skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you mean serving audio files 100k times (once per "user") then it's not expensive unless the files are especially large. If you're serving over HTTP then use high performance web server (like nginx or lighttpd) and a dedicated server.

I highly recommend ServerBeach myself -- especially if you're going to use any significant amount of bandwidth. For $75/mo you can have a dedicated server and 1200 GB/mo transfer.

http://www.serverbeach.com/catalog/cust_ref_landing_new.php?... ($100 off w/my referral code ($250 for me))

http://www.serverbeach.com (no referral code :D)
4 Weather Libraries for Ruby and Rails Developers
ERepublik creates multiplayer global strategy game
I read that as "head transplant"...
I suspect the coverage on CNET and other media will do much more to help than a few thousand Twitter users messaging each other.

But if it helps Twitter users feel important, why not?
The argument against this startup is the same argument that was made when Facebook introduced the news feed; namely, that there is a difference in terms of the privacy of merely having publicly available data and aggregating that very data. The argument has to be, the very aggregation of data is an invasion of privacy; the added simplicity is an aide to stalking and illegal/immoral in itself.

This is sort of the 'see-through window' argument - If you live in a sky-scraper and you have sex in front of a window, and somebody takes a photo, is that invasion of privacy? The 'information' was technically already out there, and the photographer merely aggregated it (lets say he also found out who lived in the apartment through information publicly available) and posted it online.

Can aggregation in itself be an act of intrusion? I don't know, but its one hell of an argument to have.
6 Reasons Why Online Education Will Boom in the Bust » eduFire
Azure Capital's numbers game
Nifty idea, but I doubt it will gain traction without some kind of industry-wide standard. Even then, business cards are easy to hand over (no lag) and you can write things on them.
all valid points. The poster might also want to consider using a CDN if it's single request streaming files, otherwise colo as you said.

whatever you choose make sure it can scale fast, but at the same time (depending on your presentation of the media), there's always the option of piggybacking on someone else (like youtube) who's made the infrastructure investment.
Because Java is an incredibly powerful tool that works across a large selection of platforms with minimal effort.

And, Hadoop is only the infrastructure, they have APIs for C, C++ and shell for the applications. http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/FAQ
I am a very happy user of Balsamiq. I was able to deliver 20+ rough wireframes in about 6 hours using its interface. It would've taken significantly longer in OmniGraffle and we've been able to use them cross platform b/c of AIR.

A++ would do business with again.
Working as a researcher on the DARPA URGENT project.
> About $400/mo for a half cabinet and some power. You're in the neighborhood of probably $500-$900/mo.

And that doesn't even factor in buying a server if it's a colo. Which is exactly why he should be renting a dedicated and buying bandwidth at $10-$20/Mbit. It doesn't make sense to setup your own rack unless you're going to have more than a few machines. It's more expensive and a lot more work.
An inspiring story. I want to know how that guy managed to actually see his laptop screen whilst coding on the beach in the sun.
Really cool. Hadoop is pretty mature and Yahoo's shown it works well on large clusters, but it can be a bear to install, maintain, and learn. I'm sure many companies wouldn't hesitate to pay a few bucks to get another company to help them get up and running faster.
Thanks ....

What about using Amazon S3 to store/stream users uploaded files, but the site being hosted elsewhere - a dedicated box at home for instance?

They click to play a file and it starts streaming it from S3. Is this doable? Looks to be cheap this way?
We've been doing something like this with Growl - how does it compare?
With Facebook news feed the data is limited by the fact that you have privacy settings and can limit the information you provide to a certain set of people which you choose.
Working on http://www.roomorama.com, a short term rental marketplace.
Python: http://www.michael-noll.com/wiki/Writing_An_Hadoop_MapReduce...

Ruby: http://blog.rapleaf.com/dev/?p=16

It's pretty hokey, either running through the shell or calling a REST service through a proxy, but it's been done if you're allergic to non-scripting languages.
Sure. http://mediawombat.com does that very thing. The website is stored on a hosted machine somewhere in Florida and the actual media is stored on Amazon's S3 and loaded via the browser on demand.
Yes, precisely. This is how Facebook moved to address the initial news feed/mini feed issues.

