skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> You have to instantiate another object to inspect the first one! Here's Python, just as an example. (Most languages would be simpler. As with most things, it would be difficult to find a language where reflection was more clunky than in PHP.)

I was about to agree with you then I remembered the work put into the Newspeak language (which I was once hopeful would replace Smalltalk as my favorite).

In Newspeak, reflection is always indirect because of security reasons.

You ask the system to give you a Mirror, and that mirror can reflect against an object you have access to. Security name-spacing and authorization is encapsulated into the mirror, so you can say:

- Give unauthorized users access to your VM with live objects, but they can't change anything because their Mirrors only allow for inspection.

- Make changes to a live object indirect. So if you add an attribute to object live object X, the system will go out of band---say to the database or announce to remote systems---that the change occurred and further action may be needed. That's great for access audits.

In that respect, PHPs reflection class isn't too bad. Though I think its a bit underpowered.
Really, it's just convenient to have nouns with which to have those conversations.
I don't really need to confirm them.

I was just wondering if it would help future emails find their way to the user's inbox...
I was talking from a user's perspective. As a user your data is safer on your local machine than on a cloud server run by who knows who.
So any Google-served address is marked as vulerable because of the Gawker hack?
Thank you for this informative rely, this kind of rely is what I'm looking for. There are a few things I should reply on:

> MongoDB stores ALL of the data for a database in a single set of sequentially numbered files.

Correct. But are you under the assumption that this means documents are spread randomly inside the files? MongoDB database files work with extents. Each collection consists of multiple extent. The extents may be scattered across the database files but each extent is contiguous.

> write-ahead log (WAL), in which the database will group several transactions together to make this a mostly sequential I/O operation

Very informative, thanks. I thought the WAL was only a durability feature. Indeed, all the resources that I've read on WAL so far only mention it in the context of durability. I had to read your post a few times to understand that it can be used for optimizing I/O.

That said, MongoDB relies on the operating system's I/O scheduler to perform the reordering. It just performs the write without fsyncing, allowing the writes to end up in the OS page cache. The OS is then free to reorder the writes however it likes.

How useful is the WAL for reordering I/O compared to what the OS already does? Do you think one is superior to the other? Other than bulk index updates of course.

> Only random reads actually become slow in this case, instead of practically every kind of I/O like it does in MongoDB when used in real-world scenarios.

Actually after fixing the _id problem my MongoDB database became insanely fast again. I/O reordering does happen in with MongoDB, just not in MongoDB itself.

> MongoDB can't give you this indicator because it's dependent on the OS cache entirely.

Your technique for measuring the working set sounds not too far off from what I do with MongoDB although I use a few more tools. The 'mongostat' utility shows how many page faults MongoDB gets; this is similar to your buffer miss rates. You can use Linux cgroups to limit MongoDB's page cache size. I also use mincore() and fincore() to see which places in the database files get paged in.

All in all, I have to change my opinion and admit that PostgreSQL does do many things better than MongoDB. However I think MongoDB doesn't do as bad as you think it does, and the automatic sharding feature in MongoDB is still something I really need.
Constructive criticism: This is an example how how the illusion of a beautifully designed, professional-looking site is easily burst by an amateur how-to video.
Perhaps. But that also shouldn't stop us from making the system better and more sane. Today the system is ridiculous and laden with vestiges of waves of anti-immigrant sentiment in the past. It needs to become sane, and if that means cutting a few corners then I think that's better than continuing to perpetuate injustice and ridiculous laws that don't uphold the ideals of our country.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2688788

this is what i was referring too much of these are in ruby on rails from the beging ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management
In the US? The CIA can't operate in the US.
Hrmmm... yes, but it doesn't affect his opinion, it merely exists, and should be considered related to the facts of his former threat of a case against him, or or should be a situation that is considered a subtle something ... anyway, someone already put my point much better than this, see elsewhere.
I agree with most of the changes on your list, but to be honest (as I'm sure you're aware) what you're suggesting is not a viable solution.

It would be far easier and more effective to simply create a new language based heavily on the good parts of php.
Factual and SimpleGeo Create One of the Largest Business Listings Databases
Yeah, that's why no one uses their products.
Urs wouldn't have said tape if he didn't mean tape.

This brings to mind an amusing anecdote. I once saw a conversation about how many miles of tape are storing Viagra ads. Someone quipped, "The only thing that I know for certain is that the trend is up."
That doesn't mean that it isn't still their modus operandi.
Communally shared cars would still have the problem that a large number of those personal cars are spending the same 90% of their time sitting in a parking space. Everyone's leaving for work at 8, leaving for lunch at noon and leaving for home at 5.

You'd still need roughly the same number of 'communal' cars during those peak times. Though people may be more likely to car-pool.

