skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
‘Shocking’ 61% of all Upstream Internet Traffic is P2P
Absolutely. Personally, I think there is something mildly offensive about sending out a company-wide email announcing layoffs without bothering to capitalize your sentences. Apparently this is standard practice for Jerry Yang, though.
Orango V880 Portable Media Player
Definitely. Nintendo is also a great example of launching, getting customers, and iterating over time to meet the market.

One cool thing a lot of people don't know is that Nintendo actually predates the NES. They had a version of Duck Hunt that plugged into a TV in '77.

Check it out -
http://www.japan-games.com/Database/images/Nintendo/TV-Game/...
Great point about the website - they need to be clearer about how much of the donation goes to administration. I'm sure there are other improvements possible as well. Please give me any feedback on what stopped you from donating, and I'll mention that the next time I see them (they're relatives of my wife). Heck, I should probably just redo the site for them.
I would say that talent is a useless idea. What really matters is an openness to new ideas, the courage and diligence to pursue them, and a genuine interest in success. Sometimes these things do not appear at all in someone but then as they acclimate themselves to an environment, they polish themselves to a shine.

How do you even define talent anyway? If it's just something you're good at, enough practice will get you there provided you are physically able.
C = C++ = Java = C# = Perl = Visual Basic ect ect save some funny syntax
He chose that example poorly and you're taking it too literally.
Reminds me of George W Bush.
The DO Lectures
From this one talent springs all.

But this "talent", to make effort in a specific way, seems more a moral "talent" - like courage or kindness - than anything else. These qualities can be cultivated, and are a necessary part of being human that are within us all. They are within you.
No, not that I know of. Though I did get pinged randomly by a yahoo employee from china who saw the story and looked me up in the corporate directory.
Frederick County Automotive Services
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Yeah I agree - I see emails without capitals all the time, but often these are brief and it indicates the author wanted to respond quickly and succinctly...

When you're announcing layoffs it looks like you just did it on a whim, or with a lack of forethought.

I know this is not true at all, and probably very harsh - I'm sure that is not the intent at all... but these things show sensitivity.
Do you have a staging/test site, a mirror of your live site? Normally you apply all the changes to the test site so that you know the upgrade works, and how long it will take. Then you can schedule downtime as required.
I found his analysis of the problem spot on, and I think a lot of companies would do well to generalize his advice to their own situation.
its not an absolute. but if you count on subdomains working for your users, you will be disappointed.

And if you think only spamming happens from China, you haven't compared the current account balances of the U.S. and China lately ;).
Open source software is appealing because it's free. There is a very low amount of commitment when you download the source for open-source software. You can sort of poke around and come back to it as you please.

Open-source hardware requires you to commit money (would have mattered more to me when I was a student), and a little more time to really get anything useful out of it. And when all is said and done, it is considerably more difficult to distribute your creation.
There is no published policy for how and why things get blocked. The behavior of the firewall changes over time.

The subdomains problem seems to do more with DNS replication and pessimistic acceptance of DNS records more so than a person actually censoring content.
desire trumps ability
Right, because if you accept the contrary argument, that it's about nothing but raw talent and work is irrelevant, you would assume that the training didn't hurt but didn't matter either.

Show me a quarterback whose 5'2" dad who stopped at middle school peewee trained them, and I'll be impressed.
Net revenue is over a billion, but what the company actually makes after costs is 50 million a quarter. Was in the linked article. I estimated the annual salary low because I don't know what category of worker would be laid off. Maybe it's just the janitors going.
Selecting your Home Heating System
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The Financial Crisis: a Historical Perspective
Are Virtual Machine Monitors Microkernels Done Right?
India successfully launches first mission to the Moon
Jerry Yang's Layoff Memo
And what if your internet goes down?

What if you lose your job and can't afford your internet connection?

All of a sudden you lose access to that library of music. Let alone if the service itself goes down.
E Dgree What Is It | EXPRESS LANE
The editorialized headline made me want to write a comment to the effect of "it's never the technologies we need to fear, but the abuses of the hands they are in"...good thing I read the article and found that was the gist of it.
The blog post says they're going to support it with WYSIHAT though.
Sun melting down, where's Java?
Note the use of the semi-colon in paragraph #2. I don't know anyone who uses the semi-colon in that capacity in off-the-cuff prose. The decision to stick it in lower-caps was presumably a conscious decision.
if luck is "success against the odds", the odds are dramatically improved by making several attempts, and making adjustments after each one. In these circumstances, I'm inclined to say that luck is inevitable.

