skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Hard drives fail. It is not a matter of “if” but rather a matter of “when” your hard drive is going to fail."

Really? I have had computers in one form or another for nearly 20 years and I've never had a hard drive fail. Ever. Not once. From a 386 with 16MHz of processor speed and an EGA monitor, to my last Dell Latitude that's now 6 years old. Never had a problem. Do Apple hard drives fail at a disproportionately higher rate than PC's? I recently bought a MacBook Pro and I'm starting to get nervous about it.
I imagine the concern on Canonical's part is that they will field a significant part of the support flood from new users. Of course, the OEM/ ODM will probably get the bulk of support traffic (with some falling on the retailer), the "pilot" from the netbook/ubuntu probably gave them insight. If they structure the deal correctly, and have an auditable way for the ODM and Canonical to determine the support costs/ unit sold that could be a way to get the deal done. Tell those business coworkers of yours to keep iterating on the deal they are presenting Canonical. I can't believe there's not an equitable way to get that deal done.
"Typical Design Contest Ending" (It's Why I Reject Competitions Too)
Thank you for posting this. A key takeaway from the article is in the final paragraph: "if we allow it, we could live in a world that makes great strides forward, but that can never rid itself of the abhorrent authoritarian tool that is the concentration camp."

We allow these horrors to occur. That's not a judgment on anyone; I'm definitely part of the problem because I'm not part of the solution (to borrow a cliche).

But what can we do? That's a real question. I want to know what we can do. Yes, we can sign Amnesty International petitions, which is a step, but what else?

The HN community is a problem-solving community. Human rights violations of all sizes and shapes (including and especially the North Korea concentration camps) are a major problem to solve. What can technology do to help? Can we solve fatigue re: "prolonged exposure to blaring 24 hour news streams that fry sensibilities with their constant emotional appeals"? Can we mobilize people and keep them engaged in helping people they don't know?
Launch early, Launch often!

Working on it now - thanks for the feedback!
Which is the outcome of a bad design. It should make the information better comprehensible.
Tested with Chrome 11.0.696 (couldn't find the Web Audio flag), Opera 11.10, Firefox 6.0a1 and even Internet Explorer 9. No sound at all.

Can someone give a description of what's supposed to happen?
The first step is to identify a problem. Find some pain point in your life and try to address it using Ruby. Some of these may crash and burn but you'll learn a lot from each one.
thanks! fixing now
Does anyone have any confirmation of the veracity of the articles?

Some conflicts...
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...

https://discussions.apple.com/message/15181058
I really like the idea and I think there is a great need from both developers and customers for this service. Have you thought at all about how to drive the demand side of this marketplace?
Excuses, excuses...

(Okay, I'll answer.)

Make a new territory called "Internet" which charges viewers directly. If a UK broadcaster wants the UK rights, that would still be available separately. People who would pay a premium aren't really in the same market as people who watch free-with-ads channels.

I know channel 4 etc won't like having a competitor with the same shows on their turf, but they do already - torrenters. At least this way, the competitor will just be one that charges a premium that will only be used by big fans of a show. The casual viewer will remain with the free-with-ads channel.
If you are a heavy computer user and have never had a hard drive fail, then you are in the extreme minority. That's like living in a city for 20 years and never getting a cold.
Facebook partners with WOT to protect its 700M users from malicious websites
Hey everyone! I wrote this little toy... I'm glad you're all enjoying it.

NOTE: OSX, Chrome dev channel (12.0.733.0 dev is the version I wrote this in) w/ Web Audio API enabled is the only way this is going to work for you. Everyone else will have to wait until the API is implemented in your OS of choice.

Lastly, there are very _real_ dangers of exposure to high frequencies such as: hearing loss, nausea, dizziness and vertigo (to name a few). Running this code is your choice, so handle with care!
Ruby dev eh? ;)
I agree. Supposedly part of what they were doing was "urging [news organizations] to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy." With a company as big and powerful as Google, there should always be people looking at this. If it happens to a reporter persuaded by a PR firm paid by a competitor, I don't we why that is necessarily a problem.
On the face of it, it just seems like clever agreement drafting by Google. Google's agreement with Motorola requires Motorola to allow location data collection by Google, whereas it's agreement with Skyhook explicitly forbids it. At that point, it's simply a question of Motorola choosing its most valuable partner. Whether this is anticompetitive or not is clearly up for question. Regardless, it's become really clear that Google has far more power over shipping devices than it has ever admitted in public.
Memory study: Children's earliest memories change as they age
Isn't it obvious we should pay them enough so they can live without taking bribes?
1. I started doing custom blog plugins, but have also done e-commerce sites, Facebook apps and custom web applications. I'm a coder, not a designer, but that hasn't caused any problems for me so far.

