skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I really enjoying listening to my iPod during SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) in the 2nd grade.

But then my teacher took it away... muttering something about "kids these days and their technology from the future"
Karōshi (過労死, karōshi?), which can be translated quite literally from Japanese as "death from overwork", is occupational sudden death. The major medical causes of karōshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress.

<from above link>
Am I the only one that thinks Mark Cuban is just mad that he didn't start YouTube?
The only problem with Rails are all the armchair scalability experts and backseat developers who read TechCrunch and use Twitter and think they know a thing or two about scaling. When Julia Allison goes on web radio and starts holding court on it, you know that whole meme has really jumped the shark.

Complaining about Rails' scalability is a really really good signal that you've never had to scale anything. If you had, then you'd already know what a small part your application framework plays in a scalable architecture.
PlanetEye: A One-Stop Travel Destination
It's a shame OpenMoko didn't pick a slightly more recent ARM chip, or it would already be running Android:

http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/21/android-neo1973
Coupled with the fact that the page is HTTP and the server doesn't seem to support HTTPS!
But the problem was/is, big label's stranglehold on the market created an environment where the risk and reward don't match at all. The musician (entrepreneur) is completely shafted by the big labels (VC).

And while distribution, marketing, recording, etc are certainly all important they can be obtained through other methods without giving up 90% of your earnings. For more information see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226352
Word of warning: many in the Rails community believe Ferret/ActsAsFerret is totally unable to handle a production environment, even WITH distributed ruby.

You're probably better off with Acts_as_solr + Solr or Ultrasphinx + Sphinx. I personally can recommend Sphinx -- it's like nginx, very fast and Russian. =)

The syntax / setup process is similar to Acts as Ferret, only instead the search indexer / daemons are running Java (Solr, based on Lucene) and Sphinx (native).

Here's a great thread about it on ruby-forum.com:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/137629
Hispanic markets have done better as well.
How is this new?
It's 2008. It's not "hacker-related" every time somebody uses a computer.
I do not understand the art. Did pictures of people reading these books really offer anything to someone reading the article?

Also, the review of H&P is the worst I've ever read. "Graham is so unabashedly geeky that, though he is a natural writer, he can't help but express himself in metaphors drawn from what he calls "his native land, hacking." (Typical sentence: "When you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as the low.")"

Damping oscillations is not a metaphor. It's like reviewing a book by a mathematician who is so geeky he says "Multiply it by 3" instead of "triple it" or "Times it".
No, I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that they thought a CMS-style application would work. After all, Twitter is blogging, and Wordpress is a CMS-style app.

What they didn't realize is that Twitter isn't blogging, it's an IM service. I think there have been enough blog posts about this (so look there for details). What I don't understand is why Twitter hasn't been rewritten to be an IM system yet. They seem to think that turning off features (like Replies) is the solution to their problems.

It's not. Re. Write. It.
I remember ballmer making fun of the iphone and how expensive it was.

Where is that video now?
It isn't? http://blog.evanweaver.com/about/ says "I currently work at Twitter" and has a link to his resume, which says he started there in May.
Before I even clicked on the article, I knew it was from Japan.
Labor laws create institutional ludditism
Many folks would say the database is where scaling problems belong. Lots and lots of programmer hours have already been expended in figuring out how to scale databases; no sense duplicating that effort in scaling your web framework.

I'd say Twitter's problem is that they're a multicast messaging app with a database backend, a combination that tends not to work so well. As an intern in college, I worked on a financial J2EE app that tried to do everything through JMS messaging queues backed by Oracle. It had similar scalability and performance problems.

In Twitter's defense, they didn't know they'd be a multicast messaging app when they started, and a database is a logical choice for what they did know they'd be (a website). They'll figure things out; they just need time and resources to rearchitect.
Awesome, i really didnt go through your code much, but i was trying myself to make this technique happen using simple old javascript. Things that were bothering me were for example the fact of passing the div element around, i think you have the CGRectMake() function that returns that div element, interesting though is that you dont add any of your methods/property to that div dom element. Another interesting thing is that you're able to figure out the size of elements before they are written to the client (browser), do you write it 2 times, one to get size and another to actually display it?
I can second the recommendation for Ultrasphinx. Ferret is like a bad word in many Ruby development circles. I'm not a search expert, but I know some talented guys and they all say Sphinx is the way to go (even over Solr).
The Master Of Memes
> The free solutions are getting much better and can compete with VMWare. Furthermore, I would say the money is not in desktop virtualization, but rather in server virtualization. For this, does VMWare even have a product?

