skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm lost - what does "competently tuned GC" mean?

You can easily get generational GC to be an order of magnitude slower than it should be by changing just one or two settings.

There is some way to get the GC to NOT ever run?

Yes, this actually came up at Smalltalk Solutions many years ago. One presenter was using Squeak as an advanced debugger at a company producing a FPS game. If all your functionality happens between frames, you can rig it so you never GC. You just throw away all of your memory outside of "perm" space every time.

With VisualWorks Smalltalk, you can change the settings so that the bulk of your GC work happens using incremental GC. It's not uncommon to get to the point where GC never takes up more than a few milliseconds. That's plenty good for most people. Admittedly that's not so good if your "light" request load is well over 1000 transactions per server per second.

And even if you contrive your app to use memory very very carefully, with a shared runtime with 100 other apps (e.g. on a server) not everybody is as nice and GC still runs/stalls the system.

When you need enough virtual hosts to be running 100 server processes -- that's likely when you need to be transitioning out of "rapid prototyping" mode and onto processes with just a little more rigor.

What I'm advocating is a language where both the rapid prototyping and running optimized mature code efficiently is possible. Not only possible, but easy to transition between.
Irony: using a web app to suggest that web apps haven't displaced any native apps.
I understand that, I'd probably have stayed anonymous as well but it seemed like it was a hasty decision as staying anonymous sort of took out the credibility since nobody knew how much stake or influence they really had in the organization. FWIW it seemed like a few software developers who were working on Symbian if I had to guess, pledging their stock options and not really anybody from management.
I feel much better about the Internet Kill Switch now.
The issue here is you disagree with FSF over the meaning of the word free. Don't worry this is a common occurrence! To RMS free means freedom to use software without violating his "golden rule." RMS believes that if a neighbor wants to use software you are using you should be able to give it to him. Just as you would neighborly share flour or a rake.

I am not going to debate RMSs ethical philosophy, I just want to point out that this is the freedom GPL gives you. If you use GPL software you will never be in the position where you can't share it with you neighbor. If some wants to use it in proprietary software they cannot, because if they did they would be unable to then share it with their neighbor. Thus, the GPL is consistent with RMSs ethical stance.

However, as you have pointed out definitions of free and freedom vary. For you GPL does not free but rather chains you up; virally spreading to other work you would like to keep private. Thus, you are prevented from using GPL software and feel less free.

Freedom is a tricky word.
The payment side is powered by Google Checkout, so the fee structure smacks Apple around all over the place. The most expensive tier (under $3000 in monthly sales) is 2.9% + $0.30. The cheapest is 1.9% + $0.30.
I would also add PayPal hasn't announced their micropayments a long time ago, either.
what about dropbox 30% of 9.9$ LOL
Cheap Credit Card Processing
Given the context, this seems a bit absurd.
I think that humans abuse discovered patterns and structure in language and meaning to search through possible interpretations very quickly.

Right, but does that structure really represent a "deeper" understanding or just vast and meticulous optimizations of statistical algorithms similar to Watson's? Or is there a difference?

We feel like we know how we think, but we can't actually explain it in enough detail to reproduce. Humans have a bad history of rationalization and tunnel vision. And now we discover that all the "wrong" ways to think deeply are actually the right ways to make a working AI.

If the AI can fool us into believing that it "understands" then maybe we can fool ourselves in the same way.
Try here:

http://www.google.com/landing/onepass/

Edit: Ah, same problem. Sorry.

Edit 2: It's working now, but they are only after "some partners" so I guess it's a private Beta as such at the moment.
Where do we go from here (the Elopocalypse)?
Dude, I still don't see why such a response is even needed.

a) EE is the reason people wanted to block sites from google results.

b) EE never has useful info even if you scroll down

conclusion: IDK how EE even made money to begin with. I guess on the suckers. Because I feel that if I sign up I am throwing my money away since nobody is else who I want answers from is dumb enough to sign up.

Furthermore, seeing as how forums are Q&A places as well, and sites scrub forums like mad to "generate content" I have zero proof that EE is in any way genuine content.
For a good laugh: How can I edit Internet speed?
You're right: consistently being 6x faster on the buzzer than the common case for your opponent is going to let you destroy them. Their only hope is that you can't come up with a response before Alex finishes reading the question.