The current start-up is likely to be under similar constraints; unless they're everybody's friend, only publicly accessible information should become available in the first place. And yet it still feels uncomfortable that the aggregation (basically a social-network google-ing of you) is so easy.
No more disturbing than Google really. Today's reality is that if you put information on the internet that can be tied to your name, email, address, phone number, etc, then that information can be found and used for or against you. Improvements in search will make finding this information easier and easier.
That's perfectly fine, but his source still should elaborate.
* Working on my second book for O'Reilly

* Speaking about, and generally pushing for more interest in Open Data

* Putting my entire life in a semantic graph: http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=73

* Trying to figure out what programmers can do about risk management failures
No consensus exists on how the brain rapidly reorganizes sensory maps following hand amputation and then reverses course after surgical attachment of a new hand

That's assuming an either/or where there isn't one. Brain regions don't have one function. If they did it would make our jobs that much easier! Instead, the amputation likely dampened activation associated with the hand (phantom pain results when it doesn't) and begins to respond to facial stimulation. But there's still some input to that region from the rest of the arm. By plugging in a new hand, the old region begins receiving very similar, but more extensive, input since the connecting nerves, spinal cord to brain, are intact. It's just a matter of the volume and frequency getting turned up. The more difficult part is the brain re-learning the fine motor skills because:

Savage’s recovery so far is limited to major nerves in the right hand, not to peripheral nerve connections for individual fingers, Frey says. It’s unclear how the neural map of the right hand will adapt as Savage’s finger nerves regenerate and finger sensation develops.
Concerts, theater, http://news.ticketstumbler.com and some other fun stuff for the http://ticketstumbler.com mothership
If you're talking about providing a high capacity and quality experience then there's no alternative to colo.

I think the /Mbps prices quoted are a bit on the high side (you can get cheap transit at 5GBP/Mbps if you deal in reasonable commits). Apart from dropping your own line in there's no cheaper way I know of to achieve the quality.

Use of a CDN would allow less capital outlay on the standard http hosting (could use dedis, vm, cloud) and somewhat instant scalability. Once you know your traffic patterns your implementation options sometimes get made for you.
posterous.com

linkedin.com (groups - I'm just as surprised as you)
nice..
If you have a first-class degree from a top institution, that's called "so what?".

Spokeo fits in nicely I think, to answer the so what and offer a more rounded view on prospective candidates.

It reduces asymetry of information and reduces the risk of adverse selection by employers. In my opinion, having a good qualification is not enough of a signal to being a good employee. It therefore provides essential information that should ultimately benefit both parties.

That said, I don't think there's any substitute for a good face-to-face interpersonal interaction to determine a person's character or suitability for a role.
i hate apple. all their products are fucking overpriced.
I go through http://serverpronto.com for my hosted machine. It's a real machine (not virtual or shared) and I've got real root access to it. It comes with Fedora 3 or 4 and I upgraded it to Fedora 6 remotely, but I'm a little intimidated to upgrade beyond that without having physical access to the machine. $30/mo, 200GB bandwidth @ 100Mbit, 30GB HD, 256M ram for starters. There are other options. I use S3 for storage of large data items. All-in-all not too bad for a good hosting setup. I host about 10 semi-active sites on that one machine. My S3 monthly charges are $1 for my personal backups of important data and $30 for website data.

I know that there are plans out there for unmetered monthly data that's capped at a certain speed for a fixed low $$/mo (30-ish), but they tend to be virtual hosts. You could get a real host (for the site and good performance) with capped bandwidth and a second host with unmetered bandwidth for the storage and delivery of your streaming media. Best of both worlds kinda, but again S3 charges so little, that it may be better to just go through Amazon for the media.
It tracks you by your email. Well, that was simple.

Get a professional vs personal email, if you don't have both already, and manage them both using Gmail (http://look.fo/how-to-manage-multiple-email-accounts-from-gm...).

