skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Interesting. Complicated issue indeed. I'd have guessed exactly the opposite about the lights. The light being on incrementally and continuously requires more fuel for the fire. The longer its on, the "bigger" the fire.

Yes, but _you_ didn't cause it. The restrictions are on actions, not on results. Almost all rules are on actions not results. For example you may not kill one person to save many, because you killed that one person. The final outcome is not totally up to you, but the single killing is.

>Does this mean that by inaction, its ok cause work to be done, even if by reasonable action, one could have prevented it?

Yes.

>Could the elevators simply move by themselves, stopping at every floor. Would it be permitted to ride them since they were simply "left on" and you wouldn't have to press any buttons, and they would have made the trip anyway?

Yes, except in israel where, because riding them causes more (or less) fuel to be burnt (because of your weight), and the power plants are run by jews it's a problem.

PS. Sorry for replying to this to very very late.
DC bike-sharing program launches, first in the USA
This is a very credible (and succinct) startup list. Unfortunately, I've been through most of them.

A recommended read and not yet-another-one-of-those-lists.
I think they not only ignore this, I think they knowingly make pills with worse emotional/affective side effects simply because they can be made cheaper. "Monophasic" birth control pills? That just means all the pills are the same except for the placebos.
The 404 Test: Wildly Brilliant or User Suicide?
Alternate link - http://dob.posterous.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant

Apparently the DNS may not have propagated fully. But it's quite ironic that the link is leading to a 404 for some people.
> #3: With the right people skills (I don't claim I have any), is there such a thing as a "wrong hire"? Sure you couldn't "build up" just about anyone without outright malicious intentions?

Probably, but that would take time and energy, and some people probably can't be 'built up' quickly, either. So they might make fine employees in other kinds of companies, but maybe not in a startup, although there are probably always exceptions.
We have a feature called autopost which will post to twitter, flickr, and all the existing blogging systems out there. Just sign in to Posterous and you'll see where you set that up.
Did Google Cross a Moral Line?
Any MANTIS people out there? Not a MANTIS coder myself, but I used to work for the vendor.
Speaking of historical mainframe languages, any MANTIS people out there? Not a MANTIS coder myself, but I used to work for the vendor.
This is my preferred method for Python (faux-)switches:

cuil_buzz = {
1: 'All the rage!',
2: 'Worst product e-v-e-r.',
3: ' ... '
}.get(day, None)
The lack of an equivalent of offsetof in C++ is a real pity. This effectively prohibits using C-style data containers, whereby container's control data is embedded into the data instance itself. This sort of thing:

struct record
{
int foo;
int bar;
...

list_item item; // keeps 'record' on some list
tree_item item; // keeps 'record' on some tree
};

There's no concise and memory-efficient way of doing the same in C++.
"We’ve got a super-fast in-house graph storage system that makes it possible to do interesting stuff with graphs quickly, notably figure out which pages are related."

I'm working with large graphs and I find that using a relational database as a backend is horribly slow if you want to run somewhat complex graph algorithms. Looks like everyone who does this ends up developing an in-house system. Anyone know if there's a library out there for doing this sort of thing? The order of magnitude I'm talking about is ~10^8 nodes, ~10^9 edges.
John McCain, Internet dunce
Anything that flourishes with a community needs good PR. Heck, even scientific truths need good PR for awhile. How long did Mendel's observations about genetics languish, even while Darwin desperately needed them?

Another way to think about it:

Good enough tech with Good PR will defeat Great tech with bad PR.

Just as good musicians who had the backing of the industry became stars, while many people with even more talent remained unknown, there are tons of examples of great tech that languished in relative obscurity while "good enough" tech achieved huge sales.
I really like this philosophy. Why waste precious development time early on building something no one wants?
My point was that different people come here for different things, and it's kind of rude to try to force everyone to come here for the exact same stuff as you. A lot of people think that the occasional humor makes the whole world a little more palatable.

I did not mean to imply that you should never comment, just that you should lighten up a bit and let the voting system and PG's guiding hand take its course. I'd say overall it's doing a pretty great job. I didn't realize just how great until I spent a half hour on Reddit.
( void* )0 is NULL, in that NULL is (most usually) #defined to be ( void* )0. But the literal 0 in a pointer context doesn't guarentee that the null pointer is actually all bits zero.

To put it another way, if you have a literal zero in a pointer context, the compiler will replace it with the machine's representation of a null pointer, which may or may not be a machine word with all bits zero.

I think that's right...
A solid idea, but why not spend 5 more minutes, make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur?

Better yet, include a form on that landing page asking how important the feature would be to the user, and get the best of both worlds.
George W. Bush & Bill Gates Meet at Olympics [comic]
This post is a plug of my own research.