I arrived at the 6x approximation by googling around for avg. ethernet latencies. I'm consistently seeing numbers of .3 - .35 ms for an ethernet ping/pong. I think it's fair to assume that with the money IBM has invested in this, Watson is on at least ethernet quality connections.
What's going on when investors say "no, but we want to track"?
It's actually Chuck Norris in disguise.
Art is power
The Free Software movement is a religious movement and the GPL is an expression of their belief system. See my comment above and:

http://blog.hackthology.com/interpreting-the-free-software-m...
He did: https://github.com/jamesgolick/always_verify_ssl_certificate...
I can see a certain competitor rubbing their hands in glee that an entire class of applications will be unavailable on Windows Phone 7.
Gah! And I started writing one myself a few days ago. You got there first though, so I'll just fork yours I guess.
Texas AG's Letter Demanding Google's Search Policies and Ad Rate Formulas
Introduction to Cracking MD5 Encryption- Breaking the Hash Functions
I'm starting to see a whole bunch of posts/comments about people reacting to losing 30% of their SaaS software revenue but no one seems to be calling out the Apple contract specifically lists content as defined as magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video. So I don't see where the SaaS angst is coming from.

Apple can charge 30% for apps and content because the ENTIRE product is being delivered on iOS. They can't charge that cut for SaaS because only a subset of the product is being delivered.

Could Apple attempt to take a cut from SaaS products if a user signed up from within your app IN THE FUTURE...sure, but I doubt they'd be stupid enough to try for 30%. Should Apple be compensated in some way for hosting/downloading your mobile app for your SaaS backend...maybe, and I'd be prepared to pay some commission if it drove signups, it might just be a tad lower than 30% though.
Re 2) - I think the opposite of focused "intelligent discussion" may be casual discussion rather than unintelligent. I'm sure we can all spot both kinds here on HN.
Not necessarily. Remember that pedophilia book that got Amazon some flack? A rogue sheriff in Florida had one of his deputies buy the hard copy and then arrest the writer for "distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct". Horrible precedent for several reasons.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-22/justice/florida.obscenity...
You're not responding to the substance of my post. I said I wasn't commenting on whether or not the GPL actually promotes freedom. It just doesn't take it away. You and I are in total agreement here. If you want your code to have the widest possible distribution, use BSD/MIT licenses (I have done this). You have the freedom to do this and the existence of the GPL does not take your freedom away from you. You also have the freedom to decide not to use GPLed code.

People have a sense of entitlement WRT open source code, I think. As if it's "open source," it should be under whatever terms they want not those of the original author. I think that's why so many people bitch about copyleft licenses.
That article is too riddle errors to be great. Consider his paragraph on OOXML. He says that ODF does the same work as OOXML in 1/10th the size.

First of all, it does not do the same work. OOXML includes hundreds of pages covering spreadsheet formulas, giving mathematical definitions of them, sample input and output, and detailed descriptions. ODF omits spreadsheet formulas. ODF, as passed by ISO, barely deserves to be called a "specification", as there is virtually no chance that two people independently implementing from the spec alone would come up with interoperable documents. It is more accurately thought of as a guide to help understand the OpenOffice source code--which is what you actually would use as your spec if you were trying to write a real-world ODF application.

Second, even for those areas where they do the same work, the OOXML spec is more precise. That accounts for much of its size. For instance, consider how dates should be stored. Both ODF and OOXML list specific calendars that must be supported. In the ODF spec, this is a simple list, just giving a short informal name for each. In the OOXML spec, they give a table that gives the short informal name, but also gives the full official name, along with a complete citation to the official definition of that calendar.

Or consider password protected documents. All ODF tells you is where to store the password. (It might also say it should be hashed). OOXML covers that, but also tells you what hash formats and encryption systems must be supported, and for each of those cites the appropriate standard.
Last that I knew, Delaware used to be the cheapest state to incorporate in.
Don't use domains subject to US law. That means COM/NET/ORG.
Well, Apple's play is they just ban Amazon's app if they don't cough up the cash.
Watch music videos in style
stream music from youtube without any advertisements
But if your charging within your Android application " the transaction fee for in-app purchases is the same as the transaction fee for application purchases (30%). " (http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html)
Advice for the job search: make it known to your dev friends that you're searching for work. Networking will yield a higher success rate than just sending out resumes blindly. Same goes for attending meetups in a technology that interests you--sometimes the meetups are sponsored by companies that are hiring.

Otherwise, good luck bud--I remember this feeling too. It's terrible, but my friends and family really helped me through it. All the best for you.
Ken Jennings recently said this, which sounds very much like the argument I've been making:

As Jeopardy devotees know, if you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it's just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best.

