skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
With disk caches primed, the main culprit may be the dynamic linker. Some of those environments (Java, Perl, Python, PHP that others mention in this thread) always load substantial number of dynamic libraries before doing anything useful. That doesn't come free. Numberous symbols have to be resolved, some static data initialized. There's non-trivial VirtualMemory to set up for such libraries, too.

For some more info: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/

EDIT: a micro-benchmark between static and dynamic C program:

gcc -- static a.c
time (for i in `seq 1024`; do ./a.out > /dev/null; done; )

real 0m0.958s
####
gcc a.c # that's dynamic linking
time (for i in `seq 1024`; do ./a.out > /dev/null; done; )

real 0m1.292s

...and that's just libc alone! Those times were quite stable across several runs, so it's not some random one-time fluctuation.

The code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
puts("hello world!");
return 0;
}
from as little coding experience i have i can say that I have seen blazingly fast V1.0 of applications which doomed to sluggish responses because of poor maintenance. So, i really don't buy the speed thing. I'll always design with a note that "There will be no awesome-coders to maintain this". A well-maintained version of Java app will beat a struggling C app anyday. So, i differ. And, ofcourse if you know what you are doing, these graphs do make sense and its worth an effort to dig out the flipping bits on registers.
I never realized before how well a Reddit style conversation could work as a lecture format. Very short "lecture" part, then lots of comments with people trying different things, asking questions, and getting answers both from their peers and the "lecturer". Very simple, but very effective.
According those links, San Francisco or San Jose aren't even in the top 50 most expensive.

Every time I read one of these "the Valley is moving to X" articles, I'm reminded of the last 15 years of "the Valley is moving to X" articles that haven't come true. Tech is a huge industry, and growth allows for jobs everywhere. I don't know why all of these articles have to be phrased as if jobs need to leave the Valley to make it happen.
Re: the last point, under Clinton and then Bush, the old Carter era CRA law got new life poured into it. Deval Patrick (now MA mayor) was one of the key guys on this when he was at Justice, using a number of laws (including the CRA and others) to beat up banks if they didn't lend to minorities at higher risk of default. Example:

www.justice.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/August94/484.txt.html

Google around, you can find plenty of stuff that starts using new regs around the CRA in 1993-5:

www.ffiec.gov/cra/letters/letter_19950629.htm

An analogy: the actual FD&C Act empowering the FDA hasn't changed much, but new appointees differ dramatically on how to interpret the law and which new regulations are consistent with that interpretation. Starting with Clinton and continuing through Bush and Obama, HUD, Justice, and others started to use the CRA as a tool to force banks to extend more mortgages to minorities ("anti-redlining"). Like Ness using tqx evasion to go after Capone, old laws were put to new use.

There really is copious documentation of all of this in Ms Morgenson's book; if you're as interested in the topic as I am, it may be worth reading even if you end up rejecting her line of argument.

(FWIW, National Review spent the 00s telling people about how Iraq was so important to US security. They had and have as little interest in exposing Bush's complicity in this as, say, MSNBC has in going after Obama. Morgenson is unusual in that she has penned a damning bipartisan indictment.)
How does your automatic detection work?
The Great Escapist
I can understand people decrying results of .05 seconds apart or so, but 3 second start ups? That would be infuriating. That kind of UX would take me back quite a few decades...
The solution to java's slow startup time is gcj. Once compiled with gcc's java compiler, a java hello world will have C like startup times.

echo 'class Hello {public static void main(String[] args) {System.out.println("hello, world");}}' > Hello.java
gcj --main=Hello -o Hello Hello.java
time ./Hello

echo 'main() { printf("hello world\n");}' | gcc -x c -o hello -
time ./hello
That's basically two flavours of UNIX (Linux and BSD), but that's OK - others are unfortunately either dead or dying. The UNIX family tree (http://www.levenez.com/unix) has been shrinking so rapidly in the last few years, that the current situation looks like the early years.
I thought even the Liberty ships were basically craft production, not assembly-line. But I admit I haven't studied the story in any detail.

