skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No, I don't think this will solve anything.

The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects.

First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products.

Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects.

Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big.

Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.
How I left Blizzard
It's gonna have to play catchup to the Amazon Could player. I think Amazon has first mover advantage here.
Google App Engine Brings Python Features to Java
Do explain the down-votes when you make them.
Ask HN: Did Twitter just revert back to "old Twitter" design?
Unfortunately, I tend to agree with you. Sales through lack of information actually works in some markets. Is this just old man-ery, wanting special rates "cuz we're business!", or are we all susceptible to this?

I feel like it is, but maybe not - I have friends who still like to walk into their bank to deposit a big check...
It might be fun to F with godaddy.com and start pumping them randomly with domains. Mixing random words in the dictionary and trying combinations in sequence like a typical user would would be effective.

Set this up to happen on a daily basis through proxy servers for different ips, and you might create an interesting way to bleed them a little bit.

Record the domains entered, and see how many times you get them to nick you. It would make for a fun blog post.

Keep in mind, they have to pay ever time they register a domain.
Yes - http://status.twitter.com/post/4375122023/temporarily-disabl...
Check out lowendbox.com for some inexpensive VPS ideas, or try Linode or the free EC2 tier if you need something more reliable.
Show HN: My attempt to crowd write a haiku for Japan
Branding is everything
Thanks for the response! Ok, so to summarize, XMPP works, but in your opinion, it's simply too complex to "figure out"? Basically, in my scenario, it could very well work as optimally as we want it to if we give ourselves time to understand it?

I wish I could use zeromq or redis or amqp, but it just is not an option in this environment.

I was wondering if there was some solid technical reason to not use XMPP, but it looks like there isn't one... it's just a matter of personal preference and wanting to avoid spending time on something. I'll charge ahead with the XMPP implementation in our scenario unless there's a good reason someone can see why not to.
It might not be. Assuming you could find a black hole which is not actively engaged in swallowing something (and hence spewing out huge amounts of heat and relativistic particle jets), you could surround it with mirrors to create an internal volume with a very low photon temperature at relatively (in astronomical terms) mild expense.

Obviously a spherical shell would be unstable, but you don't need a contiguous shell to lower the internal temperature. A rotating ring (or easier, an orbiting series of small, overlapping satellites) would be stable (not in the orbital sense, but in that they wouldn't need to hold themselves up) and could use the thermal gradient between their sides to power their station-keeping. You could construct additional rings at greater distances, each with a different inclination, to cover more of the angular area.
Show HN: LittlePSD, made by 17/21-yr-olds either side of the Atlantic in 1 week
I was asking the question in general, mostly because I've seen a rash of articles saying "Let me pay to make twitter stable", etc. I should have formed my comment better, as it does appear to question this article rather than the idea.
I'm almost finished with a Masters at Cambridge. It's a fantastic department with some really interesting research going on in areas from Comp Sci theory to photonic networks. Everyone's really approachable and are really passionate about their fields.

The city is great too with a long standing digital background: ARM, MS Research etc.

It's definitely worth checking out, and good luck.
too bad it won't stay like this. the old look is oddly refreshing.
Tnx! Just sent you a message.
you're thinking like a human, I reckon 640kb of memory would be enough too ;)
Here is what I would prefer to do:

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Program the solution.
4. Understand changes caused by the solution.
5. Iterate.
When you cool something down to near absolute zero it can turn into a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate For example at 1.7×10^-7K rbidium turns into a BEC. At 10^-8K perhaps that would turn normal matter into a BEC. Then you would have to be able to get useful information out of a state of matter where every possible value exists at once, and the tool your using to read values warms the condensate past the point of being one. Hey - I think you just invented a quantum computer. Congrats.

On a site note I think lasers are the advanced cooling system of the future!
Twitter Accidentally Shows Users Someone Else’s Timeline
> consider what happens if/when there is ... highly productive and profitable work for an individual to do there.

What productive work is there to do in LEO? I can hardly think of any, and NASA was scrapping the bottom of the barrel looking for worthwhile science to do on the international space station.
I think this is an important macro trend. We're doing this for manufacturing quoting at our startup using 3D files and some specs. Most suppliers give elaborate reasons why they're needed for very simple parts. With a few constraints on specs, you can really simplify even complex orders.
I'm a foreigner so that maybe explains why I can't relate to what you're saying, but does omitting the 'the' at the beginning of my phrase really make it bad grammar? I imagine it colloquial speech.
I think lasers are the advanced cooling system of the future!

