skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Horizontal partitioning depends on your data. Do you have lots of joins and interdependent data? Partitioning will be tricky. Do you just need to store a lump of data relevant to one customer, many times over? Horizontal partitioning is easy.

Relational databases are really cool. They're not the right technology for all apps though. The big wave-makers right now are things like Google's BigTable and Amazon's SimpleDB. They're implicitly horizontal but with reduced querying abilities compared to traditional SQL.

It's a hard problem to scale a traditional relational DB across multiple independent commodity boxes like we see at Google or with AWS. The "stuff everything in a giant hashtable" approach scales nicely across a bunch of cheap boxes.
I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to punch people who've told me that in the face when I was sleeping for 2 hours day for a month.
Actually, you can pick availability date when registering the app. I don't think anyone would, though.
Like anywhere, there are many American beers that are simply drek. Our mainstream beers often have very low alcohol content compared to other beers around the world and our "Light/Lite" beers lack much of the flavor that makes beer, well beer, so the "close to water" is somewhat true.

In defense of American beer: There are thousands of Microbreweries all over the country with influences from all over the globe. I think if you dig a little deeper, you will find that America is the melting pot of beer!

Yes, indeed, if you come to America and order a Bud-lite at the Applebees, you are quite likely to be disappointed. You have to dig a little deeper than beer made in giant chemical factories with the singular intent of HCD mass appeal. Unfortunately America excels at that sort of production and so we've gotten a bad rap in world opinion about beer. Some of the worst beer in the world is made in the USA, so is some of the best.

Sidebar: Not to nitpick but the "American beer is like sex in a canoe, its pretty close to water" is funnier when you think about why sex is included and replace "pretty" with a different word. :)
I couldn't find a more authoritative source on very short order, but FWIW, here's the TLDP (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/chapter-encryption-au...)

Unlike in IPv4, encryption and authentication is a
mandatory feature of IPv6. Those features are normally
implemented using IPsec (which can be also used by IPv4).

Seems to me that if support for encryption is mandatory for IPv6, even if it's not on by default, using that somehow would be a better route than writing your own New Thing.
Ironic as hell. As the programmer, I'm also generally the only person looking out for the user. Our project managers only care about hitting every bullet point on the invoice and coming in on budget.
Most startups, if they approached scaling like mature enterprises, would never have the opportunity to become a mature enterprise.
How can we impress on people that "no politics" means just that, not "no politics, unless it's something I really agree with and want everyone to see" or "no politics, unless I think it's really really important"?
Very cool. Next up: hook it up to a feed of all images released by various governments and new agencies, with alerts when there's a hit.
Because it means you don't have to bring up a key pad to enter numbers?
"A New Kind of Science" on any list of 10 great tech books!?! Puh-leeze.
From now on, I'm writing all my code on a legal pad first.
And you should be a man enough to use your real account.
People should upmod things that they find interesting, and they should do it here if they are hackers or working on a startup. You don't really need to go deeper than that.
"There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases."

This statement betrays that you don't understand Aubrey de Grey's position. He doesn't want to cure all age related diseases. (Except 1) Because there's so few kinds of metabolic damage (just 7) it now seems possible for us to find a way to ameliorate all of them, thus preventing age related diseases from appearing in the first place. And yes, he's done lots of thinking about cancer and the 100% likeliness of getting it if you live long enough.

I suggest that you actually read what he was to say before labeling him. (You are not alone. From what I've read on the Slashdot entry, most of the people there only have the foggiest idea of what his position is.)
Niel is currently working on his 3rd startup, two successful so far. I think he knows the early stage start ups pretty well.

I know what you mean about getting bogged down in writing everything down. I have had a hard time getting away from verbal communication and just working on my own as well. I can recall various times it has led to problems and spending time on the wrong things though. I think he basically pushes to be fast but still have some documentation, because the few missteps you make, will waste more time than you think you are saving.