Potentially, buy a .com/.me for yourself, and use firstname@lastname.me for your professional email.
Do social media apps have a future?
Not a day goes by without hearing about yet another new social media app, with a revenue model built around advertising.

* Who thinks that this is a sustainable business model?
* What other ways are there to monetise these apps?
* Will there be shake up and consolidation in the market? Can all these startups survive?
* Is social media just a fad that will get left behind if people decide it's just not real enough?
Five old-fashioned Web concepts that need to die
Stitcho is basically "Growl for the Web", but NOT in the sense of being another Javascript-to-Growl bridge (a few of those exist out there, protoGrowl, Growl mootools, etc.)

Rather, Stitcho lets you send notifications from server side code that are delivered to your users via the Stitcho widget. The Stitcho server sits in the middle to route and deliver the notifications.

Also, Stitcho provides widgets for Mac and Windows. (The Mac version can use Growl if it's available.)

Does that answer your question? If not, please clarify.
They're all crap. On my MPB (mid-2008 model) there's no tactile feedback at the exact point of the key firing its signal. Sure there's a feedback point, but it's about a millimeter too high (early). You have to push a key firmly into its mushy base to get it to work. Combine that with the lack of audio feedback and you get a keyboard that I hate.

There are some laptops out there with great keyboards. They don't run OS X though: http://herdrick.posterous.com/cant-i-have-tasteful-with-a-go
What Sequoia Really Meant
Cool ... that looks to be the cheapest solution.

Possibly use a shared deluxe to host site on 1.2TB bandwidth a month, then all the storage and streaming of audio files from S3.
Ruby needs more expensive, exclusive conferences.
> And as with any good Apple faithful knows, you don't buy version 1.

This is really true. A style change is a big upgrade in Apple terms. The next release of this will likely pack a lot more features.
A Bunch of Questions I Still Have About the New MacBooks
Google: We Like Our Data Centers Hot
'Stock market charts, in context'
Finishing my distributed memory list caching system. Think Memcached, but instead of storing an object, you store an array, and can CRUD it in an atomic way. Fast, simple, non-persistent. Usage case: caching a one-to-many relationship in a relational database.
Video simulation of SF Bay Area Earthquake
Spokeo used to be a social network aggregator like Friendfeed or Socialthing. http://www.minger.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/spokeo-page...

Uh.
I wonder what Justin.TV uses?
I do sympathize with what happened, but the Digg digs are a little tired at this point. Just on your most recent page of comments I count three.
I'm there with you on the lack of a matte display. I find it hard to believe that glare is not an issue to those with glossy screens. I think people simply deal with it because of our inherent draw towards that which is shiny...
Well... The Apple I had a nice wooden case.
Yahoo Relases OpenID Usability Research
It has no APT (well... it has but it's kind of a bolt-on solution). And no, ports is not an adequate substitute.

No APT is a deal-breaker for me. At least as my main work computer. But looks insanely great.
Have you seen its home page recently?
Some people don't have a sense of humor, and trying to explain one to them is like trying to describe color to a blind man.

In my limited experience with VCs and angels, they almost all do.
"... Good news, but a lousy article, doesn't really add anything ..."

Better than the exciting offerings from 'Barron Ernst Quicken Online Product Manager' and his cheery marketing advice for using Quicken.

With 70% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck,
we want to help everyone make it to payday successfully

So which information source do you choose from?

The cheery marketing drivel from SoftCo or the cheesy articles that add a little bit of extra info but not much because the "cough" Journalist is lazy? The real bit that interested me was the article lists Quicken as free and the author compared a large company offering to some Startups (Mint, Geezeo, Buxfer, and Wesabe). Recognition from SoftCo. they have to respond?

The fact the url exposes its implementation says to me Quicken don't know or care about "Cool urls" ~ http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI nor understand this can be fixed using mod_rewrite ~ http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html The fact they use Java confirms this.
E-gad, it's the "let's be perfectly clear" meme. Wonder where you got that one?