Huh? They are extremely strong in data center virtualization - in fact that's where their main revenue comes from: http://www.vmware.com/products/server_virtualization.html
Enterprise Rails Tapping
Even IF Java had a flash-level 98%+ adoption rate, the UI experience with Java applets in the real world has never been good in my experience. There is an annoying startup time before the apps load, Java sometimes crashes my browser, and the most ridiculous thing of all is that the last few 'advanced 3d' apps that I've tried running display a horrific security warning message saying that the app is untrusted. Apparently you can sign the apps to remove the warning, but why is it that people aren't always doing that? Is there some huge fee that Sun charges to sign your apps? I'm sorry but I'm not willing to give an untrusted browser app full access to my file system. Flash doesn't allow full access PERIOD (which definitely limits its usefulness in some applications) and I don't have to even worry before trying a new app.

Anyhow, I still haven't seen any compelling reasons to use Java that are so incredible that they outweigh these serious shortcomings. I think it's just a total non-starter. And with Flash starting to now support hardware 3D acceleration with Flash 10, there is one less reason to use Java.
Beta testing and beyond. (feedback without email forms)
CGRectMake does not make a div, it makes a rectangle that defines the location and size of views ( see http://developer.apple.com/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Ref... )
Thanks for veering it slightly more on topic.
“The PM should be the most empowered employee in your company… Yes, even more than the CEO”

This message was brought to you by The Project Management Institute.

I have yet to work with someone who is a PMP who has done anything but make a project worse. Maybe I've just had bad luck with that, but I'm not impressed with the job title so far.
The ones that cost $1 are brighter.

But seriously, I don't blame them, it takes almost zero effort and there's probably stupid people out there who will pay.
This is a great way to figure out who's opinion you shouldn't bother listening to.
This is spot on.

Unless you raise a bunch of capital affording you the time to try and build a scalable architecture before flipping the switch, it's just not feasible to spend time on problems that don't exist (and may never if you're site doesn't take off).

The irony is even if you did try and build an architecture that scales from day 1, there's a really good chance that you'll have to redo it anyway once you spot the real bottlenecks.
Ask HN : Music for boosting brain function, fake or real?
I came across a site called http://getimusic.com which claims to be selling music designed to boost concentration, memory etc. Claims to be designed by PhDs. Fake or real?

On a more general note, many music CDs on the market claim either to be relaxing or boosting brain function. Are there any scientific studies that prove/disprove their claims?
Agree. Macroeconomic effects are things that are often ignored by the public as a whole, but are so essential to understanding what's happening, both historically / politically and on our scale, where we're trying to build a startup that matters.
The rumored version sounds much more interesting than the current one. The time required to test out a service using flash/ajax is just as long as the page takes to load. With an applet it probably takes a minimum commitment of at least 5-10 minutes to get the thing to install properly. And I hope that it's well-tested so that it doesn't conflict with any of my Firefox plugins...

An article linked from the realityprime.com article that you listed has an interesting quote:

Our mandate was to get usage," Guymon (note: Mel Guymon, Google's Head of 3D Operations [and former There.com developer and IMVU Co-Founder]) said of his business plan. "The difference from the startups I’ve been in is that startups have to turn a profit or die. All the projects in Google are run as startups, but we’re given an incredibly amount of rope to be successful. We’re not about to run out of money and die. For Google it’s the opportunity to get into a space that we think is really going to be important in the long term. For me personally, I think this is going to make people’s online experiences richer and more interesting. For generations coming up from age 4, this is what they expect. For Google, that was really the stake in the road"

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/google-announce.htm...

Any thoughts? To me it sounds like they're a bit undisciplined. I'm not sure that it's a recipe for success to just throw money at a project. Constraints often help shape a product in good ways. In this particular example, it could have been a good thing if they didn't have enough programming resources to build and test their own plugin. They would have had to live within the limitations of the flash plugin, but that tradeoff could prove in retrospect to have been well worth it.
Look at his areas of expertise. Netscape. Ning. Loudcloud. Don't see any TV or movie industry experience. Do you?
Ask YC: MLB Gametime Weather Project
I built this small web app as an entry into the Weatherbug API Contest. It displays the weather information for the next upcoming game of a team.

What do you guys think? Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.
I heard Guy talk about the origin of alltop last week. He said that he heard about popurls, and how the guy was making money and doing nothing. He was so blown away by this that he called the guy and arranged lunch. Over lunch, he said "So are you going to make popurls for hockey? And wine? And so on?" and the guy said "no." So he said, "Okay, then I'm going to."
I built this small web app as an entry into the Weatherbug API Contest. It displays the weather information for the next upcoming game of a team.

What do you guys think? Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.
The Reality Tests
Ask YC: Let my PSD go?
What is your take on design companies who will not give you the layered file? Is there ever a legitimate reason beyond CONTROL?

...after a recent experience I will never again let a designer hold me hostage by not turning over the PSD...
Referata - free hosting of semantic wikis (wiki databases)
Chinese Video Site 56.com: We're Not Dead, Yet
These pictures came from a news agency, not directly from the Iranian government.

