skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These are binary tries with some interesting optimizations, in particular using special instructions supported on all modern cpus to skip common prefixes at the start of looking up.

According to the author's benchmarks they offer very consistent performance between insert and access operations, which seems to be key to why they perform better than R-B trees. Since tries don't need to re balance on insert we avoid memory operations R-B trees spend reorganizing interior nodes. Even though these are amortized in the R-B, we're still saving work.

Likewise, these are faster than small hash tables since we avoid resizing-rehashing overhead. Searching the binary trie is also likely faster than following a collision linked list we might find in a naive hash table implementation. However, for larger containers hashes begin to catch up, since at these sizes the trie involves increasingly more memory accesses.

I'd like to see these tries compared to generalized cuckoo hashing.

I'd also like to see them compared to the bagwell array mapped tries used by clojure and others.
"why should making a 100% personal decision be a crime?"

Because that "personal decision" has a huge negative influence on a lot of people. Drug use affects your family and friends negatively, it affects your coworkers, your employer, random people that you run over with your car or attack violently while high, and it raises taxes or insurance premiums since it's very costly to treat drug-related issues at hospitals.

Sure, in the beginning drug use may be a personal decision that doesn't affect too many people - but once addiction kicks in - and it does to a very large percentage of users - your drug use has a hugely negative effect on everyone around you, and even strangers.
That would be nice but what they really need is to make the thing usable outdoors.
You can hardly make successful suicide a crime. (Though there have been regimes that made unsuccessful suicide attempts illegal).
What I'd really love would be a MacBook with that kind of resolution.
Useful tip: NYT syndicates ReadWriteWeb, and it's much easier to get RWW to link to your startup.
I like their site: https://banksimple.com/

Simple design, easy navigation, and a nice overview of the important features. My favorite part of the site is at the bottom of the page: "The BankSimple Team." It's rare but refreshing to see people attach their names, bios, and pictures to banks and financial companies. I'm excited for their launch - these guys are clearly taking some steps in the right direction.
Very nice! Displaying the tweets on hover is a nice touch.
Creating to Be Human (20 Rock-Star Bloggers Take the Stage)
I don't see that disagreeing with what I said. I can't tell if it was meant to, either.
it's super effective!
The Block Album
Malcolm Gladwell talks about this phenomenon in his book: "The Tipping Point". He calls it the 'stickiness factor'. He analyzes the phenomenon where children begin taking drugs even when they fully understand that it greatly harms them.

Teenagers are inherently, perhaps even genetically predisposed to imitate others and try on new behaviors and attitudes during adolescence. Second, the types of the people who are more likely to engage in dramatic, easily romanticized behavior such as early cigarette smoking or suicide are also more likely to be those that others tend to gravitate toward and seek to emulate.

When Portugal legalized all drugs, they greatly lowered the 'Stickiness Factor' for those drugs.

http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_Tipping_Point#Chapter_7:_Ca...
I agree that T5 is pretty decent. The queues are short and there's lots of seating. Access by car is pretty decent if you're on that side of London (which most of the country is). Pretty much all I care about.

I generally try to avoid Heathrow T3 though (and T2 and T4 never seem to have flights to where I want to go).
Alcohol is a generally legal drug that has all the same issues.
http://www.watchingamerica.com/frankfurterallgemeine000009.s...

This looks like the start of it. From memory the Chinese came up with some solid evidence. Followed by some American federal banker stating the accusations did more to harm US currency than harm North Korea. Then it all went quiet.
LinkedIn Email Makes Great Use of Technology
You know, I know a really smart guy who went to a top school and now works for D.E. Shaw. He really lit up when I talked to him briefly at a wedding and asked if he was still getting to play his musical instrument. It turns out he had done so - did music for a friend's low ambition, high excitement show. And that really seemed to be more meaningful than the C++ code foo he did for D.E. Shaw.

You will never regret jamming with friends. A test is just a blip.
Any particular reason this is coming up now? Has there been a change in the situation since June 2009? Honest question; I'm not saying this isn't interesting, I'm just curious if there's any particular reason to bring it up again today.
I wouldn't try to shoehorn SSL/TLS in as a requirement of whatever language/framework you do network stuff in--it's unlikely to be a great implementation, anyway. Just put nginx or stunnel in front of your service and go about your business. Both are fantastic proxies for high-load services. We use stunnel -> haproxy -> diesel/python at Bump... and we have a lot of users.
If the server supports the HTTP TRACE verb you can still get the cookie. It would be rare, but possible non the less.
Sorry for the snark.

"no one gives a damn about my brilliant idea if I can't execute."