Everyone should be able to QA, but manually QAing or forgetting to QA something because it was a weird edge case can really hurt or slow you down. We try to deal with this by avoiding manual QA we don't want people wasting time going through the product QAing it over and over, we rely more on automated testing.

If you believe that a few short emails back and forth and IMs to keep people on the same page means your shafted,I guess we just have a different value on 30 minutes of non development time a day.

I think in our last start up to much head down development killed the startup. Which isn't related to the documentation vs non documentation issue, but was still a PM mistake on our part.
Their support in IPv6 is mandatory, while their use is not.
Lots of people will still die, no matter what we discover.
This looks like an interesting new way for indie artists to make some dough, but like someone already pointed out, they still need money for decent equipment, studio time, and mixing and mastering (at least) before their stuff is even worth listening to. This isn't a problem software or the internet can help with.

People seem to think labels are pointless with the internet now, but without a respected label backing you, good luck getting into a real music festival, good luck getting attention from pitchfork, tv shows, magazines, etc, and good luck getting to tour with other good bands.

MySpace will only get you so far.
I'm not convinced that that's enough to keep people who aren't really hackers or working on a startup to crowd out those who are with politics and such. Reddit being the number one example. I suppose we can hope that PG as moderator will keep things from getting that bad, but it's not an easy job.

The problem is that everyone has an opinion about "bike sheds" like politics, so it's very easy to get big discussions going that draw people in.
Talk about unintentional comedy. Maybe people do better if they think they are far more attractive than they really are.

Best quote: "Traditionally, the adult entertainment industry has been extremely image based and primarily focused on beauty, health, style, and youthfulness."
Allen Morgan a VC for Mayfield Fund and a big proponent of Web2.0 is Gone
Indeed. I'm in the middle of switching Insoshi from Ferret to Sphinx (http://insoshi.lighthouseapp.com/projects/9331/tickets/17-mo...), for all the usual reasons. It hasn't been as easy as I'd hoped, but it's the right thing to do. A blog post describing my experiences is also in the works.
Ron Garret details some of the Lisp NASA development. The basic thing was, it was used as an experiment on a deep space test probe (I think) but they switched to C++ because of orders from on high.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070228160104/http://ase.arc.nas...
I'd like to thank you, and everyone, who took my comment seriously.
The iPod Touch is only about 2X the price of a DS, and you get music + games. If they drop the price on this any time soon it will be a sign that they intend on owning the mobile gaming market.
I agree. I am having the same problem, with this meetings, and when I missed the last one, the project manager decided to assign me something that didn't make sense, and I had to rebuff him, and kindly tell him working on that piece of functionality right now was stupid.

Project managers should just keep track on what's going on, and leave it to the technical team to decide on what to tackle first, or last.
If I were to try and tell you exactly what it is about Twitter that makes engineers cry, I'd point out that every single page is dynamic, every user's main page requires a giant JOIN, there are lots of writes coming in all the time from every direction and writes are harder to scale, low latency is a requirement for many people, and there's no obvious axis along which to "partition" Twitter.

That's more along the lines of what I was looking for. Thanks. This sounds tricky...

Just came across this link now: http://highscalability.com/scaling-twitter-making-twitter-10...
Well, we did it because our landlord left some of their brewing equipment in the basement (along with a large amount of old beer... will not say where that went on the nights our power went out).

We found the following books to be really helpful:

1) The Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian (he's really cool)- http://www.amazon.com/New-Complete-Joy-Home-Brewing/dp/03807...
2) HomeBrewing for Dummies

Aside from that, start by going to the nearest homebrew store (after cleaning up some equipment) and ask them for their help. They'll set you up with the basic equipment and a starter kit (we started with a simple brown ale), which will include ingredients. Very simple, and almost as easy as making instant stuffing.

As to tips:
- ingredients and temperature are important, but the key is being sanitary.
- if you have a carboy, buy a nice scrubber.
- bottling tips: A) get grolsch bottles and B) make sure your bottles are not too thin (ask your local store about this) because sometimes they explode.
- Getting small 5 gallon kegs are a god-send.

