skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Strait forward and readable in many cases but beware:

http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/#loops

To be clear, I think CoffeeScript is an impressive language/abstraction. I just get tired of people selling the Javascript output as always being "straightforward" and "readable".
Weird, with Helios, I see no lag at all for me an a MacBook Air.

Not that I'm saying Eclipse has a super-responsive UI. :)
Too loose and your weight isn't distributed as evenly as it could be. Also, too loose means a lot more curvature, which puts strain on your knees (or so I've found, as I have a testy knee).

I think I'd say you know when it's set up properly when you feel almost weightless in that the hammock suspends your weight evenly. I wouldn't go by pictures of hammocks that have been set up as many are way more loose than I'd consider livable.
IBM Startup SmartCamp New York City Mentors - Good group
San Diego: join us for Hacker News meetup #18 (Fri 6/24)
yup, good point -- thanks Danielfone!
Very few complains, In fact I wish I had more ;)
My product is not spammy, It provides a great service, but I know I need to do a better at educating new users.
It tough to do when my emails do not seem to reach them...
node.js breaks backward compatibility every time it increments the x in its 0.x.y version number.
This is one of the reasons I've transferred most of my enthusiasm for new languages into new problem domains. I've been studying machine learning and DSP for most of the last year and it's done a lot more to revive my passion for programming than learning another new language could have.
Given both genetics and environment factors

The genetics you can't avoid, but the point of a true meritocracy is that you don't have the environmental factors.

I suppose by "anyone can make it" we could literally mean, "irrespective of your abilities anyone can make it"

No, that's not what it means. It means that if you have the competence to suceed, society won't hold you back. Environmental factors are all about lifting some people, and holding others back via society.

Another way to put this, if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were raised in Watts, what are the chances they'd resemble the ppl they are now? 50%? .01%?
Is it the version of Android you're running? I know that on my Dad's Telecom NZ Galaxy S he's still on 2.1 because they haven't authorised any 2.2 updates through Kies for it. I tried to install a cool synth app I'd been wanting to test on it, but because of no 2.2 update it wouldn't work.

That's android's biggest problem: carriers delaying updates for ages because of "testing". It's fine for hacky people, but for the general public like my dad who enjoy having cool new tech but CBF dealing with spoofing Kies to get it to install European updates, it's super frustrating knowing that someone else with the same phone has an improved version just because they live somewhere else.
At Yammer we use Postgres, Vertica, Redis, Riak, and Memcache. Here's a video about how we use Riak (and Scala) in production: http://blog.basho.com/2011/03/28/Riak-and-Scala-at-Yammer

PS: https://www.yammer.com/jobs
That is illegal, I agree. But while I wouldn't do that, I don't feel able to condemn him for dealing with a situation not of his own making. The government does not offer any procedure for a person in his position to regularize their legal status (eg do XYZ and pay a fine in restitution, which will allow you to apply for permanent residency on the same basis as a new visitor). Absent a way to live legally, he has little other choice.

The immigration laws in this country were practically constructed to create this exact situation, and the same politicians who voted these draconian laws onto the books have persistently underfunded and frustrated the very systems designed to help enforce them, like entry-exit databases and the like.
So Shall TV Be Disrupted? Or Democratised? Metadata is the New Oil
The presentation claims that MongoDB performance drops off a cliff once the data or the indices no longer fit in RAM. This is not entirely complete/correct.

First off, the same problem occurs no matter which database. Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, whatever, they all grind to a halt when stuff no longer fits in RAM.

Second, it's not really the whole data set or the whole index that needs to fit in RAM, it's the working set. This is a pretty big difference. I'm currently running a production MongoDB database which is about 20 times larger than RAM and at first I made the mistake of using random string primary keys (_ids). This ensured good distribution between shards but also ensured good distribution within the primary key index. This essentially made the working set of the primary key index equal to the entire index. Once the primary key index no longer fits in RAM, the database grinded to a halt. I now use a primary key consisting of a timestamp followed by some random text. The timestamp ensures that inserts only hit the end of the index, thereby keeping the working set small. The database is now almost as fast as when it was fresh.
CloudBees launches Heroku-style addons
This law is ultimately for malicious tracking cookies, but likely affects analytics (for example: first touch attribution) and targeted, but relevant, advertisements.