Tentative Schedule: Jan-Feb: not executing Mar-Apr: not executing May-Jun: not executing Jul-Aug: not executing Sep-Oct: not executing, Nov-Dec: Execute my brilliant idea
I'm not sure how fair the cost comparison is. At the time, pretty much anything would have cost less in Spain - Britain was very expensive due to the high pound. A bit different now though.
The difference is that hard drugs are a lot more addictive, and the consequences to addiction are a lot more serious.
Wasn't Cache poisoning possible as well?
Not really. The upcoming generation of mobile devices will have hardware support for VP8 and the users upgrade these devices very often.
not legal, decriminalized.
Repetition issues are rare in practice. I see why it could be important to a proof. But if I was playing a queen up against anyone I wouldn't repeat, I'd just make progress until I won. Repetition wouldn't come up, it's rare enough in close games. It's most common in (near or exactly even material) end games which queen odds games won't reach without hanging a queen.

A minor piece odds is a win for sure, any chess play can tell you that. But a pawn up .. that is unclear. You speak of GM games being decided by a pawn which of course happens but what you do not speak of is material sacrifices in GM games which are common too. And there's all those endgames which the pawn-down player wins (often by superior play, sometimes other reasons). And there's all those well known ways an extra pawn in an end game can be a draw, including for example king+pawn vs king is drawn unless it's set up so you can force promotion quickly (e.g. defending king is out of position). King+rook+pawn vs king+rook is common and this is also drawn in general (the defense is called the philidor position) unless the pawn-up side starts in an advantageous position (something equivalent to the lucena position)

One of the interesting facts about pawn odds is that you now have an open file b/c of your missing pawn. And pawns restrict moving out your pieces so having one missing can save time. The worst thing you could do is take away black's f7 pawn at the start. That is, first guess, a loss for black. Take away some other pawn and do it from white and it's a lot harder to guess.

The rule of thumb taught to beginners is that a pawn is worth 3 moves in the early game (and a knight is 3 pawns so you might think it's worth 9 moves, but that conversion doesn't work well, with 9 free moves you could set up checkmate). I think a pawn is worth somewhat less than 3 moves but it really varies and the comparison doesn't entirely make sense.

BTW there do exist well known openings leading to an unclear/unknown result that involve a piece sacrifice (lines in the King's Gambit or Najdorf for example). Losing a piece for nothing is a clear loss but various kinds of compensation are possible.
There was a marketing guy who about six months ago decided to quit his job and learn how to code. He announced it on HN/was featured on HN, along with other sites. Starting with Python.

I just googled and I am very happy to see that he didn't quit or give up - he kept going and coding... It looks like he has managed to build up a small community of supporters and that he had changed his focus to front-end development (HTML,CSS,JavaScript)...for now

http://proudn00b.com
Does your employer advertise which apps they've built? Some companies build apps for clients with an agreement to keep the identity of the dev shop private. If your employer does this, neither the clients or your employer will be happy with you telling the world what they agreed to keep confidential.
Without considering the deal side, an above market salary is attractive from an employee standpoint and if you will be satisfied as an employee the job deserves strong consideration. 1% equity is a nice fringe benefit of the job even if it ultimately pays out very little.

But from a deal standpoint, there really doesn't appear to be one. Acceleration won't trump liquidation preference and it is likely the equity is simply being pulled from the options pool. The slice assigned to filling the position reflects the value placed on the role you are considering. It's not Steve Balmer's 8% as employee #30 and it probably won't cure the entrepreneurial virus if you are infected.

Good luck.
Ditched Balsamiq a long time ago for this very reason. Would have been a good app if he didn't decide to build it on such a terrible foundation.

Still, he seems to be doing fine business wise. Maybe it's not as big a deal as al3x makes it out to be.
Strange. I was always pressured to do drugs but refused. I'd always been curious about marijuana, and I knew the actual risks and major lack there of. Sometime in college I tried it, but only one other person knew and with the people I run around with, drug use isn't "cool". It's not as bad for me and doesn't have the morning-after effects of alcohol and considerably less is enjoyable enough to relax in the evenings. I guess I'm more of a minority than I'd assumed.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who can never remember Wolfram Alpha's URL and consequently accesses it through Google...
It's tough because a "good" society would seek to help someone to prevent them from killing themselves. Counseling or treatment could help them. Maybe they've tried. Maybe they don't want to. Maybe they're plain tired of living. There are days that I feel bored with life. I would never do something so drastic as kill my life, but relative to many, I'm a spoiled little shit. I can only imagine how bad things could be for some. I hate it when people call those who kills themselves cowards. I couldn't imagine the pain I'd have to be in and the feeling of despair needed to kill myself. It's incredibly sad.
Qt for the win!
Neither is this
Wendell Berry: Why I am Not going to buy a computer
Ethanol is so absurdly addictive that you can actually flat out die from the withdraw. No opioid is going to do that.