I don't think producing ten items of any design qualifies as "mass production". Even at complexity levels like ten wooden barrels, at ten items, you're still trying to figure out what the causes of variation in your products are. You are a long way from deskilling the individual tasks and doing time-and-motion analysis on them (you probably haven't even identified them yet) and you can only afford to produce the most rudimentary specialized tooling for the product.

So I don't think ten ships constitutes "mass production".

Wikipedia suggests that the Venetian Arsenal might have been "mass production" when it was producing one ship per day --- but that was with 16000 people, so that's still 45 man-years per ship. Compare to Edison's ore processing plant (2000 tons of ore per day per employee, as compared to craft production with 5 tons of ore per day, a factor of 400 times) or the printing press (a Bible now costs two hours of unskilled labor rather than a year of skilled labor, a factor of a few thousand) or Adam Smith's celebrated pin factory (48000 pins per day by ten men, instead of one to twenty pins per day by one man, a factor of 2400 or more).

If we could really mass-produce ships, then we should expect their cost to fall by a factor of 100 or more from the cost of craft production. Everybody could have a yacht. So far, though, mass production of ships seems to be as elusive as mass production of theorems, software, or happy marriages.

Coming back to the 3-D printing idea, printing a newsletter on a laser printer still costs about ten times as much as mass-producing it with a printing press. But only about ten times as much, not a few thousand times as much. You probably could 3-D-print workable ships out of fused quartz, although it will take a lot of work to get the necessary resilience out of such a brittle material. You could surely do it out of fiber-reinforced concrete, as ferrocrete ships have been sailing the seas for decades.
you simply pass on your photo link using out api and we run some algorithms to detect if there is possibility of nudity in the picture.
Thanks for that piece of advice. I just went and found and followed this: http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/configuring_https_servers.html

and gained a noticeable speed improvement on nginx.

Here's the nginx module docs, for completeness: http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpSslModule
Brilliant! My company had a short spell in the very early 90's where we dabbled in 3D product visualization for clients with 3D Studio on DOS. At the time we were writing add-ons and engineering tools for Autodesk products and exploring other fields we could use our talents. While it never went that far for us commercially I still love to follow how the 3D modeling world has transformed since then. From 2-3 hour renders to 60 FPS today on MUCH more complex models... demos like this still get me excited.
"First, St. Paul never met Jesus, never had a conversation with Jesus and knows no more about Jesus than you do from reading the New Testament."

“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%209:5&v...
Inversion of scarcity
What kind and how accurate are those? A demo page would be nice.
I use xargs for the find + rm cases he mentions. However, if you just want the file names containing the words import, I rely exclusively on grep:

grep -r -l import *.py
"A well-maintained version of Java app will beat a struggling C app anyday."

And a poorly maintained C program will outperform an equally poorly maintained Java program...

The things that make programs dramatically slower is poor algorithmic complexity (and often a poor understanding of the architecture, be it the JVM or the metal). That's not what we're talking about here though, this discussion is pretty explicitly about start-up times. We're talking constant-time issues.
We just need to start doing //:domain.foo/script.js (protocol relative URL)
I think what we need is a window manager (or a window layout behaviour) per workspace or screen rather than a single window manager to rule them all.

I tried to use the tiling window manager xmonad and found it excellent for terminal stuff. The problem was everything else.

Firefox/thunderbird/etc. don't work in a tiling window manager, particularly Firefox and particularly popups.
Here's my list:

WEB DESIGN/BUILD
http://www.rokkan.com/
http://www.f-i.com/
http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/

INTERACTION & UX:
http://metalabdesign.com
http://www.zurb.com/
They reduce the IO burden, but not to the level to compete.
What the new field of epigenetics reveals about how DNA really works
Your definition of "intrinsic value" is clearly different than mine. If no human-assigned value is intrinsic, then nothing has intrinsic value, and your definition becomes non-functional.