I don't mind you characterization of the site as far right wing. I'd simply look at the facts, source if doubtful, and continue the discussion from there. Same as if it were far left wing.
How can I get to do something similar?

DARPA has all of the amazing stuff coming out of it...
As someone being forced to use a Dell D630 notebook for work, I can tell you there is a world of difference between any Mac and any Dell...
New York Times Campaign Finance API
"Would it have been better you think if he had remained single, or if he had ended up with a wife that was not as great as the one that left him?"

I think it wouldn't have been mentionned in the story then. Still a valid, if rethoric, question.
Obama vs. McCain - Third Debate - Taxes, Technology
True, but some of them must be operating with faulty assumptions, since otherwise the government derives little utility from running the site.
Integrating www.trovix.com to www.monster.com
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/793754/2/i...

My guess is that they could, at the very least they could just add a matte coating. Also, they claim that the track pad is glass, and it certainly isn't shiny, though how an LCD would look through it I'm not 100% sure.
This is a lot of info. I really think the most important point is to promise yourself to do something every day.

How you train is secondary to having the discipline to it every day (or x times per week, x >= 3).
What was your first book?
And something like this needs to be free - it's not terribly useful if everyone else isn't using it.
I also recommend checking serverbeach. My box for userscripts.org runs on a $180/mo box (the extra cost is for 3GB of RAM).

I'm currently doing 50k visitors a day and dark traffic of 10x that - averaging 1.2Mbps without a problem.

You can even get 10Mbps or 100Mbps unmetered for $100/mo and $1000/mo roughly
I agree. So many free breakfasts, lunches, dinners, beers and even paintball too. All while meeting some very intelligent people.
In some cases it's just a little more thought -- like here if, for instance, the border of the menubar was highlighted as the mouse rolled over it, it would be pretty obvious, in my opinion.
Working on:

* a web-site-as-service for customizing installation / install cds for different flavors of Ubuntu.

* a customizable tetris-like game editor done in javascript, allowing people to create their own shapes / rules / etc.

* slowly making an emacs-like editor in python

* working on a web based store for the various media produced by the house I live in
I got: Radiohead -> The Beach Boys

You should remove that my any means necessary.

I think the UI is pretty nice, actually. Very functional, feels like a "tool". Don't lose that when you make it more fancy.
Anonymous - Anarchist Legions lead you deep into the Matrix
The BBC suffers from Silo-itus
and disgusting.
They saved the "brick" and the netbook for Januarys Mac World.
Yes, the prices were a bit high. They're very regional (and depend on what carriers are at a given site, etc), so I was trying to give a decent average, erring towards worst case (my own prices in MA are a good bit lower, but I'm not trying to troll for customers on HN).

Good point on the CDN, "streaming" can sometimes be non-CDN compatible (although "CDN" is a wide ranging term).

Were it me, I'd start with an $800 1U box in a decent colo somewhere. Add another one on the opposite coast when the first started to get above 50% utilization and then scale from there.
"Porsche's output is tiny compared to that of Ford."

Apple has 3.6% of the world computer market.
Yeah. Your way wastes everyones time as the product isn't right from the start and it's harder to build a great business, as you don't know if you'll ever get paid. Everyone to their own though. I'd rather be sure.
What is a DE event?
Universal Music CEO Still Doesn't Believe In The Promotional Value Of Music
" It's more expensive and a lot more work."

Until your site goes viral, quashes your "dedicated" server (or the providers upstream bandwidth) and your customers are met with some fail-whale variant.

Use a rented server to get off the ground and get the prototype out there, but don't try to build a backbone on that model. Especially when you're going to be doing streaming, your uptime IS your product, renting a server is like trying to start a livery service by going to Avis every morning and renting a car each day. It will work great, until it doesn't, and you're left scrambling.
I love Quicken and I really really need web finances, but why on earth do they ask me for my banking username and password?

