skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why do Twitter following and search break so easily?
A simple test. Create two twitter accounts, A & B. Set A to follow B; B to follow A. Follow a bunch of other users on both accounts to simulate typical account activity. Now start tweeting. Do all of A's tweets show up on B's timeline? Do all of B's tweets show up on A's timeline?

I can tell you from my own experience: most of the time, A does not show on B; and B does not show on A. Googling the problem, it appears other are experiencing the same thing, (followed tweets not showing up) but no real answers on fixing it.

Because this problem appears to be the rule, rather than the exception, one wonders what percentage of followed tweets never show up.

I also note that Twitter's search function frequently errors out with the "tweets are taking a long time to load" message. But then if you do the same search in Google, you find what you're looking for.

These failures seem like such basic functionality problems that I wonder how widespread they are.
> we are rapidly destroying oxygen generation capacity on this planet

Citation needed. (Increasing CO2 actually helps plants produce O2. Even the most dire warmist predictions have increased plant life.)
My umfriend wants to get into rock climbing, so I will probably join her -- is there a good introduction to rock climbing for hackers?
I hope you are being ironic.
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Freedom is slavery!
I'm collecting people who write well about colleges they attended.

Heh, I interpreted this as stevejohnson is looking for people who "write about the colleges they attend" and who "write well" (presumably the writing they do about the colleges they attend is the writing that is well written).
From an expense standpoint, I can host this in my apartment as I already have statics, a home-based business circuit through Comcast that is 50/10. They don't charge for bandwidth and I have never been told about any cap on monthly bandwidth either. In 4 years I have never paid more than my monthly fee.

So it would seem like I would have no over-head.just my time to create the sites, set up affiliate accounts, etc.
It's a good step forward. The web standards and especially their implementation in browsers and on websites are unlikely to catch up operating system and application development. Therefore the native app is likely to be able to provide something that the browser can't. However, with such notification APIs and other technologies coming, they might be good enough.

I still like how I can switch between applications way more than I like switching between different sites or rather the tabs of one site. Any improvement on that area?
I think you are ignoring a very obvious fact, those 1% that are no longer 'complaining' are really doing so in an automated fashion with their blacklists. Further I think the complaints will be even better because people are more inclined to a fix a problem if it is easy to do so (adding it to their blacklist) than sending an email saying please remove this from my search results (and hoping it gets removed in the future), or doing an ad-hoc in browser solution that does not give feed back to google.

What I think really needs to be exploited is a ring of trust type aspect, I'd like to have the Hackernews ring where all us on here work together to remove the spam from our results and let's Google see what are taking out, maybe that will help them improve their algorithms.
Is experts-exchange really a spam site? I always thought they had real users who ask&answer questions. But that they are just a crap site that hides this behind a paywall (I'm aware that the actual content is at the bottom of the page).
Why you got blocked
BitTorrent Betting Big On Device Integration, Live Streams
I imagine they'd still make their revenue from advertising - they'd have an adsense bar. This would put the search part of the business on the same footing as other sites selling advertising space.

I'm imagining a world where there are multiple adsenses (ad brokers) competing effectively with each other for space, driving out supernormal profit for brokers, and returning the bulk of the advertising revenues to the publishers rather than to the middleman (currently Google). With more revenue for the publishers, more publishers come online and drive out supernormal profits for publisher too. That would be a more efficient market.
Apple Launches Mac App Store With More Than 1,000 Apps
Seconded. Advertising for outstandingly good products is not a bad thing.
I'd like to see an option for searching only ad-free sites, or perhaps just sites that don't use AdSense, as well. Surely Google would have no problem with that.
...or more specifically, risk capital is being financed through taxpayer dollars.
If you're working your legs that hard, you're going to have a short dive. With jet fins, even in "strong" currents, exercise has never been my limiting factor -- just concern that I'd be using up my air too quickly for a good dive. In really strong currents (Atlantic wrecks), you use lines and otherwise try to minimize current swimming).

It's not zero energy, but I get more exercise loading and unloading cylinders on the boat than I do actually diving.
This looks cool, but before I sign up for the private beta I'd like to read more documentation first. Does that exist?
> But I do think the reasons for this accelerated wealth concentration need to be clearly understood, and in some cases neutralized - unpunished financial fraud that led to the crisis,

I'd agree, but the good folks in MA just re-elected Barney Frank.

Govt caused the housing crisis and the credit crunch, so if you're arguing that govt will fix it, you get to explain why things will be different this time.
Ask HN: Embedded or lightweight full-text/fuzzy-text search engine database?
I am looking for a search engine that can search 50,000 documents on an Intranet. Very low activity. Just need it to be lightweight, but it would be awesome if it was embedded.

