter where you are. but to the extent it's a bubble, people who get in this late in the game rarely come out very far ahead. i wouldn't lose too much sleep about not being in the valley right now. if it's a bubble, that's the last place you want to be; if it's sustainable, it'll continue to be an option.
Yeah :)

But then it occurred to me that someone could solve one by hand, and then use that answer to solve five more captchas that I asked for, and then recurse, eventually solving thousands of a site's captchas.
Big Sis Forced To Respond To Nationwide Revolt Against TSA
I did something similar to this a few years ago. Specifically, I forced myself to talk to women in open social situations (bars, art galleries, etc). Yes, it gets easier to handle rejection when you've "been through it and lived" before. But one factor that I haven't ever seen mentioned anywhere else: when you have so many concurrent "rejection" opportunities, you start to care less and less about the rejection itself, because it represents a smaller and smaller proportion of your open "prospects" (I hate to word it that way because it's incredibly objectifying, but can't think of any other way to put it). At a certain critical point, it almost becomes a relief to get rejected.

And I found that this ease with the situation helped me be more successful in general. People can tell when you're nervous. The more anxious you are about a situation, the more likely you are to fail at it. That's basically true for anything, not just chatting up girls. You worry too much about non-critical issues. So, when I wasn't worried about picking up a date, I could more easily pick up a date.

For me, that critical point came when I had three separate first-dates scheduled in the same week. By the rules of my challenge, I had to attempt to follow through on every introduction. I "luckily" hit a dry spell at that point, didn't pick up a 4th date, and quickly whittled it down to just 1 regular relationship in the few following weeks. By that point, I considered the challenge over and successful.

I think there is a lesson here for sales. I've worked at a lot of contract development companies that were forced to bend over backwards for their clients specifically because they failed to "date around" for new clients. When a client asks for a major, out-of-scope feature, telling them "no" is a lot easier when there are 5 more waiting to replace them. Now, threats from clients to drop vendors are often way overblown, but it's still important to not end up with all your eggs in one basket.
Please, please make an application that will make it easy to track supporting and opposing views on a topic. The idea being to replace discussions (mailing list, real life meetings) that get lost in word games and politics. The application would bring transparency to a decision and allow any people not acquainted with the discussion to get up to speed quickly. An evidence-based transparent decision process I guess.
The 12 Timeless Rules for Making a Good Publication
BigMemory is the right solution for no problem at all.
Am interested to see the results, and more importantly, the HN discussions about the results!
This is a totally different ball of wax.

This cheater had access to everyone's hole cards and could play perfectly.

The bots in the parent article don't have that access. They're limited to making the same decisions that a regular person could make while playing, they only know about their own cards and the cards on the board.
Interesting. Perhaps you could provide links?

I found http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Introduction/ but all of the images are broken.
Comments like this are an essential and incredibly fun part of the appeal of Hacker News and of YC. We don't get a bunch of marketspeak blather. We get straight answers like "Yes" and more partners --> longer table.
fact = lambda n: 1 if n <= 1 else n*fact(n-1)

or, for that matter:

def fact(n): return 1 if n <= 1 else n*fact(n-1)
http://www.amazon.com/Explorers-Guide-Semantic-Thomas-Passin...

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Web-Berners-Lee-G%C3%B6del-Tu...

http://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Web-Working-Ontologist-Effect...

http://thefigtrees.net/lee/sw/sciam/semantic-web-in-action#s...

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/11/01/semanticweb/
DC's own "Cooks Source"?
The only problem is you get things like google's captcha system that make you question whether or not you are human.
"Good" players, including bot writers want, and need, very bad players in the games. The games need players who either don't know or don't care that they're making sub-optimal plays. That's what makes the money flow in poker. If everyone played perfectly, then only the house would win.
He's right that the 3g Kindle is worth it, but not because of web browsing. Using the browser will make you want to stab yourself in the eye. It's because if you're reading somewhere that doesn't have free Wi-Fi it will still sync your last place read, so that if you then pick up the Kindle app on your phone or iPad or wherever it will be synced.

Also on any OS, Rekindle.it is a much easier way to send articles to your device.
Now it's only a matter of days until Minecraft will fulfill both Greenspun's Tenth Rule and Zawinski's Law.
http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-harj
Anic -- Faster than C, Safer than Java, Simpler than *sh
ANI is a dataflow programming language, with strong typing, implicit parallelism, oop and the beggining of an implementation.

"Q: How does ANI resolve the fundamental issue of deadlock in parallel programming? How does the Dining Philosophers example on the main page work?