The biggest fear claimed by some writers of the legislation, and perhaps a justified one, is that cookies can (are?) be used to discriminate. If I remember correctly they cite a case where a large publisher could sell the cross-domain surfing behavior of people to insurance companies, recruiters, marketing bureaus or that it can be seized by the police, or leaked to hackers. It is akin to the reason why security cameras, if facing the public, must have a disclaimer sign with: "I am recording you". The cookie must inform the user: "I am tracking you". Right now, most users are unaware cookies even exist.

I agree my surfing behavior should be private, but I don't agree with the strictness and ambiguity of this law. The intentions may be right, so I don't expect them to even enforce it. As long as you don't violate the WBP ( Dutch Data Protection Act from 2001) you are ok IANAL.

That does mean if you build a recommendation engine in Holland you must comply with the WBP (secure architecture, handing over specific user data on request to a user, etc.).

One way to combat this is by using a hash. A salted hash that is untraceable to a user, but build from its IP, allows you to track the user, without the police or hackers stumbling upon personal data. Advertising and user tracking could apply this same principle.

As for the exodus, I believe it doesn't matter where your company or server is based, it is about doing business in Holland that matters for this law.
IANAD but I met someone who had migraines when she was exposed to electromagnetic radiation in certain frequencies. This was two years ago and while I thought it was plausible, (EDIT: she had a bit of a crackpot vibe).

It took her a long time to figure out what it was, and when she did, she got a house in a neighborhood in a suburb in the hills, a good distance away from cell towers, with no wifi, a toaster oven (i think) instead of a microwave, some special arrangement for the phone (might have been wireless, don't remember), some filters (forget which) on the screens of her computers, little trays to put between the laptop and the lap, and so on. She owned an instrument to measure the She was even getting paint designed for stealth planes (it absorbed electromagnetic radiation) to paint her house.

She had a hard time with doctors for a pretty long time, and showed a friend and I a presentation about the regulation and health risks surrounding certain parts of the spectrum (I think from ultraviolet on). My notion of her problem was that she had a genetic condition that made some part of her nervous system malfunction (or hurt for no reason) when exposed to too many of the wrong photons. I don't know if she had a good sense of direction but she could, apparently, sense if she was getting a lot of certain frequency radiation because her head hurt.
Utah man updated Facebook status during standoff
Can't be too many players around to play in the $1B range. In the US from gaming industry:

EA (7.5B market cap)

Activision (13B market cap)

Microsoft

Sony

Valve (I somehow think they couldn't afford it)

Tech / Social:

Zynga

Google

Facebook

Foreign? No idea here.
Huh? "Anybody" (i.e. excluding terrorists, nazis, communists, HIV-positives, and other comparatively small segments of the population) can become a US permanent resident by marrying a US citizen unless they are present in the US illegally. Then the case is more complicated, but in many cases you are still eligible.
Really throws the future of Hulu in doubt. If the big three media companies are no longer part owners, and they already see Hulu as undermining and upsetting their traditional partners, what incentive do they have to continue providing free content?

If anything at this point Hulu will be a talent acquisition.
Teradata
Study on job interview or work on small side project for more income?
If I want to earn more income in addition to my main job, should I study on job interview questions to companies such as google, amazon, etc. in the hope of getting a job there with a higher salary (i know it's extremely difficult...), or should I be a one-man team and spend the time to work on some small side projects such as mobile or web apps, knowing that it'll take lots of time, research, learning, trial and error, no guarantee on any kind of significant income stream...what would you do? Any recommendation or advice?
a thirst for hockey only blood can quench

Yeah, we saw that one in Vancouver recently...
Here's the relevant OECD article http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

tl;dr: there are big differences between countries in the impact of parental education and earnings on the education and earnings of their kids. Parental success is a very strong determiner of both in the U.S., but much less so in, say, Canada and Finland (both of which are among the top four best-scoring countries on the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment).
> Are you saying Gini co-efficient doesn't show inequality?

