skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It would be nice to see longer running experimentsto see how a) long term usage (compaction in LSM trees) and b) disk interactions (benefits of compression) impact performance.

For example, in the large values experiment, the experiment executes 1000 writes. However if the results report LevelDB as 1060 ops/sec. Assuming op == write, then the experiment ran for all of 1 second. This shows great instantaneous performance, but what if it kept running?

Additionally, it appears that no-compression is the way to go, which makes sense for small values and an in-memory experiment, but is that the case when disk comes into play?
Spot on observation. So, it is idiotic for the competitors to hit on AirBnB, since that is the biggest company in their budding niche and if that falls, well, nothing will remain. They should all try to minimize the damage to their biz model.

EDIT: Let me elaborate: Firms compete among themselves in a given field and all's fair in this competition. However, when the whole industry is threatened, you should gather forces, or else not to try to make your competitor look bad, because that will rub on you. Well-known example is the tobacco industry (their PR is relatively unified). If the consumer's trust in the whole industry is shaken (as in AirBnB) then it doesn't matter you are better than your competitors in this or that regard, people don't care.
I've just been using vim's built in folding with indentation as the fold method. Thus far I have complaints; it seems to work as I want it.
So...when's the buy-out?
I've had similar problems with my Android phone and LatAm carrier (Claro).

Claro has a deal with Yahoo, and they overwrote Browser's search provider configuration, which is a file owned by root, so that when I choose Google the search provider is really Yahoo. They also uninstall GTalk on all phones (which can't be re-installed from the app store) and I had to rely on shady links to .apks posted on forums to install it, and now don't have automatic updates for it.

While I can't directly blame it on Android or Google, I beleive Google should really be the one stepping into the mud and fighting my carrier in order to solve this. As a customer my chances against Claro are almost nil.
This should be their slogan. It minds me of Avis' old slogan "We try harder" (because we're second).
As the owner of a Motorola Charm, I can relate to the lady.

The Moto Charm sucks. It is full of bugs.

I'm not a Motorola hater, as I've had a couple in the past (including the old v555, which lasted for a couple of years).
There is no such thing as bad press, and AirBnB is only going to get more exposure and users from this.
Case in point : Godaddy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822946
3 Steps to Building a Personal Brand
Android Analytics referral tracking
This post show you what is, how to implement, and finally how to test the analytics referral tracking in android.
Among other use cases this is where something like https://www.socialfortress.com would be very useful.

[Disclosure: I'm involved with Social Fortress and it is still in beta]
Let me be more clear here by what is meant by 'parameterizing' a SQL command.

So, looking at some of my old code I see in Visual Basic .NET, I start by 'declaring' the types of, and allocating storage for, three identifiers:

Dim my_SQL_command_string As String

Dim my_SQL_INSERT_command As New SQLCommand

Dim new_instance_values_sum As Long

Then I build the 'command text' of a SQL command string:

my_SQL_command_string = _
" INSERT Instance_Value_Averages " & _
" ( Instance_ID, Instance_Values_Sum, N_Instance_Values ) " & _
" VALUES " & _
" ( @Instance_ID, @Instance_Values_Sum, @N_Instance_Values ) "

In this string are three 'parameters':

@Instance_ID
@Instance_Values_Sum
@N_Instance_Values

Then I assign my command string, with its three parameters, to the property CommandText of my SQL command:

my_SQL_INSERT_command.CommandText = my_SQL_command_string

My SQL command has a property Parameters which is an instance of a collection class with a method Add. So, I use the method Add to add a value for parameter

@Instance_Values_Sum

to the collection:

my_SQL_INSERT_command.Parameters.Add( "@Instance_Values_Sum", _
SqlDbType.bigint, 8 ).Value = new_instance_values_sum

I continue with such uses of the method Add and assign values to the other two parameters

@Instance_ID
@N_Instance_Values

Eventually I execute the SQL command via:

my_SQL_INSERT_command.ExecuteNonQuery

For the value I give to parameter

@Instance_Values_Sum

it is 8 bytes of binary and, thus, could have anything that could be in 8 bytes. So, presumably my SQL query is fully safe from any data at all and also from 'SQL injection'.

Is this what is meant by 'parameterizing' a SQL query?
Maybe just personal preference here but there's a lot of text in there (likely lots that won't be read). I'd drop it down to a sentence and a diagram. Agree with the idea though.
Even if they don't, they'll come out stronger.
I just got the same letter...going to contact a patent lawyer and see where that gets me. This is crazy...please email me at jeff@hansenwholesale.com with any extra info that you may have...I will do the same.
I would not have educated myself as a child or teenager.

What I mean is if you were chained to a desk and forced to study something, would your mind have automatically picked out relationships and meanings, even if they were not explicitly drilled? Most people in the upper third of intelligence do this almost automatically. For them, the curriculum is not the education.