Watson does have a big advantage in this regard, since it can knock out a microsecond-precise buzz every single time with little or no variation. Human reflexes can't compete with computer circuits in this regard. But I wouldn't call this unfair...precise timing just happens to be one thing computers are better at than we humans. It's not like I think Watson should try buzzing in more erratically just to give homo sapiens a chance.

http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html?hp...
Note that by using a technique known as escape analysis, a virtual machine like the JVM can detect that the lifetime of an object is such that it doesn't leave the context of a particular method and then stack-allocate the object implicitly. That may seem like a limited optimization, but when you combine it with method inlining it gets a lot more useful. I believe the optimization is turned off by default in the Sun/Oracle JVM but can be enabled via the -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis option. For programs that allocate large numbers of short-lived objects, it can make a significant performance difference.
My point is that a human nervous system is MUCH slower than Watson's equivalent. It is probable (don't know, but it seems likely) that it is more variable, as well. As such, under the current rules, Watson has an overwhelming advantage. If all the contestants know the answer before the question is "read", then Watson will consistently beat the humans to the buzzer. The only hope for the humans is that Watson hasn't decided an answer by the time the question is finished being "read".

Without some way to account for the fact that the human nervous system CANNOT beat Watson to the buzzer on any sort of consistent basis, the game is far less compelling than it should be.
A prediction market startup: software security's futures plural
"This is a hard lesson if you're not the one that will do the building, because it means that your contribution is not as valuable as you thought."

For this one quote alone I'd love to meet the author and buy them a beer.
Review: Infinity Blade
...and if your profit margin is close to that 30%, as it is with many businesses, you are now required (should you choose to develop an app for iOS) to sell your product to users whom you have to support and stand a very good chance of gaining nothing from.

In other words, such a business would be required to offer an option to hand off all of its profit to Apple, should it choose to offer a native iOS app. Apple gets a better experience for its customers, and the third party gets more customers it gets zero profit from. I can understand if such a business would find this unacceptable. (And look at it from a user's perspective: if given two options, one-click billing through Apple or time-consuming credit card entry through a web portal, which do you suppose the majority of users will take?)

So how exactly is that understanding flawed?

Edit: More details added, and some wording correction.
Any non-technical user won't be reading this article and won't give a damn about IE vs. FF vs. Chrome, as long as their internets work.

Not giving a damn isn't the same as not being affected by. IE slows down innovation and productivity on the web. Everyone's internets are worse for it, and it's a ball-and-chain everyone's paying to drag behind us.. whether or not everyone's aware of it.
I thought Diet Pepsi won all taste tests. No reference, just remember that.
I agree. I was looking for a demo as well. A suggestion I have is to include a few screenshots on the landing page - perhaps incorporate them with the features list.
There is no issue here, only fear-mongering. To me it seems like a pragmatic choice.

I'm not sure if the perception of Microsoft will ever change in the eyes of developers.
Considering OnePass was just announced and isn't shipping yet, I don't think we can know yet if it will be billed the same as Android's existing in app purchasing.
>the government will never turn to a giant powergrab overnight.

They've learn through history and the wisdom of the public relations industry: consolidate power gradually and using numerous pretexts. I'd guess the power consolidation has an end vision in mind: one doesn't spend the kind of effort they've spent without a goal.
My beef with .NET is that the platform and community does not feel very organic like it is with others. Making a huge generalization, I would say that the .NET community waits around for the Mother ship to produce something that it can use. This was one impetus for the ALT.NET movement.

A great example of community in action is the castle project at http://www.castleproject.org/

In the year 2010, .NET finally has a package management system. Guess who created it?
> The only reasons were [...]

This is not true. Isn't it obvious that "basically because it wasn't Lisp" is shorthand for "because of a bunch of respects in which it differs from Lisp and Lisp is better"?

Note that the comment you're replying to links to RMS's more complete account of "why you should not use Tcl", which lists a number of respects in which he considers that Tcl is not suitable as an extension language. For instance: "It lacks arrays; it lacks structures from which you can make linked lists. It fakes having numbers, which works, but has to be slow." And: "Tcl has a peculiar syntax that appeals to hackers because of its simplicity. But Tcl syntax seems strange to most users." (Yes, it is kinda ironic that he said that and then proposed using Scheme. But, as he said at the time, the intention was to have two syntaxes with the same semantics, one of them Lispy and one more conventionally "algebraic".)

RMS also did not say that "Tcl was being developed by an Evil company", nor that that was a reason for discouraging its use. He said: He didn't like Tcl; Sun were trying to get Tcl made the de facto standard extension language; he wanted to make sure that didn't happen. There's no suggestion at all that he wanted to stop it happening because Sun were evil.
"7) You run “big data” applications (i.e., financial) that require extremely low latency and/ or extreme disk I/O requirements."