Let's take the parent's example. Say we have a country with 300 million people making $100 each per year (all exactly equal) and 20 people making $1 billion each per year (also all exactly equal).

The total income is $50 billion per year. The Lorenz curve looks like a straight line from (0%, 0%) to (100%, 60%) (because the area under those 2 people making $1 billion is zero for our purposes. That means the area under the Lorenz curve is 0.3, the area _over_ the Lorenz curve is 0.2, and the Gini coefficient is 0.4.

That's lower than the Gini coefficient for the US.

Which was the poster's point: if you have a very small rich elite and a vast pretty poor populace whose _total_ income is comparable to the total income of the elite due to the sheer numbers of the poor, then inequality measures like the Gini coefficient will be very strongly affected by the inequality within the poor part of the population. And if inequality there is low, overall inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient can end up looking pretty low in spite of the existence of the rich elite.

Note that if in the above example the 300 million people each made $1000/year, not $100, then the Gini coefficient would be very low... in spite of those 20 really rich guys.

Now maybe you don't think this situation has much inequality, but that's a separate issue. The claim was simply that in this situation inequality measures like the Gini coefficient will show low inequality.
MySQL for storage, Redis for caching.
App Engine DataStore, Oracle, MySQL, Sqlite. Oracle Express is great (and free).
Haven't seen any Loopt activity on my social networks for a long time now. Are they in the deadpool?
You're blaming the laws of the country you want to recognize you instead of your parents who did not recognize the laws of the country they smuggled you into.
I like it because it is different (Inspiring maybe?), and it is someone's hacky project. Maybe a bit simple, but fits in IMO.
I don't disagree with what you say about the core experience and the danger of generalising from personal experience but there have been 14 billion app downloads. That's a lot for something which a lot of people seem to be suggesting is either irrelevant or niche.

I think what you say may have been true in the past but I do think moving forward apps are playing an increasing role, even if it is just three or four for many users.
MacBook Air with an SSD?
Apologies are good and all, but this is why you need and SLA with compensation.

No one wants to lose money, then have the culprit say "oops, its growing pains again".
Dutch parliament approves mobile net neutrality bill
One thing you can never accuse Google of is having a single view inside the company!

I think that Java-as-it-is-in-Android is a great technology, but some view it as transitional while HTML adds the capabilities needed to build a wide range of application.

Dalvik (the Android "JVM") is a layer on top of the Android operating system. The fact that it exists doesn't preclude other environments running as a layer as well. Android is here to stay, but I think it's a given that the capabilities of the operating system will expand. For example, Android 3.0 adds RenderScript [1], which doesn't have a Java dependency at all.

[1] http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/renderscript/index...
Kelly is a great optimist and I love his list but the first comment calls out some more words worth thinking about, even if you don't agree that they're on the same level:

>> s.g. (http://twitter.com/1111Observant)

>> here's 6 more.

>>Invading. Recording. Tracking. Influencing. Exploiting. Robbing.
I haven't had a chance to use Riak in a production application yet but am definitely looking for the first possible excuse to use it.
As well as killing conversion, this will pretty near force your users to write the password down. That's another attack vector (that you can't do anything at all about).