Even the trivial variation of most US 'flex time' starts wouldn't help much. The difference between 8 and 9 isn't great enough for very many cars to make it from a business park at 8 back out to pick up another passenger and then back to another employer before 9.

What might really help, is 'communal' cars augmenting the US's sparse transit system. e.g. The communal car takes you to the train/bus stop. A communal bus departs as soon as it can. The communal car takes you to your final destination.

That way the cars are doing shorter round-trips, serving more people (necessitating fewer cars) and people are more apt to use the public transport because they aren't worried about the current big problems of US transit:
1. parking at the transit stop
2. how to get from the transit destination to where they really want to go
3. what happens if you miss the train/bus time (the car can just complete the trip)
I don't entirely disagree with most of what you said, but I think you underestimate the challenges. I own a small start-up, so I know how nice it is to operate at a small scale. I let my employees chose their own browser, but I require that they keep it up to date. I can do that because I don't have to worry about supporting 500 people.

I've also consulted for very large corporations. The same disruptive ideology that applies to start-ups falls flat with large corporations. The biggest mistake is to take a unilateral position with them. They will fall back to IE. They will stagnate on old versions if we don't work with them. Is that what you want?

Maybe your product can avoid the corporate space altogether, but there are a lot of us who rely on them. I don't want to re-live IE6. I want browser makers to acknowledge that changing the corporate world isn't the same as creating Google or Facebook. It's far less glamorous and usually means doing shit in a way that you don't like for longer than you like. Change is coming, but it's coming slowly.

I hate line-item rebuttals, because they just turn in to pissing matches, but I did want to offer some clarification on these two points.

> Asking for a release timeline and asking for 3 years of support on a dead branch are entirely separate things. It's not unreasonable to ask the Mozilla keep users informed of the release schedule (don't they already do this?), but asking them to support an old version for 3 years seems silly. It takes a lot of manpower and there's no value in it for probably 95% of their customers.

Let me clarify: I don't think 3 years is a viable LTS schedule for browsers. I don't know what the time frame is, but I'm sure it's not 3 years, and I'm sure it's not "We release continuously." I should have been more clear about what "similar" means when referencing Ubuntu. By similar, I mean that they should continue their march forward, but that there should be an occasional LTS release that is maintained for a longer, more planned interval.

> I would say it's practical, not naive. If you want a browser that allows you to stagnate while enjoying long-term support, then either start paying someone for support, or start using IE. You agree that web browsers and word processors are different, so why should Mozilla bend over backwards to allow corporations to try to treat them the same?

I'm saying it's naive (showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment) to expect that this new development cycle won't have ramifications. Mozilla is free to do what they wish with their product. What I'm claiming is that it will come at the cost of market share in the corporate world. If they don't care about the market share, then go ahead and walk on it.
people aren't illegal. They exist.
Is there a version with original audio available?
I was a bit surprised when I found out that Hastings was appointed to the Microsoft board almost four years ago - he really stands out there on a board that's mostly older captains of industry and finance. Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't really buy the "put him on the board so that we can get streaming video help". Sure netflix's tech and infrastructure is substantial but it's not like it's that difficult from a 10,000 foot level. My take is these big ass companies want him for his proven ability to plan, execute and succeed with a complicated multi-stage long term view business plan.
App Stores certainly won't stop piracy, as cleverly pointed out here and elsewhere. But that doesn't make the main point of the article invalid, which is that App Stores have changed and will still change the game even more.
timjahn, you're right (I've seen it in action). Users will be scanning their own cards for purchases made on third party apps. It's really slick.
Ask HN: ever had an idea "stolen"? Felt the need to patent?
Is short - when starting a tech company, what's worth patenting and how important is it to do so? What other measures may you take instead?
I can't wait until Anonymous starts sending infringement notices in bulk. Cutting off people's Internet access based on a few random threats is a pretty obvious denial of service vulnerability.
Hm, well usually when they advertise 10Mb down, a speed test usually confirms that number. Are you not getting advertised speeds on your land line? I don't remember a time when I didn't get a given advertised speed. Obviously reliability is a different story, but unless you're paying business class, you probably won't get a SLA anyway.
you might like MAMMP on the mac better... http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html
thanks for the reply. i read the answers but unfortunately none have proven helpful thus far. i installed everything through mamp and after rereading multiple tutorials nothing indicated that there was an additional step necessary to configure php when using mamp. did i miss something? thanks again.
KenJackson is very right. The tattoo artist that inked Mike Tyson's face, is suing "The Hangover 2" for Stan's facial tattoo. I know a post-production house employee that is tasked with changing Stan's facial tattoo frame by frame so that the artist cannot claim infringement on the DVD sales. Very sad how easy it is to make a fortune off the legal system.
It's actually incredibly common to extend trademark status to include pictures of architectural works. For example, just google around to find examples such as ... Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I don't know about the other examples, but the Rock Hall lost that battle:

http://www.gentilephoto.com/html/bio_frame.htm

As it happens, I live nearby, and I've used my big black camera and tripod on the premises many times without incident. The security guards have always been friendly to me.

