skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Entirely agree with you, eventual consistency and quorums protocols all have their drawbacks. Difficult of developing against that (and the natural reaction of just "handwaving" the consistency model rather than using optimistic locking with a vector clock at the identified synchronization points) is the main one. I have, however, also seen the situation where developers would fail to understand how to correctly deal with availability and build ad-hoc, poorly thought-out HA layers on top of non-HA systems. The typical memcache + MySQL deployment is the prime example of that: there's neither the high availability, nor an understandable consistency/cache coherence model.

> Note that his "right answer" for performance (not availability, so it's a bit of an aside from your comment) is to dynamically repartition, which is what Clustrix does. Note that we can actually do this type of repartitioning on just the "hot" data, using MVCC to avoid any downtime (unlike Mongo, which blocks all writes).

Dynamic repartitioning is also what HBase/BigTable do ("tablet splitting"). The MVCC approach is interesting way around the unavailability window, by the way.

> By the way, the Google Megastore project I believe you're referring to is not actually eventually consistent in the same way that, say, Cassandra is. Megastore is fully ACID within an entity group, meaning that lowering eventually consistency down to the per-node level was not the solution that Google went with. BigTable is also not eventually consistent.

Yes, I did not mean that Megastore is eventually consistent. It is not, it's ACID compliant and uses Paxos. Real question: was this not stated clearly in my comment (I'd like to edit to clarify if it is)?

Megastore, however, is an example of a "NoSQL" system and I meant to use it as proof that not all "NoSQL" systems give up consistency: ACID is orthogonal to the query language.

Quite frankly I find the whole query language debate (and "NoSQL" marketing gimmick) to be quite pointless, the distributed systems and systems programming aspects are a lot more interesting to me.
Right now, it's great to just see people expending their creative energy exploring the possibilities. They are on the leading edge giving us great ideas on how to make good use of this type of technology moving forward.
And it matches the screenshot in the article 100%.
He also makes wonderful music as http://boyinstatic.com and http://theconsulategeneral.com.

He made a neat (mildly) interactive Flash site for one of his songs years ago: http://www.bellyfull.tv – I loved the concept of doing this instead of video.

At http://www.sonatafortheunaware.com he generated music from footage taken on the Philadelphia subway.
Techstars joins White House to "Startup America"
In Shawshank it was said much more succinctly - "institutionalized"
I don't really get the whole controversy with the angel industry. It's not a friendly world, it's vicious out there. You can't honestly just sit there, and expect the game to stay the same for the next century... It's a fast moving world. To stay competitive, new investment ideas should be developed, like Yuri's genius plan.

People are criticizing how it's a bad investment, but come on DST has earned god knows how much money from the three social network/deal/gaming giants, they can afford to lose some money. Bottom line, these offers are great for the entrepreneurs, which is what i believe pg would want, therefore he allowed Yuri/Conway to propose such deals to them. If these were horrible deals with massive strings attached, pg would never allow that to happen to his YC peeps.

The main reason i love what Yuri is doing is because this deal has increased the possibility of the American Dream. If you're brilliant enough and hard working enough, you don't need a rich family to become successful. Even if you lack in startup capital, YC, and soon many startup accelerator, as well as the increase flow of angel money (if angels want to stay competitive), will open endless doors of opportunities.
They should (try to) acquire Disqus.
Android Market
Interesting that they're targeting the $1-4 million range for the early stage fund. Sure, there's not much investment in that range, but perhaps there's a reason... it would seem like that's the range where most companies are sorting themselves out and determining whether they're actually going to succeed or not. Pouring money into companies to artificially help them to bridge this gap may be a disservice to the companies and a poor investment.
NASA has flown a few prototype solar powered UAVs. See wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Pathfinder
It's a lame argument. Since the advent of Netflix and YouTube most ISPs have increased their connection speed. If it's costing them too much money simply stop increasing the connection speeds. YouTube didn't decide to give everyone 10 Mbps connections, why are the ISPs surprised that now that customers have that speed that their using it.

