skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It will similar to your high school class in terms of being idealized and non-applicable.

I think they are interesting courses to take and there are some great conceptual takeaways. I'm not sure how valuable for entrepreneurship economics would be. I would personally go for microeconomics for it's applicability to business. However, macroeconomics is still interesting in a broader (even political and global) sense though.

I don't know what you'd be taking as an alternative to economics, but I don't see why you wouldn't take them. I took both macro and micro in college. I enjoyed the courses and found them useful. As philphodgen pointed out... what you will gain from taking the course is the ability to think like an economist.
I'm out of contract on AT&T with a 3GS. The exclusive 5 on Sprint would be available and very attractive to me. Granted, that doesn't make it a good idea, but going exclusive with Sprint doesn't eliminate EVERY current iphone owner from upgrading.
FFS, it's like you whippersnappers have never heard of rsync or makefiles. Dropbox requires the mouse, and therefore means that you should get off my lawn.

Seriously though, a Makefile in your web directory with a default target that rsyncs your content up to your webserver via ssh solves this problem much more elegantly, without relying on a third party service. Bonus points for you if you render/minify your sass/scss and/or coffeescript as a target dependency.

PS: Put your remote username and remote port (if custom) for a given host in your ~/.ssh/config file, along with any necessary 'ProxyCommand's to allow direct "rsync ./ $hostname:public_html/" or such in your makefile.
I could never have gotten my non-technical girlfriend to use this system if she had to go to a command line and type "git commit" and "git push" for ever new post. She's become quite prolific with it since there are no tools she has to use to publish, other than a text editor.
I don't design very often, but I usually stick to one or two fonts for an entire page, so I don't use too many non-standard fonts or font stacks. I've recently grown fond of Georgia, but besides that, I generally stick to Verdana and Trebuchet MS.
You had me with troff, but then lost me with Dropbox vs NFS. rsync or unison would have been more appropriate.
Racketeering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)
Why would you claim that someone reduced their prices and revenue to zero? How does providing additional functionality relate to price reduction? I'm really surprised by this comment - do you have any data to base this assumption?

To me it's opening to customers with different demands.
It has to be something like wikipedia.
A man child.
gaug.es is really nice for tracking social engagement and responding to traffic trends in realtime... It doesn't retain a ton of data for long-term analytics, so if you care about that sort of thing, it should probably be used in conjunction with another service.
Dialvetica 2.0
plus one
I started writing this originally including Facebook, which to my mind is the other really egregious violator of privacy, and probably worse than Google. However, I'm not a Facebook user. I have been in the past, and they still collect data on me, but I realized Facebook doesn't have nearly the complete picture of my life that Google does. Nor do they have my mail, my spreadsheets, my contacts. Most of all, Facebook is not in and of itself, a machine potentially capable of abstract thought.

That was the heart of my question, and I'm not sure if you made it past the first sentence and read that far. I wasn't asking which corporation would screw you over with the privacy you gave up -- I'm not interested in grinding a personal axe or rehashing the online privacy debate. My question, as phrased in the subject header and as borne out through my post, was whether Google AS A MACHINE was capable of ruining your life, and if not, then when it would be and how it would proceed to do so.
FeeFighters should announce that they're getting into the Business Credibility game and start moving in on the BBB's territory.
Perhaps I didn't stress enough in the blog that this system was designed with non-technical users in mind. My girlfriend uses it on her blog and she is savvy enough to understand Markdown, but if I asked her to run a command-line script every time she wanted to publish something it would be a non-starter.
Ask HN: how do I delete my profile from hackernews
including all the comments and posts i have made so far
You are right that it's hard to compete with x86 but it's for a weird reason (beyond the economic might of behemoths like Intel). x86 has good density, so it can do more in a few bytes than sparser instruction sets like RISC. In the late 90s when computers starting being memory bandwidth limited, PowerPC lost out even though it was perhaps a more "modern" architecture. I've often wondered if someone would generalize code compression (I could swear there was something like that for ARM?) Oh and I suppose I'm more of a ranter than a hacker - too many years of keeping it all inside - so now I kind of regurgitate it in these ramblings...
Management Consultancy Industry in a Nutshell
Kevin had tried to quit a few months ago, apparently without Alex's knowledge. Not sure why he wants out so bad, I think he just wants to rebrand his identity as more "serious" e.g. with Foundation, which is not nearly as entertaining as Diggnation.

Personally I think if the show had introduced a guest-interview element it could have gone big places.
He seems to work from home, so I would think his transport costs would be minimal.

That said $600/month! Ouch. Out of curiosity why doesn't your employer cover the transport?, As far as I know all of my non-japanese friends here have their transport covered.