"The problem is that half of people are not smart enough."

The studies of IQ and life outcome suggest that people of below-average intelligence do not spontaneously deduce general principles when given many specific examples. If you teach them to read by word recognition training, they will not figure out the rules of phonics on their own. It will be difficult or impossible for them to read a word that was not trained into them in childhood. (Whereas even really thick people trained in phonics can read words like "platen" or "vellus" that they have never seen before, and they can make themselves understood at writing down words they know but have never seen spelled.)

States once had a lot of leeway in their education systems.

I was thinking of decentralization even at a lower level. If all the schools in a city are captured by a stupid fad, it may take decades for the city to escape. If individual schools are left to run themselves, the ones that pick dumb ideas will lose students/money to schools that pick good ideas.

She'd have no idea what graphs mean, and even if she got it to some degree it would be very easy to mislead her.

She wouldn't be able to understand "the students here get the worst scores in town"? And she would keep not understanding it for 13 years? And you would never figure it out and ask to go somewhere else? There may be some students in that situation, but there are many families with some degree of awareness and ambition, and their ambitions will promptly show up in budget cuts.
I think you're misunderstanding the point here. It is perfectly possible to write awesome software in Java. With the amount of software out there, it would be completely insane for anyone to say that you can't do awesome things in Java.

> You should stand up, be confident, and realize that it is the programmer that creates awesome software. Not the language.

This highlights the misunderstanding. You're right. We should be spending our time making awesome software, not typing letters and building boilerplate code.

Full disclosure: I work with eropple on a fairly regular basis, I favor C#, I write C++ at my day job. I spent a few months doing Java, was able to do what I wanted to with it, but missed a lot of features from more featureful languages.
The New Home Button on the iPhone 5 (Allegedly)
Honest question: how is Airbnb or any of their competitors different than vacation rentals?

You rent a house for a week when the owners aren't using it. Often the key's in a combo box or they mail it to you. The only real protection is a security deposit which you pay upfront. The concept has been around for ages.
As a Window's user who uses Notepad++ why should I switch to Sublime Text?
Am I the only one who thinks that 99% chance of cerebral vascular edema is STILL preferable to 100% chance of late stage Alzheimer's?

This is absolutely how I feel. I may not take this kind of treatment in the early stages of the disease, but as soon as feel that I might be losing myself, I'd roll the dice without blinking.
Kevin Mitnick on 2600's "Off the Hook" radio show (MP3)
Topify will be shut down on August 5th, 2011
There's good potential here for accurate price discrimination. If Google collects and passes on user data (especially now that there's G+), they'll know a banker can probably pay more for a hotel than a student.

I'm not sure if they'll put this into practice, but this sure gives them the ability to.
Video - Primer on Startup HR by David Weekly
"1. Whether there was an ongoing culture of doing the wrong thing - NotW yes, AirBnb not so much (afaik)."

When you're first starting off a company, anything you do is your company culture.
The whole thing is great, but especially don't miss the part where Kevin whistles the nuclear launch codes at 34:30!
Steve Jobs only pays 15% taxes which is probably part of it.

(seriously, this is a fact http://seekingalpha.com/article/183086-steve-jobs-thrives-on... )

Take money from USA consumers, pour it into China manufacturing. They certainly aren't the only ones doing it but add them all up and you'll start to understand the problem.
>Cattle have been bred under ten thousand years of domestication to have fattier meat, whereas undomesticated sources of red meat are much leaner.

I can see that applying to deer, elk, rabbit, etc -- but moose? Furthermore, there's a considerable market for lean beef especially in the modern era, and I know that pigs have rather recently been selected for leanness. My current knowledge of the health effects of red meat as a whole is that the data are conflicting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health

The fact that Finland's diet was confounded with lots of butter and other fatty things makes the whole thing rather unconvincing as a data point saying that red meat is any more unhealthy than ordinary nutrition labeling (x grams of fat, y grams of carb, z grams of protein) would lead you to believe. I can buy a pound of 90/10 beef at the store with 12 grams of fat, ~3 grams of carbohydrate, and 23 grams of protein "per serving", which really doesn't sound terribly unhealthy next to e.g. a bag of potato chips.
You can deny that it's an Android problem all you want, but to the customer, the problem is their Android phone and the fact Android allows this situation in the first place.
It certainly kicks the pants off the Xbox 1, if that ARM core's architecture can keep up with a P3.
Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals might create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
Requiring IDs like this might actually facilitate ID theft because criminals could create fake host listings and then request all sorts of information like this in order to steal identities. Much easier than breaking into houses to steal them.
Paragraphs of justification won't convince a customer that their Android phone isn't the problem. Android allows for this situation. Therefore, it is an Android problem.
It doesn't count unless it's taxed at least three times.
Facebook Launches Security Bounty Program, Pays $500 Per Bug
But how many of these where on the front page for any considerable amount of time?
Oh my god, in 2010 there are infinity more car related deaths than there were in 1880. Are we getting worse at driving, or are cars just less safe?