They're the advanced cooling system of the present! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_trap
Static files, The Pythonic way (Django/Sass/CoffeeScript)
A lot of sales copy could benefit from a more concise, factual writing style too. There's a mountain of research to show that people react negatively when they feel they're being played, yet advertisers continue to make obviously inflated claims and use meaningless buzzwords. :-(
Hping: Active Network Security Tool by antirez
It seems like there should be more startups out there trying to do a better job than Google is at email management. I hate to think that there's no more room for innovation or competition in such an important area.
He's saying if you use a free service to expect downtime.

If you use a paid service, expect downtime. Maybe less downtime than a free service, but it will still be there.

He is using IMAP because it makes it easy for him to migrate to another provider if the inevitable downtime becomes a problem.
From a notebook to launching a startup. Lessons learned.
I love how showing other peoples timelines, retweets and who-knows-what is not a security issue.

These aren't the bugs you're looking for. Move Along.
Our 10-K Cheat Sheet: How to Speed Read a Company's Annual Report
I always wondered why Pixar was in Emeryville. :-)
ZenDesk announces its 10,000 client milestone
40% better?
Your Next Computer May Be Made of...Blood
"You cannot build a state budget on onerous taxes."

Whatever happened to saving in the good years to spend in the lean years? Wait, was it all spent on bribes and political promises?
> So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a serious cost reduction.

This was the logic behind the space shuttle. But unfortunately, they have to survive to high stresses that inspecting and repairing them between launches costs more than building a simpler disposable launch vehicles.

I honestly believe that as long as we will be using rockets, the best cost savings will not come from reuse, but from increasing the launch volumes to the point where launch vehicles stop being hand-built boutique items and start being mass-produced commodities.

This announcement gives me hope that this might happen during my lifetime.
This was modded down, possibly for incomprehensibility, but... is the Khan academy planning on hiring any profs?

Is it still the one dude doing all the videos?
For a decent English VPS: Linode.com.
My personal preference: xlshosting.com, it's Dutch, but you get great value for your money (2-Core 1024 MB VPS for €20,- a month), very good support and a fast connection.

I've got both a Linode node and a XLS VPS, Linode has a nice DNS manager, but the price, service and speed of XLS is better in my situation. (note: I'm located in The Netherlands, so comparing speed isn't all that fair ;)).
Twitter Steps Into the Wayback Machine
Ask HN: How to make this beautiful visualtion of global poverty?
Does anyone know how they might have made this? Or do you think you could create something similar? Eager to understand!

http://www.povertyover.com/index.php
To add an unrelated reply to a crowded discussion: I think that what we've seen from Googler manager skillset article in the Times is that Google has had to learn basic managerial attributes organically since that's the Google way -- from this outsider's perspective, it almost sounded like if they didn't invent it, it's hard-to-impossible to adopt given the startup culture.

I think that this board in particular has given Facebook a lot of praise; by this, I mean that there's a fascination/silent cheering for their engineering-driven culture. But I think that we're seeing a transition by Google from a startup (Facebook) to a real company (Microsoft); as much as a "management" layer is derided, a lot of Google's projects seem to have little business value; while they may eventually become valuable, it seems like their strategy has been to shy away from placing limits and directing units towards hard business goals (profitability).

But I'd argue that the rise of "business" being more important than passion-projects (which is what we implicitly view Google as) has been very visible, just ignored. Android's device manufacturers producing under anti-fragmentation clauses comes to mind as a sterling example of a unit posing to follow Google's motto but in reality has them running in the opposite direction (e.g. away from openness).

So, to round back: sure, anything could happen in regard to managers; but Google's in the middle of growing pains, and those pains I believe will end in an increased managerial presence/layer rather than ignored outright.
POKE 53280 and 53281. Values 0 to 15.
Yet, he doesn't provide any comparative uptime data to show that FastMail is objectively better.

This is true, but his solution is not one that must use FastMail. His address is his own, and he backs up his own email. So if FastMail lost everything of his, he would be able to switch over to something else. That he owns his own email address is the important factor, not that he happens to use FastMail.

For the record, I use Gmail for all of my personal email, and I don't bother keeping backups.
Or for young whipper-snapper civilizations who want to live faster, you could turn that black hole + galaxy-sized mass into a really big hydro-electric plant -- that is, power your civ from the potential energy.
You might argue that they don't fit your definition of "good schools," but plenty of schools let you skim by with only the lightest introduction into things like set theory, probability, Turing machines, and automata. The math requirements are also pretty shallow, usually only requiring you to take some level of calculus, but not requiring linear algebra or analysis. Theory courses that scratch the surface a bit deeper are often electives. Some schools force you on tracks, but others let you choose and you can basically glue javascript and ruby together for the rest of your degree.

