skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
...if Leach had the same access to talent as [better schools]....

Actually, I think he would do worse. For some reason it seems to me that genius is born from the hardship and adversity, and making life easier for people actually makes them work poorer.
:s/gracious/gratuitous/
Congratulations on moving forward. Are you bootstrapping your operations?
We spent a few weeks before the deadline editing and re-editing our application. We only submitted it a day before it was due.

Perhaps there were many groups like us who had thought about applying a while and spent time editing their application before sending in the last few days.
That's creative.
Stanford University Embraces BitTorrent
good for you :-)
Does this mean YC is "recession proof?"
I really don't know. The stock market is somewhat balanced by bonds (and short selling?) in that they are alternative positions for people to go into in order to profit from changing conditions - but there doesn't seem to have been much of a way for the market position itself relative to credit becoming more expensive. I guess at the really abstract level you want independent agents to balance each other such that the sum of their positions resistant to change rather than reinforcing each other so they can all fail at once.
All I ask is to be easy on the poor entrepreneur about his choice of {himself, subject} because he can't read your mind.
:)

Myself, I'm not sure I prefer invetment in me or my idea. There are pros and cons both ways.
He's great. I'm surprised you don't hear more people talking about that book in connection with the current financial panic.
Serious libertarians disdain fractional reserve banking as the source of bank runs. The current financial troubles hardly discredit libertarianism.
Intrade CEO on alleged manipulation -- It was an institutional investor
I'll see your geometry games, and I'll raise you http://moourl.com/ColorIQ
The Great Rose Bowl Prank of 1961
Self-fulfilling rumours which trigger bank runs can be a distributed phenomena, no one person needs to engineer it. It just needs to start somehow.

More importantly, it is possible that most people are wrong on some particular question about a market. If so, a sudden discovery of the truth by the mainstream might lead to a desertion of this market.
I love this mentality: if only smart bureaucrats were running the mortgage market, none of this would have happened!
The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.

Ok, I'm pretty sure this was a joke/satire/etc but I really liked this bit. Reminds me of Douglas Adams and the lizards...
A Look at Zero-Defect Code
UK: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones
By the way, there aren't that many libertarian anarchists that have written popular works. The only one I can think of besides David is Murray Rothbard, who wrote "For a New Liberty" detailing his anarchist vision. It's available in its entirety online. However, he is not a utilitarian, and I don't remember Murray being as convincing as David.

As the libertarian movement has grown it has become more ideologically diverse and more moderate on average. There are few fire-breathing anarchists around any more (David is not a "fire-breating anarchist". Murray was.).
Third in terms of ticket sales? I know NFL is only third in terms of total attendance due to having so few games.

I read a couple articles recently that said NASCAR attendance is dropping. Their audience is, umm, how to say this politely... the group most likely to be hurt by an economic downturn.
Bush to Host First in Series of Summits on Financial Crisis
Alcohol impact on human health
But this isn't really an opinion, it's just name-calling. I'd have no problem with it if he had any logic as to why PG is wrong. I guess that would first require understanding PG's essay, which he clearly didn't. In fact, nothing he said even seems to contradict PG's thesis, which was (as I read it) that even though now isn't the best time in history, it's still +EV, and waiting is -EV.
The existence of some facets of the financial system that were not controlled by the state hardly implies that more state control would have stopped the current crisis. Nor does it imply that less state control would have stopped it. However, I have yet to hear a single new regulation that did not require 20/20 foresight that we could have pursued to avert the credit collapse that we have recently suffered.

Our economy is very mixed. Large portions of private money, semi-private money, and government money were sloshing about in the financial sector prior to the credit crisis. Blaming "libertarianism" or "government" for it is silly. Deeper analysis and more careful thought is needed in dissecting the lessons from recent events in the market. Causal links must be proposed and evaluated.

Also, I personally don't claim that libertarianism can only work in an unadulterated form. I think rather free markets work pretty damn well now, and that most of them would work better without tinkering from central planners. I don't think you could design an economic order without macroeconomic fluctuations, free or planned. I also don't think any regulator will be smart enough to design an optimal regulation scheme, or that one necessarily exists for a dynamic economy.
That's an interesting thought. You're probably right. I imagine doubling the number of terrorists required probably more than doubles the chance of them getting caught. Might be exponential.

Unfortunately, one ziploc bag full of plastic explosive is probably more than enough to blast a hole in the side of a plane. And one of those beer belly things I would think could take a whole plane out.
If you read Nozick and were once an Objectivist, then I would guess that you've been exposed to most of the popular libertarian moral arguments.
clicky: http://www.pixlr.com/
Psst, he was being sarcastic.
Hello black market! Any young briton can now make extra $50 by reselling his prepaid phone to a frinedly neighborhood dealer. The end users will pay $100 premium, which is not going to put any cirminal out of business.