The multithreaded treatment in the article is naive: grab a lock, do the operation, release the lock. You won't get much concurrency that way in mutlithreaded applications with many concurrent memory operations. A prior research project of mine was a lock-free memory allocator: http://www.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/streamflow

That link has source code and a published paper.

Research that is not my own: TCMalloc, which is a part of Google's perftools library, is an excellent multithreaded allocator. Despite using locks, it was actually the best competitor in terms of speed. TCMalloc description: http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html

The Hoard memory allocator was one of the first in the literature to address the mutlithreaded case: http://www.hoard.org/

Writing your own allocator is a great exercise; I've recommend it as a means to learn systems programming in C. But if implementing your own is often not worth the effort in a real application. If memory allocation is an issue in your application, there's probably an existing allocator that solves the problem better than you can.
Is this supposed to go to a 404 page?
Alternate link - http://dob.posterous.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant

Apparently the blog.dougpetkanics.com DNS may not have propagated yet. Sorry!
You know, there are men who want it for their own reasons and wouldn't give a shit if a woman believed you or not. It's so they don't have to worry if the women screws up and the girl gets pregnant by mistake, hooking them up for child support payments for 20 years. Their girl might not agree with chemical contraception, making it better if they got it themselves.

Also there is research into non-hormonal contraception for men.
...unless you're writing code for an embedded system which has (say) 16K of RAM and a 1MHz processor, in which case that will cause you more problems than it solves.
Any guesses as to the name of the unnamed "wildly popular web site"? :)
How To Lifestream From Your iPhone
I completely agree. It's much better to test for interest in the feature in the works with a page saying such.
Is it free? If it is, you should explain that as part of your marketing somewhere, at least on the register page. I can see myself wanting to write notes when I bookmark an image, but that might go against your plan, since you think your competitors have too many features.
Does not work with surgeons and ice cream scoops. Or several other things.
Lack of proper tools can severely hamper your ability to excel in many fields. As a web designer, I rely heavily on my vector graphics software that can't be replaced easily by something else. The tools in this software allow me to create designs that would be impossible with other less sophisticated applications.

The point of this article is only valid in a fantasy world where one doesn't look too hard at the details.

You'd think as geeks we'd understand better the importance of killer-apps/killer-features and technical innovations for the world of the creative.
> make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur?

You've officially missed the point of the article. The argument is not that you look like an amateur, but that the user thinks the problem is with their computer or ISP. Since most 404's are due to user error in URI entry, web filters or cross-site link rot, this is a reasonable assumption on the part of the user, an assumption that can be readily exploited.
Here's a random posting I just stumbled upon, perfect example:

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/web/794985430.html

Real estate web designer needed!!

Contact me at the link above if you are interested in helping me build a profitable web site directed at listing fsbo, investment, foreclosure, etc listings.
I currently have a site up, but need to re-build it to make it a more profitable, user friendly, attractive web site. I am looking for someone who is able to work with little direction other than a basic idea, and run with it to make it a top notch web site to attract more sellers and buyers. I am looking for someone to utilize web search optimization, etc to inrease hits to the site and repeat visitors.
I am not able to pay for services at this time, but have a much better offer for the right designer. I am willing to offer up a part ownership in the web site itself and profit share in exchange for your services. This could potentially be worth ALOT of money to you if the site is designed properly and starts to generate a positive cash flow/ positive hit stream. I am open to discussion of this if you have any questions.
Please send your resume to me at the e-mail link above to get more details.
Twitter.

They also do these tests regularly to make sure we still need existing features.
>... most of the time the visitors to the site blame the 404 on their own browser, connection, or service provider ...
I have seen such horrors firsthand. A Smalltalk subsystem where all methods were class-side methods, only referred to local variables, and had variations of the same long list of arguments. All of these methods were copy and paste variants of each other and involved nested loops, multiple incrementing indexed array references, and conditional logic 4 or 5 levels deep. The coder who wrote these: a PhD in math who insisted she had a great understanding of Objects.

What's more, she's outlasted everyone in the group and is now in charge of the entire application!
That's really funny how it enlarges images no matter how small. http://imgfave.com/index.php?action=shownotice&notice=20...

Also, would it be possible to use Media RSS so that the pictures show up on Friendfeed?
"But upon further thought, the 404 test is brilliant. Why? Well as the CEO aptly put it, most of the time the visitors to the site blame the 404 on their own browser, connection, or service provider anyway."

I think this is a faulty argument, since you know most users will hit refresh and realize it is your site after about 30 seconds? People are pretty familiar with this new fangled web browsing on those interwebz now...
This is terrible. You could at least put up a custom page, with perhaps an email field offering to notify the user when that feature is available.
Improved Title Case in JavaScript
No: http://dob.posterous.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant
There are two kinds of seekers of good instruments. One kind pushes him/herself so hard that they run up against the limitations of their instruments and so are driven to find better ones. Another kind doesn't push themselves so hard, but gravitates towards the advantages of better a better instrument even though they still have even more scope for improving their own playing through technique.