The tracks allow a similar siloing. If you take an applications track, it's likely you won't be learning fourier transforms that you'd get in the graphics and vision track. In either of those cases, you may not get the functional programming experience that you would get in the AI or theory tracks. Those two wouldn't require you to take the database courses you'd need for info science.

There's only so much that classes can cover in the course of an undergraduate education. Teaching yourself advanced topics is likely essential in taking on a project of a different nature than what you learned in school.
What Android Users Really Think of Apple.
What 10,500 Android users really think about Apple. Note sentiment towards iPhone if it ran Android...
You must own any data that’s irreplaceable to you.

An interesting additional point given the ongoing trend towards web apps and storing data "in the cloud". Note that "own" in this sense means you need to be able to export it in a standard way (e.g. access via IMAP). I don't see a lot of enthusiasm for this from the big sites out there. I can only hope that users start to realise the value in this and begin demanding more control of the data they are creating.
Coding in a vacuum! I was about to coin that term in a blog post! Dammit. I guess it's lucky I didn't do a blog post proclaiming how awesome my new turn of phrase was only to find out that every man and his dog has already heard of it.
That GE link though doesn't really dispute the gist of the NY Times story. Which is that they didn't pay any tax on their profit in the US. That link just goes and says that it pays payroll and sales tax, and tax in other countries. But never actually points out where GE pays tax on profits in the US.

UPDATE: Much better link here

http://www.propublica.org/article/setting-the-record-straigh...

GE hasn't filed their 2010 taxes yet, but appears they will have a small tax liability. How small? We probably won't know unless they tell us, according to the article (which seems odd for a public company).
Thank you! Some "real" problems have to be solved before one can blame amorphous entities like "learning problem solving", passion, culture, etc.
The Silicon Valley of South America?
No, I certainly read the whole thing. With Google Apps you get all the support (SLA, uptime, phone contact) along with data ownership (by using an offline mail client for example).
"We figured out", "we built". Something tells me Woz did those things, SJ.
> Secondly I think we're losing opportunities because we aren't making people call us

That can be an advantage - you end up spending far less than your competition on each sale.
A good start for 500 startups' first class. Will be fun to see what happens after demo day this week.
When I see a panhandler, I don't really think anything, unles they are funny in which case I might laugh. Usually I merely suppress the urge to engage entirely and think about it as little as possible. I certainly don't waste any of my time judging the person.

Apart from the barely-applicable analogy, it's a decent motivational blog for someone who is actually suffering from the particular problem of procrastination with regards to shipping a product. Not everyone who hasn't shipped has that problem, however, and to them this is just a confusing rant. Other common problems are lack of focus, lack of discipline, lack of ability, lack of organization, and lack of knowledge. Being told to "stop panhandling your ideas" doesn't help at all in those cases.
0 taxes on $5B in US revenue is at least a major business strategy. 975 employees dedicated to tax avoidance.
> I'm not sure what version to trust on that particular story[1]

WTF? How do the Mad Men citations relate to this?

> It's a good, balanced, exquisitely written essay.

The distortions in the first anecdote of the essay show that it's anything but balanced, and not good by any set of values which holds the truth in high regard. I can't really see the exquisiteness of the writing, but I don't really see how that relates, either.

Your response is very strange.
Didn't they do exactly that at the time?
You have to break rule number one to be a politician, corporation, or spokesperson for either. Passive voice is what you use to acknowledge that something fucked up, without placing the responsibility.

"There was a failure of communication."
ShowHN HTML5 shooter - updated
Probably if you use something like node-compress or node-zippy.
What's the reliability on RDS like? I've heard some fairly bad things about EBS and trying to run databases on top of it, so I'm curious if this is any better.
I think between 1 and 2 it also helps to talk to other people in your network who might have knowledge / wisdom to share about the problem at hand.
Ask HN: Why do you often drop the subject in first-person sentences?
It's a trivial and insignificant question, I know, but this is something that I've noticed quite a bit here and in many other places, typically in a professional setting. An example would be someone saying "Would love to talk to you about this further." What's the reasoning behind dropping the "I"? It is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, I'll admit, perhaps because I've never really understood the mentality behind it. I mean, it is grammatically incorrect.

Anyway, I'm just looking to scratch a small itch. Would love to hear your opinions.
So I've added a few tweaks that HNs asked for.

