skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm quite convinced I have found some purpose. For that matter, I quite like my work.

What concerns me is the idea that so many feel they need to own something, in order to enjoy it.
Does that mean he went after this information, or more likely one of the computers in the botnet happened to have such information residing on it. It's possible he didn't know of any financial information...

No it is not possible. Had you actually read the above references as you claimed you would know that after executing a search warrant the FBI found credit card numbers and SSNs on computers in his dorm room. It's in Section 12 of the FBI document. Sure, maybe that was a result of a chat room he was logging. Maybe he didn't specifically go after this information himself. But at the very least he still chose to retain that information on his computer and at worst he did indeed go after the information himself.
Peggy Olson: "You never say thank you!"

Don Draper: "That's what the money is for!"
Ridiculous. Facebook could whitelist only the user, not any proxy, to download whatever data friends already make available to users inside the boundaries of privacy controls. This is only sensible since it's already exposed to the user. If the user dedicated human time to archiving a bunch of web pages, they could reconstruct their contacts. But it's much simpler for the computer to do it.

The user could sell out their friends to a third party if they chose to (opt in). But Zynga would only get access if the user said so.

The reason Facebook won't do it is that it would commoditize the social graph and allow straight head to head competition on features. I think no one, even Facebook, knows how that would turn out...

Except for Google, who clearly decided to make it happen.
This phenomena was described to a t in Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality. In it, he first describes a situation in which one would be paid a high salary (I think a million dollars) for creating power points that were immediately deleted. He asserts that most people would not be able to handle the job. To test, he does some interesting experiments wherein students are paid for assembling simple lego figures. If the figures were then disassembled in view of the student immediately after their completion, students on average, constructed far fewer figures. Worth a read.
How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area
Yet there are words in English that don't have one word equivalents in many other languages - eg. "home" (as opposed to "my house")

While I don't think it tells you much about linguistics, I do think these kind of games give you a little cultural glimpse.
That's an interesting point, because of all the languages I prefer working with Unicode (UTF-8) in Lua.

This is because I know exactly where I am, there's no under-the-hood encoding/decoding to slow down my application, etc. This is a common problem I find in e.g. Python applications. If I need character count instead of byte count, I pull in a unicode library. For most things this is not necessary and unicode strings are just passed through transparently.

Finally there are numerous modules and ways to interpret and manipulate unicode strings in Lua, should you actually need that.
I have a feeling that if someone submitted Hacker News as a Rate My Startup post, lots of people would point out that it lacked search, and that relying on an external search engine was unacceptable.

I think it would be nice to be able to do an advanced search, such as searching for posts with fewer than/more than X number of comments, Karma points, etc., or excluding new users, including an arbitrary list of users, etc. in addition to just keyword searches.
Ah, but if I remember correctly, the terms of that OAuth usage explicitly state that while data may be accessed and used, it can't be stored indefinitely (with good reason, sometimes I don't want some app toy to indefinitely store all the information I trust Facebook with). So if a third party uses that API as an export mechanism, their API access should be (rightfully) shut down.

BUT - what if I actually want to export all of my photos into SomeApp.com, and I want to give SomeApp the right to store my photos indefinitely? Is there an API they can use to pull it from Facebook directly?
Any Russian speakers here? Is sehnsucht an adequate translation of toska? It's not really an English word but I think it's sufficiently well known due to the work of C.S. Lewis.
I don't understand the quote... charging for common bugfixes is what they call 'support,' so yes.... they'll charge for common bug fixes
The Stanford Boys (and Girls) Club—In Beijing
Some words ought to be universal. Shark would be a good one.
Made in the USA
OK, OK. Most of your workloads are HDD bound.
Sharon Apple will happen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWUb04t6_ws
Expecting to receive inheritance is not something you can do when your born but planning to leave equity is absolutely something that can be done. I'd rather give my children a small boost than nothing at all. Doing something like home ownership can give you something to pass along and something to enjoy too!
Oh, I misread. I read another day another x people come permanently for the better job opportunities. And he was talking about commuters.
These students will fail the FizzBuzz test

Nah, there are guides for that.
Realtime Hacker News
If it happens, may I suggest Cambridge Brewing Company? i love their pale ale.
Non-technical users don't "get" the directory tree because it is a leaky abstraction that fails to consistently deliver on the assurances offered to users. It helps when deterministically planning a Unix filesystem but over time the system destabilizes due to inevitable mismatches between the expectations of OS maintainers, package authors, and end users.

Sorry, but people's comprehension problems are much more basic than that. The very idea of a hierarchical filing system where things can be put at any level hits a mental block. This is well before any detailed discussion of how any particular thing should be organized.
It's strange that pricing is only available to customers (for now?). There are three plans, starter, pro and elite and they all include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, unlimited employees (users) and e-mail support.

