skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's some room for complaining about the "smartphone" classification. Most Symbian-based phones would not qualify as smartphones in the US. I'm on my third, and they're pretty smart, but not having touchscreens really puts them in a separate market segment.

And those phones run Qt, too, which this analysis lumps in with MeeGo. So, if you counted up just the people Nokia has working on touchscreen phones, you might find it about matches the iPhone team.

Which, mind you, is still not a ringing endorsement of Nokia's efficiency. My N86 has some advantages (1) over, say, my wife's Android phone (a Backflip running 2.1), but Android has a lot more room to improve.

(1) Mostly quality of the phone UI, as opposed to computer UI. For example, the N86's voice control works with my headset. On Android, voice dialing requires you pull out the phone and press a button; with Symbian, you can just push the button on the headset. I now consider that essential; if I had to drive without a feature like that, I wouldn't be able to make calls.
This is as fine an example of burning a bridge as I've ever seen.
Instead of helping him find it, they should have recommended / influenced him to use the insurance money to get something better, like a Bimmer or CTS-V!
I worked on the Bing AI team (pre-launch), they didn't copy Google. If anything, both search engines copy wikipedia. I believe that this was the click-stream research done by an intern researcher from UBC.
Im sorry but its hard to get past the name.

"Poke" is just too sexual. It might appeal to some people, but I can imagine a lot of women having negative associations with being "secretly poked". I do, and Im a guy.
I kind of agree with the earlier post on FB, I just use it to share once a week or so..Its true that FB is running at the cost of our personal relationships. I have had friends who had serious trouble just due to Facebook and pictures.
Myself I think twice before sharing it with people as who knows where the relationships overlap...Facebook is good but is there something that can be made better than facebook which solves all the problems facebook has? Think it like this..We had Landline phones...but it had problems..we came up with mobile phones...and now we hve smart phones...My thinking is facebook is way too good but something better can be made..hopefully one of the hackers here come with a brilliant idea which solves a problem..is viral and gets a new revolution...
Still trying to make up my mind about crowd sourcing, but I like to compare it to the well-established practice of architecture contests.
That system also gets criticism for forcing architects to do a lot of work without a guarantee of being paid anything, but nevertheless it is broadly accepted: big-name bureaus participate in them too.
The reason why it works, imo, is because the potential reward is much bigger. They might spend weeks preparing an entry, but in case of a win it's usual to have months or years worth of paid work.
In my eyes, for web design/software crowd sourcing to gain the credibility needed to attract more than starters looking for a foot in the door, it will need the same effort/reward ratio. For example, you design a specific part of the future website in detail, and the winner gets to redesign the whole site. That way, the client still has the benefit of getting more than well-written intentions in a project proposal, and the contestants know that the potential reward is bigger than being paid for what he has already done.
I'm not sure that's the way to respond. Wouldn't it scare away any potential future clients? We don't know the whole story, maybe the designer was asking for too much, or changed the price at the end. At any rate, it doesn't matter now, but future clients might hesitate if they knew the designer did this in the past.
I'm implementing a similar solution. My only concern is that the ssl handshake takes an anywhere been 600 and 1000ms - far too long as far as I'm concerning. does anyone have a suggestion to improve this?

My setup
1) Linode $20/mo REE box (will bump up in production)
2) Nginx
3) RoR 3.0.3
4) SSL Through Geotrust. It is a "chained" cert but i don't believe this is the bottleneck.

thanks in advance...
Crowd Workers Are Not Online Shakespeares, But They Can Write
Awesome, thanks for the response -- the info on their site was a bit minimal. IP failover would be a big win, as would slave-based flushing and the "live" upgrade of available memory like you had mentioned int he podcast. Anyway, redis kicks ass, keep up the good work!
Harsh! ... but I love the humor in it and I actually think it's fair. Assuming everything in the article is true, it's not even slander/libel.
Stephen Fry backs project to make Web more accessible
Headless Raphael Testing
Then by your logic, they're already gaming Google Suggest. And with Instant Search, that's the holy grail. Who needs to optimize placement on a given keyword if you can just nudge users towards your desired keyword.