A: In ANI, under the hood, pipes implicitly enforce total resource orderings for acquiring data. Somewhat surprisingly, deadlock theory guarantees that there will be no deadlock if this condition is met."
What Dogs Can Teach Us about Self-Control
This comparison is absurd. Would anyone use it if Google did build Instagram? I can see it now:

They built the world's fastest, most reliable, most relevant search engine on the planet, the most usable webmail and map apps... and then a dinky photo-sharing smartphone app with three features?
Please rate my Startup: Kroud - Q&A Community Building Tool
This is just one of the reasons for my growing distaste for a platform I was once quite fond of - the frankly mystifying decisions with regard to what features and products stay and go. Apple seems to be embracing the "less is more" ethos more and more as time goes by - which is good as far as it goes, but sometimes I think they're taking it too far. Certainly, as this article shows, they've already taken it to an extreme where communicating with the outside world is concerned.
Because it has nothing to do with the topic, and especially because it doesn't add anything to the discussion.
Or lived with the sense that you are constantly being judged for everything you say and do.
ANI is a dataflow programming language, with strong typing, implicit parallelism, oop and the beggining of an implementation.

"Q: How does ANI resolve the fundamental issue of deadlock in parallel programming? How does the Dining Philosophers example on the main page work?

A: In ANI, under the hood, pipes implicitly enforce total resource orderings for acquiring data. Somewhat surprisingly, deadlock theory guarantees that there will be no deadlock if this condition is met."
Surprisingly, there are still applications being written which do not require an internet connection at all times.
yup. another handy tool is ngrep: http://ngrep.sourceforge.net/

for app-level protocol stats and/or high-end situations i'd attach an extrahop product: http://www.extrahop.com/products/
> "Having a much lighter, smaller, easily holdable-in-one-hand device == a HUGE advantage."
It's an advantage, potentially large, depending on what you want from the tablet. If you want one-handed reading, yes, it's a huge advantage.

It's not a lie, it's a personal, subjective assessment.

> "The idea that someone is going to tote it around is ridiculous, though it's just as ridiculous that people are going to tote around an iPad and use it at, for instance, a coffee shop."

Given that people do tote around their ipad from home to work, to meetings, to coffee shops, to friends houses, I don't think it's at all ridiculous.
Is this the Y-Combinator of books?
The UI is about as un-Mac-like as you can get without being completely text-based.
Thanks!

I believe YC is one of the most innovative places in silicon valley and has the potential to truly change the world by helping to create hundreds of new tech companies. It's exciting to be a part of that.
Ah, jmeter. The whole district was jammed. Two days ISS.
from math import factorial

Or

fact = lambda n: reduce(operator.mul, xrange(1, n+1), 1)
Cached version, via Slashdot: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EzsEFco...

Make sure you choose "text-only version" in the upper-right.

Looks like it's just hardware conditional breakpoints, nothing to see here...
I'm trying to read through it, but it looks like gibberish. :( I really don't understand what these images mean: http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Update%201-3/

Random thoughts / snippets / whatever while reading through it:

17th Malachite, 1052: A farmer tried to organize a party in the statue garden when everyone needed to be working, so I locked the bastard in there. I hope he enjoys partying alone.

----

http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Update%201-4/wint... -- Do players really build all that, or does the ingame AI make those decisions?

----

http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Update%201-6/dwar... --- Jeez, the fortresses can become pretty massive.

----

I've had little sleep in the past two days, and must retire for tonight. I have quite a bit of work to do in the upcoming season, mainly outfitting our soldiers with steel equipment, setting up improved magma crafting centers, and managing our food supply. I hope that the coming summer proves to be favorable to Boatmurdered.

Keyboard Fox posted:

Dude! We have FIVE METRIC FUCKTONS of prepared food! We're not low on food!
Locus posted:

Oh. Prepared food? So these are some kind of dainty fancypants dwarves that don't sit in the dark and gnaw on cold mushrooms?

That seems undwarflike.

TouretteDog posted:

It's dwarf bread, man. The cat peed on it, and it doubles as a lethal throwing weapon.

----

http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Update%201-8/13_E...

----
Early Spring - 1055:

Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words:

What

The

Fuck.

----

The humans bring me a load of meat and cloth. I trade them an elephant in a cage for everything they own. Have fun with that one, assholes.
The only time I could see myself wanting the 3G feature is if I am traveling and out of books. OTOH, is that worth $50, as a just in case? I don't travel THAT much.
I find it hard to believe that he's built real systems that work.