The middle ground is a policy that enforces harder to bruteforce passwords (eg. at least one of each: upper case, lower case, numeral. Minimum length and no combinations of dictionary word + easily guessed number). Of course, the more complicated you make it, the more likely the user will write it down, forget it, not bother with your service, and/or curse your name.
I give reviewers a little bit more credit than that and believe they are capable of telling a difference between important and marginal.
Honestly? Totally rooting for global warming. For your sakes.
Gree - $5B

DeNA - $6B

Tencent - $50B
I always said that YQL is the most underutilized technology at Yahoo! (internally and externally). It has/had the potential to do what it claimed, select * from internet;.
"and there are several words in the Hebrew bible that are usually translated as "soul""

I stand corrected on this.

"The notion of the "soul" in Greek philosophy predates Aristotle."

True, but my point is that certain sects of Christianity borrow heavily from Greek philosophy when trying to intellectualize what a 'soul' actually is. Some tend to follow the Aristotelian conception rather than the Platonic (they are distinct.) I'm not trying to say that Aristotle invented the concept of the soul if that's what you're thinking.
This will probably ruin the joke and I'm sorry, but could someone explain what's meant by "bit kiting"?
The real shame is that this is still something the programmer has to worry about in first place.

When you're a database in 2011 then you should have a damn good reason for asking programmers to space-optimize their identifiers. I can't see such a reason in Mongo really.
You seem to be assuming that something is right because it is the law. I'm inclined to question that assumption.

I could also make the usual snarky comment and say that by the letter of the "law" we owe native americans a whole bunch of land. Maybe even the land your house is on.
Why do you think Valve couldn't afford it? They are a private company and so don't have to release revenue figures, but they make billions in revenue a year.
You don't need to be uneducated, insane, or an idiot to withdraw all of your money when you suspect that your bank is going to fail. It can be an individually rational move even if you merely suspect that other customers suspect that your bank is going to fail.
>Stories should be upvoted because they're interesting and relevant, not because the submitter has a social network upon which to draw.

That's only a concern if you consider yourself an HN'er first and entrepreneur second. If your goal in submitting is to provide high-quality material for HN, then you wouldn't use meatpuppetry. If, on the other hand, your goal is to drive traffic and you don't care about HN, then you use whatever means you can. It's the same for people who spam craigslist trying to get users. They're polluting craigslist and lowering it's quality, but they care about traffic, not craigslist. If it's acceptable to do that (and most startups do), then it's acceptable to game HN.
Other than having Bing as the default search provider, I would love to know why people choose it over Google.
I agree it seems heartless to not grant kids like this guy residency. The problem I have with this is that that would just make the moral hazard stronger. Parents already smuggle their kids into the US to give them a better life. If they knew that these kids would then be eligible for legalization, it's hard to see how even more people wouldn't try.

I'm not a Minuteman and I'm not going to argue for any border fences, but it seems like the root cause of the problem is that the risk of getting caught is so low that many people try it. The real solution would be to make people not want to immigrate illegally in the first place.
I would rule out:
- Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Sony, Valve

Just doesn't fit the acquisition profile for those companies IMO. The Popcap guys are smart, and for a billion dollar valuation, the acquire'er would have to have some sizable synergistic advantages afterwards.
I can sorta see many cases where that would be useful, but personally I am happy letting SQLLite do the heavy lifting extracting things with indexes, grouping and using the where clause.

But yeah, JSON is great for small amounts of data.
I took it as the bit equivalent to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_kiting
As a younger/smaller companies, I wouldn't use Oracle/DB2 even if it was free. Happy mongodb user here.
Thanks! That's exactly what I was referring to.
legal immigrant (now citizen) here

immigration is a pain in the ass. we stood in line at the INS at 3am (back before they instituted appointments), and i'm not just talking tech people...i mean everyone, from all over the world and all walks of life. it sucked but we all did it.

we stood in lines and paid the fees and waited and followed the rules. if you don't, adios. i have zero, ZERO pity for everyone who has tried to come across as a charity case when they really just wanted to jump the line or not deal at all. to even get back in line i would assess a $10k fine on all of you, regardless of income or background.
Pretty cool. Might base my next color palette off of this.
Props to Manu for keeping his check from his first investment. That's so cool.
Yup. :)

Nations are basically large families.