Or, what's more likely, is that the respective companies are aware of this very obvious vector and have attended to it.
Multinational Startups: The Future Or A Doomed Idea? [video]
Free Internet Porn Is Legal, Says California Appeals Court
Awesome watch case for the new iPod Nano
Yeah, I can't believe how long we've had to wait for a notepad and pen. Finally someone invents a notepad and pen!
socmetrics helps you find bloggers to target when preparing your campaigns. It takes time to read all their posts and figure out what's relevant to personalize each email. On the blogger side, they hate getting pitches that's not relevant or impersonal. We want to help both sides get what they want:more buzz and more targeted product pitches they might actually want to write about.
Checkout AI uses camera to tell your apples apart
As seen in Egypt!
If the debtor pool varies as widely as you claim, that reinforces something I've been wondering for a while:

Is it true that Americans are in debt because they are fiscally irresponsible, or is it because the playing field is tilted?

It is hard for me to believe that 33% of all Americans can't grasp the idea of "spend less than you make". Sure, a lot of it is consumer culture / media pressure, etc. But other countries have the same sort of culture and lack our level of credit card debt. Could it be that the field is tilted -- e.g. wages are simply at a level that does not allow the average person to save much even if they try, meaning that as soon as they hit a financial bump (job loss, non-insured surgery, car repair) they are in debt and the interest rates on the card spiral?

This is not a conspiracy theory -- I don't think there is a literal collection of people in a room saying "how do we stick it to them this week?" -- but I do think that many economic actors (credit card companies, credit bureaus, major retail stores, etc) act in their own self-interest to continue this situation.

I've seen bits and pieces that support this theory, but I lack the economic and political background to tell if this is right or not. Can anyone point me at good sources?
Looks to be a custom theme based on "Sight", found here: http://wpshower.com/free-wordpress-themes/sight-1-0-free-wor...
Global illumination + raytracing in a realtime engine
Very clean design, and I like the goal of 4-5 high quality posts a day. Looking forward to tracking its progress!
Simulating worst-case scenarios
This would be twice as cool if it had two nobs and shake to erase.
Ooh, good catch. Thanks mate.
If you pay it off in full, and get 2% cashback then that lunch cost you $19.60
SQL is a declaration of "what should be done".
Hints - procedural directives, ie. "it should be done this way". Modern optimizers do pretty nice job so hints aren't ususally necessary, yet taking away control which is extremely important in 10% cases just because it isn't necessary in 90% is just plain stupid.
That one more reason explaining why Oracle or MS can charge so much - because no viable alternative.

And i fail to see how supporting hints would prevent improving the optimizer. Oracle does it extremely well. MS seems too.
A small preface: I evangelize technology for Twilio, so going to events is part of my day-to-day job... there might be some biases here.

When you're starting out on a startup, or life in a new city as a tech person, events can be amazingly powerful. It's my job to know which events are awesome, and which ones are a waste of time -- IN CONTEXT. The key is that people go to events for many different reasons: socially, professionally, personally, intellectually. The number of events offered in cities like San Francisco, New York, and even Seattle where I hail from originally are vast.

Events matter because they let you practice selling - something you'll need to do sooner or later. They're a very simple kind of customer development tool, because you have to explain to people what you're doing and if you either a) can't or b) aren't understood then that's a valuable data point. It can mean a lot of things, but the point is that now you have that data to analyze.

Events, when you really engage in them (even in short 45 minute bursts before you bail) can yield a lot of crap as well as a lot of weak connections which might turn into something. The "weak connections" might not have immediate or obvious benefit, but as you continue building you might be surprised. The key is to filter fast, stay connected, and make it clear what you want from the people you meet. What is your ask? What is your give?