There are more people, there is more stuff, and there is a little thing called inflation. People live in areas of Florida that were swamp 20 years ago.

http://mensnewsdaily.com/images/misc/tipler/a.jpg
Actually all three telecoms charge for incoming text messages. Telus pioneered it, Bell followed suit and then Rogers jumped on the bandwagon in 2009.

I called Bell to have them block all incoming text messages and they said that they could not do it because it was somehow tied to their emergency 911 location determination service. After much prodding they said they could turn off incoming texts (but I should hope that I never have to call 911 with my mobile) but came back with a $3/month plan for like 500 text messages so I just took that instead.

I switched to Rogers and am now on an iPhone plan which has text messaging but I would love to be able to block incoming texts again if iOS 5 and Google+ gets serious traction.
Perhaps this is just a a smug, vindictive thing to do.
Casual gamers are driven by trends and early adopters. A lot of these people know what Kinect is because their "nerd friend Alphonso" won't stop talking about how cool it is. Don't knock the early adopter crowd just because they are small; while they may be that, their extended social circle is generally large enough to sway even the mainstream numbers.
Wow, most on HN are not action oriented?
That is easily the silliest thing I've heard about this so far, and this is after reading AirBnB's PR statement.

If they fuck this up, they won't "come out stronger", they'll come out with a sufficiently heavy PR backlash that people won't use them anymore. And that'll be that. As it stands now, the only thing people are hearing are negative things about AirBnB, and unless they take huge steps to fix that, there's going to be a lot of people who won't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
TSA and cops are both screened before they are hired, doesn't prevent the horror stories.

How do you know the people who do the screening actually do anything? What's their "skin in the game"?
I never really got the sense that Wesabe was really trying to be successful. I know that sounds odd but the web site was always in disarray and what was being offered was not compelling. It seemed like there was a lot of focus on providing universal bank APIs which sounds cool but is a different business.

Whereas Mint was simply QuickenWeb done (mostly) right.
Should be noted, the taxes in Chile are not only lower than Europe, they are also lower than in the US unless you are a member of the ultra elite rich that has a team of tricky accountants who shuffle assets to remote islands to make sure you don't pay your share. How can they do it? Well they don't maintain a global imperialist war machine that costs trillions to maintain, nor do they give away trillions to criminal bankers.
Ah, another tip. Learn the phrase "it is what it is". It's the answer to everything from lieing vendors to incredibly poor implementations. If you can learnt to accept bad software, implement it in a way it's not going to break the bank to support and move on, you'll find yourself avoiding the path to the "grumpy SA".
There is a slight advantage to Haskell/Scala/Caml's Maybe versus the nullable type system used in Vala and Groovy and so forth. If you have a hash table whose values are (e.g.) Integers, looking up a key would return a Maybe<Integer> (because there's no guarantee the key exists.) If you wanted to have null values in the hash table, then the values would be Maybe<Integer> and looking up a key would return a Maybe<Maybe<Integer>>, which could be Nothing (because the key was not present in the table) or Some<Nothing> (because the key was present and a null value was stored in the table) or Some<Some<x>> where x is an Integer. As far as I know, nullable type systems don't allow Integer?? as a type. Still—it is a huge step above the nothing you're offered in other languages.
I've been asked for an ID for both vacation rentals (through VRBO) and from most places overseas through AirBnB. Each time it was when there were some valuable items inside.

In fact, every time I've gotten a place through AirBnB, the owner met me in person. Of course, I always rent higher priced places (I look for places nicer than a hotel for the same price).
Build something significant yourself. It can be a web app, a game, whatever. Just pick something that interests you and build it.
Hardly a valid comparison. The CEO shooting an elephant has zero to do with the product GoDaddy offers, so there was no way that the negative PR would end up affecting perception of their actual product.

The AirBnb fiasco is totally different- it's not the errant actions of a CEO (although they hardly helped), it's an exposure of danger in the core of AirBnb's product.
They aren't, it's just a "smaller" scale using the internet.

The business idea is proven, AirBnB is just leveraging technology to stake out a significant market share.

Nothing wrong with this at all.
Wrong.

