skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm one of the developers, although not currently very active. The main "unique capability" is closer integration to the machine. Our approach has been "The OS is our VM".

We use mmap() heavily, and when running on 64-bit systems take liberal advantage of the giant address space. Using the system to do more of the buffering also allows us to have lightweight processes that can start quickly. We think there will be both speed and memory advantages in the long run. The other main difference is that C is much easier to integrate with other languages than Java. We're starting out with Perl bindings, but have plans for Ruby, Python, Lua, Tcl, and others. The goal is to offer a truly native interface from the language of your choice.

The degree of host language integration is wild. You'll be able to seamlessly subclass just about any part of the C library in any supported language. Nothing is ready beyond C and Perl, but eventually you'll be able to have your indexer in one language, and your customized searchers in a couple more, while all sharing the same shared system cache.

As for why? Marvin, the main developer started the project as KinoSearch at a time when Lucene wasn't really ready for prime time. He's been very interested in real time indexing, and at the time Lucene didn't handle this well. I got interested because I was looking for something lighter weight than Lucene, where I could try to blend the boundaries between search and database retrieval. Lucene had too many layers of abstraction for my purposes. A parallel might be SQLite and Postgres. Both have their place, but Lucy is more on the SQLite side of things.
Absolutely. Just make a point of never competing with the $10/hr crowd.

Take a minute and read a few of those cheap bids. Do they inspire confidence? If you were an employer, would you honestly believe that the person who wrote that bid is capable of building the thing you're trying to build? Of course not. They all sound like a bunch of desperate children trying to get away with something. If you want to take work from them, all you need to do is not sound like a desperate child trying to get away with something.

Take 10 minutes and write a good proposal, with a summary of the project, your basic approach to solving it, and what you think it would realistically take to do the job. Quote your full rate, and don't worry even for a second that your bid is ten times higher than the next highest one. You're sending a message that "I can actually pull this off", and the best way to do that is to distance yourself as far as possible from the herd.

If you succeed, the project owner will end up looking at two stacks of bids. One stack will have 150 flaky looking quotes to do the whole project for $300, none of which stand out as inspiring much confidence. The other stack will have a single well written proposal, quoting a bit more than he'd expected to pay, but clearly from a guy who has done this before and can do it again.

His choice is now: Sift through that rubbish pile and hope I get lucky, or go with the expensive guy.

That's a pretty good place to be.
Redis based triple database
The two do not compare in the least.

Dependence on oil has direct costs in extraction, and high potential for environmental disaster associated with it. Then, on top of that, there are ongoing costs for physical distribution of fuel, and then after all of that additional environmental consequences of using the fuel.

Rare earth metals are a component that are extracted from the ground, manufactured into the structures we need for electric cars, and then put in the cars until the component wears out.

So, sure, long as we need stuff, you're never going to get rid of dependence on everything. But lets have a reasonable sense of proportion here.
What, you think agriculture is such a solved problem that people don't need to learn anything to do it?
Operating System | SPIDER.NET INSTITUTE
> Universal login using your Apple account: Walk up to any Mac, sign in as a guest using your Apple account credentials and you’ll be brought to the same desktop you get on your personal machine.

This is interesting. It sounds to me like something people think they want, but wouldn't really use that much without a big social shift - we're too attached to personal belongings (at least here in the US), and we're too mobile and independent to share.

Suppose people actually did want this, or thought they did - the result on sales sounds too unpredictable and risky to try, anyway. Would people start sharing computers more, meaning fewer sales? Or would they get more users temporarily by converting Windows users, but ultimately damage their ceiling through the new shareability?

This sounds like a dream that no one would implement.
You should override the default behavior of Backspace, because if someone is not in the input field, Backspace will abort the quiz and take them back to the previous page (in most browsers).

Maybe the multiple choice option should only become available after a certain amount of time?

I would decrease the time a user has to fill in an answer. Where there is competition there is generally cheating (who would do that right? I know), and you want to prevent GoogleIntellectuals from doing just that.
Errr, a dream that only open-sourcers would implement. (:
The thing with Groupon is that it can't afford to keep it's implicit promise to merchants. It's a conflict over customer loyalty. If the customers become loyal to a couple of local restaurants, Groupon loses them and must 'purchase' new ones. If they remain loyal to Groupon's offers, then they will not be worth the merchants' expense to put out the offer. Based on this, Groupon must either keep spending to acquire new customers, or new merchants. Either way, the large marketing costs are here to stay (until they saturate the one market or the other and burn out). I don't think Amazon had any such fundamental conflicts to deal with.
In other words: it's a good trade.
I think it's interesting that this story and the story from 2000 condening Amazon for losing money every quarter are both top stories on HN today[1].

