skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I totally disagree with this blog posting, but here's a situation that I feel SO could do better.

I wish there were a feature whereby as a question-asker, you could say "I've dutifully read all the provided responses, and none of them answers my question. Marking this as 'unsolved'".

And then the "unsolved" questions would not count against your percentage in "accept rate". When new answers come in, you'd need to go back and re-evaluate whether or not the new responses answer your question or not.

The original idea of publishing askers' accept ratio is to encourage people to "give credit where credit is due". But it also has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging people to accept sub-par answers at times.

Apart from that I love the site, and hope Jeff makes a bundle (or at least a happy existence) from it.
2000/XP was always extremely aggressive about allocating memory for cache. It would very often swap stuff out to increase available cache, which made the apps you did not use for just a few seconds completely unresponsive.
Design looks nice, if a little rushed, artistically but completely misses the point of the business.
3 winners of MIT Web Competition
Why not to try a new site for programmers http://tagmask.com. It provides the ability to filter out content according your preferences and looks really good. Have you checked it out?
The bug is in the JDK code running on a JVM (I posted a link to the source). Also runhang.java hangs on my 64bit java vm.
Check-in with Google Latitude
I think he makes a very lucid argument ...

"The fact that 37signals is unwilling to adapt to a changing market (i.e. demand for native apps) shows their archaic mindset and lack of innovation"

Mobile Development seems to be the next frontier in the evolution of the interwebs, and they could very well be betting on the wrong horse.
Live Chat: Scott Adams Takes Your Questions on How to Tax the Rich
I fully concur with how annoying it is to have to enter a password and email, even though I used FB Connect. Totally takes away the convenience.
It is useful for autogenerated code. Which is a big sledgehammer that should only be swung carefully. But one use case is that you can have a DSL that you convert into code in your target language that you then eval.

Given the ease of going horribly wrong with this strategy, I strongly recommend only using it in cases where it is obviously a huge win. Such cases are not non-existent, but they are rare.
get.theinfo is the best way to find data sets. They are a bunch of data hoarders who can help you: http://groups.google.com/group/get-theinfo/?pli=1

I always ask there if I can't find what I'm looking for.

Here are more and more data sets. These are general data sets. Email me if you have a specific data set in mind (e.g. web-as-corpus, spam, images, social, reviews, etc.). I have a big file of information.

http://theinfo.org/
http://infochimps.org/datasets
http://ckan.org [Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network]
http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web.html
http://del.icio.us/pskomoroch/dataset
http://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1242029
http://www.reddit.com/r/opendata
http://www.trustlet.org/wiki/Repositories_of_datasets
http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/data-for-data-mining/
http://www.quantlet.org/mdbase/
http://datamob.org/
http://freebase.com/
http://infochimp.info/ics/data/ripd/www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/netdata/
http://www.archive-it.org/public/all_collections

Large:
http://www.ckan.net/tag/read/size-large
http://www.diggingintodata.org/Repositories/tabid/167/Default.aspx

Web as corpus:

Good instructions:
http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/internet.html#description
http://sslmit.unibo.it/~baroni/bootcat.html

http://www.drni.de/wac-tk/index.php/Documentation

etc. Email me if you need more
http://cleaneval.sigwac.org.uk/
http://liste.sslmit.unibo.it/pipermail/sigwac/2007-November/...
http://wacky.sslmit.unibo.it/doku.php?id=
http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/marco/research.html
You'd think the App Store pricing model would repulse the big players, but Microsoft have actually said they're seriously considering the Mac App Store (http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110127/microsoft-consideri...).
Somewhat OT. What does a Netflix streamed movie consume, these days? I recall looking some months ago on their site, but I couldn't find any hard numbers (leaving the impression on me that this was on purpose).

I guess next time I watch one, I can fire up a monitor.

--

EDIT: Answering myself, partially. My Google-fu is apparently a bit better, today.

This is a bit dated, but provides some figures (bless dslreports):

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22164481-Netflix-bandwidth-...

It also cites this link:

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html

There's probably better information, but this seems to provide enough of a ballpark for my current interest, the one caveat being any changes in the year or two since.
Massive Loophole in Google Apps
"rely"? It's using customer behavior as a signal. Someone typing into a search box and clicking a link is a pretty good signal, regardless of where the search happens.

This only implies inferior technology if this is the only signal you have in determining relevance, but clearly they have tons of them.

The fact that they're trying to capture the totality of the user experience is a very good thing (again with opt-in). Search relevance hasn't progressed as it should. But I think if they could use my web browsing habits it would increase a fair bit.

And lastly, Bing and Google are near parity, but not identical. I don't think anyone is under any allusions that neither engine could learn a thing or two from the other.