Aside from that, I think you're set.
Yeah, I know. I was commenting on your assertion that the current price of oil is due to supply problems.
Folks - i'm the one that gave that presentation. One thing I am seeing here is a semantic assumption that PRODUCT management and PROJECT management are the same thing. IMHO they are two vastly different disciplines and very little of what I said applies to my opinion of PROJECT management (I could do another preso on that alone). Project management is a book keeper and arbitrator function in my view - not a decision maker about the final product being developed. Many companies blend these functions, we intentionally separated them as managing project timelines and gant charts is a vastly different skill set than managing requirements. I suspect many people have a poor opinion of Project Management (and the institute) because they blend the two functions. But don't confuse the downfalls of many project managers (they have limited consituencies - budget and timeline) with the Product Management process.

Hope that helps - glad this started some discussion.

Niel
And ps - you can Google me to find out my resume. I have only ever built startups - from powerpoint to sale. Since the first company i started when i was 14 :)
How To Save $200 On The iPhone 3G, Maybe
over PM - ing, is the death for any early software startup.

Get a prototype (wireframes). A basic engineering specs, and divide everything you are going to do in tasks that don't take more than 3-4 days to complete. Anything that takes over a week, should probably be divided up.
Put all the tasks in a list in a excel sheet, and start marking them down as they are completed.
Or insert new ones, as they arise.
That's it.

I recommend to my competitors to get as many PMs as they can, especially the ones that love Microsoft Project, and don't know how to operate otherwise.

Burocracy is a PM's best friend, as that's what they fundementally are. People that track projects, and tell their managers on what's going on.
The iPod Touch also has no buttons. Even though the DS has a touchscreen, there are very few games that use it exclusively; it seems that many of the games that use it do so only for the novelty, much like the detecting-blowing-via-the-microphone gimmick. Although I'm sure people can come up with compelling games using only the touchscreen, I think it would be hard for the iPhone to take on the DS and PSP's "twitch" game audience.

Given the iPhone's unconventional input techniques and the 1-2 years of lead time needed for a professional game, I wouldn't consider an iPod Touch price drop as a sign of interest in gaming. Rather, I'd look for Apple to purchase or contract existing game studios... ideally a year ago.
Clearly bought for the publicity and VC cash potential. I bet the price tag is sub 50K.
This is why startups need "business" people.
Where can I download this "Internet"?
yahoo is provider are fucking suck no jok....i dont want a membership from your motherfucker again....sucker..
Successful - that's cute.
I'll have some snake oil with that, Doctor...
What does "mandatory" mean? What happens if you don't implement it?

I agree that the Pirate Bay should join forces with the IETF BTNS effort that is already underway, but this is still orthogonal to IPv4/IPv6.
solid answer, thank you.

i hadn't even considered python. what are its selling points?
now you both owe me.
Aah thanks. The claims and graphs by various vendors can be very difficult to make sense of sometimes.
My bad .. should have looked up wikipedia first.
In my programming experience working in large projects (100+ developers), it's virtually impossible to Do it right the first time - I mean the overall project. We always have had to iterate towards the solution...but for smaller stuff it could work.
Don't miss the comments:

I recall the story of a young boy who had a large wine-colored birthmark that a large part of his face. His mother, of course, was heartbroken. But she refused to be daunted. She told him that he could not change what he looked like, but he could impress people so much by what was within that they would not care about his appearance.

That young man went on to be a college president.

And from personal experience, I have found that some women, while more objectively beautiful than others, are not nearly so sexy. You would think…. But when a lady knows how to carry herself, present herself, and enjoys laughing and fellowshiping at the fullest, it is incredibly attractive.

And then, my own world. Having been a big guy all my life (I know am in the mid 400s, and hope to have gastric bypass one day), I can only say that, yes, I’ve experienced some weight related “bias.”