Starter - $99/month
* 35GB of file storage
* 35 Basecamp projects
* 20,000 Highrise contacts

Pro - $149/month
* 100GB of file storage
* 100 Basecamp projects
* 50,000 Highrise contacts

Elite - $249/month
* 300GB of file storage
* Unlimited Basecamp projects
* 100,000 Highrise contacts

There's no mention that I can see whether Basecamp includes time tracking (available only on the $49 and higher Basecamp plans) or how much, if any, conference call minutes are included with Campfire.
If the investor is valuing it at 5mm, so are you. You are telling the investor that the company is worth at least 5mm.

If it sells for 2.5mm, you screwed up. Why should you participate in the proceeds of a sale?
Interesting… I didn't bother searching for a previous discussion as I was under the impression that when you submit a URL that was already submitted you were simply taken to that page and upvoted it.
I think that class of people is attempting to fill a void in their life with possessions, but that doesn't imply that all or even most ownership is unhealthy/bad. If you are buying things to find fulfillment you might as well eat the money, but if you are fulfilled and buying things (responsibly) - I applaud you.
Kismet: Destiny

Ayip: Shameful

There are worse Turkish concepts to choose to translate (the many alterations of Gule Gule that can be added for one, I've never been able to get my head around the construct) and the mis suffix (to have experienced something indirectly or via another person is probably the easiest way to put it).

Having said that, Turkish can be extremely beautiful as a language, particularly for conveying emotion, beauty or craftiness.
the way it works with Oracle is, someone spends a lot of money to buy an Oracle license, and then they have access to all the products in Oracle's suite. After that, they have recurring revenue on support. They know where 70-80% of their quarter revenue comes from on day 1. disclosure: used to work on rdbms kernel
Could be to improve the presidents image -- he just lost the election (the republicans can now block legislation in both houses) -- now he needs to seem tough so he has a chance in 12.
http://hfboston.com

* fixed, thanks hsuresh, can't even spell my own site's name.
It strikes me that choosing to rent over owning is the antithesis to the theme of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (recommended book).

The driving metaphor comes from the contrast between (effectively) renting a BMW motorcycle (since they are hard to repair), and owning a simpler model that can be maintained by oneself.

The stated benefit is greater autonomy and satisfaction derived through taking ownership and solving one's own problems - a more classical approach to life. Rather than taking a "fix this for me" attitude, you see the world as something that you have control over.

Personally, I've found it very satisfying every time I'm able to repair something in my car, which I've owned for 8 years.
Reminds me of some government work I've done. The worst case was when I wrote a best-practices manual for Java/database/security for their internal development, and it was basically taken in draft form, put in a big 3-ring binder, and put on a shelf to never be read by anyone. They paid a solid 5-figures for it, but more than anything it was a checklist item that could be signed-off in order to appease the auditors. "Yes, we did the required review and policy and procedure development".
@andreyf:

When Facebook switched from their old API to their new OAuth-based API they also removed restrictions on storing data.
Good catch. On their web page, text zoom in Firefox works, but text zoom in Chrome doesn't. Chrome bug?
It's still just a projection onto some sort of medium.
But the font size also changes, so the change in number of words per line isn't as dramatic.

However, there is a point when you shrink the page where the number of words is about twice, but probably few devices actually have that width.
I'm not proposing leaving nothing to one's children. Instead, I'm asking readers to consider the merits of both renting and owning and choosing what fits for them.

Admittedly, I have positioned my argument strongly from a renter's perspective, as I believe the "default setting" is heavily skewed toward ownership.

Fact of the matter is that many of us believe we need to own everything, when many things can be rented more economically and fruitfully (e.g. car co-op versus car ownership).
Great idea. Let me know if you do that. One could extend it so that it could find users with similar interests.

You would probably need a 'down vote' button to say "I'm not interested in this"
So do they record and then playback, or is it voiced fully by computers?
TouchTerm on iPhone supports SSH keys.
PhoneGap Build - Build native, cross-platform mobile apps in the cloud
Make some metalized underwear and bras, sell em on the net. Might make some bank with that.
I do keep an eye on Squeak and Pharo (hoping for JIT performance someday getting fast like the commercial VisualWorks product).

What about CogVM? I thought you could run Pharo on it already? (Granted, it's in something like Beta.)
How Domain Names Weathered the Recession
Isn't that the definition of anecdote?
I know that there is just _way_ too much profit in the monthly payments, but a car company that somehow forced you to pay in cash woudl quickly create a status symbol for itself.
Precisely. I'm not against owning things; I just question whether we need to own everything.
I don't know besides my company, but as a generalist technical founder, I would be loathe to take someone with experience in x technology over a generalist who'd shown ability to learn new technologies. We work with Flash, clojure, and assembly, which is obviously the weirdest smorgasbord ever. I have yet to see a resume that mentions anything but flash, so I've tried to look for people who look smart and a little arrogant instead, while still being personable.
Accelerated Learning
Some points that are getting lost in the discussion below. I work at Facebook.