Netflix / Youtube cost ISPs little compared to BitTorrent.
Well, this is a topic I feel very strongly about, and in some ways there is a bizarre circularity to discussing this on HN for me. I'll try to provide some context. I started out BBSing as a kid in the 80s, usenetting in the 90s, and I felt post '00 that the dominance of the www seemed to be fragmenting and destroying the feeling of specialness that digital communities possessed. Discovering 4chan in 2005 triggered a flash of recognition, a sense of "aha! this is where the creative spirit of Ye Olde Nettes is!" I've always thought the absence of personal ego and freedom of expression of 4chan at its best represents a higher ideal than voting-based communities, and paradoxically enables richer self-expression than the banalities of myspace and facebook. For years I held myself aloof from other online communities, reading them, but always reserving my participation for 4chan. Last year I finally broke down, and my very first contribution to HN discussion was to vent my frustration with the idea of making facebook accounts a prerequisite to the use of other sites!

tl; dr - Long time 4chan user finally compromises his internet ideals to join HN just to complain about sites piggybacking on Facebook. A few months later, moot makes use of his new site dependent on Facebook.
In a way, he's outsourcing his due diligence, dealflow, etc. to YC by paying a premium for equity. By the sounds of it, he's not located in the Bay Area, so this may well be an absolute bargain for him. YC benefits indirectly by increasing the odds of success of their portfolio companies. Not having to worry about funding for a while alone must be worth quite a lot in this respect.
Busting the Myth of the Giant Green Button
Ask HN: Attending Conferences - Is more of your focus on learning or networking?
I'm interested in the feedback for those who attend conferences and also those would like to but are prevented by some hurdle/conflct.

Is a conference for you more of a social event or an opportunity to learn? Or perhaps something else entirely?
Interesting article, though I think the authors arguments could also be applied to the comparison between the 1918 cookery.

The person in th 1950's could say that they cook just like an 1918 era person, still using fire under a pan, or roasting in an oven. But now (1953) the oven and stovetop are easily controlled with gas. Refrigeration is now more convenient with electricity rather than the ice box, etc. etc.

I still don't have many of todays conveniences of mixers and blenders, but hand mix (beat eggs or whip cream) and crush with a pestle and mortar.

I think their is great progress to come in our knowledge of food and availability of fresh ingredients. I don't know if the methods of creation will ever change drastically for most home cooks.
The value of a University Degree in Computing
And yet...stereotypes often come from somewhere, no? Would you say that these stereotypes are inaccurate in terms of the general picture they paint?
As a startup founder and Torontonian, I was thinking that maybe I've been missing something, judging from the headline. And then I read the article and it's kind of a puff piece. More an advertorial for Erin Bury than anything else.

I had the good fortune of meeting a high profile VC in the Valley in November and when I told him we were in Toronto, he said "OK, here's my first piece of advice. Move to the Valley."

I wish that wasn't the case because Toronto is awesome, but you can't compare it to SV when it comes to volume of activity, talent density or the echo-chamber that can hype your picture-sharing app up.
Google had nothing to do with it. My thoughts are with Wael and his family, and I hope that Google applies inquiries and whatever pressure is possible in case he's been detained by the Egyptian security services.
Ask HN: What questions would you ask YC founders?
Just an experiment, seeing what types of questions people would ask of YC founders. What things are you interested in knowing?
Agreed, and I think this decision is what defines an entrepreneur
That's just it - why is he more tolerant for risk than everyone else? Risk is not a personal thing - it just is. It's not like he gets his money cheaper than anyone else.

Either he's wrong and everyone else is right, in which case he's burning money, or he's right and everyone else is wrong, and he's burning less money.

Either way, I don't get it. These guys are very well connected. Is it so hard to participate in Y Combinator Series A round that they need to spend this much money just for the opportunity?
I don't see why its relevant how fast it can render templates: Wouldn't anything more than once or twice a second be sufficient for general needs?

Edit: I also want to point out that the linked page above is user editable, and allows remotely hosted javascript (by design). Beware :/
Both Livejournal and Dreamwidth use OpenID to allow commentors to claim an identity. I also use it to log in to Disqus, Hacker News, Slashdot, Stack Overflow, and a bunch of other sites. Oh, and to leave comments on a bunch of different blogs.

It's not the answer to everything - but it still works remarkably well for many.
I love Canada, I love Toronto and I love entrepreneurship. I run a small startup in Toronto and I must admit that comparing Toronto to Silicon Valley is a joke. Toronto isn't even the best place in Canada to work on a startup and maybe not in the top 3.

It's nice that the community is tight knit and there is some good talent here but what is missing is really some of the most important stuff: 1. VC and Angel Money, 2. Connections and 3. A deep pool of startup oriented hackers
I think it's really impressive - the design is fantastic, especially for a startup whose site just launch.

I, too, think Facebook is a bottleneck to keep the tossers out, but I hope Poole/moot finds another way to throttle abuse and trolls eventually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion

> Extortion, outwresting, and/or exaction is a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion.

Where is the coercion? Is there a threat here to do something? I can't see it. In fact, the opposite - the damage is already done.

The coercion would exist only if there was a threat to do something bad from the extorter, which really, I can't see at all.
So you're claiming that the only part of managing throughput is the in-ground wires? That ISPs don't use network admins to manage load congestion? That ISPs don't have to purchase new hardware and other capacity to handle increased bandwidth consumption?