It's not about inferior or not, but trying to get better.
37signals has an extensive API built around all their apps with tonnes of 3rd-party native apps for desktop and mobile. If there isn't a native app for your platform, go write one and stop complaining.

And arguing that a web app isn't useful as _a freaking web app_ on your mobile is a little wild to me. There may be deficiencies in areas like file uploads on mobiles, but largely, you interact with Basecamp through a browser on your desktop. Why doesn't a mobile work well? (I've used many iOS Basecamp clients and none were better than the mobile version launched today by 37s).

I love native apps too, and I'm glad that 37signals encourages their existence by providing a solid, well-documented API. And while they do ship some native apps, I totally buy them building really awesome web apps on the desktop, and now on mobiles.
lol, people find a torrent or a file they want and then they put it in their download list, someone downloads it and sends it to them on a USB drive.
"Support" isn't a fine-grained enough word. Selling the revolutionaries guillotines is probably bad. Providing them the means to tell their story to the world is probably good.
I think Clinton's actions were well within the common-language definition of "sexual relations". I don't think the Google "experiments" showed anything about Bing's behavior that falls within the common-language definition of "copy".
"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

That is exactly the way the Kindle app on the iPhone works. When you click "Get Books" within the app you are redirected to Amazon's website on Mobile Safari where you can purchase the book then return to your app.

With that in mind I don't see how what you are suggesting is any different than what Ars is saying.
They do have multiple designs right now, just try to refresh the site. I'm guessing they are keeping track of the conversion rate on each of the designs and will change them once they have enough data points.
"And you're smart to do so."

Finally, that's the first comment I get, instead of someone extolling the virtues of swap and babbling warmed-over 1990s rules of thumb about "twice the RAM is the recommended size of your swap file" as if I'm going to wait for even 200MB of swap to fill up before flipping out and killing the offending process, let alone 8GB.
4) Make a webapp. Not perfect, but also an option.
I checked my national lottery (Belgium), but sadly none of the 15 scratch card types they sell have 'baited hooks' or other unique numbers, as far as I can see ( http://lotto.be/NL/Spelen_en_Winnen/Krasspelen/default.aspx - in Dutch). I would laugh SO hard if we found some exploitable lottery...
Yes, we thought this in early 2005 and created NOLOH (http://www.noloh.com) as a solution. You write your app in a single tier, rather than having to worry about all the plumbing (Cross-browser issues, AJAX, client-server interaction, Comet, etc). You can even use your existing HTML, JS, CSS, if you like, and NOLOH then renders a version of your app targeted specifically towards the end user, whether it's IE, Chrome, Mac, Windows, etc. or a search engine robot, in a "lightweight" (only the correct and highly optimized code is loaded for a specific user) and "On-demand" (only loads the resources that are absolutely necessary at a given point) manner, thus allowing for rich web apps like gmail, to load instantly, and as needed, rather than a traditional web fat-client.

Every few months someone will write a post like this, and I wince. We've written several extensive articles for php|architect magazine and have presented NOLOH at several major web development conferences around the world. The fact of the matter is that tools like NOLOH exist, there are others, and they can be used now. Today, web development doesn't need to suck.

If you're interested in the specifics of the above stated "lightweight" and "On-demand", specifics can be found in the article "Lightweight, On-demand, and Beyond" in http://www.phparch.com/magazine/2010-2/november/.

[edit] Link to free December issue of php|architect article "NOLOH's Notables" so that you can more easily see what I mean without the November issue paywall. http://beta.phparch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/PHPA-DEC-...

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of NOLOH
I believe Ben Bradlee would call that a "non-denial denial".
San Francisco, CA (SoMa)

Early stage, well-funded web startup with SoMa office seeks talented developer as lead engineer. This is a core position; you will have a chance to influence every element of the company's technology, and you will receive a salary, options, and a desk in an office in SoMa. Must be local.

We're keeping our business plan under wraps, but the gist is that we're building a platform that will help local and state governments raise new money from an existing public resource. Read the paper: the time is ripe for this idea, local governments are going bankrupt all over the country. They are desperate for new solutions (see Governor Brown's State of California speech last night), and we will offer them a solution that will raise millions at the local level.

If you like novel solutions to hard problems, saving the US from bankruptcy and working at a company with a massive profit potential and an incredibly well-connected advisory board and investor roster, then tell me what you can bring to the table:

wallacrw<at>yahoo.com.

Must have several years' experience building scalable web applications, with a preference for folks interested in auction theory. You'll have to demonstrate that you can take an idea and implement it from the ground up, and that you can work closely in a small team as a co-founder.
Yes but it is one thing if a small startup does it, and its another if a giant like Microsoft does it. In a way its applying a double standard, but i think Microsoft has enough money to invest is innovating in search space. Ultimately you can't really prove its illegal, so its a matter of ethics. Strangely we would all encourage a startup to copy what it can, so it can focus on the core innovation and not be bogged down, but we look down on Microsoft. Why is that?
Most people want to work in a company that innovates.