2. Haven't touched oDesk since my first job there. I might use it again in the future, but to be honest I found searching for work there rather depressing with all the low rates.
Reading through the other comments on this post tells me that there is definitely some controversy over this.
Doesn't work in Firefox, Opera or IE9. It's written with the Web Audio API available in Chrome on OSX (about:flags to enable)

All it does is emits an adjustable frequency sine-tone.
Parents. Savings. Welfare. Thrift.

The article's point is that for many poor people getting a shitty job that only pays enough for rent and food is pointless when you can get rent or food from your parents, or from welfare, or by thrift alone.
They announced yesterday that they added 99 new countries for paid apps.
See:
https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (previous list, not translated yet as of now)

https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (new list)
> The two mala can overlap; in the realm of unauthorized copying, I think that they sometimes, but not always, do

How?

You are taking a more cautious view than me, which is maybe more prudent and respectable. But I would be interested to hear how copying can be intrinsically harmful . . . the basic problem is that it is by definition physically separate, so for there to be any effect communicated at all requires some other system. Is there a good counter-argument or -example?
As in racial discrimination? Yeah, I'm sure it will for some. But it's still really useful. For example, I'm sure the videos play a big role in YC applications, although probably not as a first criteria.

Plus it's not like the developers would be talking about something obscure, they would be talking about their core competencies.
I think we will break that out in the future. We wanted to simplify for launch, but I think its a good point.

Please sign up! Just mention in the comments you are a designer.
If this stuff sounds interesting to you, we're always looking for excellent engineers (and much more): http://jobs.heroku.com/
Right. Electron-positron annihilation produces gamma-rays in a line at a very specific energy (E = m_e c^2 = 511 keV), while the typical TGF spectrum is spread over a wide range of energies.
People have said it many times before, but there's no such flag in this version of Chrome (11.0.696). Is it OSX specific?
The first clue that it's not meant to be done by end users should be "a bunch of torx screws". I don't think Apple's using them just because they are a bit less likely to strip out than a standard or Phillips head.
We debated this number at length... We don't usually do projects for less than 5k, but every once in a while there is something small and quick that is worth it. We figured start low and if we need to raise the bar we will. Thanks for the feedback.
Rome, an interactive film
TaurineScript ^_^ - tho doesn't quite roll off the tongue ?!

CokeScript haha
https://graph.facebook.com/michaelfairley/picture?type=large for the picture.

Friends can be accessed similarly, but require an access token (_any_ access token, not just the user's that you're inspecting.

More details at Facebook's API docs: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/
Power consumption and cooling will, of course, be very dependent on your chosen hardware and hosting (DC).

Yes, swift can handle heterogenous drive sizes. For example, you can start with 2T drives and start adding 3T drives when they become more cost effective. You initial 40-60TB is well within reason for a swift cluster. I know of several running clusters at much larger scale than that (PBs of data, billions of objects).

Cost consideration are also highly dependent on your particular hardware choice. We recommend that you optimize your hardware for price per GB rather than for IOps or RAM or CPU. As you can imagine, there are nuances to all of this, too.

In case you haven't seen it yet, all the auto-generated docs for swift are at http://swift.openstack.org and much help can be found in #openstack on freenode IRC.

I'd recommend that you first look at the swift all-in-one docs (http://swift.openstack.org/development_saio.html) for running an entire cluster in a single VM. It should give you a good feel of the different parts of the system.
2,292,133 were in prisons in the United States in 2009 [from wikipedia]. Even though I guess conditions are better, 200 000 doesn't sound like that many after all.
All kinds of type
Except if Microsoft had bought it, it would not be worth even that much today.
Financial Mgmt For Bootstrappers – Part 2
Why the monthly pricing? Job boards and freelance sites are traditionally pay-per-post for a reason. Unless you know something that the rest don't, you might want to stick to conventional wisdom here.

Just charge $100 to post a project.
You can't spend via thrift. Welfare, yes. Parents' gifts would be income if properly accounted for. It seems unlikely that these people have savings sufficient to support such expenditures.

My point is that these people have income equivalents that are being elided in this discussion, to its detriment.
Would you like to try creating extensive content on a touchscreen?

I love my netbook, it goes almost everywhere with me. I can touch type on it fast enough to take notes in meetings or from church sermons, I can write music on it, I can even run Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 well enough to be productive with them.

I can't for one minute imagine how I'd be able to do anything like that without a hardware keyboard and I'm yet to see the add-on keyboard that's as stable for typing on my knees, in the back of a car, held in one hand while standing (or whatever) as any netbook. I've got no problem with tablets as devices but they still seem to be firmly consumption devices to me.
I've often wondered what 'little' in the CoffeeScript tag line meant ? Do you mean that it's terse ?
Please don't use "GitHub page". Github is not the only code hosting site out there and many people (like myself) don't use it.
Facebook introduces Two Factor Authentication
I asked for a pencil sketch of a logo idea. Went with the only artist who submitted one. I even ended up using the original idea.
If they still made the sears catalog I'd suggest the key to starting a peoples' revolt in North Korea would be to airdrop hundreds of thousands of catalogs across the country.

Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.
US senators: Corporate date breach reporting is inconsistent and unreliable
It would be interesting to know how many users use Empathy. I don't myself, and maybe I'm not representative, but I don't think it is that many - Pidgin seems more popular among people I know.

I don't follow the /usr bit - what does mounting /usr have to do with loading or not loading WebKit?

WebKit is around 24MB, which is as you say quite hefty, but it's even worse as it depends on some other libraries - sqlite, libpng, etc.
Sorry, fijall, that the number of enslaved people (who are in many cases not guilty of crimes beyond disagreeing with a dictator) is not adequately horrific for you.

Perhaps if they were 200,000 people you knew... or even one you knew.
The cost of hiding from the law must be less than the cost of abiding by the law.
Michael Arrington is so naive
I want a site that charges people to bid. This way you are sure to only bid if you are confident.
If you actually follow the link to the data (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt) you can see clearly that the $0-5k group spends more than twice as much as all of the other income groups on education, suggesting that there is a much larger proportion of students in this group. Clearly, students shouldn't automatically be considered "poor" just because they do not have income.
I was a Summer Analyst (Intern) in the Technology Group. All the interns that were in this group with me were a majority of CS majors. Once you are in the Technology program you typically do a placement day in which you meet with managers from groups who are hiring and you pick your top 3 and they pick their top 3 and then HR does a "matching" process. I was assigned to a group where I primarily used Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. In my opinion you didn't need to have a CS degree to do this. Some of the other interns were assigned to developer positions and seemed to like it. I turned down my offer to come back full time when I graduated and instead I will be working in the Bay Area at a startup as a Software Engineer, in my opinion this is a much better culture and environment and you are much more catered to.
Not a designer? Here’s how to make your web apps look awesome
"I guess I'm not following, because type safety is a property of typed language. Expressive power is orthogonal."

This is where you have it wrong, and it's well known that it's wrong. Anyways...

Scala's is a series of compromises made to give a more expressive type system to a language that interacts with the JVM and and Java libraries. Saying its not "safe" to some arbitrary metric is neither insightful nor helpful to anyone. You can find it as "ironic" as you like, but it's not a particularly fair criticism by many metric.
read rWaldons comment below...
The "standard" you're referring to is simply not as good. Older screw heads are dated designs that are more likely to strip out than a torx or hex design. They're mostly still in use because the benefits of being common outweigh the downsides for many applications, especially in materials like wood that are more forgiving.

Torx is an accepted standard (just not one commonly found in homes.)

Lots of manufacturers use torx screws in locations where there is very little chance a home user will ever see them. They do it because it makes for a better product initially and easier repair by a professional later on.
It's not available in the stable release. You need to use developer channel Chrome, go to about:flags, enable Web Audio there. Then you can restart and begin abusing your eardrums. :)
I wonder if Skype acquisition will follow the same fate
I have no idea how the Facebook PR team thought that they’d avoid being caught doing this.

Perhaps Facebook's managers think themselves exempt from the changing privacy norms they keep telling us to accept?
Knocking on wood, but I've also never had a harddrive fail on me (and I personally don't know anyone who has). Though I do get a cold at least twice a year...
I fail to see your point. Does the number of U.S. prisoners diminish the vileness of what goes on in North Korea? Are you saying/suggesting that the numbers of prisoners in the U.S. are so great that other countries are beyond criticism? That it's hypocritical for Americans or the American government to be shocked by the situation in North Korea? Can you clarify?
If it is important or interesting enough (or you are important or interesting enough) you will get traction. On average it takes at least 6 calls to reach someone. Most sales people give up after 1 or 2 tries. You must keep at it.
No. On the contrary, Scala has a very minimal syntax. Syntactic sugar are rare in Scala.
It makes me sick that a large percentage of the people in American jails are there for crimes that hurt no one but themselves but to compare this to the people in North Korea is just asinine.
Thanks. I'll have to check it out, I love learning new languages. Can you recommend a good Scala book?
Facebook launches two-factor authentication
The site - about 3 weeks. The two landing pages up right now? About a day. Working on the design fixes now!
The scope of the Technology group ranges from typical IT stuff to development. In general there is another group closer associated to the Trading group along the lines of Quantitative Development. I believe all of these interns were Financial Engineering majors, none were CS majors (a lot more hardcore math involved). These salaries were closer to ~90-100k.
This is a great idea, It's hard for people with little tech experience to find a good hacker/coder and it's hards to find clients with a sufficient budget for a project.
So here is my biz dev advice..