The only reason ethanol is legal to consume and most opioids are illegal is that ethanol has been with human society for thousands of years. There is nothing rational about it.

Furthermore, it's hardly just "hard drugs" that are currently illegal. Even fucking caffeine is more dangerous than THC...
So where do you want to draw the line on this graph?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Rational_...
Based on the GPU device driver information and leaks about A5, it looks like they do indeed have such hardware.
suicide is illegal in germany.
This is a fascinating question. AIR and the new mobile app frameworks are great for prototyping and getting an app out there really quickly, and perhaps then you can make the decision to either build native apps for your biggest platforms; or not.

Alex is obviously pointing to the verbal minority (of which he is a part), because for every person out there that speaks out against, say, the Tweetdeck AIR app; there are probably millions that are satisfied with it and in fact prefer it to the native alternatives (that don't have columns, even though they might be native).

The problem with listening to the verbal minority is that you're then building for the verbal minority, and not the bulk of your true user base.

Startups are all about priorities, right? And logically you should prioritize things that will materially affect your business (such as stability) over things that aren't real problems but get written up anyway. EDIT: I mean, he did leave Campfire because of a stability issue, even though there's a native app for it ;-)
I've never liked AIR and QT/WebKit apps (or even the Opera web browser) because there's this feeling similar to that of Uncanny Valley, where something just doesn't feel right. The scroll bar doesn't work well, something happens too fast or too slow, selection doesn't behave as it should, the buttons look weird. Something along those lines.
Interesting how some of his criteria for new equipment, which rule out buying a computer, are very much consistent with the hacker spirit:

3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
Citation definitely needed on that claim.

Alcohol kills, and so does alcohol withdrawal... The only drug that kills more people per year is tobacco/nicotine, which is also legal.
Thanks a bunch for pointing this out. I was annoyed they removed it but not yet to the point of searching for it (although I did hope for a comment like yours when coming).
While I agree with the point you're trying to make, that image is pretty useless without some units on those axis and citations for the studies that determined the numbers.
Bill Joy on the Six Webs
Facebook leaps into future as smartphones prepare to get smarter
Examples? I've seen okay looking GTK and QT apps running under a specific OS or distribution, but usually when you try to run them on a different OS they fall apart.
Me too, but considering Apple's focus I have low expectations for future Macs.
Only for Google's implementation and not any others...

This is the key point that everyone's missing.
Punishable by death?
Well, that depends on your definition of AI, of course. But using some definitions, we are having it in several forms like search engines, self-driving cars, and question-answering machines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/ibm-watson-jeopardy/

Meta: snark does not contribute to civil discussion.
A nice side benefit of this was discovering https://www.dropbox.com/edu, which doubles your space bonus from all referrals. I'm at 13.8gb now with a free account.
I guess the same applies for apps in the mobile space too. iOS Apps built using frameworks such as Titanium and PhoneGap always seem a little off.

There is an interesting discussion about this in Dan Benjamin's latest episode of the 'Build And Analyze' series with Marco Arment. http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/8
I can't understand why there is all this fuss over H.264.

Simply put H.264 looks like nothing more than a replacement for Adobes offering. While I agree H.264 is superior it doesn't solve the long term problem.
So instead of Flash being the dominant video delivery mechanism it is handed to some other company.

Now please excuse me while I check my realplayer messages, install my adobe flash updates, update windows media player and why is quicktime flashing?
You can dismiss the "verbal minority", or you could treat them as leading indicators. Personally, I'll err on the side of building something that's up to my standards rather than seeing if I can get away with mediocrity.

It's entirely possible to focus on both stability and, say, a quality desktop application. If you're under-resourced to accomplish both goals, maybe you didn't plan correctly.
Security noob follow-up: How do you exploit the fact that your javascript can launch requests bearing those cookies? I'm assuming your end goal is to get access to those cookies. Do you do something like POST the contents of the original HTTP request headers that follow your injected \r\n (including said cookies) to a malicious server?
The idea that the government should regulate what I choose to put in my own body is preposterous to begin with.

The abolishment of the FDA seems like a pretty drastic measure by any standard.

However effective drug legislation really -is not about this at all-. As you alluded to in your second point, it should be part of the broader system of minimizing the damage to society. Drugs are harmful -to society- when the criminal element is the sole distributor, when quality and dosages are completely uncontrollable, and price and availability of the addictive ish are unpredictable. Thus it seems the only way to quell the social damage of drug use of for the government to not only decriminalize everything, but to also ensure drugs are given away by community centers with specialized staff.
For the lazy: http://yc.backtype.com
I'm wondering if that number is for every possible game valid or invalid, or just valid games.

In case anybody is interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game
If anyone is serious about proving things about chess I would suggest they start by proving things about simpler chess variants.

