skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How about: Oh that's just conspiracy talk?

In any case, some of these questions are tedious and uninteresting, but some are not, and calling them dumb seems to be just a way of persuading others not to discuss them.

For example, I think active population control is one of those unaskable questions that should be discussed more. Even the crude, corruption-prone way in which the one-child policy was implemented in China seemed to have helped the nation modernize. Here in America, having children out of wedlock is linked to poverty, and our foster care system is a wreck, but we somehow don't care to entertain even the search for humane and effective policies along the lines of population control. No doubt this is because history is filled with cruel and paternalistic implementations, but this would seem to be exactly the baffle in the free flow of ideas.
It's Official: Sirius-XM Gets Thumbs Up From FCC (Finally)
Startup Toons
Babbage - The language of the future
They get a lot of points in my book by providing a reasonably detailed description of the event instead of delivering the usual non-informative yada-yada.
A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems
I can't agree with this enough.

There are many reasons why code can be obtuse, from first pass un-refactored code, to performance constraints. Comments are totally essential and explaining why code was written in a particular way is helpful.

However Ari's point I think is even more critical. The code was written to solve some business problem, whatever it looks like it needs to continue to deal with that problem. I particularly like the pointer to a requirement ticketing system (Y! use bugzilla for this). That way you can see all the previous discussion around the business requirement without sullying the codebase.

I can't +1 this post enough.
I think amazon is approaching this in the right fashion - when you have a major outage, show that you understand exactly what the issue is, and why it won't happen in the future.
That's quite a while to be down, but their openness, and what I perceive as honesty, helps me trust that they know what they're doing. And like mixmax said, their detailed description and timeline scores them extra points, instead of the usual corporate nothingness.
We're still planning on moving over to "cloud-computing", or "infrastructure-outsourcing", and AWS still seems to be the leader in the field.
That's why git is using checksums as commit labels. It forces consistency checks at every step.
Indeed, also some pretty big news is that GPL is now covered in their Open Specification Promise.

http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer/archive/2008/07/25/announcing-s...

"Q: I am a developer/distributor/user of software that is licensed under the GPL, does the Open Specification Promise apply to me?

A: Absolutely, yes. The OSP applies to developers, distributors, and users of Covered Implementations without regard to the development model that created such implementations, or the type of copyright licenses under which they are distributed, or the business model of distributors/implementers. The OSP provides the assurance that Microsoft will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who make, use, sell, offer for sale, import, or distribute any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including the GPL. As stated in the OSP, the only time Microsoft can withdraw its promise against a specific person or company for a specific Covered Specification is if that person or company brings (or voluntarily participates in) a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft regarding Microsoft’s implementation of the same Covered Specification. This type of “suspension” clause is common industry practice."
On 11: Population Control. I'd argue that this is a specific instance in which market economics by themselves do not suffice to solve the problem -- unless you regard it as acceptable that miscalculations on the part of parents, such as having one too many kids, should result in one of the kids being allowed to starve to death years down the road. Probably the best solutions are going to involve lots of market incentives, and what they are going to be is what the question is asking.
Valley Wag Ace Reporters Actually ...Report | My Philly Network
I wonder why it took 3 hours to clear state.

It didn't -- it took 3 hours to get all the machines talking again after the state was cleared.

This is probably mostly due to two factors: 1. When doing a "clean restart" Amazon almost certainly had each S3 node look at the data it had stored to make sure that they had correct metadata; and 2. After each node had been restarted, Amazon probably had to relink them gradually rather than all at once -- most self-organizing network protocols have limits on the rate at which nodes can join or leave the network.
ASK HN: How to become security expert
I would like to become an security expert. Can someone point me to where and what forums/irc channels most security gurus hang around? And any recommendation on great security books worth getting hold of? Thank you.
Shareware selling friend (ASP member) recommended:

http://www.shareit.com
http://plimus.com
I think - this is just me, mind you - that interviews are the best way of weeding out really bright kids from pretenders. It means you can't hide behind any words and have to rely on who you actually are. Although, granted, that's not quite as efficient.
Cuill Launches Next Week?
The world is not a black and white place where profit equals evil. No one bullied you into living your life any particular way.

So what if someone is paid for their work? The publisher employs people, people whose kids need food, and medical treatment of their own. The beauty is that capitalism works, and it keeps us all from living lives that were nasty, brutish, and short.
That question is rhetorical everywhere but here.
On Sunday, we saw a large number of servers that were spending almost all of their time gossiping and a disproportionate amount of servers that had failed while gossiping.