The harder I work, the luckier I get
It was a novel. I published it through CreateSpace, so it could be found on Amazon; it's online at Scribd at http://www.scribd.com/doc/3319195/gstepl.

I still write, though I haven't written anything as ambitiously. My start-up is one that focuses on creative writers who want to learn to write at a more professional level, so it lets me get away with doing both. And I'll probably be writing something for NaNoWriMo in November: if I like that, I'll spend a little bit revising and seeing if any publishers are interested.

The two things go nicely together, because with literature you get used to putting things together haphazardly until they work: hacking gives you a more utilitarian approach to doing things. I find that when I'm in the middle of programming, I write better - if that makes any sense to you.
Lets hope that next feature of google labs will be the ability to turn it on in Google Apps
I agree. I know it was discussed ad nauseam all over the web but I wish he would've addressed it a little more in this post. He mentions being upset that they didn't develop "one" community but it's difficult to be surprised by that when he basically built a system that thrived on abusing the "one" community it wanted to foster (intentional or not).
I know, I had a good chuckle. First rule of the internet, never criticise someones grammar. Gah, never know what version of that spelling to use.
Looks like YC Summer '09 just got a little more crowded.
seems like git isn't designed to handle long-running branches, or branches with more than one committer. i'm still pretty novice at git, and was hoping this article could clear that up, but mailing patches around seems .. inefficient.

anyone want to correct me? i like git in most respects, and am now using it on a few projects.
At no point has yahoo (sorry, Yahoo!) offended anybody in the manner that AOL managed to do time and time again.

EDIT: I'm wrong. I used yahoo (sorry, Yahoo!) as a domain provider until they jacked up the price to 34.95/year. WTF? Couldn't believe it. So I got to spend two hours transfering them... I guess I'll always remember Yahoo! for that.
My rule is generally the exact opposite.

Anything sufficiently complex that you code is will quickly approach being a language.

The .NET class library is a language - if you built a a reasonably sized Class Model in Java it would be a language... Thinking about it in terms of language constructs can give a lot of very useful insights.
I believe I'm talentless so I couldn't agree more with this article.
I know what you're saying, but those quotes also describe deliberate practice... look how hard Gates worked at 11 yo, and in what way.

If (and I don't know if he did or not) Bill Gates had been practicing those skills since the age of 3 or so (as Tiger Woods did), one would expect him to be highly capable by the age of 11, and to score well in any test of those skills. etc
this is excellent. 'curse you under my breath' will henceforth be in every contract i write. they're pretty simple to begin with, but that's choice.

i'd correct the first paragraph (emphasis for clarity):

'... entered into _today_ and between _you_ (hereinafter "The Advisor") and _I_ (hereinafter "The Keeper of the Idea" ...'

then keep it around, laminated, to show folks.
with git you don't checkout, you clone. then you branch that clone locally. if you want other people to work on that branch, you can git push that branch to the origin server repository, and other people can then git pull it, and of course any member can then simply git push it whenever they commit and it will be widely available.
Yes, absolutely! Doing customer service is a great idea. Many problems (esp. usability) stem from the fact that the people making the product don't empathize with the people using the product. It's just like when developers eat their own dog food, the software almost always ends up being significantly better.

I actually have asked multiple times to work in different departments at my day job to get a better sense of how users use the stuff I'm making. I feel it's necessary to do my job well. _Necessary._ But the culture just isn't open to that I guess. Short of quitting, I don't see it ever actually happening.

I completely agree with you about compensation. At a big company, the bonus I get has no correspondence to what I actually do. I wonder if it would work out better if profits were broken down by product, for example. Then, if you worked on a given product, you get a cut of the profit for that product. At least then, the profit from big hit products wouldn't be split among everyone in the company.
Hm? Why would you think that?

Did you realize that your master/ branch is just one such long-running branch, and one that's not special in any way other than being the default for some commands...

As far as multiple committers on one branch -- well, you can do it, but with 'git rebase' and friends, it's just easier to do your own work on a short lived branch off your primary branch, and just merge in stuff as you get it done.

It's not that git makes it difficult to do it compared to other version control systems; it's just that it's a nicer workflow if you use short-lived topic branches to do development because you don't to worry about what other people are doing until you decide you want to take a look at it and merge it in. The short-lived private branch + lots of merges workflow is just easier because it prevents interruptions in your workflow.

As far as emailing patches, it's a matter of taste. It's certainly easier to make sure all changes get reviewed if patches are mailed around, because people tend to read their mails. Personally, I just use a post-update hook to mail out a list of changes for each commit, and review them later, since it's always relatively easy to back out or fix a patch -- after all, it is a version control system.
De-duplicating Primary Storage
Derek, if you're out there -- beer or two? I'd do that. Have some experience with crowd-sourcing, plus some experience with "specs" (since I made a living of sorts off of elance.com)
The next wave of file systems should have block-level compression (like gzip) plus automatic block-level de-duplication.