Do you think all ISPs are running off the ancient network equipment they were originally set up with back in the day?

I'm honestly surpised that on /Hacker News/ of all places, so many people thing that the only thing contributing to their bandwidth cost is in-ground copper.
Blast from the past: The Java Saga (Wired, 1995)
You're right, I was talking to jrockway. Not really sure why you entered the conversation.
Seems broken at level 55, though in fairness that's pretty deep.
Leadership, Teams, Success, and Happiness
Tom - good luck on your new endeavor. Your last comment reminds me of Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech (http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html). You're in a better position because of your efforts.
Ask HN: how to reward advisers in a revenue (vs exit) oriented startup
Hi,

I have a startup in the revenue oriented (saas util) space. I am not against selling it, but it is less likely to happen (because of location where I live for one). I am getting 3 advisers and am looking for cooperation on execution side with few people.

Since it's not certain that the startup will be ever sold and advisers/co-ops are active people (not already $loaded guys that just want to help) it became apparent that the share should also be turned into some concrete revenue based reward.

If someone here has more experience (or feel) about this. Please comment on my hypotheses below:

----

- reward should NOT be based on net profit of company, since that is not related to how the company is doing. And it's close to 0 for companies that want to use their money for future growth, and pay less taxes.

- a valid parameter on which reward should be based seems Gross Margin (since it is reflecting to how the company is doing in global, not internal decisions(salary, advertising,office space). As example: advisers should not get punished (get less reward) if you are doing so well that you increased salaries, or moved to new office, etc..

- The big question was then how should for example 2% promised equity = ?% GM (x% EQ = K * x% GM). This K must be determined since we want to give them an option of deciding how they want to split their reward between EQ and GM.

- After thinking about it seems K could just be 1. Does this makes sense?

- Should / Can the adviser agreements be limited in time (with an option for extending them). We were thinking about 2 years.

----

I hope post wasn't too long. I will greatly appreciate any information or opinions you can give me.

Janko
A chatterbot using reservoir computing to process and generate natural language.
Reserbot is a small project of a chatterbot using reservoir computing to process and generate natural language.

This project is looking for colaboration or discussion.

Link: https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot

Also, some theoretical and technical documents are in the wiki (https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot/wiki)

Thanks!
Ask HN: Best tips for holding great conversations with liberal arts alumni?
I'm attending a university alumnus dinner, being the only CS-student there.
They should create large tax write-offs based on how complicated your tax return was. That should simplify things! I think...
if you hate giant heaps of money, applying for any investment whatsoever seems like a bad idea
-- except me
I haven't seen any indications that Paul is suddenly going to start accepting older entrepreneurs. If you're over 35 ycombinator will never be an option.

Which only really opens an opportunity for someone else;<).
Years ago it was primarily to learn - both technical info at sessions and learn who the players in a particular industry and/or region were.

For most tech/net related events for me these days it's mostly social - personal and networking - and very little about actual tech issues - perhaps 10% of the sessions are of keen interest in that they'll impact my day to day work/life.

Another aspect is speaking - I enjoying presenting on certain topics at conferences.
It's a "Web 2.0"-style dropped-vowel spelling of "lanyard". (Lanyards being commonly used at conferences to hold ID cards.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyard
Good to see Talking Points Memo join the ranks of journalistic outlets that are open-sourcing their useful in-house stuff.
There's another thing you should take away from this article: if all you want to do is work on really hard technical problems, be well compensated, and never have to worry about managing people and career-limited for it, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are all great places to do that. Having sat on the other side of the hiring wall from the author -- as a manager doing hiring of developers at Microsoft -- I found that college students who had gone off to a startup for several years often had gained some breadth (product knowledge, used/configured more types of systems, etc.) but had failed to gain much real technical depth.

I take a little bit of issue with his characterization of risk at these big companies. I don't know anyone working at any of those companies who hasn't experienced feature or product cancellation at some point in their career. Well, except for a couple of guys who've worked on debuggers and text editors for their entire 15+-year careers, but those are special cases :-)
Copy/pasting this from thingist, but:

"We're trying to have a society over here."

Imagine this for a moment: You just purchased a new microwave and would like to plug it in on your countertop and cook a delicious burrito, but you can't. Why can't you? Because the power company only allows you enough power to run a small coffee maker, or maybe a rice cooker, or maybe a toaster, but none of these things at the same time.

This is the internet, and it is horrible.

Now imagine that General Electric, who makes the microwave, also owns the power company. They have decided that only GE branded appliances will work properly on their power distribution network. You can have a toaster, but if you have a GE microwave, the toaster will only toast things like 10% (because the GE microwave gets priority, you see), and won't work at all for bagels. Now imagine that Westinghouse, who manufactures your toaster, actually pays GE to transmit the power to your house. Would this make you angry?