I think the overall trend of wealthy organizations and individuals attempting to broaden their intellectual property holdings this way is a symptom of the way high litigation costs result in asymmetric access to the legal system. The Rock Hall (or Jay Maisel) can afford to litigate forever. I'd be utterly ruined by even a single lawsuit.
By doing so you've raised their costs

I don't think that's actually true, aside from maybe $10/month extra in hosting[0], I think costs tend to be lower with not-PHP. Using PHP greatly increases the probability that a random contractor will be a bad programmer who will write things that are broken, require more billable hours to get things done or make a mess that slows down the next guy.

I've never lost work due to suggesting not-PHP to a client. I have, however regretted failing to do so several times. I've come to believe that a client's insistence on using PHP is nearly as much of a red flag as a programmer not knowing anything else.

[0] If a client is worried about $10/month extra in hosting costs, you'll probably also have to fight them for every dollar. They might even try to get out of paying what they agreed to. I've had it happen.
First, you wouldn't get all programmers. You'd still have customer service. You'd probably also have executives, teachers, scientists, mechanics to work on robots, doctors, cooks, and then your smattering of people mixed in to help with robotic and computerized tasks.

Second, many people are not skilled enough in math and logic to program well. If programming became as pervasive as math education, lots of people would forget it after high school or never really learn it. If it became as pervasive as writing (as some commenters mention), then it would exist in a similar state: a collection of highly talented authors and a mass of untalented writers (with some in between). So you'd have to have newer programming environments that let unskilled people get some useful tasks done reasonably well. We have a lot of work to do before programming environments get there, but some people can make interesting things with mangled Excel spreadsheets or spaghetti code in PHP or copy-paste-modify JavaScript hacks.

Third, also as some people mention, labor is cheap in certain parts of the world, so robots aren't economical. Contrary to what some claim, I don't think that will go away. There will always be some portion of humanity that is not sufficiently educated to be programmers. This could be due to socio-economic circumstances, or it could simply be because they don't want to learn it. Some people go through high school refusing to learn, others drop out. How do you fix that? If they can't get customer service jobs, then they have to sell their manual labor cheap enough to compete with robots. You'd only replace all that if you eliminate poverty on a global level and have excellent education globally too. Then there won't be cheaper labor, so those jobs will move to robots, and then there won't be enough people wanting to hire humans for labor and so finally that market would cease to exist. I'm not counting on that happening, not even in a hundred years and possibly not ever. With a concerted effort we might have a chance at a utopian-like society world-wide in a couple hundred years, but that's plenty of time for wars, natural disasters, apathy, tyrants, terrorists, or any number of things to mess it up.

Conclusion: Sure let's make programming environments more accessible to less-nerdy people, and let's improve education about programming, since these things will improve lives. But we won't end up with all programmers.
You didn't address his point at all. Is it really necessary to protect these works for 50, 60, 70 years?
I apologize that I got testy, I just don't think there is a need to paste the whole valgrind run into the message.

Anyway, problem #1 is that valgrind is not a code-coverage tool - it only sees the execution path that just happened. You can, of course, combine it with a code-coverage tool, and people do, but code coverage is an incredibly difficult thing, since a huge number of code paths just don't happen in any normal execution. And those are the dangerous ones, both for malware attacks and for reliability.

Problem #2, which is smaller, is that valgrind is just not that perfect - for real-life code with foreign-language interfaces, real-time driver accesses, and so on and so on, it will give false positives and false negatives. This is why it has a feature where it takes a humongous error-suppression file to stop it from showing you things that you're not interested in. That's not a perfect solution.

I'm not saying there is nothing you can do - of course you can, and for well-defined projects with strong security goals and very large resources, you can get to excellent security. But even the Sun JVM had buffer overflows, I seem to remember. Those guys have heard of valgrind.

If there was a button that someone could push to make C/C++ lack of memory safety stop mattering, it would have been pushed by now.
i just replied to joshrice below, but i installed everything with mamp and never read anything in a tutorial or online that required additional configuration for php when using mamp. perhaps i overlooked something?
That solution worked well for Javascript, since it is impossible to remove the bad parts since they're embedded in older browsers.

For a server side language I would imagine a better solution is taking the good parts of PHP and creating a new language out of it. Its a very difficult thing to do, and attracting the top members of the PHP community will be challenging -- but could have a useful result.