Whenever history repeats itself you'll always hear people say "But this time is different!"

The article Joel Spolsky wrote about the "Amazon model" of growth (back in 2000) really explains why some companies grow the way Groupon and Amazon do[2]. They're in a land grab and they almost have to grow with huge losses and lots of funding or else they'll lose.

Personally, I'm a fan of what Joel calls the "Ben and Jerry's model" which I tend to call the Jason Fried model. Unfortunately, Groupon isn't one of those companies that can expect to win if they aren't growing extremely aggressively, and taking large losses at first is just part of the Amazon model.

[1]http://www.slate.com/id/1004565/

[2]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html
Many electric car components can be be made without resorting to "rare earth" metals, and have successfully been implemented by Tesla, for example, which supposedly doesn't use these metals at all.

http://www.economist.com/node/18750574
JSAssembly: an assembly interpreter in Javascript
It was my understanding that (for a lot of the steps) it does not matter what mechanism you use, so long as you use the same one.

The problem you are addressing would matter if someone were trying to query TinyEye's database without submitting the image to TinyEye's servers.
I agree, one would assume an economist would have this basic understanding of supply and demand.
As usual, the Freakonomics brand name stands for an idea that seems sensible and provocatively contrarian on cursory examination, but fails hold up when you dig into the facts. There are some issues with the current rare earths supply, but most commentators believe they are transient and will disappear now that prices have risen to the point that production makes economic sense.
Cocoa support in wxPython is coming along but isn't 100% there yet:

http://groups.google.com/group/wxpython-users/browse_thread/...
The reason Rubygems causes so much ire is that it is at a choke-point in the ruby ecosystem. Not every gem is actively maintained, so just fix the gems is easy to say, harder to do.

The rubgems maintainers are in a position to practically destroy Ruby's usefulness overnight by making frequent changes and deprecations, causing every installation to become a debugging nightmare and destroying millions of man-hours. To be sure, the emotional drama is boring, but the stakes are real.
Suspension, Ban or Hellban?
PhotoGallery | SPIDER.NET INSTITUTE
I agree. I can't see any investor with half a brain buying any company with a P/E of 2,147 (LinkedIn)
When I read the article, I wasn't very convinced the obfuscated Python bytecode couldn't be decompiled. There have been Python bytecode decompilers around for years.
Oh, that's a very good point! I never really thought of that technique as this kinda trick, but yeah. For some reason I always thought of it as squaring the integral (or the contour integration method).
Do you think the +1 button should influence search rankings?
I agree. However, you will be passed over by most project posters for one of two reasons:

1) They aren't serious, and are posting the project to get a sense of how much it may cost them to develop an idea.

or 2) They don't care or are ignorant of quality issues when choosing a $10/hr bid.

As developers, we scoff at badly written code - it offends us. But as a business person, especially the cheap ones, as long as it works and accomplishes the goal, you're happy.

You should ask yourself if that's who you want to work for. You won't capture every dollar posted using the method above, but it will filter out the non-serious and non-quality minded project owners.
I don't think that's the one I'm recalling, though that title is interesting.

I'll have to ask him. I'll probably speak with him this weekend.

P.S. I hope the OP will take a look at tokenadult's title. It might be a good choice.
JavaScript Mixins for grown-ups
I prefer http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Simple_unix_tools

An oldie, but a goodie.
Excellent concept. Had never heard of this before...but love the concept. Is there a way to manage multiple tasks at the same time?
In my first Calculus course I had failed to memorize some trig integral, and rederived it on the spot. Unfortunately what I came up with differed from the usual by some complex trigonometric substitution. The grader saw a ton of work, not the usual answer, and didn't bother differentiating it to demonstrate that it was correct, and marked me wrong.

I was ticked off about that for some time. (Wouldn't have changed my grade, but it was the principle of the thing.)
What is Grab A CAR?
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Move the multi choice option after more time: currently it is faster to reply using the multichoice feature instead of typing. Or, another possibility, when a competitor replies using multichoice, don't reject the typed answer as too slow.
Anyway nice game, nice idea.
The project proposals are often incomplete, so my strategy is to make a bid, and in the comments ask intelligent questions about the project and design to show I'm serious and experienced. So far no takers on that.