If you don't offer something, and need something in return, you shouldn't be there. It's a social marketplace.

On the flipside, there are certainly people who go to EVERY event and add zero value. They offer nothing, they ask for things but there's no point in trading with them. Every event has these people, the day I figure out what motivates them will be a serious breakthrough for me. I just accept them as part of the scene and move on.
Service Temporarily Unavailable
Perhaps 160+ people don't agree with what the rest of us believe is quality reading material. That's a hell of a force to fight. That, or the "blind-vote" bait of the title was too much to resist.
1/3 of Americans carry a balance from month to month (revolving) = ~100 million people; sorry layout is confusing but this is in fact correct. Of course, more than 100MM actually have at least one credit card but not all of them carry balances.

Simply put, way more than 100MM people have credit cards, only ~100MM or 1/3rd carry balances from month to month.
Susan Blackmore says genes evolve using the technique: copy, vary, select. All have you have here is market validation.

The issue is not implementation as odd as it sounds.
Who is your market? How will you reach them economically and timely manner? Why will they either switch or if greenfield turn to your app? Those are the real questions to answer. Do the marketing plan. Talk to potential customer base and see if what they think since it is their wallet before you even build. If you do not know who to talk to and where to find them, this issue alone will sink you.

Now which part of this market is not being served either by quality, quantity, or price. Perhaps there are too many features for the price so a portion is not buying the current market. Perhaps there are feature that are needed for a particular niche that are not being served. Perhaps nichify for a particular group.

Also look at the supply chain in this industry. Who in this industry can also benefit that isn't?

All your experience is telling you have not done your homework and asking you to collect more info before investment - there is nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing.
احداث مصر اليوم
I was at the presentation - it's a very smart system. They basically maintain a whole bunch of counters for any particular thing that's being tracked. For example, say someone clicks on a t.co link to blog.example.com/foo at 11:41am on 1st Feb. Rainbird would increment counters for:

t.co click: com (all time)

t.co click: com.example (all time)

t.co click: com.example.blog (all time)

t.co click: com.example.blog /foo (all time)

t.co click: com (1st Feb 2011)

t.co click: com.example (1st Feb 2011)

t.co click: com.example.blog (1st Feb 2011)

t.co click: com.example.blog /foo (1st Feb 2011)

t.co click: com (11am-12 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example (11am-12 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example.blog (11am-12 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example.blog /foo (11am-12 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com (11:41-42 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example (11:41-42 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example.blog (11:41-42 on 1st Feb)

t.co click: com.example.blog /foo (11:41-42 on 1st Feb)

So that's 16 counters to track one link, but it means they can do fast, denormalised queries in realtime to track how that link is performing.

It's not just for t.co links - they can use it for internal server monitoring tools, tweet counts, advertising metrics... pretty much anything that involves counting at scale.

It's possible to build a similar system for much smaller scale applications using atomic counters in Redis - I've been experimenting with something like that for some of my own projects.
Am I the only one who thinks this is an obvious fake?!!!

180 hrs battery, usb, SD, wifi, mp3 player - all for $99! Hardware guys please let us know if this is even feasible and what the BOM would be!

I'm guessing us doodlers & sketchers will have to wait a few more years.

EDIT: just saw the Boogie Board post and clearly I'm wrong about the feasibility of a basic slate. Someone please make one: just needs sketch and USB for charging and export. All day battery and raw bitmap is enough to start!
That text shouldn't have been pushed live. Just a joke for some of my friends that were helping me beta test it.

It's already removed on the main site.
> Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be over here not having to do mental math every time we go to buy something with a $/£/€5 bill. And we'll still know how much tax the government is charging if we really care - it's printed on the receipt.

Doing a little mental math is an awfully small price to pay for a little more transparency. Having it on a receipt, although good, doesn't quite cut it because most people will never look at one. I believe it to be important for every person be in tune with the cost of government.

> Wondering - how do you feel about gas prices?