This is net neutrality.

Howabout this! You purchase 10,000 gallons of water from your city. The city enjoys selling you these gallons, but they decide that you are only allowed to use them in the shower. If you want to use some of those 10,000 gallons in the dishwasher...wellllll, you're going to have to spend an extra $30/mo for the privilege.

This is AT&T, and this is internet on cellphones.

This is insane, and this is stifling innovation.

ISPs and telcos, we're trying to have a society over here, would you please get with the program?

Why is this nonsense tolerated? In the past we've gotten together as a civilization and realized that certain things are important to our continued development. Schools, for instance, were recognized as important because it's important to have an educated population. The interstate system was recognized as a hugely important economic driving force because it allowed people to quickly move around. The rail system was recognized as important because it meant that we could move goods.

Why haven't we gotten together (well, we have, geeks have) and decided that having un-meterd fiber to every home in the United States is an enormously important piece of our future success as an economy?

How awesome would it be if I could build a (albeit crappy [because I don't have generators and flywheels]) datacenter in my house? I want to build $really_cool_app...so I just do it. This is freaking possible. The incremental cost of transmitting bits is almost nothing. Why aren't we making this happen?

By the way, US lawmakers, other countries are making this happen.
But not many limits. Modern browsers are pretty consistent in the way they render HTML/CSS, and their differences tend to be superficial. In the past you might have to deal with half a dozen browser layout bugs; now it's whether the browser supports rounded corners or drop shadows.

If you have to support IE6, you'll obviously have much more problems, but if you're supporting IE6, you're probably working on a corporate web app that has a very uniform design. In which case, there's less need for a designer to work on every single page.
vBulletin does not store passwords in the clear.

Nor does it transmit passwords in the clear when you go to recover an account.

Same thing with IP.Board (Invision).

The only one that I know of that has done so is phpBB, and I am not sure if it has been fixed or not because with their security track record I don't even want to try them.
Anyone looking for devops/sysadmins? I need a new gig real soon, and do to various life circumstances need to be remote.
Can someone please make the title stop shouting?
My Daily Thinking Ritual: But, What Do You Actually Do?
A Data-Driven Snapshot Of The Cellphone Industry
The full comment given to the LA Times:

“We care deeply about the safety of our employees, but to protect their privacy, we don’t comment on them individually.”

Link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/google-wa...
Clickables:

https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot

https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot/wiki
Justin.tv to launch Socialcam video sharing service
at first thought the fight seems to be about about greedy ISPs wanting to be double-payed.

At the second thought - it is about power and control over Internet. Right now ISPs should accept whatever is dumped into their pipes. They are just common carriers. Given the right to charge content providers for carrying the providers' traffic, they can just pick and choose whose traffic at which price and whether to carry it at all.
The top response on Quora is enlightening: http://www.quora.com/What-s-wrong-with-OpenID (also, it's annoying that I can't directly link to a response on Quora).

I really agree with the breakdown there. It's an over-engineered solution to a problem that doesn't really solve it all that well. I also use it to log into SO and the related sites, but frankly it's a PITA. I don't use OpenID to log into HN, and I never have to type in my credentials here, since my browser has the cookie saved.

I also use a password manager, so OpenID doesn't offer any additional security to me. As for privacy, the potential problems are too abstract for me to understand. I'm technical, but I don't understand OpenID on a deep level. I'd hardly expect your casual home user to know this either.

OpenID seems like a product that was designed in a vacuum, and should have had a stronger vision behind it. It's put together well, but the thing as a whole just doesn't do what it needs to do.
Getting sick and tired of articles talking about why ____ is better than the Valley. If it is better, please fucking show what product has come out of the place. Show something, don't just talk.
There's been a lot of talk on OpenID recently; it's nice to see one that doesn't simply bash it.

TL;DR: OpenID wasn't revolutionary in itself but the idea behind it is.
The two most interesting points for me:

* JavaScript wasn't the original language choice: he originally tried C, Lua and Haskell. He especially liked Lua but "it already had a lot of libraries written with blocking code."

* He regrets using the CommonJS module system. ("Far too complex and wildly different from how the browser works.")
LetsLunch.com: network with the VIPs of Silicon Valley
here are ways to sever health insurance from employment other than single payer national health care

That's just silly. Next you'll be trying to tell us that people should buy their own food and housing rather than having it provided by governments or employers.
not really, plus there is a real limit to what people want to link their facebook accounts to and what they want to use it for
Animated HTML5 logo - K3D demo using HTML5 Canvas and JS