I will write a blog post detailing design decisions that I made about this game soon too.
"... As an ex-academic I believe formal education is about credentialing ...how much stock do you put in credentials?..."

read "After credentials" ~ http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html
Skipped the boring numbers? Count the number of engines on first stage of the Falcon 1... now count the number of engines on the first stage of the Falcon 9...
Not perfect but nothing ever is the first time. Installed and love it so far can't wait to see some of the suggestions mentioned put into use in the future!
No, I was wondering how The Onion was going to satirize this topic.
Not in our case at least. I'd happily spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a new sale. And a phone call is a really great opportunity for us to explain our advantages and establish a personal connection with someone.
They hunted whales, but "farm" implies some kind of active breeding.
Similar guidelines from the UK's Plain English Campaign:-

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html
And then please read this essay from the Language Log in reply (or as a counter-point, at least): http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992.
Missed opportunity here, if you had set it $1 I'm sure some of us would have paid just for the hell of it. I know I would. :)
I second the recommendation of this book.
tl;dr but, yea, I agree about keyboards. I went to a decent amount of lan parties in high school and was always baffled by how many kids prefer the tricked out keyboards/mice. I keep an old Microsoft natural keyboard around, but nothing I've used is as enjoyable as an aluminum Apple keyboard. I actually use the audio control keys on it very often.
This is a great role for a manager to play for as long they have the power to actually shield the developers from politics.

When things go bad politically for the manager and they lose that power, the politics have a way of suddenly rushing in and catching the developers off-guard.

So developers, inspect your manager for leaks regularly.
It's all the more impressive when you realize that the Falcon series to designed to (eventually) be reusable. Now, the mass fraction won't be anything like as good as the expendable version, and the turnaround time will be significant, (you'll have to sea-recover each stage, install new seals, and reapply the heat shield; but the STS also has a turnaround time for the same orbiter measured in months, even with their reusable heat shield and dry-land capability) but they've given themselves quite a lot of margin.
I'm a US citizen, and I don't claim to be an exception to our general lack of tolerance; I mean, I've been unreasonably annoyed at teenagers talking loudly, or people dropping cigarettes on the sidewalk, or making racist remarks, just like most people from the US. I'm just observing a fact.

As for "noble concepts", well, there's the kind of tolerance that's a "noble concept", and then there's the kind of tolerance that's an actual description of how some people behave toward other people, some of the time. Like, how Argentinians behave toward children, that people from the US don't. Or, for that matter, how Argentinians behave toward US tourists.

Turns out that there are real benefits to turning down your annoyance and smarter-than-thou attitude and digging folks who don't shop at the same supermarket you do. I can't always do it, but I'm glad when I can.

(By the way, when you complain about how awful it is to have to talk to someone who's stupid, you should consider how that would sound to someone who's a lot smarter than you are.)
Theres a more thorough exploration of using a black holes in a reversible Carnot Cycle here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1674-1056/18/3/015 unfortunately behind a paywall.
Would really appreciate some assistance from a coder
I am really confused with this coding, i have all the designs ready but trying to get the coding to work is a struggle, could anyone who would be willing to assist email nboswell90@gmail.com

thanks
What, exactly, would cause people to receive higher subsidies than they need?

And how is making people pay back money they should not have gotten in the first place a bad thing?

Maybe the the whole "people getting money to which they are not entitled" plays a role in government finance shortfalls.
The Email Game - 30% Faster, 100% More Fun
Appreciate it and I understand.

On the whole, I thought my post was pretty balanced. At the end I talk about how I'm looking for people to work with (cofounders / core team) and I care more about their ability to hack than which school they came from.

I also said that people with degrees from good schools can become complacent and lazy because they always fall back on it whereas someone without a degree could be a better producer of good work.
I love The Economist's spartan (but cheeky) style guide, which opens with Orwell's six writing rules. This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/

And when you're ready, here is The Economist's style quiz:
http://www.economist.com/diversions/quiz.cfm?quizname=styleq...
Why did you decide to host your own servers instead of going dedicated or cloud?
The most ridiculous job interview questions
Jonathan Rosenberg: Rules to success (video)
China's dead affected by (paper) iPad shortages
Depends on what I going to use it for. Nightlies in a trial virtual machine, beta on my backup machine, stable on my workstation and long term support in my business.
Business oriented products like Google merchants and Google checkout do not give you a direct way to talk to someone at google. That is inexcusable in my book.
Every time I use Twitter, I ask myself, "How long can this amazing and terrible zeppelin of bubblegum, balsa wood and toilet paper possibly stay aloft?"

I'm not sure if aloft is even the right word, there hasn't been a time in recent memory where I wasn't able to trigger a "Whoops! Something went wrong, please try again," or, what I'm getting now: "Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing..."