Good that you mention that because I don't like the hidden taxes in gas prices and that's precisely the point I'm making. They can up the tax rates on gas here and no one would know the difference because it's built into the price.

All I'm suggesting is that we have very clear transparency in taxes and make sure everyone knows the cost; don't hide them.

> Do you support advertising airline tickets net of 30-50% surcharges so you can know exactly how much of your ticket goes to fuel, airport charges, taxes, and "fees"?

I'm not talking about surcharges; fuel, airport charges, and fees are nice to know but have nothing to do with taxes so have nothing to do with my point. However, they are nice to have itemized.

As for the taxes: yeah, I would like them clearly separated from the advertised price. It's annoying but are you seeing the pattern yet? Taxes that are hidden away in the price tend to be ridiculous and easily increased without the average person noticing. I'm fine with taxes but this isn't what I would call transparency and that's a bad thing.

[Side note: this wouldn't be so messy if we didn't have absurd taxes. "Sept. 11 Security Fee"? Why isn't that a service charged to the airport/airlines? Oh, because then it would have to be reasonable and the airlines would simply price their tickets with this cost in consideration and the TSA wouldn't be spending millions on privacy-invading machines that don't improve security. But they're the government and can just charge the passengers directly and when they need more money, instead of having to justify it to a for-profit company as actually improving security, they can do whatever they want and increase the tax.]

> And for the other side of the coin - what about not being reminded exactly how much value you got out of the government every time you drive down a road?

I suppose this question is because you think I object to taxes; I don't. I'm fine with them but with as much transparency as possible.
Talentopoly - A community for programmers, designers, and IT professionals
Weather Underground redesign
Indecision ... get off your butt and do something!
The way I read it, the two facts are redundant, they mean that virtually everybody with credit card debt carries a balance from month to month. That's tautologically true.

I would guess that more than 1/3 of Americans have a credit. card account (not necessarily debt).
Both hotornot (with its Meet Me service) and okcupid have features with some similarities, too (although in both cases, you are rating profiles on their site for people who you most likely don't know IRL instead of entering e-mail addresses of people you know.)
"They teach how to code, the basic stuff like variables, if statements, loops, etc. You probably had a course in data structures and algorithms where you learned how to code your own lists and then how to sort them. You probably learned about object oriented programming with tons of examples about how a dog is a type of animal or maybe a foo is a type of bar. You probably wrote a ton of little one off programs to count the words in a file, calculate fibonaci sequences, fling disks around the towers of hanoi, or calculate interest rates."

That was all first year in my program. Second year was algorithm design, architecture, source control, *nix devlopment, etc (in addition to math, technical writing, etc).

I don't think my school is particularly spectacular, but even in second year we've gone beyond what you describe, and the people who take the attitudes you talk about have failed out. I don't think most CS programs are as bad as you say.
"Get bent", "This website is not yours anymore", "Deal with it"...

Frankly, I think a little "this website is offline because they didn't pay their bills" would be enough, given the web designer is being honest about the whole situation.
The Boogie Board (http://www.myboogieboard.com/) is worth a look for anyone interested in this sort of thing.

It's technologically MUCH simpler than this concept — you can't save what you draw — but the response time is instant and it's a real thing, today.
Facebook celebrates 7th birthday today w/ 1.5 million people
Obama to discuss open wireless in Michigan
Great advice; I'll definitely put it to use.

I've heard that when constructing fireplaces and chimneys, masons sometimes install a plate of glass partway up the flu. When the final installment on the work is paid, the mason drops a stone down the chimney to break the glass. Otherwise it's a house full of smoke for the deadbeat client...
Remember, you have to hold it upside down:
http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Etch-a-sketch
This metaphor needs to die, stat (and hopefully take the ninja and rock star metaphors with it into the dustbin of history). It adds nothing useful to the discourse about programming and, worse, is demeaning to the profession.
You suggest Google Toolbar collects Bing search results?
Facebook Turns 7 & Gets a Spiffy New Menlo Park Pad
Co-Founders: Your Idea is Worthless. Show Your Chops
Very clear writeup. I thought this was an excellent point:

"PR is not leading this dispute. It’s following behind. This dispute is happening because real engineers at Google felt there was a deep injustice going on — as reflected in the quote from Google’s Amit Singhal in my original article. I’ve known Singhal for years. I’ve never seen him speak like this before. It’s not because Google PR told him to. It’s because he’s fundamentally bothered by what he’s seen — as are members of his team.