I need googlish full-text search features like fuzzy text search, "did you mean" and maybe autofill search suggestions based on popular queries.

Is there anything like that out there?
Well noted. I used waterboarding because that was one of the techniques being employed at Guantanamo, which is also mentioned in the post.

Having your e-mail in Exchange and having to use Outlook (or worse - Outlook Web Access) daily is indeed more like having the testicles fried in a frying pan or being stretched on the rack.
My x-wife purchased a substantially number of songs from iTunes - we are talking a 5 digit investment. When I moved over seas to England; I was no longer able to partake in my music due to the DRM placed on it by Apple and my new "jurisdiction."

I am very deeply suspicious about the 'app-store' what if I purchase an application while I am here in the UK? Is it going to work when I get back to the USA - or will they force me to purchase it again the way they are attempting to do with my music?
Maybe a lot of people bought new PCs for the holiday season, crippling the botnets that used to rely on older (less secure) versions of Windows?
The Mac App Store and the “MZFinance.NoGUIDTokenFailureKey_message ” Error
yeah same, i haven't logged in for a year at least...but it's still useful when you are on the other end trying to look someone else up.

I don't think Facebook would be able to challenge LinkedIn without branching out to a new domain name...i dunno something like workbook.com
One point seems to be missing: web applications that do have a web front are actually distributed not only on the servers, but also on the clients. This makes reasoning on reliability or security even harder.
Put an email address or twitter in your profile, so we can follow you up on that...
Yeah this isn't gonna fly. They're basically just adding OLED keys to a netbook, and the result looks like an ugly netbook.

I know exactly how to make the best mobile gaming device. You need something more along the lines of a wide Playstation controller with dual-analog sticks on the thumbs. I never understood why they think the buttons need to be facing upward and used only by your thumbs, that's wrong. Your thumbs are the most dexterous and should only be used for analog joysticks. Buttons should be on the backside of the device under each finger so you can press them while gripping the device.
It doesn't seem like it would be hard, but if the rankings aren't driven by money, then there will be attempts to game the system. The problem I feel is Money. As long as everyone has to compete for it (meaning money doesn't work for the people, people work for money - in a system owned by the few), we'll have shady marketers, shady products, spammers etc... so, I think that it will remain a cat and mouse game.
In the US most phones are bundled with a service contract (typically two years). This reduces the line item price of the phone from list price to a fraction of list price (or zero). However, if the contract is terminated early, the balance of the list price is due. In addition, if a smartphone is bundled with the service contract, the purchaser must select a plan which includes data service.

ATT makes additional revenue by charging the same rate if you have bundled a phone with your service plan or if you are using your own unlocked GSM phone.

Tmobile, the other significant GSM carrier in the US provides a $20 a month discount for (and does not require a service contract) when the customer does not bundle a phone with their plan.

In the US ATT is the exclusive iPhone carrier and unlocked GSM iPhones are not available. Thus the price of the iPhone is $49, and it's cost over the course of a 24 month contract is $899 because of the terms required by ATT's standard agreement.
In college you are forced to learn all the boring stuff about code readability, data structures and algorithms, code life cycles,etc...

Most of those I know who have taught themselves code (engineers, physicists, statisticians and mathematicians) in a non-academic environment spurge spaghetti, and I hate them to death.
1.5 - Ensure that others know of the value.

(Sort of a prereq or a part of #2.)
Let me offer a counter point of view.

LinkedIn knows me and it know my colleagues and my work history. My interactions on LinkedIn are more formal and even more cordial than my interactions on FB or here.

If you were a HP/IBM/ any large tech vendor in charge of Financial /banking vertical, you could find me and reach me through LinkedIn and I would hear your pitch, just out of courtesy to my colleague who introduced you. The value of this interaction is what LinkedIn captures.

If I were looking for a job at a company, I would be able to get an introduction to someone at that company through my LinkedIn contacts. At FB, everyone seems to be sharing their vacation pictures and hookup/breakup stories.

I will guess the CPM on LinkedIn for targeted ads and brand building campaigns would be much more lucrative than on FB. And sales and marketing folks of vendors that sell to businesses would pay for premium membership as well. And so would job seekers.
Care to elaborate on why that is good?
I started with nothing but a dream, and twelve million pounds in my pocket.
I said the same thing about Amazon in 1999 ("they won't even turn a profit until 2003? How the hell does Wall Street think they're worth $40B when they lose money on each sale?") and ended up with egg on my face for it.

FaceBook's a bit too risky an investment for me now, but I can see how someone who really believed social networking will fundamentally change society and FaceBook is the horse to bet on would go for it.
Isn't the most important part of PC gaming the mouse? How are they playing WoW and DotA without a mouse?
I think this could be modeled after Gmail's social spam filter.
> But I notice that the only people that really hate it are powerusers.