1) Your concept of screening coders for talent is important, only accept people who can get things done.

2.) Only charge developers a monthly fee. The collective fees should be enough to cover the cost of an ongoing marketing campaign to attract the right businesses and entrepreneurs.

3.) Educate businesses and single entrepreneurs about the cost of projects, and cost of talent and explain trade offs for paying less.
Experienced coders may cost more, but they have the experience can work faster, less learning on job....coders who charge less may be less experience, in different time zone, not so fluent in native language, etc. Provide rough estimates based on info on past projects. i.e. Angry brids cost about $150,000 to create.
(http://www.develop-online.net/news/37242/Angry-Birds-cost-Ro... )

4.) The education is important and it provides prescreen of potential clients, only accept projects that fall within reasonable guidelines.

5.) Do not charge businesses a monthly fee. as mentioned by MatthewB "If it takes any more than a month to find a dev, there's something wrong with your system."
Once developer has been found, charge business/entrepreneur fee per projects because you're providing technical screening service.

Note: So the idea is to take some elements of successful services like elance, etc and raise the bar.
setting up useful guidelines and an effective marketing campaign will not be easy.
How about SkyMall catalogs instead? They're already on the planes ;)
That actually seems counter-intuitive, to me.

I work in a company of about 140k people and I'm far more aware of the CEO than I am my boss or his boss. I don't even know who my boss' boss is or what he does, but I hear about the CEO on a regular basis (beyond just showing up in movies). It seems to me that in a large company, you're aware of your boss and the figureheads and everywhere in-between those two levels are given the gift of obfuscation.
K - will rename to portfolio!
What is the practical range for RFID?
Bliss, definitely. I felt the same. :)
"I can admire China’s growth in infrastructure and technology, it’s pursuit to compete on a global scale, but what good is all that growth if it allows these crimes to go on next door?"

I admire America's prominence in infrastructure and technology, it's continuing domination on a global scale, but what good is all that power when over 40,000 people and rising are murdered because of a drug war for which they are complicit next door?

It's great to try to solve problems that seem so fruitless and terrible, but isn't it akin to pointing your finger at a mirror?
What I can't understand is how people can visit North Korea and not feel disgusted by giving support for that regime.

I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to feed them. I don't see a clear cut right or wrong way to view aid to North Korea. It's a disturbing case.
Go see a good counselor. You may get better just with talk therapy or you may need some anti-anxiety meds. Either way a counselor will help you coordinate your options. I have noticed that programmers (myself included) tend to be an anxious and high strung bunch. There is no shame in something like this happening but take my advice and don't try to deal with it all yourself. Good luck !
Google is stupid and evil, but Facebook is awesome [satire]
Actually this might haven been the worst investment MS ever did…
Hi everyone,

I wrote this post after being asked by a few people to tell them exactly what you get once you've downloaded the theme that you've paid for.

If you have any questions, please do ask away :)
There was a very interesting discussion about North Korea a couple of months back that had great links to undercover videos and photos from within Korea:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223

The most notable video was Children of the Secret State (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657) - I recommend everyone watch this...
It’s unbelievable how candid and forthcoming you are as a business owner (YC being your business).

Is it wrong to assume that the value of YC diminishes with each additional serving? And as a follow-up, do you have any third (or even fourth) time founders?
For there to be negative-PR blowback on this, the user-base will have to pull their heads out of their asses and stop playing FarmVille for five minutes. Even then, chances are they'll shrug and go back to harvesting self-esteem from their facebook "friends".
I found another site similar to that, they're trying to beat the Guinness Record for the book with the most authors: http://wabblegame.com
Still, http://neovella.com/ is probably a way better one.
You're welcome. Also:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%...
I don't think there's anything wrong with having polished site aesthetics as long as it doesn't sacrifice on the objectives. It's not a zero-sum game.
Quite frankly, who cares? I'm tired of the GNOME release plans: remove features, make GTK+ controls bulkier than ever. It's like they're trying to ensure that the same amount of stuff fits on a screen despite increased screen resolution.

I'm happy to see the role Compiz is taking on. A recent rewrite that cleaned things up, replacing more and more window management tasks, support for non-accelerated backends. I'd love to see Compiz's wallpaper plugin mature and replace nautilus for the task. (It'd also allow for the global menu to not be awkward when the wallpaper has focus and for multiple wallpapers on different workspaces). Though frankly I'd love to see nautilus die in a fire anyway.
Why Google Choosing Arduino Matters
Can't you use a torque wrench with the far more common Torx fasteners? It seems to me that they selected Torx TS fasteners for a reason, and that reason had nothing to do with automated assembly.