When I said that gold coins have intrinsic value (the same is true for copper coins, etc.), I mean that regardless of what nation minted the coin and what value appears on its face, it will always be worth at least its weight in gold.
Cable boxes use more power than the fridge
Just word the question to "do you want to be sure you have a secure web experience" so the default yes is secure...
thanks for the suggestion i'd definitely setup a demo page this week. you can try it out anyone who sign-ups from HN in invite list will be $0.50 USD credit for free
When it comes to discretionary spending I believe the 80:20 rule applies very often.

I wanted a smartphone so I got the cheapest Android.
I'm sure I'm missing something the most expensive phones have but not much.

My car is 12 years old it pretty much does everything a new car does, it doesn't look pretty but I don't have to worry about it being stolen either.

It's helpful to look at things from the other end. Companies produce a baseline product for a certain price, they then try to add value which essentially means getting people to pay a whole heap more for not very much extra. Sometimes even the extra is illusory (eg a celebrity endorsement).

You can have almost as good the lifestyle of someone with many times your income if you can see past marketing.
"didn't get their priorities the way I would have wished"???

They already had a package named ack. WTF? By "getting their priorities" correct you mean catering to you?

The same problem is currently happening with node.js. Its unfortunate that node.js chose node to replace an equally ambiguous and generic name.
Lulzsec Doxes "The A-Team"
Mike just wrote a blog post about how much expensive Amsterdam is: http://mur.mu.rs/?p=179

About the "the Valley is moving to X" I can tell you our objective is not to move the Valley here. What we want to really accomplish is to build the some sort of evolution of it. We want to build a great community and make Amsterdam the technology and innovation center in Europe. The outcome looks bright and we are very optimistic about it.

We definitely do not need to move the Valley here for Appsterdam to be successful, Europe is full of great talent.
But of course people from the Valley are welcome as well and can make our community richer.
I think you need to define nudity and semi-nudity more.

1 - No nudity detected people fully clothed.
2 - Semi-nudity detected people fully clothed.
3 - Nudity detected private parts/gentials visible.

How can there be semi-nudity if people are fully clothed? Are female breasts considered nudity or semi-nudity? What about male breasts? What about pubic hair without display of genitals? There are so many gray areas you need to be more specific.
Steve Blank on the Secret History of Silicon Valley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ

History of electronic warfare -- very surprising, recently declassified stuff.
Plus the history of Silicon Valley itself, from a pro-valley perspective.
lol sorry i meant partially clothed fixed it thanks for noticing
I enjoy on occasion pointing out to people how the worlds most popular drink is a rather acidic stimulant infused with CO2 that comes in pressurized aluminium canisters.

The present is weird.
Definitely true. There is nothing stopping anyone building a credit card network on top of Bitcoin. Again, Bitcoin is still an experiment. It might even be the case that certain groups of people require such a scheme to use it.
We've been doing this for going on two years now. Off-season--even just by a few weeks--rocks for better pricing. We've gotten a bunch of beautiful places very inexpensively off-season, after school starts, for example...this is in the US; for what we do, we need consistent & reliable Internet access, plus we're traveling with our pet.

VRBO & HomeAway have been pretty solid senders, we've tried a bunch of other options, but I don't think we've ever managed to book via any other site (except for one rental straight through the condo complex in an area not well-served by HomeAway/VRBO). Searching VRBO is a pain in the neck, but the owners tend to be a lot more experienced.
I find that really hard to believe. I mean, there's far too many variables to measure that accurately. I mean, this hypothetical set top box could be in full swing recording three programmes, while the fridge is at optimal temperature and has gone into standby mode. (fridges are efficient like that).