It could be that the project posters aren't serious, or that they're not impressed by my credentials/portfolio, or maybe my higher price.

Does anyone in the HN community regularly bid on freelance projects and get them?
I wonder what he might have said of the Internet ;)
It's dead. You can use http://www.hnsearch.com instead. HNSearch was created by the guys of ThriftDB, the same guys of Octopart. I think.
I hire on Elance and ODesk a lot, and almost ignore price. I've never hired the cheapest person.

Instead, put your attention on getting good ratings from past clients. That makes all the difference in the world.

Even consider using their platform when doing work for friends or existing clients. Do it through the site, letting them take their cut, because it's worth it for getting a good strong history of past-projects there.

I'm working with an animator on Elance, and even though we've done 5 projects together, have 10 more upcoming, and do all our communication directly by Skype, he still wants me to keep all project posting & payments through Elance. It's good for both of us. (After each project I give him 5-star ratings, and he does the same for me as an employer.)
Homeland Security USA episode 203: Startup Founders

Starring:

BadassFractal the startup founder

H1B the visa

OnlyCash the lawyer

HN crowd the wannabe lawyers

Live now on Hacker News
If you're not in a position to market your skills outside of freelance sites or at a higher cost, your skills probably aren't worth over $10/hour.
CLA Redux - The Donation of OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation
Agreed. Permanent magnet synchronous motors are just one kind of traction motor. There are alternatives out there that don't require rare earth magnets. See this nice table:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_motor#Categorization
I hope this won't turn into another... oh, my aching brain cells -- what what the econ/market site based on HN code?

If searchyc is toast, can we migrate it as opposed to simply the deadpool? There've already been some offers to host.

I'm hopeful that they're simply exploring options, and that it won't come to actual death.

(Hmm... It seems I'm very "optimistic", this morning. More coffee!)
Maybe I'm just a Luddite, but I really don't like reading long-form literature on a computer or Kindle. Mostly because of the eyestrain, but also because of the physicality of the book (and the kindle/computer's lack of it).

Still waiting for electronic paper...or something that lets me access the web's info in a physical, eye-pleasing way. Until then, I'll still be looking for the deadtree version first.
I have to agree. When it ultimately comes down to it, you shouldn't be competing with the $10/hr crowd.

Clients that understand the importance of good design and solid code knows that it costs money and they're willing to pay for it. Clients that think $10/hr is a normal rate are probably bad clients with an unrealistic expectation of how much work it takes to produce a good website. They'll be late to pay and double the scope of the project.

When I freelance, I usually go through a talent agency. This guarantees payment, the clients are usually much bigger and the projects much more exciting than mom and pop stuff I'd find myself or on those freelancing sites. With them, I'm getting at least $35/hr full time for the period of the project. Sure, not as high as my personal rate when I deal with clients directly, but I enjoy the peace of mind that buffer provides. Plus working through an agency, I never run out of work because it's their job to find work for me. I usually go back and froth between agency and direct work.
no i just made this yesterday, it only takes snapshots of current deals. If you want to collect revenues going forward I would set up some kind of cron job and run it every night at a reasonable time (11pm Eastern US time would probably work, but you'd underestimate on the West Coast deals)
فيلم الفاجومى 
فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى فيلم الفاجومى
umm... does anyone know how vinod khosla(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla) start so many companies(Sun Microsystems) just after graduating? I believe he was not a U.S citizen and had come to the U.S only for his education.
Investing In The Cultural Revolution
So far elance.com has gotten me decent wages that an American would expect; however, freelancer.com and vworker.com have yielded nothing but $5/hr crap jobs and projects where the scope creep was so bad I ended up making like $2/hr by the end. Also, freelanceswitch seems to be better because you have to pay $7/mo to bid on jobs and most of the $5/hr crowd won't do that.
I really don't know how to solve the Backspace. Probably, the only way to catch that is to have some sort of onexit event handler.

I love the idea of having the alternatives appear automatically. when there's only like 3 seconds left.

The time, 15 seconds, is maybe too long when there's really hard questions. I want people to upload easy questions that forces you to think instead of googling.
There are the regulatory and market aspects. Would you want to make a major investment in U.S. development, right now? Or elsewhere, with the Chinese machine as competitors?