1. Facebook lets you export your data. It has been possible to do so ever since the graph API debuted in April '10. Since the market wasn't filling the gap, we even built a "download your information" product (https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php -> Download Your Information). It gives you a zip file with all your contact info, photos, video, status updates, wall posts, etc. If somebody would like to write an importer for Diaspora, or Google Me, or even a non-vaporware competitor, they are well within Facebook's ToS, imho.

2. Facebook allows other sites programmatic access to the social graph. Yes, the supposed "crown jewels." That's exactly what Facebook Connect is for. You can see it in the wild on Pandora, Netflix, Yelp, Quora, and literally millions of other websites that are already doing what Google claims it wants to do: identify your Facebook friends.

3. Most importantly, what Google is insisting on is completely insane.

The ability to export my friends' email sounds good, but as with so many social product ideas (e.g., themed backgrounds for profiles), it stops sounding so good when you realize everybody has the same power. Think of it instead as: all of your Facebook friends can export your email to anybody who writes a Facebook app. Those spam quizzes? Every farm simulation knock-off flash game? The day Facebook does this, every Facebook user will wake up with their inbox crammed solid with spam from random Facebook applications that they do not even use.

What Google has not explained is why they need friends' email addresses, per se. Why couldn't whatever message they want to transmit be transmitted via Facebook messages, or wall posts, which send email notifications to almost all users anyway, and are already available via third-party APIs? This entire "not open enough!" straw man is a set of moving goalposts that Google will use to justify whatever competitive maneuvering they find convenient.

Facebook is in the right here, people. The product decision Google is asking Facebook to take would be a disaster for Facebook users. Meanwhile, the lever Google is using to attack Facebook comes entirely at the expense of GMail's users, who before this episode were voting with their feet by the millions to import their contact data to Facebook, and no longer have that option. Google is making its users' lives worse, in an attempt to make Facebook make its users lives worse.
English undoubtedly is the world's richest language in the sense of having the largest vocabulary.

Citation needed.

I have, however, found this:

Is it true that English has the most words of any language?

This question is practically impossible to answer, for the reasons explained in the answer to How many words are there in the English language? However, it seems quite probable that English has more words than most comparable world languages.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/94

Also interesting, from Wikipedia:

The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volumed Hanyu Da Cidian, records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters, and gives over 370,000 definitions.

A Chinese character is a bit like a prefix/suffix in English. Most words are made of two characters. I would guess that "370,000 definitions" means there are 370,000 different words. But the phrasing is a bit strange.
Also a significant discussion of this phenomenon in PK Dick's VALIS trilogy
You guys are actually testing these right now - conventional warheads on ICBMs (SLBMs technically). Gates announced them (kinda) back in April. I believe the term they like to throw around is "prompt conventional global strike". Bush tried really hard to get a bunch of monies into these projects.

You have to admit, it does have kind of a boyish sci-fi type of appeal. Knock down a building from the other side of the world within 20 minutes.

But practically, it's quite possibly the worst idea ever. The ballistic missile tests we conduct right now are already announced well in advanced with missile tracks specifically chosen so it couldn't be mistaken for an actual strike. The limitations in use would be ridiculous. I mean, you'll have to aim around Russia and China. And even then, it's still playing with fire.

"And we have prompt global strike affording us some conventional alternatives on long-range missiles that we didn't have before." - Gates

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36362669/ns/meet_the_press/page/...
Toska: looks like Melancholy
Saudade: how is that different from mourning?
Job openings drop sharply for second straight month
The article really fails here, this is a horrible example and horrible reasoning.

I'm no Java expert, but the reason you'd synchronize a smaller block of code, or use any finer grain lock, rather than a whole method is that you'd have a shorter time to wait if many threads are competing for the lock. You'd increase utilization.

Lines of bytecode doesn't really tell you anything, especially since the synchronized method is a stub that does nothing. Not only that, but the synchronized method does all its synchronization work implicitly; the JVM still has to acquire the lock somehow, it's just not written in the bytecode.

What really matter is what happens when the bytecode is compiled to native code, so you could see the synchronized method call overhead. If the article analyzed that, it would be helpful.
Ask HN: What QPS does your application/hardware stack get?
Inspired by the performance number of Mysql/NoSql article. I started wondering what QPS people are getting on their complete application stacks(frameworks->lang->persistence->hardware).