I just want to keep track of my finances without messing with my bank account, how hard is that?
Blogging at SitePoint.com, switching RailsForum.com over to vBulletin (no, Beast won't cut it), and working on a utility for educators (K-12 and post secondary).
Hungry people get brutal.
Reality Check: Surviving Is Always Hard for Startups
Intel’s Q3 earnings grow 12 percent, but Q4 looks cloudy
Ultra-Chaining with jQuery
Working on the following open source projects:
Merb
Rubinius
Nanite
Vertebra

Also working on some top secret engine yard projects that I will be able to talk about soon.
purely ad-based revenue models are sustainable provided you can sustain the traffic. traffic, however, is often fickle, especially in the social realm, which is why it is usually "better" to get paying users. however, its a double-edged sword, as most social apps aren't worth paying for.

i highly doubt that social media will be viewed as a fad. it has already had too much influence to be considered meaningless in a historical perspective. imo, that is. it might not always look the same, but the concept will likely be around for a while.
iTunes was an acquisition. So was GarageBand. And I think some other software acquisitions that directly made their hardware more valuable.

I think that says a lot about how Apple's acquisitions strategy.

Although, they also bought PA Semi, and we still don't know yet just what they're doing with them.
Video communication, Mobile Communications...
I keep hearing "theoretical speed" applied to USB, as if there's some theory under which one would be able to get 480 Mb of data transferred in one second.

No, 480M is the baud. (Download the USB 2.0 spec and check out the wire protocol.) The fastest you can transfer data is with a bulk transfer, which top out at 53248000 Bps = 406.25 Mbps. (That's what I would call the "theoretical speed".) Other transfer types are slower.

Companies like advertising "480 Mbps" because it's a high number, but it's not physically possible to transfer data over USB2 that fast.
> 5. Blocker ads

So ironic, since I got a blocker ad trying to read this article.
Great suggestion. It'd also be awesome if you could do something similar for your own domain, so you can sign in with your personal address everywhere.
* real time news aggregation and moderation

* sports data modeling

* desktop notification app
The value is in having nearly every cyber criminal on the planet gather at a central location. They're able to easily build a database of usernames, passwords, email addresses, and IPs. They can also monitor what type of goods are being sold and new schemes that pop up.

Everyone knows that law enforcement runs/monitors these forums, but they don't care. You need to be anonymous every step of the way.
youtube scaled on serverbeach. 'nuff said frankly.

I however would do AWS without question. (already on AWS, was on serverbeach - loved them though)
Finding all the places you've used your e-mail address that you forgot about: $15

Deleting your profiles from these places: Priceless
I would disagree, Pet Sounds is one of the greatest, earliest experimental pop albums ever.
Why?

Last time I checked, nobody is putting your personal information online in a public domain for you.
So was OS X (I think). I'm not saying there's room for them, I'm saying 'how high could the volume get?'

The volume of software start-up acquisitions should be directly related to the volume of software product lines.
I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. As the volume of startups increases, big companies will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone.

I might agree with that statement if it wasn't so obviously self-serving (given pg's role in YC) and if it were a little more qualified.

If acquisitions go the way of existing standardized hiring practices then it's more likely that they will become burdened with the very kind of bureaucratic and institutional nonsense that has traditionally prevented big companies from hiring high quality hackers.
Isn't this similar to Spock? (www.spock.com)

For those who never visited Spock, you entered an email address and it tracked you all over the web. Now it looks like Spock requires logging in to work.
but you decided to spread it anyways (to the tech recruiters and HR who lurk here on HN)...
How are they getting access to facebook profiles???
I'm working on http://rawberry.tv - somewhat of a platform for creating your own music video mix reel. It's not even close to being done, but I'm hoping to finish it by the time I graduate to help me land a job or something.
Oh, "my way" involves solving the problem of "how to find out what users want" WITHOUT resorting to shady little tactics.

I refuse to believe that there is no other way of conducting a market study other than resorting to sneaky, dastardly little tactics. Why? because there ARE other ways.

Also, nice strawman, I obviously did not counter with "conduct NO market studies/surveys" - I came back with "that's dishonest and I don't believe in it".

Funny, how I have set up services (granted, not products) that made me money and I did not have to resort to cheap little deceptive tricks.