This is my favorite sentence of the day.

Now every time I see that damned whale on Twitter I'm going to find myself involuntarily crying out, "Oh, no! Failed while Gossiping!"
A single bit was flipped? Cosmic radiation comes back and us all in the rear! (Of course there's more reasonable reasons, but cosmic radiation is always my favorite. :D)
and I can't believe no one appreciates my sarcasm.
Cool Program to turn sound into images and back again
Assuming you're talking about network security (and if you're not the principles still apply), I would recommend nothing more than learning about what you want to secure first. Learn about networkring, the ins and out of networking. Where I went to school to even get into the network security course you HAD to get an associates in the general networking course. In that case, I'd look at the Cisco networking academy. (Http://cisco.netacad.net)

If it's software, the very same. Learn about the software you want to secure FIRST.
They were also a major sponsor of OSCON, above, e.g., Google and Sun. http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/home

WTF?
YC doesn't only happen at the dinners. To start with there are a lot more official YC things than just the dinners. Plus the founders all tend to become friends and hang out with and/or help one another.
'Last Lecture' prof died today at 47 - CNN.com
I can't fathom how he got this data. I didn't think Craigslist even kept pages around that are more than a month old. Any ideas?
Cheers to a man who celebrated life
Selling to small and medium businesses is fantastic because they have money and they might even be willing to spend it. The same cannot be said of college kids who are only willing to buy ringtones and alcohol.
This might just be on reddit, but I've heard it said before. "If you weren't such a moderate perhaps you'd be more prone to logic."

But reddit is a bit wonky nowadays anyway, sadly.
fyi, the font is obscenely small but if you click through to slideshare you'll get a full-screen option.
No, but that means there's at LEAST a two-step program to beating Apple. First, you need to MAKE a set of applications that aren't hodge-podge; then, those apps have to be better than Apple's. And call me a fanboy (for some definitions that would be true), but Apple apps are top-notch and Apple is never stagnant.
That's a great bug, very nice "illness"-like behaviour. The spread of a corrupt bit, infecting and taking down the host.
Would you guys plz stop rattling the HN cage?
Hey. Microsoft is a lot of nasty things but it's not stupid. It doesn't compete needlessly, not always, and it knows a good thing when it sees it.
If we take pg's 95% literally and define YC's current contribution to a startup as 100%, then if they give 3x as much money their contribution to the startup becomes 110% of what they contribute now. So they would demand 10% more equity.
Apple’s Culture of Secrecy
Same here. It's the difference between quitting my day job and not quitting. For the summer program I wouldn't have to move. I would move for the winter program if I could make it work financially. Housing a family of 5 is probably expensive in S.F. Plus we want a good Montessori school nearby.
You're right that we wouldn't take too much more equity. (In fact, the last time we increased the amount we invested, we didn't ask for any more equity.) But if we invested more per startup we'd tend to become more conservative. We'd think twice about investing in some of the riskier projects, and that's the last thing we'd want.
I think that was when I downvoted all the congratulations in your wedding thread. :)
"Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite -- for example, web calendars may have a "next day" link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a "new" page."

Strictly speaking, even that would keep the number of pages finite, even if very, very big. Any amount of data you can produce with any number of finite computers (with finite and bounded memory -there are practical bounds for memory sizes), will always be finite.
You need to get a certain karma before you can downvote comments. I think it was 100 before I could ...
Yeah, it almost read like a description of a virus.
The search box is a little off in FF3/Ubuntu-- the rounded corners bit is smaller than the actual input field.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff241/tdoggette/Screensho...
The early stage funding gap
The article is "Registration required". Ironic.
Good read all the way through.

A little philosophy, a little business, and a little personal.
not for me?...
Please review: Reading news Del.icio.usly
Wondering how it could be made more useful?

That was a part of my entry for the Daylife developer challenge. The whole entry is http://jaxly.com which includes a news search engine and an OpenSocial app for Orkut.
Seriously? How many of these posts do we need today?
Not ironic. Coincidental.
That is why gossip protocols are also called "epidemic."
This process was ludicrously long; it's shameful that the FCC allowed this process to be so politicized.

I'm interested in seeing what the share price of the stock does on Monday - it's plunged on every bit of positive news in the past four or five months.
5% of your sales for what it offers? Remember, they're not hosting your payment stuff, or processing credit cards, or anything like that.