Or, whoever took these measurements could simply have done it wrong.
French Journalism
The grep one didn't involve a switch on grep. It was just the xargs example with xargs removed.
Should also mention that this pattern is idempotent, an important quality.
http://agilebits.com/products/1Password

Mac is the first platform listed.
How about when Arthur Dent tried to explain tea to the ship's computer, and it was baffled that he wanted the flavor of boiling water poured over leaves and mixed with a fluid squirted out of the bottom of a cow?
Google "failed" because they didn't have to succeed. In terms of corporate culture Google makes products that do well with the general public, but anything with health is both very niche and mission critical. To really crack that market takes a singular focus -- and that's not just creating the product but dealing with things like lobbying and sales. I'll grant you that the folks at Google are very bright, but very bright doesn't mean you can do anything. And I suspect that this was just a bit too much of a stretch for them (unless they purchased a company that was already in that space).
EMachines EME443-BZ602 $ 330 Laptop Pack 15.6 “display, AMD C-50 APU
can you explain how this is a charade? I would think that posting my username & password from a http site to a https site still does ssl negotiation before sending that username and password along a network pipe. Doesn't sound like a charade to me.
What about video? Do you plan add it as well?
For worse, I concur. I still fire up my SGI boxes once in a while to remind myself things didn't use to/don't have to be as binary as they mostly are today (Linux vs BSD, iOS vs Android, Intel vs AMD etc.). That, and to run electropaint, of course. =)
Before reading the dox info from "The A-Team" on Lulzsec, and now Lulzsec on "The A-Team," it seems that within this particular group of people there's a rather large transgender population.

Anyone else find this interesting?
sure i'll add it if there is a demand for it
I have this exact problem even without the travel... A couple of days at home without continuous jobs / tasks needing to get done. Great, I can finally get onto doing some work for project X!

Except it never happens. Seems my motivation / drive is so depleted that the best way to use the days off is to actually rest. Then I feel great (although generally a little miffed that I didn't get anything done on project X) and for the next several weeks I seem to have more focus and be able to get my everyday things done more effectively.

Sometimes the best way to utilise a break is exactly that - have a (complete) break and just rest the mind - I find some physical exercise (surfing) helpful with that too.
Define spiritual, explain how it cures pancreatitis, then we can talk.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/17/report_hightraffic_c.ht...
I don't understand why is it on front-page. Did you just re-invent Google Code / Kaywa API or is there something I'm missing?
The Male Biological Clock
We abandoned the gold standard because governments wanted to spend money (usually on war) that they didn't have.
I'd like to know this one too. I actually started writing one cause I could not find another option :)
Historically, UNIX filenames almost never had spaces in them.
Mobile is really where Web 2.0 was in 2002 — we're really at the beginning at that market while the web is a mature market. The mobile market reminds me of the PC market in the 80s where brands were slugging it out to see who would survive. The web on the other hand has been around for 15 years and really reminds me of the PC market by the end of the 90s. On the web the winners are Google and Facebook -- in terms of software I can't honestly say who the top dog is yet. So to me mobile feels like it's still next...
It sounds like a lot of fun, but how do you save for your retirement? If you spent 10 years doing this, wouldn't you be too far behind to catch up and end up living a poor lifestyle when you should be traveling and enjoying your later years?
It's posted at groklaw here:

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20040224035032...

And here:

http://www.mckusick.com/csrg/calder-lic.pdf
The argument is friends' contact info belongs to your friends, not to you. Its a social grey area that has been created by the internet, the correct protocols have yet to be defined.
I hate how HN is turning into Reddit.
I'd love to get my hands on all of that private info too.
Yeah, some features can be pushed into the language, but I like languages which have few rules. Like C and like CHESS :)

My favorite languages are C, Java and Python though. So go figure...
sure :) let me know your feedback when you try it
Is there a paper on this?
We've done this pretty successfully, actually, for going on two years - and you're right about the continual travel planning being depleting...but new places are also really energizing...the key is making sure the length of the stay coincides with your release cycles. So, stay somewhere a month or more for a really big push, two weeks for maintenance and bug fix releases. This gives another fun advantage: release code names very easy to choose/remember. :)

Also - make sure you've got a nice view. We've found that our productivity increases substantially when we've got something nice to look at. Building product in basements is depressing and can really drain your energy/creativity/purpose. There's something about the ocean or the desert that can really drive you forward.
People ask me why I like to keep around some old computers. My response is that you can't see where you are going unless you know where you have been. This is my version of 'those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it' (or the more modern 'repatent it')
The author is correct in suggesting that for any such system to work, there has to be involvement of health care providers and, without being reimbursed, they are not likely to get involved.