This is an excellent point. If I write network clients in elisp just for yuks, I'm probably not Apple's target user for iTunes. Emacs' UI has broken my brain (and hurt my fingers.)
I second this. I am super smart and I am a shit entrepreneur. I try, but it's just pathetic.
Ask HN: Solved this problem with stochastic beam search. Any alternatives?
I have the following problem:

Givens:

There are N types of item.

For each item type, M instances exist.

Each item instance has two integer attributes, A and B.

There is some subset S of item types (i.e. a set of up to N distinct item types)

Goal: For a given set S, choose the optimal set R of item instances corresponding to the set (i.e. one item instance in R for each item type in S).

Let SUM be the sum of all the values of A in R. Let MEAN be the mean of all the values of B in R.

The optimal set is one that meets one of the two following conditions (depending on which one we are looking for at the give moment)

a) SUM is the minimum possible, and MEAN is within some range.

b) MEAN is the maximum possible, and SUM is within some range.

My approach:
Two-part stochastic beam search. In the first part, the objective function is based on the distance from the center of the constraint space (i.e. the space where SUM or MEAN is within the acceptable range). This goes until we have k states within the constraint space. In the second part, the objective function is defined by the qualification for an "optimal set" defined in the paragraph above. At each step, only successor states within the constraint space are considered. Iteration continues until MAX_STEPS is exceeded.

What other approaches would you consider for solving this problem? One issue I have with the current approach is that, while it does generate results that satisfy the conditions, the results are not optimal, in the sense that I can run the algorithms several times and get different answers.
Even with Eclipse running and all of the memory allocated, less than 4 GB are currently being used for program workspace. The rest is being used by buffers. It's one of the cases when a PAE-like memory model would suffice.

I cannot remember when was the last time a single program wanted more than 4GB (I can, actually, it was Firefox and I left it running with a page full of Flash thingies for the weekend - by Monday, it was unresponsive and I had to xkill it). I can agree we need 64-bit addresses for servers (and we have been needing them for quite some time now) but not for desktops and certainly not for my own computers.
Digikey doesn't compete on price, they compete on inventory. Most hardware designers I know use Digikey exclusively because Digikey is pretty much guaranteed to stock the part they want to buy. If Digikey doesn't have it, no one else does either.

Also, Digikey ships things out extremely fast. Not many other places offer overnight shipping, which is important when you are closing in on a deadline.

If you are doing real engineering and not just screwing around in your basement, you don't really care that much about price. The last thing you want to do is order from multiple vendors because it eats time and is more expensive in the end because you will be raped by shipping costs.
Nope -- apps have to be self-contained .app bundles, and it's not permitted to write anything into shared operating system folders (which would be necessary to install a screensaver).

Apple is strictly enforcing that rule, too. My app was at first rejected for violating it. The specific reason given was:
The application is creating files or writing to </Library/Preferences/com.apple.mediaio.DeviceSettings.plist> and <~/Library/Images>

It turns out that my app had nothing to do with this -- the responsible party was the IKPictureTaker class in ImageKit, which I was using to provide the "take a photo" functionality.

To Apple's credit, they made it very easy to email a real person about the rejection. When I explained that ImageKit is responsible, the rejection was rescinded within a day.
Tesla Vehicle Engineering
Mark stated at Startup School that Facebook hasn't posted huge profits (if any) because they continue to invest almost everything back in for as long as they can [1]. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen, but I think it's fair to say that if/when Facebook chooses to turn more of a profit than they are currently, they can/will.

[1] http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272178321
Agreed. That's what we found at Bitpass, a micropayment system for digital content in which people were asked to buy a prepaid "phone card" for digital content. The minimum prepay was $3 and people were still complaining.

So, based on our experience at Bitpass, we recently launched a cashless micropayment system, ThankThis.com. Instead of a Flattr button, there's a ThankThis button. Clicking it shows you a small sponsored message (i.e. an opt-in ad), which pays the publisher and gives you points for your favorite charity or nonprofit, which could also be wikipedia.
He is claiming that the value "css" is special, along with a few others, in that when you call attr with it jQuery actually dispatches to the css method passing the second argument as the value. He claims in the comments that this works with 1.4 (http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/2353-5-things-you-might-not...), but I can't find it documented anywhere in jQuery's docs, nor can I make it work with the version of jQuery served on the jQuery docs site itself.
The point about the uncacheability of DNSCurve seems correct and a huge concern (http://dankaminsky.com/2011/01/05/djb-ccc/#caching).
I wonder what fraction of that $2B gross revenue number is purely Zynga.
is scala FP? Usually FP languages are :