It sure will create hassle for the rest of the people though.
Ah, sorry for the confusion...

The public and the article.
What a joke? Its like Bin Laden hosting a talk on concerns over Al Qaida!
This guy does:
http://www.startupfail.com/fail/pressflop-our-first-fail/
PressFlop: Our First FAIL
precision is a very important part of how math interacts with the real world.
best of luck to everyone!
very interesting article. it definitely gave me a new perspective about thinking about the mind.
Interesting that people are admitting it, but this has probably been true for longer than I've been paying attention (about a decade) -- it's generally recognized that the first cut is deadwood, especially if the number is low (like the quoted myspace 5%).

An often overlooked silver lining to this is that a person under-performing in a position often has as much to do with the position as the performer. The person will probably go on to find a better, happier, more productive, or higher paying job elsewhere. Failure of a person in a role has as much to do with the management that put them in the position as the guy who ended up there, especially when the employer is in bulk-up mode.
Yeah, he was trying to invalidate my point by sarcastically saying that conservatives don't map well onto the traditional right of the political spectrum. He's right, but not for the reason he thinks.
I'm extremely sorry. It wasn't intentional. I wud update the blog entry and will give you due credit. Once again, I apologize for missing that out.
> Banks do not, en masse, make loans to people who aren't likely to pay the money back without Government encouragement.

But when they securitize the loan, and sell it on, they have every incentive to 'make bad loans', because they get a cut of the sale, and little of the actual risk.

This crisis does not have one and only one cause - it's a mix of nasties that came together. Anyone who is trying to sell you one policy that would have fixed it "it's all the government's fault!", or "if only we had had more regulation!" (without saying what regulation) is very likely wrong.

Tyler Cowen, as he often does, has something sensible to say:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19view.html?partn...
"... A company that has made layoffs is branded a loser, and it becomes very hard to get positive press, recruit new talent and close new rounds of financing. Until now that is. Companies that have made layoffs in the last week are generally being given a pat on the back for being financially prudent ..."

Think this will be the last round of layoffs?

Probably not. A salient point to remember about creating/joining companies with VC backing they become another layer of management dictating the terms when financial conditions are not in their favour. As for shedding the bottom 5% - trees do the same. Shed their leaves in a desperate bid to survive just before they die.
Any political theory that needs to be implemented completely, can't be judged based on its components.

You can construct lots of internally consistent ideologies that would be perfectly stable in a vacuum. The difficult part is making one that can survive when put into competition with other ideologies and still be benevolent. Any survival of the fittest type selection will tend to favor nasty traits such as xenophobia.
" ... he makes horrible comments about startups that haven't failed when his has."

PressFlip has failed? From what I've read, it is marching on without him.

http://teddziuba.com/2008/10/moving-on-out.html

"The product is in good hands. Matt and Kyle will continue to develop Pressflip, and I'll continue to be a user. "
I don't think this needs to be an "either/or" type of scenario. Depends on the specific requirements.

Sometimes you need a multi-threaded model...i think a GUI library is a good example of that. Other times, a multi-process model would be easier to set up...a "just run in the background" sort of thing.

I also don't quite understand why suddenly everybody is afraid of writing multi-threaded applications. Just make sure you understand how the threading model works in your specific technology and what abstractions are provided. If your application is complex enough to require a "complex algorithm to manage shared memory", then i think you need to really take your time to understand what you're trying to do.

Having said that; I acknowledge that chasing down bugs caused by threads is not fun at all. Especially race conditions since they are seemingly un-predictable. But i think it is getting easier with newer platforms and tools.
one thing's for sure... everyone wants to be a fuckedcompany and everyone wants to be an uncov. do yourselves a favor, write up a spec script, send it to SNL instead of wasting it on the intertubes.
Teachmate - new web educational project
What teachmate is all about?

TeachMate.org is a service that helps people who want to learn and people who want to teach find each other. It is a dating site, except that the aim here is education.

The idea behind this service is simple: whoever teaches — learns. There are few simple things we wish our user could find out:

* You don't need to be a professional to teach. Instead, you have to teach to become a professional.
* You don't need to pay money for learning or ask for money when you teach someone.
* Learning is not about the degrees, it's about the process and what you can do with your knowledge.