Yes, "decomposing services into multiple components" works well when everything is living in the same address space, but if you want to build fast and reliable systems, minimizing round trips is important.

If I didn't have anything better to do and if I liked dealing with idiots, I'd hang my shingle as a high-priced consultant who helps "enterprises" dig their way out of the REST morass. Just last year I managed to speed up an application 100x by switching from REST to POX. In this case, the app was doing thousands of round trips for no good reason other than architectural purity.

In the real world, composite operations should be done, more or less, in transactions. For instance, in one user authentication system I've worked on, there are about ten database updates to create a new user. There really ought to be one "createUser" call that creates the user. You could probably get away with not having database transactions if you're talking to the database locally, but in a distributed app on the wider internet, you just can't expect to do ten communications in a row and have it work "reliably enough".
Ask HN: Facebook - $836M in funding. What are employees stock worth?
So why are people joining Facebook on the premise that they will get rich from their stock options?
Facebook has $836M in funding and what's their valuation?

Compared to Google, Google only has around $22M in funding and $193.14B in market cap.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company
Lies in election ads causes court to invalidate election
I've long wondered why Amazon doesn't have a authentication service, like Facebook and Twitter. Seems like it would be really useful for startups based on EC2.
If by decompiling you mean turning machine-language (or bytecode) into equivalent human-readable source, it's also possible to do it in C.
I have a couple of quibbles with the article, but they pale next to the inaccuracy of the title.

The premise of the article is one vendor of a NoSQL database solution is distancing itself from the term NoSQL because it is not specific enough. The article goes on to explain that "NoSQL" refers to a variety of SQL-less approaches to data management, and that other vendors will de-emphasize the term NoSQL in favour of being more specific about their technology/paradigm.

The title makes it sound like the article claims that everyone in the industry will be going back to SQL, when in fact the article (a) is only discussing commercial vendors, and (b) is only discussing the use of the term NoSQL, not the technologies themselves.
I trust I can read my gMail over SSL without someone firesheeping me. Can I do that with Facebook right now?
Did you know: In NYC, yellow cabs are required to take you anywhere in NYC.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/taxicab_rights.shtml

I think more people need to be aware that in NYC the yellow cabs are required to take you anywhere you want to go in NYC (any of the 5 boroughs). They cannot refuse to to take you. As long as they do not have passengers and are not 'off duty', they have to pull over and take you.

"It is against the law to refuse a person based on race, disability, or a destination in New York City. A taxicab driver is required to drive a passenger to any destination in the five boroughs. You can make a refusal complaint by calling 3-1-1." - http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/faq_pass.shtml#21

What does this mean? This means you don't need to ask the driver if they go to a certain destination in NYC. They are required to. Don't make the mistake of standing and talking to the driver outside of the cab. Get in and then tell them where you want to go. If they lock the door and/or drive off, remember their cab number (on the sides/back) and file a complaint.

Why do they not want to take you to a destination? There are any number of reasons. One of them is probably since it's a long route and they make more money taking people to shorter and more profitable routes. However, it's illegal for them to refuse.

Cabs are supposed to make your live easier and get you to your destination quicker, but yet I still see people make the mistake of accepting that a cab does not go to their destination. In NYC, all of NYC can be your destination!

Why am I posting this? Yesterday I saw a guy (non-threatening, white, well dressed) get refused by a cab and it seems like he probably got refused by a couple of cabs prior to that. I didn't take the opportunity to share this information with him as I was in a hurry. I figure to make up for it, I'll share it with NH since some of you guys may be in NYC too and are not aware of this information.
I work at a very large K12 district so some feedback:

It's probably not you, it's me (them). Government/schools are notoriously slow and bureaucratic. Even the most simple of purchases takes FOREVER. In my district I can't buy ANYTHING from you unless you are on the "approved vendor list". This means your company would need to fill out some forms, wait, provide more information, wait, wait some more, until you are finally given a number in a database somewhere.

For enterprise, and especially government/schools, a 6+ month sales cycle is not uncommon.

As for what you can do for them:

- Do all the paperwork required, even when it seems mundane, redundant, etc. This isn't the IT dept's fault, but they have to play by the purchasing rules. Again, they probably can't spend a dime until you do the paperwork.

- Don't bug the shit out of the IT people. Stay in regular contact, ask about progress, but don't call daily and ask what's up. If you bug anyone, make sure it's the purchasing, finance, procurement, or other people you're dealing with.

- Make things easy. Whether it's your POs, subscription model, support costs. The accounts receivable people and procurement dept probably don't know anything about technology, and weird-sounding line items will confuse them and stall the process.