- lisps and schemes: CL, racket,

- the ML/erlang/haskell axis incl ocaml,

- spoken of in reverent tones: dylan, clean, mozart/oz

- the JVM/CLR languages: clojure, F#, scala, groovy, jruby
Motorola unveils tablet with Honeycomb, Tegra, and (soon) 4G
Top Tips for Your Small Business to Thrive in 2011
Fair point, I suppose I just want a linux geek to look at the areas of OSX I consider to be deficient. I was thrilled when virtual desktops came to OSX as a core feature, but there are some bugs that seem like show stoppers that I'd think a *nix hacker would have run into. Similarly, it seems like 3rd party dev package management is always a chore... but on that front I'm probably just being anal.
How I feel about Scheme's performance
Not necessarily when you factor in that you may need tens of thousands of accounts to suppress one popular site. - And in a profitable niche you're likely competing with multiple sites.

Keeping all those accounts active, cycling out dead accounts etc. could take quite an ongoing infrastructure investment.

Moreover google could give significantly more weight to accounts that look very real (i.e. actively using multiple google products for a long time) and thereby further devalue the botnet impact.

It's yet another arms race of course. But one with fairly good odds I would think.
This may be a bit out of topic, but I wonder why doesn't Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) improve their App Centre quicker. They have it since so long, but it still looks crappy IMO. From the screenshots I've seen of the Mac App Store, it looks really nice and a giant step in front of Linux.
You can't fix a broken system by becoming part of the system. Many critics of public education have set up their own systems, of course--the whole charter school, Montessori, and homeschooling movements for example--but right now the best bet is to rescue children from the public school system and put them into something better.

Even if you can fix the public school system, becoming a teacher is not the way to do it.
But any cheaper phone is still useless without a contract anyway? The difference isn't $899, it's $899 minus the cost of ownership of an equivalent phone. Even a free phone on a 2 year basic contract is going to be around $600-700, surely?

There are pay as you go options, but other than the lightest of users, I don't know many people who find it cheaper than a contract, especially if they use any data.
I would argue that the consolidation of (fiscal) power into a few large centralized institutions can be a natural outcome of capitalism, since an increase in the size of an institution (either through growth or acquisition) can offer more profit opportunities. Now if you view a corporation through the traditional lens of being sociopathically focused on profits, then it is natural for it to seek a position where its failure would catastrophically affect too many people for responsible governments to allow, as a sort of insurance. It's not "crony capitalism", it's unbridled capitalism. On the other hand, placing oligopoly restrictions to prevent the growth of corporations beyond a certain size and impact isn't (in a very strict sense) "capitalism". We already think that monopolies are bad, but where do you draw the line with oligopolies? 3 large banks? 5? 20? GS subsidizing FB, and the taxpayer subsidizing GS seem to be very natural outcomes of an unrestricted business environment and a mandate to generate profits.

NOTE: not trying to take a left or right stance here, just viewing matters through the fun lens of mathematical optimization.
Already got some emails, thanks for reaching out guys, will be emailing back ASAP.

Clickable link:
http://www.madebyone.com
Wow, so those complaining about Goldman's seemingly two-faced behavior are implicitly complaining that the firm was actually following SEC regulations?
Show HN: DubPlate, my Mac App Store app
'"Some of these companies want to go public because they want to beat Facebook and others out," said one of the sources.'

What's the value for being first with an IPO? Who does this matter to? Honest question.

'"If Facebook went public before Linkedin, do you think anyone would pay that much attention to Linkedin?" You might want to surpass the beast."'

Again, who does this matter to and why? They are similar companies but they are different in ways that matter regarding target audience.
What kind of marketplace? Like Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, app store, etc.?
Because you can look at the sum total of DOD line items. Bamford has done a lot of research into deciphering this.
What can one use this for?
Just what we need... a new way to get infected via USBs. :)
Chances are your town has a climbing gym (or a half dozen of them). They'll have a section of low walls over big fat pads that you can play on without ropes (known as bouldering, and actually more popular than roped climbing in places). They'll also rent you a pair of rock shoes and a chalk bag. You can just turn up and they'll hook you up with everything you need to try it out.

Come back with a friend when they're not busy and get them to teach you how to tie knots and stop each other from hitting the ground when you fall, then give toproping a try.

While you're there, notice that most people around you aren't taking it too seriously, and are mostly there to socialize. Talk to some of them and you'll quickly find yourself invited out on the rock next weekend.
A part of the solution: robust sync.

Let's take the typical example of a photo editing app. Robust sync ameliorates a lot of these issues. You might lose your connection. Not so big a problem if you have your own local copy. One of the administrators is doing something that shuts off access to one copy of your data -- you still have another copy. The network is slow -- with synced data, you just have to send deltas.

Robust sync doesn't completely solve everything, but it takes these problems -- which are often edge cases -- and it reduces their impact.