I hate a lot about PHP, but it definitely has good parts. Python and ruby are great languages - but their style is completely different. I use PHP because there isn't a better alternative that "has the same feel."
Easy encryption in Rails with attr_encrypted
DC Police Arrest Journalists at Public Meeting
Adding & Tracking Social Buttons on your site
Sure - and from that perspective farming was a probably not a great example. But surely more people could be programmers than currently are.

Pushing a car is physically exhausting but doesn't require much training and practice. Programming requires training and practice, but I don't know that it requires more training and practice than, say, becoming a lawyer, doctor, martial artist, or other engineer. And the opportunities for practice come much earlier in programming training than lawyer or doctor training!

Though now that I think about it, farming involved more than just physically exhausting work - knowing what to plant, when, how to handle the soil, etc. - those all seem "hard" to me in a "training and practice" sense.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails Generate $17.90 per Email
Jesse Schell: "I think we killed them all, cause that's how we roll."

http://storify.com/devonvsmith/games-for-change-jesse-schell...

P.S. The whole talk is worth listening to when it eventually comes out.
I wonder why the Windows client will officially not be updated to Jingle? If it was just "not at the moment," they would have either kept mum or said so, but to actually say that it won't be updated..... that says a lot.
Well, I am not sure why Google went with XMPP when the rest of the telecom and networking industry is gravitating towards IETF SIP as signaling protocol. There are so may overlaps in both of them in the sense that they use the same components such as SDP and ICE. Can anyone from Google or otherwise throw some more light on

- Why Google prefers XMPP over SIP
- In what areas XMPP is better that SIP

I am not stating that one is better than the other, but would like to understand the core differences and advantages.

Also with Google moving on with XMPP and other major vendors converging on SIP, where do you see the inter-operability issue heading towards?
Tiny Tilera Threatens To Thrash Intel, AMD
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.6.8, Including Lion Prep
I ascribe to the notion known to a few other countries that an artistic work belongs to the culture that produced it, and not the individual artist.

The only thing the artist may be protected from is duplication for the mere purpose of profit, not further cultural benefit.

Thus everyone is free to make derivative works, so long as they're not so closely associated with the original that its considered mere duplication.

Duplication, if not for profit, can be allowed for individual consumers but not businesses.

---

I think writing off this admittedly socialistic view on artistic work as "self entitlement" is short sighted.
That overreaction was one of the funniest things I've read online in some time.
> Immortality seems an easier problem to solve than building a starship

Why do you think so?
> Cold war was fun.

On your side of the curtain, maybe.
I managed to download it after multiple tries and uploaded a mirror here: http://multiupload.com/3I1SLCNT1Q

I will edit out the link when the book on the site gets updated.
LDAP as a hierarchical data store with same flat schema for each node containing application specific serialised Python dictionaries.

Oh, and PostgreSQL for reporting.
Instapaper Server, Including Data and Codebase, Seized by FBI in Unrelated Raid
Sadly, I can see recruiters abusing the hell out of this. I hope they have an opt out.
Eng vs Sl Live: England vs Sri lanka t20 Live cricket 2011 score online Updates
Eng vs Sl Live: England vs Sri lanka t20 Live cricket 2011 score online Updates
Why equate unemployment with boredom?
For information on support in GNOME's Empathy IM client and on Maemo/MeeGo, see http://blog.barisione.org/2011-06/broken-gtalk-calls/
Sounds like a good use case for Instapaper :P
I guess we'll find out when we build one of each. Until then, it's like asking what's easier to build, a heavier-than-air flying vessel, or a magic carpet?
My point was more to show that it can be done if people just want to play around with node.js on windows until it becomes a more first class tool. Not a plug particularly for Cygwin, though it sure beats MS-DOS.
The title is mis-leading in many ways though the premise is rather interesting. (Basically that we've been using the 'reference web' until the recent development of the 'social' web.)

It's a intriguing idea - can we have separate 'webs' for reference, social, academia, commerce etc.
Just store in plaintext because I am already assuming you are. All the this talk about sha-1 vs bcrpyt vs scrpyt is nice and all but I have little faith that most companies care about this as much as HN does. I believe that most people are using the default password storage mechanism for their framework which are already known to be easy to break if the database is compromised. But all of that is mute anyways. Unless you have access to the site's source how would you know if they are hashing at all much less which one they are using? The best practice is to use a random password for each site you use. I just don't see any point in having an rememberable password for websites and hashing just leaves a false sense of security as illustrated by md5.
This one is better atleast:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8p9x6_jean-pierre-dutilleu...
Start around 3:30
Just a thought, if you want to do this then I recommend not posting anything that becomes popular. I wouldn't be happy if I woke up with 100 email notifications that my thread had been replied to.
WebGL is Fundamentally Flawed
Prepping your Gemfile for Rubinius