ZFS and NTFS can already compress your data transparently; on my computer, I am getting 50% compression without any reduction in performance.

Windows Server 2003+ has "Single Instance Storage" that does de-duplication of entire files.

ZFS has an open issue in its issue tracker for this feature, and the foundation work for it (block checksumming) is already in ZFS: http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6....

I am a Mozy user and their tech support told me that they already use de-duplication to cut storage costs. A single client only has to send each unique block (over all files on all computers on the account that use the same encryption key) once to the server, and that block is shared across all files on all computers on the account. The results: backups are faster because less data is sent, costs are lower because less storage space is used and less bandwidth is consumed. (Mozy told me they don't do compression.)
New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency
I once read that the highest paid employee of 20 some states is a college football coach. I know it's true in good old Ohio.
I don't think I would take the promise of tenure over a job that pays me 12x the salary. Even most Div 1 coaches last more than 3 years.

Also, it's far better to make $3 million in 3 years than it is to do so in 30.
You just managed to prove that you have no understanding of what Open Source is actually about.

The entire purpose of open source if you go back to the origin is about the Freedom to build upon, produce, and learn from other's software. Stallman was frustrated with the printer at the lab because he couldn't fix a flaw that he had previously fixed on a earlier printer.

With hardware if their is a flaw or it just doesn't quite meet the need you have then you can take the design and fix the flaw, or build upon the base to get what you need. That is the purpose of Free, Open Source Software and Hardware.

Open source has little to nothing to do with being free that has been a side effect of giving the source away, why charge for a product if anyone can build it themselves?
I came looking for this comment hehe.
Working with virtualenv
I am shocked things in second-world countries is so much worse than those in even a third-world country in which I am currently living. It seems that everybody owns a computer here.
Sure I'd be happy to.

To support, One would need a way to:

.. get more info/contact details/donation method (an email address?) ..understand what it is they want/need (in kind donations, ongoing support, one off donations, earmarked donations, full scholorships)

To decide to support it would be useful to answer some basic questions.

What Universities are being sponsored? What does the scholorship include? What are the general selection guidelines? What are the aims of the cause? etc.

Heck, I should probably just redo the site for them.

Don't leave them hanging. I've met a bunch of organisations that have had work 'donated' to them & then been abandoned. They are stuck with a site they can't get much use out of. Such a pity when the ability of charities to connect online with people has such potential.

They sponsor engineering, CS & BA students? Why not get some help from them. Maybe see about setting them up with a good, easy to pass around CMS & let their students do it. (maybe offer to supervise) Let the BA guys apply to Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. for some advertising credits.

*on a side note, the info they did give got me curious. They peaked in 2003. Why? What happened.
I blame the unseasonal cold weather seezing up my jointz ;)
"You’d like to work on each of your 4 features A, B, C, and D independently and somewhat in parallel, though B looks like a quick win."

Does anyone here seriously work like that?

Seems like git has some advantages if you branch a lot, but I don't think branching too much is particularly healthy. I can see why it's good for open source if you have a ton of contributers, but what's the win for a small team who hardly ever branch?
I think you're getting revenue and net income confused. Revenue is over $7B TTM...Net INCOME is over $1B TTM. Sure Q3 was $54M, but at least use TTM or something other than multipling by 4. That's just misleading. Also even the linked article said "[t]he goal was to reduce annual expenses by more than $400 million before the end of the year". Your estimate of saving $50M through layoffs is absurdly off. Even people with no faith in the layoffs ability to reduce operating costs would admit it's going to be the majority of the $400M, i.e. saving at least $200M or roughly $150k per employee (a much more realistic figure if you remember there are costs outside of salary to an employer).
> If you're in a creative position, talent is essential.

I used to believe this strongly as well. I worked with a great web graphics designer on several projects 3-5 years ago. We'd collaborate on overall flow and wireframes. He'd make it look good, and I'd make it work.

I commented once that I wished I had his artistic talent. His response was basically that if along the way I'd spent as long in photoshop working on and trying to dream up mockups as he had, I'd be just as good.

Since then I've come to strongly agree with him.
Merb 1.0 RC2
Like.com’s Perfect Timing: $32 Million Series C Round
I thought Ballmer knew Gates well in college. I'd say that would definitely help him get that CEO position.
New Android Maps API Terms of Service and Key Enforcement
Russian translation http://spring.jumpidea.com/2008/10/paul-graham-badeconomy.ht...
No, frankly, I usually see clearly that's it's an arrow only when I come rather close - before that it's just some small, green light left to the main traffic lights.