As to the question of the occurrence of a new round of testing at all, American military intelligence is looking on that rumor dubiously. Russian intelligence is flatly denying it, saying what happened has been mis-characterized. And even the Europeans are only giving tepid support to that allegation.

Frankly if American military intelligence thinks it didn't happen then that's good enough for me. But some people need to hear it from multiple quarters.

A good question would be . . .

Why American and Russian intelligence thinks that what happened has been 'mis-characterized'?

Who 'mis-characterized' it?

And most importantly . . .

To what end?
Aubrey de Grey reminds me of the cold fusion people.

Chairman and chief science officer of The Methuselah Foundation - cute but BS.

Biogerontologist - BS.

He is a very smart guy, why doesn't he go ahead and get himself an MD?

There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases.
If you live long enough the cancer incidence is 100%

So the world is working on curing aging, it always has. There's just still a VERY long way to go, don't hold your breath. Unless you are < 10 and reading this.

What exactly de Grey wants, that's not already being done in the regular effort to cure people, is beyond me?
Internet cable-laying boom
Ask YC: Is Zend Framework worth learning?
I started reading Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP a few days ago. The book relies heavily on the Zend Framework and Smarty templates to build a blogging website.

Does anyone else have experience with these? I'm willing to devote a lot of time learning modern web programming, but am not sure whether I'm headed in the right direction. Any advice?

Thanks in advance,
Matt
Or IPv6, right?
A similar question would be: What is your take on programming companies that won't give you the source code on projects that you paid for?

There are legitimate business reasons to do these things but if you want to avoid the situation, make sure to have it clearly stated before the project begins that you expect to have full rights to the source files. Even better, include it in the contract. Or have it written up clearly and agreed to in an email before the project starts.

And if you ever have a wedding, the same thing applies for your wedding video or wedding photos. Work it out ahead of time that you will actually own the raw video or photo files.

And don't be surprised if the prices that you're quoted go up when you ask for these things. Often, contractors will quote low prices knowing that they will make more money in the long run from followup work. It's not wrong for contractors to do that, but it feels dishonest when it's not clearly explained ahead of time exactly what you're getting when you pay for contract work.
Many folks would say the database is where scaling problems belong.

This makes sense but I've found the db to be a rather large bottleneck. On one hand, it's nice to store everything in a single blackbox and the apps don't have to care about data. On the other, databases can be slow and I figure some kind of caching is involved between them.

I could see that a site would simply use the db to generate static pages which would then be cached, but as you said, multicast messaging with a database backend seems like a tricky combination.

Edit: I realize I've kinda thought outloud here. I've summed up the general idea with the question below.

I take the problem to be that going to the actual database is necessary. What are the possible solutions for something like this?

Horizontal partitioning seems like the obvious answer. Is it that easy, though?
I'm not a fan of the "Project Management" discipline as described in this article. But neither am I a fan of design-by-prototyping.

I believe that Agile methods are the way to get things done faster with just the right amount of process. Agile teams shouldn't be allowed to get away with not doing architecture, design, whiteboarding, feature planning, user stories, QA, or UAT. Indeed, they are so important that they need to happen all the time.

They SHOULD get away with not having to use the PMP-approved form, with self-organizing rather than have tasks assigned, with not being "statused" every week in a big sit-down meeting where a 200 line project plan is reviewed in detail, and with embracing change.
Who wants to be thought of out of context? I want airlines to think of me as a passenger, and doctors to think of me as a patient -- I don't think I'll get better results if they think of me as a unique and special human being.

Why add mental overhead?
They did demonstrate their UI skills, by deconstructing the logic behind what the TripLog interface was trying to do and showing the logical groupings of related info. Translating that into visuals is simply the next step - scroll down to sanj's comment or go to daringfireball's followup post for links to visuals the 37s discussion sparked - and unfortunately, many people see it as the only step.
So, what apps have people installed? Any recommendations?

My favorite app so far: "LifeGame" ... it's Conway's Game of Life

Other apps I've installed:

- Loopt (cool integration with Twitter, Facebook, Yelp... just need more friends on it)

- AOL Radio (very nice, except you can't leave it running in the background while you're doing other things, but that's Apple's fault)

- Facebook (quicker than the web iPhone app, which is also very nice)

- Apple's iTunes Remote app
The only disadvantage would be if the dollar continued to slide. But if you don't immediately need the capital and plan to return in the near future, I'd leave it overseas.
IPhone App Store: The Early List of Top Downloads
IPhone 2.0 Firmware Already Jailbroken
Rogers iPhone 2nd most costly in the world
I imagine AT&T might have a problem with the bandwidth required for video streaming.

Though there is an AOL Radio application, which is pretty cool.
I want my vendors to think of me in their customer-specific mindset, too. But I do not want my boss thinking about me as just another "resource" without unique skills and contributions.