QPS are hard things to calculate unless you actually implement the full solutions.
HN is supposed to get "350k pageviews" build on Arc/MzScheme with hardware:
"Old: 2.4 GHz Pentium 4, 4 GB RAM, 32-bit FreeBSD 5.3.
New: 3.0 GHz Core whatever, 12 GB RAM, 64-bit FreeBSD 7.1." from posts about 2 years old

My last startups got 10k QPS for a Adserver profile tracker running Mod_Perl->Apache2 over a GDBM datastore on CentOS 5.1 Linux Server with 2 x Quad Core Xeon E5410 2.33 GHz, 4 GB RAM 2 x 80 GB SATA @ 7,200 RPM

What QPS are you getting on your RoR/Seaside/php/JavaSpring web site/app/service?

Mysql/NoSql
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886137

PG on HN Volume
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562588

RTM on HN hardware
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516108
I'm reminded of NG-Resonance[1] from Deus Ex 2. Of course, in that case, it was based on a real person.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Invisible_War_characte...
Another Russian word is rodina (родина) which very superficially translates to homeland, but really means the place where you feel at home. I think there are some cultural reasons why American English doesn't have this word: basically, no need for it.
Hyper-Texting and Hyper-Networking Pose New Health Risks for Teens
one is a slang term related to mobile phones, that probably has equivalents in most languages

It has no equivalent in American English. That may be because in the USA you pay for time spent on the cell phone, whether you initiated the call or not, so that behavior doesn't exist.
Ask HN:  What's the datastore behind HN?
I've noticed that the front page loads significantly faster than the threaded comments page.

I'd be interested in a discussion as to what causes the relative slowness of the discussions.

Is it just homepage caching?
Or, you could pony up for VisualWorks server licences and get even better performance. (And swap out the hot paths with DLLs implemented in C.)
Will go well with their fancy new office.
Ask HN: MacBook Pro or Air+Cinema
This would be my main setup. recommendations?
If we're being picky, "l’appel du vide" is actually 4 words.
> If you never save and always rent

I see that as a red herring. The key if you are going to rent is to save the difference between what your rent is and what your mortgage + other costs of ownership would be and put that capital to work for you through other investment vehicles. In America there is this convoluted idea that 'everyone should own a home'. It's a ridiculous premise and should be nothing more than a pipe dream for many people who do currently own a mortgage on a home.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...
This looks like something I might want to check out.

I've been writing modest little web bots/crawlers in shell script for quite a few years now. I think it was a comment on HN just yesterday that prompted an impulse purchase of Michael Schrenk's Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers (ebooks at nostarch.com currently 1/2 the dead-tree version price). Even though I knew the platform going in (PHP w/ the CURL lib), at every page I can't help but gasp at what an awkward platform this is for the task. I'm only 1/3 of the way through, so I'm still hoping to learn some advanced techniques that I haven't thought of yet. At the least I hope to walk away from the book with some new ways to look at the problem space.

Anyway, as someone who's wanted to learn and dig into Lisp, this library sounds really cool. I'm not a fan of anything which depends on Java, so maybe the libray can be ported to something more scriptable like ECL, NewLISP, or SLisp. I will, however, install Clojure and give it a spin.
Interesting, but if you have to write html/js/css, why not just use html5 and get cross-platform apps without the extra step.
Ask HN: Startups and Past Contributions
In many startup-related articles and HN posts, I've read that people tend to overvalue past contributions, and undervalue future contributions. Eg:
http://cdixon.org/2009/08/23/dividing-equity-between-founders/

Why do many people not put a lot of value on past contributions, such as forming the idea and developing the business plan, when deciding how to split equity between co-founders?
You mention that job listings get hundreds of replies, yet just a few pages back we have an article [1] about the short supply of developers in Silicon Valley. What gives?

[1]: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-is-there-such-a-stun...
Personal Genetics Startup 23andMe Raises $22 Million
RV here is Reentry Vehicle. (I saw it looking for something people could drive and got puzzled.)
Suppose China were the launcher. Why might it do such a thing?
S-expressions stored in files, lazily loaded, and occasionally gced.

There are many levels of caching, but it could simply be that the homepage has 30 things on it while a threads page might have hundreds.
Good advice going forward for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. I'm out of the game myself these days, but I actually did that when I was still active (after this little rant bomb went off). And I know that there are undertones of bitterness and racism in that original posting, but I was especially frustrated by nearly five hundred unread emails that particular morning -- my main client at the time thought I was ignoring her because it took me hours to find the one message that was actually important among the pile of messages all tagged as high priority. That's not a real excuse, but once I clicked Post it was on the intarwebz forever, and I've got enough integrity to let my personal lapses stand for posterity.

(By the way, Indians were not and are not the only people who had a highly developed sense of entitlement. It's the thin and poorly applied synthetic varnish of politesse laid over the demand that made the Asian emails especially annoying. An honest "gimme-e-e!" hurts the teeth much less than dishonest, disrespectful "respect".)
Digitus Impudicus
how does it identify location co-ordinates with labels? How does it know which place is home and which place is office?

I guess you can specify that easily, but how does it identify which place is a coffee shop? labeling each place you go to seems tedious.
A Breakthrough Result