There were likely girls that didn’t give me a second look (and yet, I still married a total looker 13 years younger than me–going on 11 years together now). Or perhaps the truth is that I didn’t even take the chance because I convinced myself that it wouldn’t happen. (And it likely would not have, but still….)

I feel that I am two levels below where I should be in my career. In looks, I’d give myself a 6 (not for physical attractiveness, but for personality and so forth–so help me, several really pretty women have had crushes on me–go figure). But in intelligence, I think I likely have about as good an aptitude as anyone (of course, when it comes to physics, I’m tower like a colossus over, oh, 10% of the poopulation). So I’d give myself a 9 in intelligence (OK, and 8).

And yet, though I tend to get most of the jobs I interview for, and though I get good reviews, I am two levels down from where I think I should be–and where I KNOW I am worthy to be.

I could mark it down to being a BFM (Big Fat Man). And that may indeed be the case. But I also wonder how much of it is attributable to my rock-the-boat type thinking. I’m not afraid to write to my CEO with a great new idea (and skip everyone above me in the chain-of-command). I tend to question things and want to improve processes on a regular basis.

I don’t know that I’d feel any better if that was the reason I hadn’t progressed further. After all, not knowing when to leave off the maverick stuff is somewhat of a business flaw, I suppose. But I would indeed be very hurt to think that someone didn’t give me a chance becuase of my size.

Of course, I do well enough. But I do notice that salespersons tend to be pretty, blonde, long-legged, big-breasted young ladies. You would think people could see through such manipulation.

Lastly, I am fortunate to work for a world class Fortune 20 company that seeks to treat me well (of course, getting rid of all those too-small chairs would be nice, too.)

— Posted by AaronS
My first degree is actually in Mech Eng, not CS. To us, a "resource" is something you use up and then discard. Coincidentally, that's also the HR definition.
I've heard that the belgian iPhones, while "unlocked", only work with Belgian cell phone companies. I don't have any source, but its something to consider and watch out for. Somebody said its called "Nation Locking" or something.
Someone should just insert this code in the feed of news images.
Here is an easy workaround to the "programmer = resource" question. If I make 50/hr as a programmer than the cost per day of me as a programming resource is 508 = 400. Now we can add an "Efficiency coefficient" to account for how skilled I am. So, the default cost for our programming "resource" per day is:

ResourceCostPerDay = HourlyRate8EfficiencyCoefficient

If this coeff. defaults to 1 then in my example:

ResourceCostPerDay = 5081 = 400

If I am really super good we can change this to have a coeff. of 1.5 so

ResourceCostPerDay = 5081.5 = 600

If I totally suck we can change the coeff. to 0.5 so

ResourceCostPerDay = 508*0.5 = 200

So by having a simple "efficiency coefficient" the resource cost for a programmer can indeed be modeled fine, so with due respect to the person who posted this article, he is mistaken: a programmer or engineer (speaking as a test automation engineer myself) can indeed by quantified quite well as a "resource" like any other "resource" such as the number of application servers a company has. Reductionist? Yes. But this is a reductionist universe. Deal with it. :-)
electrolytes, mostly
Regarding crashing:

Am I right in assuming that there's very little process separation in the older RAD 6000 boards?

There is no process separation. I mean basically what we —

One bad pointer in one module and —

Exactly. —

you wait for the next update window.

Exactly.

Wow. I could write software like that.

[Laughs] Well —

I won't give you a 90 percent certainty though.

We have strict coding guidelines that we use. We don't allow dynamic memory allocation, for example.
Expatriate Travel Basics - Know Before You Go
Memory: 128M
Basically they are just adding a "get naked" button.
I'm right here.

Blackberry till I die.
For those who haven't read it already, the archives on his blog are a goldmine, esp. his ten commandments of venture capital:

http://allensblog.typepad.com/
I wouldn't commission a piece of software without stipulating that I receive the full source code. It's the same for design, with me.