Golden%Braeburn strikes me as something that would be great, but I'd really only want to pay for it once.
I don't think that's true. Being "quick", which I think you're talking about, is all about strength.
You don't find value in what he said. I do. Seems like lots of other people do. We all listen (or don't, in your case) to him for personal reasons.

As for him doing pushups - he obviously knows he's dying. He obviously knows his health isn't good. He's just showing his spirit. I could never be as outwardly optimistic as him in such a situation. Your cynicism leads me to suspect you'd be even worse.

I actually think you could stand to learn a few things from Dr. Pausch.
Almost off-topic, but I see three layers:

Poor: Unable to make enough money working to sustain your lifestyle

Middle-class: Must work to sustain your lifestyle

Rich: Work not required to sustain your lifestyle

That implies that there are two ways to becoming rich, either you can make boatloads of money, or live below your means and create a savings that sustains you. I didn't come up with it, but I try to live by it.
Loose lips sink ships!

(sorry, I had to...)
If you can't beat them, join them?

or

keep your friends close, but keep your enemy even closer.
That may be true. Though you could probably make the case that the optimal physical requirements for a center are rare as well, especially at the NFL level. If those requirements don't correlate with intelligence then centers are being selected partially for intelligence.

From my experience playing football offensive linemen and quarterbacks have significantly higher mental requirements. Personally, I always found keeping a complex offense straight against any potential defense more stressful than actually dealing with the defenders. My role on any given play wasn't set until the ball was snapped (or later). Most skill positions knew what they were supposed to do as soon as the play was called.
>Do we listen to this man because we feel sorry for him? because we're afraid of dying as well? The whole concept just seems like so much saccherine [sic] from a dying man. In 20 years no one will remember this book or him

People listened to the man because of the way he lived. That he continued to live that way to his death is admirable if not inspirational, but ultimately inconsequential to that end.

It's awe-inspiring that he packed two auditoriums for those talks. Just consider how many lives he must have touched to be able to do that. How many of us could do the same? I know I couldn't.

Who knows how long he'll be remembered. I'll bet it will seem indefinite compared to the average individual, though.
His counterexamples are very bad. If you don't practice proper car maintenance, you can get into a very unsafe situation with e.g. underinflated tires. Prescription medication? My dad almost put "otic" (ear) drops in my eye when I was a kid -- I pointed out that there was a typo on the box and he gave it a second glance.

If users aren't going to put a minimal investment into using a product safely, there's only so much you can protect them.
Start by reading code. Then go read some security advisories. Then go back and read some more code.

Before you can do new work in computer security, you have to understand what's been done already... and the only good way to do that is by reading advisories and looking at the vulnerable code and how it got fixed until you say "oh, so THAT'S what a <insert vulnerability type here> looks like".
Great idea on bootstrapping user interest from del.icio.us.

I have too many del.icio.us tags. Please sort them by frequency rather than alphabet (or at least provide the option).

I use del.icio.us as a repository for technical bookmarks (as opposed to faves.com, where I put cool links for my friends). So my "language" tag refers to programming languages, but that's not what Jaxly assumes. It would work better for me if you took the whole tag cloud and tried to infer my interests from that.

I'm probably very atypical.
LEGOs Unboxing The Iphone | My Philly Network
There are a few people I will be sad to see leave this planet, folks like Hugh Hefner and Richard Branson, visionaries. Jobs is one of those people.

I'm not a fanboy, but I respect his ruthless passion.
That's the same as saying an infinite data structure is finite; just because it cannot be practically evaluated before the heat death of the universe doesn't mean it isn't theoretically infinite.
The title might be more aptly written, "It's official -- Steve Jobs calls a Times reporter and says that he does not have cancer."
What functionality (pieces of the puzzle) does he not want to deal with? In general, selling software boils down to being able to take money (credit cards) and provide the software (via a secret URL or a serial code).
I have a long stretch of tags (username: bprater), when I click on a lower one, I don't know that stuff is being changed at the top. You might take the user back to the top.
Data integrity testing?
The problem with this is that it is much easier to get to all of those college kids than it is to get to the SMB market. You _need_ funding to sell into this space because you are going to end up pissing most of it away on marketing. There are no CxOs or VPs you can go to and get a five-figure sale, no conferences that will provide enough leads to generate a 10x return on whatever it cost you to get to the conference, and no viral campaigns that can get your product in front of millions of twenty year-olds with a small bit of disposable income.