Regardless, I definitely agree on moving closer to the city, I ride my bike everywhere in a 10km radius.
Alexandria, VA (Washington DC area) Full-Time

Looking for web developers to work on web mapping and GIS applications (ExtJS, OpenLayers, MapServer, JavaScript, C#, Java, Oracle PL/SQL, ArcGIS)

Send me an email at kris.carle@syncadd.com
You haven't read the node.js homepage, specifically the bit Ted quotes "Because nothing blocks, less-than-expert programmers are able to develop fast systems."?
I wrote that exact script earlier, except I used Rake.
Supposed is the keyword. Once you root/jailbreak the phone, nothing is stopping you from using WifiTether/Tetherme for your tethering needs.
If youre a power user and require over 5GB a months, then youre in trouble. But for most of us that need tethering for those select moments we're away from wifi, its a godsend.
Numberplay: Fusing Dots
I have issues getting it to work consistently. Also the fact that it isn't tightly coupled with my editor makes it very inefficient for me (needing to open up the file i want to debug in MacGDBp, and go back to my editor to make changes). Perhaps it just works differently than what I'm used to from the IDEs -- any tips or tricks would be appreciated because I'd rather use ST2 + a debugger than a big bloaty IDE.
What strategic value does the acquisition of PhoneGap possess for Adobe? Is the idea to introduce integration of Adobe services (e.g. CreativeCloud) into PhoneGap to make it easier for developers, designers, agencies to build Adobe-enhanced mobile apps?
> It's simply not a matter of your assessment. Canada's non-white population, at 16.2%, is less than the US 27.6%.

How are we defining "white"? I ask because Hispanics just passed Black as a percentage of the US population. Both are around 13%, which leads me to suspect that the 27% "non-white" doesn't include Hispanics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

supports my theory.
Rent a car 
a worldwide car rental supplier.
"sane pricing model"

by sane you mean really expensive for hobby projects. I keep thinking this will be a problem in the long run, disruptive technologies tend to be bottom up. I can't host a message board on heroku because it's way too expensive.
A 'sentient' Google? Frankly, that sounds paranoid. Google has algorithms, developed by humans and which don't change unless someone edits them. The idea that it can somehow get 'pissed' and start purposefully trying to ruin your life is ridiculous.

Google 'grows' in data and it certainly improves certain AI-like mechanisms, such as spam detection, face and voice recognition, etc. Programs don't magically become sentient from that.
A look back: Dan Ingalls 1989 lecture on object-oriented programming
Disclaimer: I'm the competition.

It's basically BerkeleyDB Java edition, probably BDB High Availability (HA) Edition with some layers on top.

They're doing pre-sharding with ranges mapped onto replica groups, which are probably BDB HA instances. Since BDB supports transactions, they claim transaction support. But it only works if your keys fall in the same replica group (see other comment in thread). (Nothing wrong with that.)

There's no mention of shard migration, so they probably don't support it right now. (Shard migration is hard to get right.)

It's Java only.

BDB HA uses something which is said to be like Paxos, so they're claiming that (although they only mention it for master election), but they also have other consistency modes, which is interesting.

Looking at the plots:

Running on 32 replica groups (96 nodes) they were able to get 350K insert/sec, which is ~10K/s per replica group, with 1K values that is 10M/s per replica group. That means the local BDB instances just wrote everything to the log files, good luck with that. That's assuming they were running BDB in transactional mode, which is the only mode that actually keeps your database intact in case of a crash.

According to the 10M/s figure, it should have taken them 1.8 hours to load the data. According to the latency number, it should have taken 91 hours, so one of them is wrong. Probably the latency numbers, they were probably batching ~100 inserts and that's what the latency numbers are for.

In my NoSQL startup, our first product used BDB as the disk backend. In our second product iteration, getting rid of BDB was one of the major driving forces. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Would this make it a crime to disable GPS on your phone? I was gonna say "pull the battery out" ...that worked pretty well back in '03 but you can't do it anymore, lol.
Correct,

"Oracle NoSQL Database is build upon the proven Oracle
Berkeley DB Java Edition high-availability storage engine"

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/learnmore...
Leeches. Someone should destroy these folks. Legally and peacefully, of course. But they must be destroyed.
To me, the biggest Bitbucket UI issue isn't the lack of some of Github's snazziness, but the simple lack of visual cues to separate elements on the page.

See: https://bitbucket.org/ellislab/codeigniter-reactor/

Every major block element on that page except for the very top page navigation has a white background. The project info box has a white background, the branches/tags/etc controls bar has a white background, the commit table has a white background, the footer has a white background - all matching (and failing to stand out from) the page's own white background.

Compare to: https://github.com/rails/rails

The use of varying grays and even a blue background help separate elements from each other, as well as separate them from the page background that they're on top of.