"We don't want to trade security for volume" == "Your screw up is our marketing"

As someone else noted, I'd never heard of this company before, but now I have. Currently my only real impression is that they're NY focused and are security conscious. I think they'll take that introduction.
Agreed. I don't want to sound totally callous, but while this is a dramatic and terrible incident in it's own right, her writing style does seem to be magnifying the drama for maximum effect/ attention, in which case it's a truly difficult problem for AirBnb to solve. Even handing her a big sack of cash/ new apartment (just an example, not recommending that course) would probably just lead to an expose blog post about how they tried to buy her silence. How do you satisfy someone if a large part of what they want is attention? Create a new security policy and name it after her?
HN, pls remove this post.

even the guy who made a mistake is entitled to his privacy

pls review US code law

http://uscode.house.gov/
Ask HN: Important milestones for a startup
For a founder of a startup, it's a bit difficult to celebrate the important milestones since things are always going on and happening. (Who needs distractions?) I thought it would be a good idea to ask the HN community what are the important milestones that a startup/founder goes through along the way. Significance could be defined as relevant to the founder, important to the business, etc.

Here's something to get it started:
MVP,
First user,
First customer,
First hire,
Funding

Edit: Comma-delineated the tentative list at the bottom
this is kind of petty...
Okay, look. As comments on TechCrunch have stated, MAJOR crisis coaching/high-level PR needs to be hired and step in, stat. This is just getting worse and worse.
The Gigabit Challenge - A Google Fiber World Wide Business Plan Competition
wow, dash isn't acceptable in unicode??

fixed with double-hyphens, thanks
Paul Graham would have a lot to lose by making such a broad, unfounded statement...unless of course that's what he's been told and has good reason to believe it's correct. If so, why should we disbelieve the pg and Airbnb account? Simply because EJ's is loaded with emotional appeal? I don't see how a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb?

I believe that most of her story is true (in the first blog post she even states that Airbnb has been incredibly helpful[1]; in fact this seems to corroborate pg's statement, they offered her financial support), that it was very traumatic for her, but what I don't believe is that pg and Airbnb are lying, that Airbnb has effectively made no attempt to help her; because they could have tried and she might have refused and now she's realized that the whole Internet is up in arms and on her side...so she can frame it however she likes, right or wrong. But I'm still inclined to believe pg would not spread disinformation; why should he? I think the man is much smarter than you're giving him credit for...

[1] http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html "I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here to emphasize that the customer service team at airbnb.com has been wonderful, giving this crime their full attention. They have called often, expressing empathy, support, and genuine concern for my welfare. They have offered to help me recover emotionally and financially, and are working with SFPD to track down these criminals."
Is that pronounced "uncle", or "uncool"?
Yeah, that is interesting. Abt the same time :). Reminds of the Malcolm Gladwell cartoon of people thinking the same thing while walking down the road.
I glossed over it a bit, but one of my points was that I thought I had done due diligence in researching the product before buying. I had compared specifications, Samsung hadn't fumbled any phones this badly before, it was a "with Google" product, they were pretty consistently communicating to their customers about coming updates, Sprint was pushing it pretty equally to the HTC Hero (and Sprint's contract came in slightly cheaper than AT&Ts), the only complaints that had surfaced on forums were mostly DOA devices, etc. All information available pointed to it being a pretty good decision at the time.

If years of market research prowess fails me and I consistently see similar stories crop up every month or two where other technically inclined people regret purchasing some other Android device, it says to me that I didn't simply get a lemon or make a huge mistake in my decision making but the market itself has a problem, whatever issues and loopholes allowed it before have remained unfixed. Since the price difference between iPhones and top end Android phones are basically the same ($100 variance or so on a >$2k total cost...big deal), and that I can mindlessly buy whatever the next iPhone release will be and have pretty good assurance Apple has my back, I'm completely unwilling to waste time researching Android devices and still possibly get bit in the ass for my efforts.
On its own it could have been innocent, but there are too many of these too close together in the press release to believe that
http://twitter.com/#!/AlexKrupp/status/97016704860823552
Is it really that had to fill in "Mr" or whatever in the other name box?
Thats funny. It has become an association at this point with Google.
A little OT from the actual story but I find it annoying when TechCrunch and similar sites find a random picture to put near the headline. I suppose the point of this is to attract more eyes to the article, but when the story is about someone getting their home trashed and you show some completely different house that looks like a bulldozer drove through it, I can't help but think you're creating an association that is a best worthless and at worst misleading. Pictures in articles serve a purpose and that purpose certainly isn't to remind me what a trashed house is.
>But there is little preventing a manufacturer or carrier from using the open-source (subset!) of Android

Except the losses from maintaining the stack separate from google, and potentially losing the google market might not be covered by the kickbacks for shovelware. The real competition will be if amazon steps up to provide a distro to phone manufactures.
There are plenty of ways to set things up so that dividends are not taxed in the US, the most obvious being stocks owned by charitable organizations or resident of another country. As to bonuses the AMT was specifically created because of people paying zero taxes despite significant income. However, you can have situations where a bonus results in minimal, zero, or even negative additional taxes for a given year. EX: Putting the full value of a bonus into a 401k while over the SS cap.
is it? I tried. But, it still renders results.