Have fun!
Audio from the 1908 presidential campaign (Bryan vs. Taft)
Ask HN: Greatest Living Thinkers Today
Location-Based Dating: Not New, Still Creepy?
Cynics are dangerous not only to others but also to themselves.
I understand that this is satire but lets get something straight: a "jubilee" wouldn't work because debt "creates" money and to erase it all would vaporize tons of actual money!
"... Both physics and climbing seem to draw people who are comfortable living on society's fringes .... It always seems ready with another surprise, something we couldn't have anticipated ...:

Great article. Climbing probably achieves 3 objectives at once - it's quiet, nobody bugs you. Working on a problem? There is nothing worse than interrupted thought. So moving away from people distractions works. You can let your mind relax and wonder while you exert yourself on something totally unrelated.

Done my climbing for the day ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2954173256/
Exactly!! Great find.
From the news, the government sure seems to be doing its best to make it worse.
a potential customer or partner.
Start Your Own Small Business Today & Begin making Money now
Money making source for entrepreneurs and small business owners, a step-by-step guide to starting and operating your own business
Karma catches up with Ted Dziuba
"Libertarianism is the idea that government intervention is morally wrong"

Since morals are just a substitute for lack of knowledge, that seems kind of silly. So libertarianism is a kind of religion?
If I were yahoo I'd change it to "Microsoft, Call us. We'll take the 40 some billion. Please, call us."
Yes, I'm kind of confused about what the original poster is actually talking about. Erlang has a pretty good model, but it's enforced at the language level, not the OS level - strictly speaking, its processes do "share memory" in the sense that they all run in the same OS process. Of course, the implementation more or less prevents them from stomping on one another, so it ends up working quite well.
Or just leave them in all the cars until one of those filthy proles... err citizens commits a crime.
Post Apocalypse Board Meeting No. 3
The decision depends on the interactions between them.

Threads make intercommunication cheap but at the price of exposing to problems like deadlocks or data access synchronization overhead.

My rule of thumb is to use process and move to threads only when there is a significant added value.
Contrary to what this article might state, this offense is in no way novel, clever, or rule-breaking. This might be novel in SF, but it's nothing short of gimmicky in other areas, sorry.
Worm Grunting: A Mystery Solved
My personal opinion isn't interesting really. Neither is the author of this article's.

What is interesting is public opinion. That seems to have swung away from deregulation. It is (rightly or wrongly) being blamed for this. In many circles (more so outside The States, I think), non-intervention is tolerated because it works, supposedly. A lot of people have accepted that while it is unfair, unsavoury, & generally unpleasant, but it works. Now it doesn't always work.
Life After the Bubble: How Japan Lost a Decade
It's hilarious how much power you people attribute to Ted -- he wrote a few paragraphs sprinkled with profanity juxtaposed with a picture found off 4chan, how damaging is this really suppose to be? -- and how delightful you people are in taking him down a notch.

A troll is only as powerful as the audience he gathers. It's also the internet, take the joke, it's not serious business. You people bought his shit hook, line and sinker but now want to drag out his 15 minutes of fame some more.

So, Jay? Nothing personal against you but how about this? Move on. No one cares. Focus on your own shit instead of taking pot shots just like he did.
Ask HN: No, seriously, what is the best distro for web applications?
So far I've narrowed down the list to Debian, Gentoo and FreeBSD. Am I missing any other? What are your experiences? By web applications I mean really any application, be it in Perl, Python, Ruby or even C, that needs to attain awesome uptimes with great stability and reliability, specially if I need to run several copies of it in parallel.
To be fair, Dziuba's criticisms of startups have always been on technical and design points. Here, Arrington is attacking the personal choices Dziuba's made, which seems a bit inappropriate for a business blog. For all I can tell, Pressflip will be better off for having dropped a founder whose priorities were shifting strongly away from the company. But the business reporting aspect was ignored in leiu of Arrington's "I told you so" post that is basically aimed at having the triumphant last word in the overly personal spat he's been having with Dziuba since way back.

I think if there's anything due Ted via karma, it's an Uncov like bashing of the technical aspects of Pressflip (which, as far as I can tell, is actually well architected...). Why rag on a guy for living his life?
Self-Employment or Voluntary Servitude - Which Road Should You Choose - Associated Content
If you need to process a bitmap in parallel, it's a pain to use processes, since there's a significant amount of memory that has to be passed around. And it's inefficient, as you would always have to copy memory to the other process.

That's what threads are for - parallel paths that need to share memory. Processes are for parallel paths that rarely need to access the same data or to synchronize between them.

Don't forget also that when your CPU shares time, it divides up the time equally among the processes. So if your application creates 20 processes, it takes a disproportionate amount of CPU time (I believe, someone correct me if I'm wrong).
This has been asked repeatedly. Do a search. No, seriously. Search first.

I universally recommend Debian or CentOS for our customers (and we deal with thousands of folks building web applications and websites--I have a huge swath of data in my head on how much trouble each choice causes). Ignore this advice at your peril. CentOS is the one I recommend for newbies...just because the documentation out there is so much better, the support channels are so much more populous, and so much software is tested first on CentOS. I really like Debian, personally, and the package selection is vast and wonderful, but for a newbie CentOS is just a simpler choice.