I'm not a designer, but the one thing that has always turned me off from Bitbucket is feeling like I'm looking at a bunch of visual clutter whenever I first look at a page. And it's not because there is a lot of visual clutter (there isn't) but simply because everything on the whole page is on the same white background and, at first glance, just blurs into each other.
> I was also being paid a typical Japanese salary, not an expat salary.

I'm curious if you mean to imply that an expat salary would be higher or lower?
Since when is 34 middle-aged? :-)
Getting Started with Scala on Heroku
A Different Sort of Mag-Lev, as Demonstrated with Toy Train Set
On Friday, we had a look at a levitating lamp by Ger Jansen, who develops and sells proprietary electromagnetics as Crealev. In the same vein, this video of a toy mag-lev train is not the conventional sort of magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnets pulsing along a length of rail to compel the train into motion; this one is motorless and the magnetic field is formed using liquid nitrogen, a temperature differential, and a proprietary material that conducts an electric current at super-low temperatures.
Yep, the salesman explicitly said unlimited LTE.
as I wrote in the article, I also think Flash will have some valid use cases for the next few years. Games, like you mentioned, are definitely one of these.

I agree with you on GIMP vs. Photoshop. It's not even close. But Flash vs. HTML5/JS is quite different. The iPad has forced all the biggest websites to have Flash-free versions and, well, no one seems to have been lobotomized yet :)
Well, they acted like kids on the show, yes, but also note that Alex and Kevin worked together for years before that on The Screensavers. These guys were definitely kids together doing this stuff, and I can understand how they must feel like they've outgrown it.

I'm about the same age as these guys too, and I stopped watching about 2 years ago. I felt bad for them that they had to continue doing what they were doing even though they must have felt their age catching up with their antics.
The x86 thing is just grousing by people who think aesthetics in the assembler are the definition of a clean architecture. Instruction decode for a modern x86 CPU is indeed a difficult problem when compared with cleaner architectures (though ARMv7 is hardly "clean" -- how many instruction sets does it support now? Five, I think?). Instruction decode, however, is one of the easiest problems to tackle on a CPU. It just happens to be the part that software people understand, so it's what they like to whine about.

You're absolutely right: if it could be done much better, there'd be an example in the market to prove it. Yet Intel is walking all over the market, and has been for the last 8 years or so.
You don't.

We have your infos. FOREVER~.

Which we shall use as blackmail if you ever decide to do anything funny.

Like leave.

We are watching you.
I actually quite agree that the BBB code of conduct is harmful. I'm not trying to argue for the code of conduct.

What bothers me about the article is that Fee Fighters is arguing from the point of a victim. Yes BBB has a harmful code of conduct, but Fee Fighters had a chance to review it and signed up for that.

> Nobody cares about the BBB code of conduct.

I don't understand this comment? This article is about how Fee Fighters lost their accreditation due to the BBB code of conduct? I think Fee Fighters cares about the BBB code of conduct. Many people who have upvoted this post and downvoted my original comment care one way or another I believe.
Software is just massively complex. Some day, someone will come along with the resources to redo large parts of the technology stack "correctly." If they do it right, it may even be an improvement. But make no mistake, the investment required will be massive.

So until we hit a major technical wall, why bother? Why optimize prematurely until we're bumping up against atoms?
And... How often have you watched a railsast on a particular subject, only to get an a-ha moment on something only marginally related? Happens to me every other episode.
In an introductory writing class, you get maximum utility by letting anyone in.

Even then—at least at the college level—a lot of universities have tracks of various kinds; at the University of Arizona, there's a normal 101 / 102 class sequence (where most students land), a 109 class (where students with AP or other credentials land), and a development class the name of which escapes me (where students who basically can't write land). From what I can tell, a lot of high schools do something similar.

Even then, I've seen students in 101 who really can't write, and students in 109 who clearly can't take the pace.

Maybe we're bumping people's chances up from 30% to 40%.

This reminds me of MFA programs, which are basically trying to do the same thing: most people in MFA programs never publish anything substantial. But the goal of the program is to give the kind of boost you're describing.

Well, the real goal might actually be to provide employment for the profs, but at the very least the subsidiary goal of helping 10% go to 20%, or being a catalyst for many people, persists.
How to Set Up and Maintain a Wireless Workplace
Hams have been doing packet radio since the 70's in earnest and it's been around far longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

There is clearly prior art. When you make this big a nuisance of yourself, clearly exploiting the system at society's expense, you should be permanently disbarred. You are a clear and present danger to the continued operation of the justice system.

Edit: Might a flood of complaints to the bar association do some good here?
Email info at ycombinator.com and ask nicely :)
Never heard of that rule. Perhaps you are confusing with trademarks, which you must defend?

Or you are confused about the damages - you can't collect damages on anything that happened before you told the victim "you are infringing, now stop or pay me $XXX". But you definitely can collect from that point on (triple damages, if willful infringement is established)
If your non US based, you may be interested in Simplified Ecommerce.