The thing is, I DO NOT NEED to distinguish that it's a left arrow, because nothing else can light up left to main R-Y-G traffic lights. Now imagine that you have a fourth traffic light below the R-Y-G lights, it may light up as a left arrow, or as a right arrow, in the same place. I would have trouble in that situation, distinguishing between the two arrows.

BTW I live in Russia and weather is poor here most of the year, and most traffic lights are made of arrays of rather big LEDs which are brighter and blurrier than older lamp-based traffic lights but make the shapes harder to distinguish. I guess in the US it's better.
Project Fortress: A Multicore Language for Multicore Processors
Russian translation of PG's essay "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy"
"A stronger will beats superior genetics" -- Dorian Yates. He's only partially right, tho', as Stuart McRobert demonstrates.
The thing that caught my attention the most about this wasn't the size of the code or whatever, but the fact that they want to make it highly customizable. It's a pain.

I'm sure there's a good example of TinyMCE finely-customized to fit an interface beautifuly and I'm sure someone here will produce said example, but most of the places where I see a WYSIWYG editor, it looks kind of out of place, this is very important to some designers (I think)
I know a lot of people here in Russia, aged anywhere between 10 - 60, who are in some way severely limited in opportunities because they do not speak English. I'd advise learning it as a must - it simply "opens too many doors" to be ignored.

In Russia, in the 90-s people who spoke English more or less decently were so rare in some regions that they were hired mostly for their knowledge of the language. Not sure about Turkey, though.
Talent isn't everything, but it sure helps. But then again, maybe "talent" is just the product of hard work and dedication in the form of an almost scary obsession with something.
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I don't use git, I use bazaar - but yes, I often work like that. Why? Sometimes my headspace fits one class of problem better than another, other times I might want to push a largish patch early to another team member, sometimes you want to break a lot of stuff as is often the case with exploratory programming. Short lived branches can be very handy.
What you have to understand, and is pointed out very briefly in the TC article, is that EVERY email from Jerry is lowercase. I can see how some people think this is offensive, but honestly, they lack the context of every other email he's ever sent. I think Yahoos would be more worried if he started using capitals honestly.
A PCalc 1.1 post-mortem (getting noticed on the iPhone App Store)
Talking about my generation
Developing Web Applications with Erlang
Powazek mentions "We underestimated the “spec work” issue." You mention "the tiresome spec work debate". Not having followed Pixish previously, can someone give a nutshell summary of this debate/festering issue?
An appeal to authority argument: newly released Android code is kept in git repository. Google built a new wrapper around git called "repo".
How to read your text file like a book
It contains a lot of embedded libraries such as WebKit. WebKit is shipped with hundreds of megabytes of test data.
14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website
Thanks so much for the excellent feedback. I've composed an email and sent it to them. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and I doubt I'd leave them hanging - they're family after all :)
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Ask YC: Need a new domain name registrar
The place I'm currently using raised their renewal fee to $35/year and I have a lot of domain names =/.

I'm looking for a place that's around the average $10/year or lower and has a nice web panel design to manage domain names.

What are you guys using?
Yes. At work we've got several small teams (sometimes just one person), and each work on their own branches (basically, there's release branches and branches with shared content too). With a single team or just a handful of people this may seem crazy but honestly not branching often just doesn't scale well beyond a certain number of engineers. So you're right, for a small team it may not be worth it. Yeah it's easy to lean across the table and tell your cofounder they broke the build but I'd still say it's a good habit, since you can always launch versioned code and not include any unfinished features (and potential security holes).
When you delete the master branch, you are enlightened.
randrews' comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=339190 ) about the "Kill Your Blog" article is a sentiment I agree with. Amongst other reasons I write a blog to hone my writing skills, but there are other ways to do this:

NaNoWriMo is overtly about getting words onto the page, breaking through the quality fetish and the procrastination that stalls many wannabe authors. As such I think it an interesting social hack (as well as being a neat website in itself) and thus of interest to this community.
dreamhost does pretty well at $9.95/yr
Ideas to stay connected from a farm in rural Wisconsin ?
I second dreamhost.
I have been using NameCheap for many many years and they do a great job. There was one outage recently, and the owner kept everyone up to date by constantly posting on the forums and answering individual questions.
Rethinking Investing: Common-Sense Rules for Uncommon Times
Kudos to India... I said this before when China shot a man around the Earth, and I'm going to say it again; I hope they spur another healthy space race.