FreeBSD is a fine choice, if you know you want FreeBSD and you know why you want FreeBSD. Since you've asked a bunch of strangers for advice, this is not you. So, FreeBSD is not a good choice for you.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you'd have to be retarded, or hate yourself, to choose Gentoo for a server.

Oh, yeah, hosting providers almost all support CentOS and Debian. Gentoo and FreeBSD, not as much. I don't know of any hosting providers that offer Gentoo, actually, and if I saw one that did, I'd pretty much write them off as amateurs. People who are passionate about FreeBSD are often extraordinarily savvy, and there are a few FreeBSD-focused hosts.
Leach is hardly known for anything more than running up the score at the end of easy wins while still failing to beat the spread.
Starting Up in an Economic Downturn
Criminal Minds - Episode 4×04 - Paradise
The BAU joins the manhunt to catch a serial killer who conceals the manner of his crimes by staging car accidents.
"...you'd have to be retarded, or hate yourself, to choose Gentoo for a server..."

"I don't know of any hosting providers that offer Gentoo, actually, and if I saw one that did, I'd pretty much write them off as amateurs."

Hmm... Linode and Slicehost are fairly well-known around here, not to mention those amateurish retards over at EngineYard.

Seems a bit extreme.
You should give us reasons why you have narrowed it down to those 3 and what you level of experience is.

I personally use Gentoo or FreeBSD whenever I have a choice. A significant reason for that is years of experience tuning these for my needs; it has become second nature.

For some environments I have used CentOS with good success, but I still end up modifying and trimming things so it feels more like Gentoo. In the end, you would likely be happy with CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu as far as binary distros go.
Indeed. Run

ps -eLf

To see what LWPs are
The key features are isolation and fault management. Isolation means that each process is separated from the others and can only communicate via a safe means. What happens when a process dies? Good systems have far more fault-tolerance.

An additional benefit is security. Your model can rely on some processes having the capability to access confidential data. These act as proxies for accessing that data and protects it. The OpenBSD operating system has used this "privilege separation" trick for years.

Everything with shared memory will die in the long run. The hardware can't keep on fooling us with a big memory space shared among all processes anyway.
MySQL reserved words
Debian... the last poll on this showed that the vast majority (90%+) of posters here are running Debian on their servers.
OK, I should have said, "that support Gentoo". Linode and Slice, both of whom I've talked to and know are extremely savvy people, let you pick your own poison...but they don't support what's inside the "slice" or "node".

EngineYard, I'm unfamiliar with. Maybe they just really know what they're doing. It's possible to make Windows run reliably on servers, if you really know what you're doing...that don't make it a good idea.

But, it changes nothing. Gentoo is, for most users, a horror show on servers. Probably less than 1% of our users use Gentoo, and about 50% of the batshit crazy problems (the ones of the "my Apache won't start and says there's a link error with blah blah blah, and when I try to run a PHP script it kills one of my goldfish...why does your software keep breaking my server?" variety...our software always get the blame, of course, since ours is the UI they see) happen on Gentoo.

I'm just trying to help, and trying to be emphatic that Gentoo on a server is begging to suffer. If you don't really know what you're doing (and often, even if you do), it is so easy to shoot yourself in the foot (or your whole leg, or nuke Idaho), it just doesn't make sense to run it on a production server.

I figure I have a lot more data than most people here, since we make systems management software for web servers, and we have millions of people worldwide using it. I don't intend to piss off the raving Gentoo fans, of which I know there are many, I'm just pointing out that Gentoo is a dramatically more complex system than any other distro, because of basic design decisions...and the amount of testing that any one Gentoo configuration ever gets is miniscule--practically nil--because there are so many possible combinations of "Gentoo system". If you enjoy Gentoo, that's fine. But, I know what happens when Linux newbies are set loose on a Gentoo system: disaster. And it happens fast, and in dramatic ways that leave them wondering what happened, and why they didn't keep better backups. I'll also point out that we support Gentoo with our products (what does that say about us? nothing good, except that we listen to what our users ask for). We try to accommodate them and help them, but the marketing for Gentoo has been so effective, and the quality control so ineffective, that it leads a whole lot of newbies down really painful learning paths. And the culture around Gentoo is one of "embrace the learning experience"...no matter how painful it is.
Its derivative, Ubuntu, is pretty good too. I use it, and really enjoy the fact that I run the same thing on my server and on my laptop. Wikipedia is switching to Ubuntu, apparently.
Optimización y reducción de costes para empresas - servicios a empresas
Optimización de costes y reducción de gastos en la empresa..