For the record, I think that the standard wedding photographer scheme is sleazy.

My data belongs to me.
I'm pretty sure my friend just started working for one of the companies there.
The most surprising aspect of that video is the quality of journalism. It is sober, no FUD, lasts 6 whole minutes, and actually allows the viewer to get an accurate idea of the topic. I was too young to remember that era, but it clearly shows TV journalism went downhill since 1991.
Do you know if your friend likes the workspace there?
It depends entirely on the contract.

For example, in photography, the photographer keeps the negatives (or .NEF files these days). What you get is the finished product - colour balanced, retouched, cropped, and probably actually only 5-10% of what was shot. That's what you're paying for, the final images. If you're the bride, then the photographer's business model is to give you a good price on shooting your wedding and make money on reprints. If you're an ad agency, the photographer licenses you the image for this campaign for this much time, because the business model is that that image will end up in a stock portfolio in a few years.

If you get the originals, and exclusive rights in perpetuity, then expect to pay a premium for it. It's up to you if you actually need them.
It's incredibly easy to learn & use - what I've always liked about it is that I spend very little time thinking about how to accomplish a task in Python.

In addition, Python has solid support for object oriented programming which I can't really say for PHP (PHP's object 'support' is slowly improving but it's still a crappy patch). This is represented at it's core by the fact that EVERYTHING is an object - if you say:

foo = 5

foo is an object of type int. It's still loosely typed, in that you don't have to declare that foo is an int, but the contents being objects gives you a lot of power for dealing with them.

There are a lot of great tools for Python as well - Pylons (which Reddit is based upon), Django and TurboGears are pretty well entrenched and established. They are easy to learn and work with (Django has an incredibly low barrier to entry/learning curve) and powerful.

Mark Pilgrim wrote a great book called "Dive into Python" which is available for free on his website: http://diveintopython.org/

It gets things moving pretty quickly if you're looking to get a taste of what Python offers.
I think he does, I just left a message for him asking if it was actually the company. He is new to the whole start-up idea, he just found out people will pay you to start a company.

If it is actually the place I will let you know.
This announcement is not about jailbreaking the new 3G iPhone hardware. A huge attack against the first generation iPhones was discovered in March which completely compromised the secure bootloader and made it possible to install any unsigned firmware image you want.

http://wikee.iphwn.org/news:pwnage

All they have probably done here is hacked the 2.0 firmware to include the installer app and then loaded it on first generation hardware with the bootloader vulnerability.
You might also look at some of the great early stuff, like Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.pdf.

Also, check out the Graphical Gems series from IBM: lots of great algorithms.
Writing a book is a linear process. You have a start and an end.

But a Lisp program (for instance) has multiple paths to its goal, so it makes more sense using non-linear tools when writing Lisp software.
The other point of course is that if you learn PHP, you've only learned a tool to build websites.

Python is a pretty multipurpose tool that happens to have the ability to build web applications. (And Ruby as well)
Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Create An Ebook Today
Hi, Cory here. Today I have for you yet another one of my latest articles about ebook publishing that I think you will enjoy giving you 5 reasons WHY you should consider writing an ebook.
Ask HN: What is your political view?
What is your political view(ask fast for missed ideologies)?

* Liberal
* Neo-con
* Conservative
* Socialdemocrat
* Environmentalist/Green
* Anarcho-capitalist
* Socialist
* Anarchist
* Commmunist
* Social-liberal
* Fascist
* Nazi
* Don't care

Quick, how do I make a voteable list, ie up and down clicks?
I would expect that they're under pressure to avoid offering apps that might cut into AT&T's business, such as Skype or an IRC client. An ssh client would be about as good as an IRC client.
also, "There are no rate limits on the number of queries per day" from http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/07/boss_the_ne...
Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks
Bizarre; I didn't see that there when I looked earlier.
Audiences may be ready to give up ink smeared on paper but they are not ready to abandon storytelling delivered on a screen.

You mean like...your computer's screen?