This is a late-adopting, retail-driven market and you will be competing with companies that have serious marketing budgets and established relationships throughout the distribution channel.
As a supporting data point here, one of the things which makes SWA such a profitable airline (in addition to its amazing luck using futures to hedge its fuel costs) is that it has some of the fastest turnaround times in the industry. Its planes spend their time flying, not on the ground waiting to be unloaded/loaded. This lets them get in more flights that other airlines with comparable fleets.
We currently pay less for our food as a percentage of income than any other nation in the world, so despite his belief that farmed subsidies are not worthwhile we're doing pretty well.

Many times in our history the government has interceded when farm prices grew too high so most in agriculture believe that it has an obligation to help when prices are low. Having watched these cycles closely for over 30 years if you believe that the policy makers can remove themselves entirely from agriculture you're naive.

The American people have been pretty supportive of farmers and indeed farmers poll much higher than the president or congress.

Despite only being four percent of the population agriculture is extemely competitive. It is also the only industry where you buy retail and sell wholesale. If you totally eliminated farm subsidies you would spur an even higher concentration in agriculture. Things would reach a tipping point where farmers would organize into labor unions or price setting cartels. If that happens OPEC wouldn't be the only cartel we'd have to worry about.
It's good until you rewrite the function to use a different algorithm, but forget to update the comment. After that, it's a confusing contradiction that will slow down anyone who tries to read the code.

If the code is genuinely hard to follow without it, it's probably still worth leaving a comment, but recognize that there are real costs to balance out the benefits of commenting.
What's the price point of the software? A buddy of mine sells a pretty well known app for under $100 and he uses http://www.esellerate.net/ He mentioned that Kagi is also an option: https://www.kagi.com/kagisolutions/index.php

If the software is over $150 or so, it's probably better to setup your own payment system down the line.
BumpIn.com is also doing the same. But I think that the market size is very big. Being able to comment and interact with other people on any site is the missing feature of web 2.0.

In this case that multiple players can exist together. But sooner or later something like browser wars will start.
Data integrity testing?

This question no verb? Or rather... I have no clue what you're asking, can you clarify?
The Siberian Blast (or the Tunguska event) Visualized in a Supercomputer
Bead Sort: An O(1) Sorting Algorithm. [PDF]
Edi Weitz, Common Lisp Lifetime Achiever, releases CL-UNICODE
Oh yeah! I too found some difficulty when I read news and then clicked the 'older' link I was still at the bottom of the page while the news on top changed.

Will correct it in a few minutes. Thanks for reporting the bug in usability
First Look at Scalaris (Transactional Key/Value Store) on OS X 10.5
Scalaris - Transactional Key/Value Store for Web 2.0 Hosting
I noticed that too when I clicked on my tag 'code', I got all sorts of stuff like presidential code, etc

You mean doing semantics can set this right? Any suggestions on APIs to use?

And, the the action of getting tags takes place by an ajax request, so will it be heavy for the server if I perform semantic actions in the background to give user tags? I am running on appengine

UPDATE: I changed the tag visualization to a tag cloud to solve the navigation problem. But still the 'older' link problem leaves me stranged at the bottom of the page when the changes take place at the top.

UPDATE-2: I changed the tag view back to list type. The cloud type seems too crowded and not readable. Atleast the list type can list neatly by alphabetical order

UPDATE-3: Solved the view problem when selecting tags and navigating through news. It works fine now. All I had to do was to change the href=javascript:something as onclick attribute and set the href to an anchor pointing to the top of the page. But still the problem of selecting tags through the crowd, I am not able to come up with any visualization idea. Creating a tag cloud with various font sizes is not possible since I don't know the number of bookmarks in a user's account. With that data I could have done some math and set different font sizes for different tags.
>tolerance of inanity.

Thank you. That sums it up.
What was Amazon's response when their storefront went down a couple months ago? Were they this upfront about it?
Actually both area and radius are completely meaningless as a representation of intelligence. Perhaps some figure that represents percentile score would work better -- something like an empty glass for 0%, a glass half-full for 50%, etc; or something like the circles that Consumer Reports uses for rating products.
I think the goal of school is supposed to be to teach children how to evaluate which actions will be most beneficial to them.
What school actually teaches is how to be dishonest/illogical in all the correct ways for a given society.
The author points out a trend that there are more garage sale postings on Craigslist this year, but Craigslist usage growth should be a factor in his research.
How about making a freemium subscription web app where the base paid plan is $9/month?

Note: I have never worked in a startup.