I think this also extends to software tools.
Tools do help a lot although. Sometimes using a debugger is the quickest way to fix a bug, and not being able to use one (because of a lack of a remote debugger) can make a 10 minute bug into a 30 minute bug.
Weird, that shouldn't be happening. I'll fix that today.
what happens on day > 3?
I got that, I just don't necessarily agree with it. IMHO, if you've got a web app that users are savvy enough to know that they need, especially one that costs money, 9 times out of 10 they're going to be savvy enough to know that getting a 404 page with your branding on it is your company's problem, not theirs.

I know this because I work for a company that provides an enterprise B2B web app, and customers already consistently blame the stuff that ISN'T our problem (connection, filters, ancient browser, javascript turned off, etc.) on us.

And yes, a lot of 404's are due to improper URI entry and "cross-site link rot"... but isn't that a completely moot point since we're talking about internal links?
Unlocked new LG KS10 Black
The LG KS10 is a fashion conscious multimedia handset which is an Internet browsing focused 3G phone. The handset comes complete with Symbian operating system complete with Internet browsing with Google.
Man we need an "apple" filter. Most of the apple related news on HN is getting ridiculous while you can still get important apple news on any other news site.
Twitter 404s for a whole other set of reasons. But this site isn't Twitter, because it has been acquired:

> ... and it was acquired not so long ago for a figure with 9 digits
He is right about playing guitar. Tone is in the fingers -- alas.
your site is showing 404 error too, Maybe even you are testing to to see how many people will click on the link. ;)
'Make something you yourself want' is what I would recommend to hackers in general.

No offense to them, but when it comes to understanding what others want, they aren't able to do it, and often lament, criticize, put down, or devalue other people's actions or responses that don't make sense (instead of trying to understand them). For instance, many hackers can't fathom why so many people use Facebook (and don't try to understand that target population, but just ignore it or write a blog post about how Facebook has no value to them).

If you have the ability (and I really think it is a skill that you have to train) to understand other people and their motivations and needs, then I would suggest doing what edw is saying. But, from experience trying to teach my own hacker friends, this ability is very hard to learn.

Unfortunately for hackers, making what they themselves want often only caters to a small niche market in the vast world of people out there, so it might be useful to invest some time in learning how to understand other people, or team up with someone who has that ability in one form or the other.
That was my impression a few years ago.

But it's more than a solid idea. It's a proven technique. It's in use in more than a few major websites(I know from experience).

The beauty of it is:
A) Couldn't be any simpler and faster to implement

B) A 404 page actually can be a better user experience. If you give the user a "Coming Soon" or "Under construction" or "We didnt really build this page, but wanted to AB test whether it would be worth it"---those can be actually more confusing to the average internet user than a 404. Remember, the average internet user probably doesn't even know what market testing means.

C) In my experience, when it is used it's used in a very small fraction of visits(just enough to get a relatively significant result set), so only a very small number of visitors actually reach the 404.

D) The users that reach the 404 might be annoyed for a sec, but generally return to what they were doing before.

E) Because it's so fast and easy to implement, and there is only 1 key variable to look at (number of clicks), it can quickly be used over and over for many different situations(think: easy to automate).
Neat. Can it grab images that are hyperlinked? I'm using Opera, and it doesn't seem to.. don't know if it's a bug or a feature.
That's true, but it might be more bothersome in the long run (like another entry point for hacking attacks). Also another thing that could lead a Noob to ask questions (why does web site X behave in a weird way).
Didn't Larry Page come up with Page Rank?
I know two women that didn't want to take the pill because they said it made them psycho. Don't shoot the messenger!
It's telling that all the top states are the ones served by Verizon FiOS. Apparently we should all move to Rhode Island. ;)
How To Get Traffic From Non-English Domains
I have been using non-English bookmarking sites with great results. Here is the biggest list of working foreign language bookmarking sites on the net and how to get more traffic from non-English domains and sites
I don't think that a tolerance for high levels of alcohol, or the ability to spread among humans, could be considered an 'amplified' trait. I also don't think it's useful to argue that there is a difference between believing in small changes from one generation to the next, and the large changes that result from the sum of this process. It's like saying that you believe in counting, but there's a big difference between that and believing that 41,217 comes after 41,216.
Anybody else have a problem with the fact that visitors will blame their computer or their ISP first before the website that returned the 404 error?

My personal experience is that if users are confused about what system to blame, they blame any systems they can!