This dispute is also happening because real engineers at Bing feel there’s a deep injustice going on — as reflected in the quote from Harry Shum above. Bing’s worked incredibly hard to build a search engine that’s worthy of respect. Now here’s Google suggesting that Bing has simply cheated its way to relevancy."

The conversation with moultano on a thread a couple days ago was a good example of this. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177354
event driven development should be avoided whenever possible. coroutines exist for a reason.

Writing event-driven applications is very prone to errors and invalid(impossible) states.
as one of the suited and booted attendees, I'd just like to say I'm running a startup but selling into conservative / corporate organisations so the shirt and tie helps.
"Now, be fair: Erlang papers over the deficiencies of the lower layers (namely, the kernel) with significant manual effort."

Since the various Xpolls were added to the kernel, I would disagree. Even based on a select loop the kernel has still been happy to do many things asynchronously for a long time now, it's just a bit of a klunky API. What stopped it from being easy was that C had no good concurrency story except "lots of manual effort", so nobody could really effectively use those things in C. (The kernel has actually had the "lots of manual effort" applied to it.) The vast majority of concurrency failure has been layered in at the high-level language point. There is a large class of "better C than C" languages (or the implementations thereof as the case may be) that simply shoot you before you can even think about fine-grained concurrency, CPython, Perl, Ruby, Javascript, etc. And another class of languages that permit it but don't really help much, like C(++), Java, C#, and anything where you might seriously use a semaphore directly.

This is the core error that Node.js hype and its partisans make, mistaking the deficiencies of a set of languages for deficiencies in programming itself. It's not even in the OS; the OS doesn't mind threadlets/green threads/OS processes, it's all in the high-level languages.

The kernel may not have provided you a threadlet system out of the box, but the Erlang VM isn't particularly fighting the kernel either, it's building on it. In this context, that's not particularly what I mean by deficiency. Missing things can be added, I'm talking about things where the underlying layers actively fight you.

Also, yes, in some respect I'm still really responding more to the hype than directly to you. Saying that BEAM is an event-based server behind the scenes is basically the point I think needs to be made more clearly. You can be "asynchronous" and "event based" without having to embed the asnchronony and eventedness visibly in every function and nearly every line in the code base.
Chiropractors aren't doctors. That's tarnishing the good name of doctors.
That raised some flags with me as well. I would not advise anyone to purchase one of these devices, until a credible source has actually seen one in operation.
MS and Oracle also have large teams of people that work full-time on improving the optimizer. With, the handful of people with the skills and inclination to work on the Postgres optimizer don't view hints as a high priority.
What is math (Comic)
I don't know why you're being downvoted. It's a legitimate question. I had a hard time figuring out whether it was a joke or not. I remain convinced that it's either a joke or just some dumb, wishful prank.

"no superfluous features" ... but it includes an MP3 player.

"any ordinary pen or pencil usage" "real paper design"

"solar energy backside cover"

"no antialiasing (on of our best features)"

"180 hours battery life" ... So 180 hours of OCR on a 6mm thick device? Sure. That's totally plausible.

HN's bullshit detector has been firmly switched to the "off" position.
Spork is a hyper-local platform that enables granular local services, deals, and gifts. The first app built on the platform is a food discovery tool that helps users find dishes, decide on menu items, and share with friends - it’s like a yelp for dishes.

http://www.sporkhub.com
http://bit.ly/sporkforiphone
I've just sent you an email