I am currently having exactly this problem, and although my preference is to try to stay on the cloud, more and more it looks like a losing fight.
Borders files for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection
Uhhh my point was that "The Valley" != "SoCal". Not that it isn't part of SoCal. It's obvious if you read my post properly. Thanks for trying anyway.
Why squander an opportunity to get sign ups?
Grab the Best Bundle of 2011 – Just One Week Left
In case you missed the launch last week, BundleHunt 3 is now on sale, but there’s only one week left to grab it. This bundle features 20 popular design resources and applications normally valued at over $1287, and it’s priced at only $49. The idea for this release is to put together a complete design resource pack for web developers across the board for the smallest price in history.
IBM's Watson Puts Game Face On, Wins Jeopardy vs Humans by Wide Margin
A short synopsis is that Clojure 1.2 works out of the box, but startup time is poor. According to the author of the REPL app, this is due to bootstrapping the Clojure runtime, specifically the clojure.core namespace. (http://www.deepbluelambda.org/programming/clojure/creating-a...)

There is at least one fairly recent thread on the clojure group (http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...) and a SO question with some links as well (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4651757/clojure-on-androi...)
The Facebook "turing test" is also a scary way of bayesian improving facial recognition software so that they can track you and your activities better.

(here come the downvotes)
As I added in the content section, I think that SaaS providers have the leeway to pass along the "Apple tax" to iOS users and thus embarrass Apple a little bit here. I'd like to see a service at least try to make an "iOS plan" - if a service is normally $10/mo, create a separate plan (that would be the only way of accessing the content for iOS users) that costs enough to offset Apple's take. This plan would cost the same both on the service provider's website and in the app, and would be the only way of accessing the service's content in the app, meeting Apple's rules... it would just be conspicuously more expensive than the version for all other platforms.

I'm not normally the self-promoting or blogging type, but since I'm an enthusiastic user of many of these iOS services (Rdio, Netflix, Audible, The Economist...), I expounded a little bit here: http://www.thetechbastard.com/post/3326771970/a-hypothetical...
Oh I agree.

I dont' really see them fundamentally as different. I was just pointing out stuff I was also doing which could might as well have been done by a developer (in fact I worked with a couple developers on setting up the proper architecture)
Also coca! This is the original recipe remember. So no probably not any alcohol in modern Coke.

But it IS in your vanilla extract etc.
I just did this mod and posted a pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colin_n/5451298732/
"When the [government] does it, that means it is not illegal!"
I'd rather see TED team up with another discussion forum (like Quora) insted of creating their own walled garden of conversation. Offering a way to talk with TED speakers on an already popular service sounds a lot more sustainable.
Share-Alike licenses like the GNU GPL are excellent licenses and are worthy of consideration for whole categories of software.

What they aren't, however, is 'free' by any rational or sane definition of the word. They impose restrictions -- and carry those restrictions downstream -- on the use of the software that increases the theoretical range of people who would do things with the software. But those restrictions in and of themselves do not increase "freedom" for anyone.

Like I said, there's good reasons to choose these sorts of licenses. What I object to are the semantic games and occasionally outright lies and histrionics of GNU GPL supporters.
You're using the words profit and revenue interchangeably.
Yeah, but people on this site are pretty familiar with putting up a web sales site, and aren't going to be very impressed by that - certainly not to the point of paying their entire margin to Apple for it.

Yes its a popular site - hey! could that be because its the only site?
Well they do expect a cent. Because they've banned you linking to the website, and they've forced you to use their in-app billing system, and they've banned you from incentivizing customers with a lower price elsewhere and they're taking a huge cut from in-app purchases. So unless you can telepathically control how your customers sign up, Apple's going to be getting quite a few of your cents.

It's a bit more complicated than Apple getting 30% of all your sales, but it's also more complicated than Apple just letting the iOS customers choose how to buy. You'll lose some random part of that 30% depending on your customers buying habits.
Have you tried Firefox 4 Beta?

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

We are nearing the end of our Firefox 3 cycle (Firefox 4 is going to be released next month), and that's where our significant speed improvements have been implemented in the last 2 years. It's about even with Chrome speed-wise.
So.. when is YC for applications again?
Well, when you spend your money in a local economy the money tends to circulate back around. Say I shop from a farmer's market, I support people living in my community who can then spend that money on other local goods/services, and eventually some of that money may make it's way back to myself. If I shop at Wal-Mart, the money leaves my local economy forever and basically just goes to shareholders and overseas manufactures. I also think local merchants are more likely to sell goods/services that are better for their local economy than a big box retailer that is completely disconnected from the local economy.
I love this site for the name alone! The web app's intelligently designed and is the next evolution in digital documents.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck
I'm confused is this not what scribd does ?
It just seems like what I would expect, although I give them full credit for tackling this challenge in the first place. I'm not the only one:

http://www.madpickles.org/rokjoo/2011/02/14/ibm-watson-vs-go...
Cool, let me know if you have suggestions, additions.
Kudos to Nokia
Borders turns page to Chapter 11
True, but that case has yet to be settled. Either way as far as I know the US government has made no move to ban the book, and even if they do get a conviction it will be under local laws and not federal laws.