I'd guess this approach works if you have a large user base with a lot of churn. It doesn't matter if you upset a particular user because they probably wouldn't return anyways.
The philosophy is a truism, but the methodology is flawed - users don't know if they need a feature until they've used it.
I'm sorry but there are many, many other ways to test if people are interested in something. This is a horrible idea.

Poll users, send out a newsletter and see the response, post a link to a page telling them what's coming and see how many click. If no one clicks, then no one will miss out on this new upcoming feature that all of a sudden isn't coming.
Not following through has a certain 'authenticity' and honesty.
Okay. I've only seen this done with major consumer websites with high traffic. For B2B sites, I think you are right. Your solution would probably work better.
Ask HN: What is the job for a jack-of-all-trades?
I have been wrestling with my next career move recently and wondered what the HN community thought about a person without a specialized skill set.

About 18 months ago at 26 years old I decided to leave my studied profession (music) and pursue my rival passion for technology. Fast forward 18 months and I now work as a repair technician/customer-liaison/troubleshooter(amongst many other things) for end-users for a major consumer electronics manufacturer.

During this time I have been moonlighting as a web developer, implementing projects in Flash, PHP and MySQL, Ruby on Rails ...etc. I am no expert in any one language or framework, but teach myself skills as I need them (I like to learn new things). I don't produce anything complicated, just what the job requires. I maintain both jobs working around 20 hours a day catching up on sleep when there is time between projects. I have no foundation in programming, but a broad "just-below-the-surface" understanding of a massive list of software/languages/hardware/and more . . . my question is: What's next?

A cursory glance at Craigslist reveals openings for "PHP Wizards, Sr Ruby on Rails Devs, and Flash Guru's" of which it is clear I am under-qualified for... yet I continue to receive freelance work companies like these.

Are there jobs for a driven individual with excellent communication/interaction skills but a non-focused skill-set? Should I start focusing on one specific development area?
Fascinating stuff. Extremely effective and entertaining.
The chronology doesn't make sense: this supposedly takes place in 1979, but the TRS-80 Model 1 was introduced in 1977.
The example may be somewhat literal and simplistic, but I feel the idea has merit.

An interesting direction to keep in mind should the controller logic ever begin too smell spagghetified.
Not everyone here thinks it's a mistake. There are going to be better solutions to narrowing the signal/noise ratio in the search space than Pagerank.
You need dupe detection.
Unless the fire was caused by research into a new iFlamethrower -- and it wasn't -- this isn't Hacker News.
VC Discovers Facebook, Has Some Tips To Share
Could be powerset. Three clues:

1. Recently acquired by MS for a rumored 100M.

2. CEO is talking about 404 pages. Powerset's CEO is indeed a tech guy, Barney Pell.

3. "Thousands" of visitors per day sounds about right for powerset.
'Slowing' light might help speed the internet... Oh, and make invisibility possible
I am very suspicious of any hormonal birth control for my girlfriend. Her 2X or more enhanced sensitivity to everything is really uncanny in how consistent it is. At first I thought she was making things up or overreacting. She's not. I can't see any hormonal birth control avoiding the side effects unless it was specifically designed for her. I hear that this is coming down the pike, however. If you could do this in a cost effective way, you'd make billions.
Venture Capital: "Desperate" VCs try to squeeze TheFunded.com
Why is it that science writers for the New York Times seem unable to grasp basic concepts like eugenics? (I'm speaking of course of the claim of evolutionary proof in human hunting of bighorned rams resulting in rams being born with smaller horns. No shit, sherlock, if I took over Sweden and began hunting down and killing the blondes there will be a whole lot fewer born as the gene markers are winnowed from the available pool.)

Has the New York Times joined American police forces in setting a limit on the IQ of their employees lest they be too intelligent?

(Just to forestall argument all the mentioned case actually proves is that traits are inherited, and that the subset of rams less desirable to human hunters have outbred the more desirable ones, which is basic common sense. Their greater numbers assure greater numbers of offspring and that their genetic traits will predominate.)
Making an uber concurrency friendly Ruby would probably end up looking a lot like Stackless Python.

Rubinius is going whole-hog on green (lightweight) threads, BTW.
The author is making the assumption that clicking on the 404 link is correlated with interest in the feature... I'm not sure if that's always the case.
Yeah, can anyone from disqus give some guidance as to when the API will be available? Curious if it's going to be days/weeks/months.

I'm just excited to play with it is all!
and this to

http://ejohn.org/blog/spicing-up-embedded-javascript/
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Yeah, that will be one of the next things I add. Thanks for checking it out!
Barack Obama Overtakes Kevin Rose On Twitter. McCain Is Nowhere In Sight.
Disturbing Stats about Facebook Users and Security
JumpIDEA
Nine Startup Diseases and How to Cure Them