This isn't innovation. Any fool can write something that copies data from a competitor.
No, problems like returning meaningful results for "torsoraphy". See the first example that is provided in Danny Sullivan's post.
You Can Now Buy Up to 16 TB of Storage from Google
WordPress force SSL in wp-admin
You could not have done a worse thing to their previous branding an image, which I thought was pretty damn good in the first place. Nowhere on the homepage does it tell me what MailChimp actually does. The content font is pretty small, and hard to read many of the times. The feature and resource pages are painful to browse. All these artsy images are absolutely unnecessary. Even the guides themselves are actually pdf books you have to download, formatted in artsy ways, making the entire process of searching for help and answers really, really unpleasant. They've sacrificed tons of usability.

I'm a bit shocked that they'd do that, personally.
37signals provides APIs for its apps and there are many 3rd party native apps available based on them. For example Propane - a native Mac Campfire app is very popular.
>I believe Microsoft sends the data back by SSL, so it's harder to verify even that than you'd expect.

Please. Adding my own SSL cert to my own laptop is not harder than I'd expect. Certainly not harder than many other things you did in setting up this experiment.
VIDEO: Joseph Campbell on Becoming...
I had a pair of Sennheiser HD570. I bought this back about 7 years ago and they still sound amazingly good. List price at the time was about $150, but I got it off Ebay for around $80.

My friend had a pair of Bose (the collapsible $150 one) that has noise-canceling, but sound-wise my Sennheiser headphone beats that Bose stuff out of the water.

I'd recommend any mid/high-end Sennheiser headphones. They are totally worth the money. Especially when you like listening to music with lots of layers and bass. You'll feel the difference right away.

Good hunting!
I think the correct decision is to make a native shell that holds an HTML5 app for iPhone and Android. That does not require any additional developers to accomplish and you can track/save the state locally.

That way it can be downloaded from the app store as that's what people are used to anyways.
This remains as relevant as ever...

"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." -Picasso
I think this would still leave Google with a fairly strong argument - if Bing does it for all search engines, then they're effectively copying whoever is most popular. Since it's done through Internet Explorer, which is still bundled with Windows in most places, they could try to make the argument that Microsoft is using their position in the OS market to crush competition in other markets.
GetSat and UserVoice are seen as competitors (even though they're really not). Also, the submitter is the CEO of UserVoice.
Even though he knew the formula, at least where I buy lottery tickets, the person behind the counter gives you the ticket. Assuming there are many more losers then winners, without being able to select the tickets yourself, it would seem as though it'd be a losing proposition. Now, if you were the store owner and had access to the tickets yourself, that would be a different story.
Mozy stops offering unlimited storage
While a mobile app can certainly deliver a rich user experience, the availability of a standard, universally supported platform (read: a browser) is a more sustainable approach to application deployment.

We've been down this road before. In the pre-browser era, desktop application were king, but at a high cost to IT departments as well as end-users. The same game is being played out on mobile platforms now.

From a business perspective, do you really want to support multiple development efforts for each and every mobile platform? Will it be worth it in the long run?

The advantages of the mobile app platform must be balanced with the cost and maintenance overhead as well. Give me a great browser platform, and I'll gladly take its shortcomings over the long-term sustainment costs of a dedicated mobile app.
The Day Apple Became Nathan Myhrvold
Screenshot of previous design for comparison:
http://i.imgur.com/aeKr8.jpg

I agree with the general sentiment here. I'm baffled and confused why they made this change. The reason I happened to have a screenshot is because I keep a folder of images of sites I think work exceptionally well. They lost both their usability as well as their humanity. That's a double whammy. I'd love to see a post from them explaining the redesign and any results that may come from this.
Developers should simply add a 42% "Apple shipping and handling" tax to all in-app purchases, to let end-users know what is going on. That is the only way to attack Apple: to get the end users on your side.
I've used it in Matlab to get around the lack of first class functions and function pointers.
I like the idea of individual progress reports (my velocity compared to my team's velocity or what share of tickets I close), but my colleagues have argued that programmers would hate the idea of being judged against a personal score in Pivotal.

Another thing to consider would be "participation metrics" - how much people login, comment, file tickets - to encourage people to be active in the app overall.
I think that policies very significantly from place to place, and even from field to field. I know that at USC, the policy is favorable to students in most fields (http://policies.usc.edu/policies/intellectualproperty040301....). Software developed by students or faculty, even if it uses things like USC computer labs or Internet access or any commonly available office supply, is owned by the creator unless it was done as a paid work product or under a specific agreement with the University. On the other side of the equation, cinema students give up most of the rights to movies they create under the explanation that significant University resources are used in the production of those movies.
I find it strange that they don't use some true random source in generating the tickets. I'm also surprised the article finds this obvious.

"Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets"

Surely the lottery could quantify uncertainties and set up a system where the probability of them losing money would be arbitrarily small. Interesting interview, btw.
The Psychology of Color (infographic)
The PlayStation's Interface Sucks
Is it fair to assume that the "Powered by Happy Cog Hosting" implies Happy Cog was behind the redesign? Potentially irrelevant, but curious.

Regardless, I agree. This seems like a step back. I'm a huge fan of Mailchimp, their brand (well, to date), and the way they engage their users (aka "support"). Mailchimp is known for their ease of use, but this design doesn't reinforce that, especially the overuse of imagery (ref: http://mailchimp.com/features/).

Mailchimp has been known for their transparency (ref: http://blog.mailchimp.com/going-freemium-one-year-later/). I hope they share their decision process on this, or metrics on the new design, or both.
Ask HN: basic tech for photo uploading API
If you were creating an API to upload photos these days, what would the basic tech setup be? ie.: rest, json, http post, auth, etc.? What API's to look at as examples?
The AOL way
Changing the color should not be needed (since the alpha is 0.01). Feel free to use other colors though.
Like how Google copies the titles of web pages and snippets and puts them in search results?

Ahh... the innovation is not in the "content", but how the content is determined. Google crawls the web, copying content, creates and index, and a sophisticated formula for determining relevance of search.

MS has innovated by taking this one step further by saying, "if you opt-in we'll use your behavior as part of our index and relevance metric". So they no more copied from Google than Google copies from CNN. But in the same way Google has created value from mined data, Bing has created value from mined opt-in user behavior. That's the innovation.

If one can't see that, I think most of these places would do a "no hire" in any case.
Sorry, I have a bad habit of springboarding off the sarcasm without making it clear I got it. :) Seriously, they're months away from the point where they will discover they can't replicate Erlang on top of JS no matter how smart they are; I'm very down on Node.js's long term future because trying to build it on top of JS was locally a cool hack but globally an unrecoverable error. They're not done applying their first coat of whitewash and not interested in being told that a whitewashed Pinto is still not going to be a race car.
I always wondered why you couldn't purchase a book directly from the kindle app on the iPad (it makes you open up a new browser window to do it)
I doubt it. There would still be a non-Apple way to buy books (e.g., through amazon.com).

I hope there is some fair trade law under which Apple can be prosecuted or sued. Apple is, after all, in the book business itself. How does one see this any other way than stifling competition?
Any Q&A site that discourages potentially useful answers is doing it wrong.

As it happens, I've come up with an algorithm that would solve the most common problems with Q&A sites (included the ones cited in this article) and am in the process of building a prototype.
the way original was worded it didn't sound like author was describing that particular wart, but, rather believing closures didn't exist. Generators, yield.

PyPy
furthermore, isn't blaming IE close to blaming the customer?

The customer has chosen (even if the decision was made for them), and that is something that we as developers have to live with.
With that logic you should definitely work at MS. It'd be a perfect fit.
Sadly, after the latest infestation from Digg users, I almost don't read Reddit. HN is too sophisticated for now to that to happen.
There appear to be a number of problems with this proof of concept:

1. A requirement seems to be the ability to make and receive socket connections. How would you address the typically restrictive home firewalls/NATs that most people are living with?

2. In the responses, a commenter raises this issue: With the above example of two users and 56 connections it seems like there could be scaling issues and or perormance issues.
They may be less obvious on computers but mobile devices with more limited bandwidth and sometimes quotas may suffer for those users with muilple devices and their multi device highly connected friends.

The response from admin is: "Correct, this technology will have to scale along with hardware. I don’t believe we are too far off with 4g, more inexpensive memory and the like."

That doesn't inspire much confidence in the idea as a proof of concept.

You're also claiming to solve a far more fundamental problem: that of creating and maintaining a reliable distributed peer-to-peer network without any central servers at all. If you do have a practical solution to this problem, then a bunch of other difficult problems (like tracker-less Bittorent, for example, which currently relies on distributed hash tables) reduce to yours. Are you sure you're able to make that claim?
You can't get to a million points on SO without learning a few things yourself.

Most of the questions I answer these days on SO are outside my areas of expertise, but I know enough to know where to look for information that can help me come up with an answer.

And even in answering noob questions you at least get practice in understanding people who don't know enough to articulate what they want and in writing clear, concise, simple answers. Both of those skills are valuable to any software developer.
I too am not happy about losing the ability to read Kindle books on my iPad. But does Amazon allow Apple (and Google and Sony) to sell their ebooks on Kindle? This is shaping up to be a battle of walled gardens. While the gardens battle, Google Books and Android are looking a lot more attractive.