I had a boss years ago who called us all "code monkeys" who were engaged in the process of "tickey-tackey" all day.

There is nothing quite so demoralizing as hearing your most creative work -- that you studied for 8 years in depth at a difficult university to be capable of performing -- described as "tickey tackey that monkeys could do."

Which is similar to the feeling programmers get when called "resources," IMO.
23 Go To Resources for Finding Great Code
OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 finally to end in 4 months
Wow, I didn't realize that Japan's population was similar to the US. You really do learn something everyday...

I agree, the desire for India and Chinese to bolster the middle class is at the heart of the problems we will face in the next few years.

We balk at paying $4/gallon for gas, but the folks in the East who have no historical frame of reference like we do, may easily accept $8/gallon. (I hate saying we, since some Y!Hackers aren't from the US, you know what I mean...)

If this is true, then Eastern oil importers can bid much higher prices, pushing our prices higher.
Do most people agree that Rails is better than PHP to master?
Are you sure you linked to the right site? http://GetMusic.com seems to be a generic ringtone-purchase site. I don't see anything about music designed to boost concentration or memory.
Secure Design Using a Microcontroller III
zend is a good php framework. its used more in corporate environments, from what i've seen, with cake/symfony/codeigniter being used in smaller dev groups or by freelancers.

i don't have enough experience using it to give you my thoughts on how it works and stuff, but i will tell you that for the most part, the php frameworks are all similar in how they work.
Twitter isn't your standard Rails application. It was hacked out with Rails because it was easy with Rails. Nobody clearly understood that Twitter wasn't a traditional Rails app until it was too late.

The biggest scaling issue with frameworks (like Rails) that obscure the database operations, which tend to be the most expensive, is that inexperienced developers won't spend time picking through the logs, trying to find ways to eliminate or speed up queries.
Ah, geometry -- the only math I ever had some pride in my ability in.
i don't.

its too situational and dependent upon time, i feel, to be able to make a generic, blanket statement like that.
He really wasn't pushing a document heavy, he thins man of the so called docs could be in emails, with very quick statements. It just avoid confusion of beginning down a path for a few hours, when there was a minor communication error.

He said one of the things he hates the most is when you send a requirement off to an engineer and 3 hours later you get back, a working feature, documentation, and a spec. then if it doesn't match the initial concept a bunch of time has just been blown.

Just to give some perspective, Niel is a CS grad and has plenty of engineering in his background. He said he gets why engineers fight back so much, but it hurts the project as a whole.
What is a rectangle on the web? Isnt it a div?
Beer got me through my PhD.
Of these, Only 'C' is accepted by the American military establishment as being true. Which means, I only accept 'c' as being true. Regarding 'A', go listen to the original speech and learn Farsi. That's the good thing now-a-days, a lot of younger people, those with military backgrounds anyway, know Farsi and Arabic. They will know when they are about to be hoodwinked. As touching 'B' the American military establishment has been consistent in saying that weapons and, more importantly, logistical support have been coming into Iraq from Iran. Not from the IRANIAN GOVERNMENT. It is clear that radicalized people in Iran are behind this in my view. In fact they seem keen to want to avoid the mistake they made in Iraq, getting rid of the government, when the people are the problem. And despite whatever you heard about the middle east, the people really are the problem.

Similarly weapons, money and support for the killing of Americans comes in from Syria, Jordan, and believe it or not, even Kuwait. But, by far, the largest supplier of man and material in the struggle against us pig-eating infidels is from our good friends in Saudi Arabia. Fun fact, there are units in Iraq who have yet to catch a foreign fighter who is NOT Saudi.

Did you know we actually trained some of the most effective foreign fighters in Iraq ourselves? When Chechens were blowing up Russians we thought they were freedom fighters. So they got tacit support, not just from us but from the West in general. Ask any man from Marine one eight and he will tell you about the effectiveness of Chechen snipers in Fallujah.

My point is, from MY point of view, which is clouded from being in an enlisted family as opposed to a commissioned one I'm sure, Iran is only a small part of the problem.
I wish I had more than one mod point to give you.

Scalability issues are a very nice problem to have.
Those hours contributes to the stress no?
Actually, Japan's population is less than half of US: ~127 m vs ~301 m.
Yeah, I don't follow everything he outlined. I think being able to do testing with out a formal spec is good. Especially when talking about unit level testing. Once you are talking about functional testing it is better to have an outline of what exceptions and expectations should exist in the system.

Good point about talking in groups, letting potential clients argue over a feature and resolve what they both think is best can be gold. It is a great way to force people into some potentially different ideas.
oh thanks for notifying.
fixed to http://getimusic.com (forgot the "i" in the middle before).
Are Prestigious Educations Killing Venture Capital?