One last thing - legal departments are SLOW. If your contract needs to be reviewed by the legal department, and it probably does in most districts, you're going to be in for a long wait. There is nothing you can do about this step but wait.

Comments are my own and do not represent my employer.
We would need to establish a bona fide intent to use it for commerce, although it does seem like there's a strong market for facebook hating...

On a semi-related note, the reasoning for that is actually quite interesting - the justification stems from the congressional power to regulate commerce between states.
Interesting - hope it grows.

I ran netstat.net back in the day - took it over when MCI threatened to sue its initial creator, then updated it and expanded it.

We tracked latency to common ISP nameservers from ~15 locations in the US and Australia. It seemed a little more important when we had to deal with non-broadband latency (dialup was awesome).

Interweather was another 'competitor.' As was the internet traffic report.

And this makes me feel old: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1998-06/msg00401.ht...
Interesting take on the problem of productivity. I've also noticed that when I do design work, design work after design work my design just gets ugly. To solve the problem I do the following:

1. Don't design/code for 2 days.

2. After 3 days, find some article that will get you pumped. Read it.

3. Design/code for 1 hour less than you usually would(for instance I usually code/design for 5-6hours a day, I'd do it for 4-5hours MAX here), take a 10 minute break and then continue. You'll get amazing results. I think this is partly because (like the author of this article said) your brain continues working on the problem.

4. Go to step 1.
Ok so what step did Techcrunch make and what does it have to do with the either Facebook or the title of the article? It just makes little sense.
funny. that's what I submitted as my original title but thankfully it automagically changed to be less link baity.
I just went through it, choosing almost exclusively certainties. I'm definitely an entrepreneur, although currently a very struggling one.

I fear the survey is going to be incredibly influenced by income level and current financial security. If you had changed the magnitudes of the numbers, my answers would have been completely different. I can do the math, but I also know that my immediate financial needs are unmet and that my ability to sustain losses is very limited.
How the cloud is changing the way database administrators work
"Your friend wasn't doing what his boss wanted. The boss said something mean for whatever reason. "

Are you sure? For all we know, Jobs really did fire him for his voice.
From the title, I was expecting this article to be about how the bots were evolving to play against each other. Sort of like HFT algorithms. Fortunately, it seems like they're still a small enough piece of the population that that's not a significant issue.
You do not need to worry. No computer algorithm can actually add information not present in the original writing. An algorithm can chew on information given and perhaps make it more presentable or accessible, but absolutely nothing can create information from whole cloth; it's fundamentally impossible. If you think you see it happening, look for the curtain to pull back.
Or lived with the sense that you are constantly being judged for everything you say and do.

(my bad - I thought I double posted and deleted one...)
That's fighting. Not bullying.

Bullying is typified by a victim being picked-on mercilessly because he never fights back. Because the bullying tears him down. Because the bullied is a victim.

Bullying isn't a contest for the bully. They do it precisely because it isn't. They're not trying to 'win', they're trying to make someone else feel as bad as they feel. If they can't do that, because the victim refuses to be victimized, they find a new victim or find a new outlet.
yes, the series was conceived and written by a Columbia mfa
thanks for the response, RiderOfGiraffes. you're right, i'm confused between downvoting and flagging. are there two different ways to vote no available for people with a high enough karma?

in any case it sounds like the "HN thing to do" here is for me to advocate my position and see what the community says.
Yeah, my budget is pretty tight as well. I can handle losing $50, but if I lose $1500, I can't make my mortgage this month.
Two words: bed bugs
He's not complaining that his ego isn't sufficiently stroked. He's saying that ego-stroking is insufficient to motivate him to keep writing reviews.
And now I can't find your post...
"Access Wave from Google Docs"

This means they are trying to integrate wave into google docs. It baffles me that they didn't run with this headline instead: "Wave is being integrated into Google Docs." This would have been much better publicity than just pulling the plug and declaring Wave as dead.
Pre-Roll Video Ads Suck (and how to fix them)
argh.. every time I read these articles I wish my wife would let me play poker again.. =( .... I am so sad...
Complainers will always complain.

Imagine how nasty would it be when someone decompiles their code and discover lots of, say, GPL code in there...

Is there a lot of GPL'ed C# code out there?
If there's one thing I'm afraid of, it's the fact that robots are written to expect human input and respond to that input, but in practice, robots also unknowingly receive robot input, which results in weird, unexpected things happening. One example is high-frequency trading robots in the stock market, where one trade (or bug) could set off stuff like flash crashes (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/business/09flash.html)