The variant of chess "wild 5" where your pawns start on the 7th rank and pieces on the 8th (so pawns promote in one move) has far fewer choices than in chess. It's a simpler game. It has a significant advantage for white, much larger than in normal chess. Humans came somewhat near to proving it's a win for white just by learning the (relatively few) openings out to 20 or so moves. At each step there's usually only a couple moves that aren't terrible. For the first six moves there is a single way of playing which is considered best for both sides.

Yet even in this much simpler game which humans are near cracking, I think a pure math type approach would have a very hard time getting anywhere.

If you can't do anything there, you could always try an even simpler game. There is a game called pawns where you start with only your pawns. If you promote you win instantly. Math ought to be able to solve that one. If you crack that, move on to little chess (normal chess but only with pawns and kings). Little chess should no doubt be a draw (you can waste moves with your king unlike in pawns where it's less clear) but proving that would be a good accomplishment I think.
NASA - A First Look at Flight in 2025
Ask HN: Startup latency rank list, recently on HN?
Anybody remembers a link to latency rank of startups. It was within a month together with a link to the monitoring service. Searched google/bing/searchyc w/o luck. Thanks.
Then again, a 30" display is 2560x1600 and costs over $1000. Will they really get that many pixels in a 10" display and still keep the price around $500.

I'm going to go with "unlikely".
It's the cycle that kills Apple's competitors in the consumer market: 1) Apple sells millions of a brand new device, 2) this allows Apple to order millions of components, 3) cheap components drive down Apple's costs, 4) Apple can then lower the product's price but still retain a high margin, 5) Apple sells millions more because the feature & price one-two punch is too much to overcome.
Yes. I chose to demonstrate it using an XSS vulnerability because it makes for a much easier to understand PoC (you click on a link and see an alert box). ;)

Had the XSS vulnerabilities failed, I would have spent more time investigating the cache poisoning possibilities.
The government doesn't "allow" free people (those not in prison, psychiatric hospitals, etc.) to commit suicide; they are free to do so if they choose.

Prevention is orthogonal to what I'm talking about. In fact, I'm all for helping those folks who are suicidal and will accept help. It's a shame that mental disease is one of the few afflictions that you can't admit you have, talk to others about or is even accepted as on par with more physical ailments.
Lots of personal decisions have negative effects on those around you. That's not a rational reason to make all of those actions illegal.
There is getting to be too much hype about BankSimple and too little public launching...
Tech Canon: Top Tech Classics according to The Atlantic
The Atlantic says: "Nearly every topic has a canon, a set of classics that you need to know. These works are recognized as key touchpoints of analysis and understanding. Technology, though, seems to resist that sort of thing. We think of it as something that is changing too fast for anything to remain relevant for long. "

But I say: they did a pretty good job with their 50 picks.
Which would mean the PPI is lower than the "retina display" minimum that Steve Jobs talked about when the iPhone 4 debuted. I wonder if they'll still call it a retina display?
Devil's advocate: is criminalization tantamount to prevention?
This shows why being first to the market with a good product can seal your advantage for years. Assuming it's not too early.
Only inasmuch as the phrase "doesn't mean much now" suggests that it ever had a solid, singular, standardized meaning.
it should be part of the broader system of minimizing the damage to society

That's certainly one thing it should be about. Whether it is appropriate for the government to decide what substances people are permitted to introduce in to their own bodies is an important question though.

Thus it seems the only way to quell the social damage of drug use of for the government to not only decriminalize everything, but to also ensure drugs are given away by community centers with specialized staff.

Alcohol was pretty unsafe during prohibition, often containing methanol, a toxin which can blind or kill. Legalizing it meant that anyone producing and selling impure, mislabeled or adulterated alcohol could be sued or jailed. The same could be done with other drugs.
An unknown, yet AMAZING gaming community
http://byond.com

I spent my childhood playing and making games on the BYOND platform
It's doubling each dimension. Since you're multiplying the two numbers, that turns into 4 times the number of pixels.
The crux of the whole internet privacy issue is this: will people be culturally conditioned to accept whatever privacy norm their society pushes on them, or is it ingrained in our nature to find only a certain level of privacy acceptable? It's your classic nature/nurture question.
Thunderbird no longer on Mozilla.com?
Go to mozilla.com and Thunderbird is nowhere to be found (except in the support drop down). It now has it's own domain, mozillamessaging.com, but you wouldn't know that unless you went to mozilla.org.
Most people didn't have enough imagination, then. The Nokia N770 had a 800x480 pixel screen in 2005. It was more surprising to me that the original iPhone launched at such a low resolution and took so long to upgrade.
I think "Uncanny Valley" is exactly right. It was something we faced when building an AIR app, we could mimic the look of the each OS pretty closely but it never felt quite right.

In the end we opted to a stylize feel of each OS but not an attempt to recreate the look and feel exactly.