But I really feel Google Health failed because there simply wasn't enough consumer involvement. It could have continued as a system that allowed patients to monitor their own medication use, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. and analyze it for them and provide information for them to take to their physician - but that never happened. By and large, most consumers of healthcare in this country are the elderly, and a lot of the current generation is not going to go online and store and update all their healthcare data.

I do some work in the long term care setting and recently I saw an older patient in this setting get an iPad. Some of the facilities have started talking about implementing wifi, a few already have because gradually some patients are beginning to demand it. When you see this becoming more widespread, you'll know there's a paradigm shift taking place, and that's when you'll see things like Google Health, or Microsoft Health Vault or Avado really start taking off.
Good questions/points.

I would only respond with that in particular, GWT is more than a compiler - it is as much a JRE as anything. So there is more to it. I personally don't see Google doing much public interaction with the development of the GWT compiler. If it's left to Google and its own time then my point remains.

JavaScript on the other hand really doesn't have a single organization leading it's development. Maybe this is an argument to be made about its perceived slow progress. Language design by committee is pretty slow.

More choice is good. Always. But right tool for the job should always win.
In his announcement of the MVC Mini Profiler that this is based on, Sam Saffron writes unencouragingly:

> Our open-source profiler is perhaps the best and most comprehensive production web page profiler out there for any web platform. (http://samsaffron.com/archive/2011/06/09/+Profiling+your+web...)

New Relic (http://newrelic.com/) provides somewhat-similar tracking for Rails as a paid service.
Google's Descent into Irrelevance
A scam as a currency, yes.

If FooCorp started trying to convince people to do all their buying and selling using FooCorp shares - of which the FooCorp owners naturally have a great many - then yes, obviously, it would be a scam intended primarily to enrich the FooCorp owners.

As a stock, FooCorp might be a perfectly fine investment.

Remind me again what the fundamentals for bitcoins are? What are their same store sales for last quarter?
miners will just charge a fee to verify transactions
Minimum viable product: What happens to the user experience?
No thanks. Abusing government resources that are intended for real refugees that have had to flee war zones and oppressive governments is not only unethical and rude, it could also land you in jail for welfare fraud.
JC Penny's Tawdry Search Scam
Electronic Arts Hates Strong Passwords
If only there were a device that could automate computational tasks, such filtering would no longer pose a challenge. Some sort of compute-er...
then the bug reports of stuff not working come flooding in
You don't mind paying, http://NewRelic.com is excellent.
Series FF class stock: FF, Super F and Plain Old F'd
It's not the default because things like 'find | grep foo' wouldn't work as well: the output would appear all concatenated, as the terminal doesn't break lines on null characters.

I wrote a utility I named print0, which simply converts line-oriented input into null-terminated output. Very useful for building pipelines of line-oriented utilities, where each line is a filename. It's quite common to have spaces in filenames (if nothing else, user files on NAS shares), and vanishingly rare to see newlines, so I find it to be a sensible tradeoff. Things like 'find | egrep | sed | print0 | xargs -0' work as you'd expect.
Zuckerberg broke into the emails of journalists he thought could damage him back in the college days, and he called his users "dumb fucks" for trusting him. The way Zuckerberg is idolized for his success and even held up as a role model(!) when it was achieved through unethical means is symptomatic of a lot of my least favorite things about society. The fact that the essential character of Facebook is trying to leverage people's social connections for the purpose of marketing is highly distasteful to me as well.