Imagine you spent your whole life thinking you were part of Family A. But then, you discovered you weren't biologically part of Family A or actually adopted by Family A, instead Family A kidnapped you. Would you be inclined to stay with Family A, or would you seek out Family P - your biological family? Similarly, would you want to stay with Nation A or go seek out Nation P?

I would go seek out Nation P.
Koder App - Code Editor for iPad
The Pain of Mobile Web Development
IPhone still most popular phone on both AT&T and Verizon
Not Valve? I dunno, it seems possible to me, but I think it's probably one of the companies trying to move into casual games, which PopCap are great at, I assume EA.
I can't argue with your reasoning

But I just switched from self-hosted SVN to Github and it was painful for our Windows devs. Offer a stupidly easy upgrade path from TortoiseSVN to Github and I would have joined a long time ago. In fact I'd pay extra for that. I think I am not alone.
No API?
Its simple. Do you implement the LAW ? or let law hijacked by emotions/plight? The legal aliens are idiots?. There are literally billions of people living below poverty line, who will sacrifice everything just to come to America - legally!!! Hardships, emotions and empathy has no place when you take into account 300 million citizens who are legally bound to support the system (tax, servcies, public shcools, hopsitals etc)

The real gem of this story is that the Secret Service and Whitehouse staff/security couldn't catch the fake social security card/number, that Vargas submitted.

LoL! If those institutions cant catch, then who can? Anybody can come here illegally and live/work enjoy. The fear (no reason for it) they have is similar to fear we have of accident - it rarely happens but needs vigilance/careful.
Hacker group LulzSec downplays arrest, claims Brazil attack
no actually we don't have "more resources" as population grows

the freshwater supplies all over the US are in peril. naively presuming we can continue to push towards some 400 million number simply isn't taking into account our actual inability to provide water, clean air, energy and infrastructure capacity for all of these people
Winklevosses Drop Facebook Fight, Keep Settlement
A clever idea, however his data source is irrevocably corrupted by the auto exposure and auto white balance of his webcam. The result is, sadly, more influenced by the algorithms in his camera than the sky itself.

Notice how there's some outrageous and short-lived tones during sunrise and sunset -- that's the white balance jumping around (Possibly an automatic saturation gain too?)

Then notice how the brightness doesn't peak and fall during the day, instead jumping quickly from darkness to "full" brightness with frequent dramatic shifts far greater than reality would allow. That's because the moving cloud cover is triggering the auto exposure to jump around incessantly.

The ideal fix would be to replace the webcam with a digital camera capable of tethered shooting and fully manual operation. You'd fix the shutter, aperture and ISO values to a level that minimizes clipping, set the white balance to daylight, and point the camera in a direction least likely to be in the sun's path (in the southern hemisphere, that's south).

In order to capture the dynamic range fully, you could allow the camera to automatically choose the shutter speed, then compensate in the algorithm by reading the shutter speed from the EXIF data.

That said, full points for the idea, and for a great web app to visualize the data!
"in many cases" being the operative term there.

How many YC startups would kill to get Steve Jobs to work even 1 hour a week for them as employee #1?

It's all about perceived value and negotiation. If your company values you enough, they will not make you work unreasonable hours. And if a non-workaholic employee values himself enough, he will not agree to work unreasonable hours.

Death marches are definitely a pathology in the computer industry, as they are in the medical field, where residents are forced to work insanely long shifts without sleep. In both cases, people's mental and physical well being is put at risk, the chance of burnout increases, and the quality of the results suffers.

It does not have to be this way. What will it take for management to stop understaffing and overworking their employees? And how long will employees consent to being worked in to an early grave?

Companies pulling this sort of crap is what really makes me wish the computer field had some effective unions that could collectively bargain for reasonable hours for reasonable pay. I know I'd join in a heartbeat.
db2? Sybase?
Anyone have any insight on where to get that many generic images?