We cover the entire payments stack- gateway, vault, PCI compliance, recurring subscription management and Affiliate Marketing. http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com
Being a wee bit pessimistically inclined, I somewhat agree with the assessment of the node.js programmer pool (seems similar to the first migration of PHP programmers to Ruby after the infamous RoR screencast), I find it hard to attribute to this to the developer(s).

Or in other words,

a) what did they do wrong?

b) What do you think would be the best way to "spin" a new platform like that without either being cluelessly elitist or giving the unwashed masses false hope?
Indeed. Worse is better[1].

[1] http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
Top security fears for mobile devices
Diggnation is completely awesome and Im extremely sad to see it go. Say it ain't so! Alex & Kevin have produced an extremely entertaining and enlightening show. I completely disagree that Kevin Rose has "never... said anything substantial", quite the contrary. Each show is not only a friendly conversation that is easy to pay attention whether you're a tech professional or a complete layman, but the insights into Digg and it's struggles over time as well as other interesting anecdotes about technology and its evolution have taught me a lot.

Hope they change their minds on this.

They've got to be killing it on advertising but I would happily pay to watch Diggnation instead of Foundation, although There's definitely value in the later as well.
Have you seen any good examples of iOS apps made from HTML5 with PhoneGap that are actually good?
One other thing. It's coming fast now. Google wanting your birthday and recognizing your face and voice in the last week... this is complete BULLSHIT. Do they think people are dumb? I guess they have good reason to, since 90% of Americans are already walking around with these tracking d$&#*@ces. But I've never owned a smart phone for exactly this reason -- I have a GPS in my car, but I'd never get one that was hooked to the cell net, and I won't have a cell that I can't pull the battery out of.

This is a law targeting people like me. Not you, not the other 90% of Americans, not everybody on this site, because you all have smart phones. Admit it. You have one. You've been letting them track you for years, and by now they already know exactly how often you get laid, who you're sleeping with and how many drinks you have a night.

Not me, and not ever. What you gave up voluntarily, they're now going to take from me by force and fiat, and you won't lift a finger to defend me, will you? No, because you're smug with your iphone and your android and your blackberry. You're the problem if you have one of these. And I genuinely hope China blows the crap out of the US before this shit takes over the world, and gets the shit blown out of it in return, and we end up eating radishes and drinking out of each others skulls in total fucking blackness, and I will before I submit to this utter horseshit.
ARM has a second instruction set built into it called Thumb, which performs a subset of ARM operations in smaller instruction sizes. ARM is also an incredibly complex architecture which -- as someone who can effectively write x86 assembly in his sleep now -- I can barely wrap my mind around.

the core dilemma of computer science is this: conceptually simple systems are built on staggeringly complex abstractions; conceptually complex systems are built on simple abstractions. which is to say the more work your system does for you, the harder it was to build.

there are no stacks which are pure from head to toe. I guarantee you, old LISP Machine developers from Symbolics probably had a hard time designing their stuff as well.
Shopify throws weight behind Stripe
I got hooked early on in the excitement of IPTV taking off. I've watched every episode (I think) and I find it consistently entertaining. The hosts have good chemistry, are very "comfortable in their own skin," and are consistently funny.

The show is far from informative or even insightful, but that was never really the point. It didn't take long for the show to diverge from its premise (top stories from the social news website digg.com). It's really just about the chemistry and personalities of the hosts, which I find very enjoyable. And still, there have always been the occasional insights (albeit perhaps biased and not "fair") on the start-up world, gadgets, internet media, etc.

Oh, and there are some completely ridiculous "best of" moments that are likely to induce intense laughter. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Zpl6tmUxs&feature=playe...
What a narrow minded and myopic view of the world. I could cite a tweet to counter that, probably from someone with far more authority than the person you cited, but then I'd be citing a tweet as some form of proof...
It's pretty close to halfway between 0 and the expected lifespan, but that's not the common usage of "middle-aged." I always think of mid to late 40s.
Lots of small companies, like YC co's post demo-day, get bought as talent acquisitions. Adobe doesn't seem to focus on that stage much. Why?
Speaking for myself, it is because I see google as something that brings you traffic (and revenue if you use adsense), not as something that tries to bring away your traffic: You go to google to leave it as soon as you find your destination, while you go to facebook to stay there... and facebook is trying to cajole everyone into closing themselves inside their walls, with their pages, their apps, and so on.

Of course, with Google betting so much on G+, this could change. But I can still hope that google will try to differentiate itself from FB, at least in the eyes of developers, by being more outwardly than facebook. If they can make an offer that is more compelling for third parties, not driving them to completely relocate themselves inside the G+ environment, they could benefit from that in the long term.