There may be plenty of reserves. If other polities/economies can't get their act together to develop them, you still have a crisis.

These days, the U.S. can't even manage its budget (not without a cr-pload of manipulative hysterics). I'm not altogether optimistic.

Separately, they are messy projects. I hope we won't be forced into a "race to the bottom" in terms of ecological impacts.
The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrH92TjV4ZM
What happened to searchyc.com?

See here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605959
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600193
yeah but the fundamental problem here is not whether the government is doing something or not. The issue is transparency and accountability.

There are corporate entities who are wasting their money on nepotism, graft, and efforts that are doomed to fail in the "planning" stages too. The difference is that the way that consumers pay for it is hidden in the cost of whatever products the company produces.

We can make government behavior suck less if we actually provide better transparency and metrics for success.
Thanks for the feedback!
Note that typing in the answer gives a whole +3 points.

I'll figure out some new rule adjustments once enough feedback is in.
This is going on my books to check out as _soon_ as I get to college list!
I'm still trying to make a go of it on vworker, but have no ratings. However, this guy seems to be successful with it:
http://tbbuck.com/winning-your-first-freelance-job-on-vworke...
I often go one step further, and highlight a very broad range in a bid, stating that my proposal is hourly at rate x. Then explain the reasons for needing an hourly assessment: lacking functional specification, requirements, etc. - making it impossible for me to determine an accurate project timeline.

I include a few points that can help them clear up ambiguity in their project requirements, and generally offer an hour of project review as a complimentary service.

On this call (or meeting if they are close), you can quickly determine if they are just trying to get a free hour, or if they are genuinely interested in a more experienced consultant who can really help them with their project.

My experience is about 25% of posters will respond to such a bid/proposal. Of those 25%, about 33% are actually looking for assistance and open to paying for experience.

Notes: I moonlight, and usually bid on projects for which I estimate 40-120 hrs of work, and they are generally in the realm of system administration, database optimization, and php (often on shared hosting). Not the greatest client group with which to work, but you encounter some interesting challenges.
I'm not the author; but I am the lead quant at a profitable $1B hedge fund.

I don't generally mention this, but it seemed like it might give you pause to think about how you deal with people.
That breath was supposed to be 1g or .001kg. See, I was tired!
You are absolutely correct. See for an illustration of this: http://seekingalpha.com/article/271991-apple-price-stall-is-...
what the econ/market site based on HN code?

New Mogul. That was quite enjoyable for a while.
Do BMW's stand a chance in the US automotive landscape? Will Whole Foods survive the Walmart onslaught? - Price is just one of the dimensions on which to stand out in a market, there are buyers who look beyond the price.
This is why you don't write code before your morning shot of caffeine (unending recursive function calls). Meh.
AirBnB and the quest for early VC investment
Luddites were against technology that cost them jobs and made them generally obsolete. They'd weren't simply anti-technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Given that, you may be set in your ways, or have standards that don't match the trends, but I wouldn't say you are a Luddite. (Though, perhaps, you are a deadtree publisher..?)
The higher your bid the better. Your $100 an hour rate is your premium branding.
I hope their first job will not be to rewrite it all in C++ or Java on top of some proprietary Google storage. :)
I use the same registrar as these guys. The Bahamas pretty much do not give a fuck about FBI requests. They likely registered on the site using falsified info through a foreign, compromised Windows machine acting as a proxy and paid using an anonymous Paypal account. Problem?

Paypal accounts are cheap to buy and machines running Windows are plentiful.
Oh, yeah, I know what a Luddite is, and yeah, it wasn't the best word choice. I jokingly grasped at the word nearest to my situation - guy-who-doesn't-like-LCDs isn't quite as catchy. :) I'm as tech-savvy as anyone, but I prefer to work/read on standard paper if possible.

(not a deadtree publisher though - just a guy with irritable eyes)
[Word Game] Le God of Words Update 1.3
Ask HN: OpenCV and Php Facedetect. Is there another option than self hosting?
hello!

for a web app i will need facedetection software. after some research i found opencv (http://opencv.willowgarage.com/) and a php extension (http://www.xarg.org/project/php-facedetect/) that creates a wrapper for using it.

my problem is that my hosting company does not install such extensions on my virtual server.

do you know any other option than a root server (which i would have to administer, update, secure,...)?

thanks a lot for your help guys, you´re great!

martin