skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So the object referred to by the variable myObject gets deleted from our servers. It was created whenever it was instantiated using a query. What global is it using?

How does myObject acquire a reference of some kind to your servers, and the context in which it is stored? (That's the answer).

saveAll is a static (class) method. It takes in a collection of instantiated objects and saves them to our servers. What global is it using? As for interjecting custom behavior, perhaps you're missing that all of these methods take in a variety of callbacks that can modify behavior.

How do I arbitrarily modify the saveAll method so that I can perform arbitrary operations on objects before they're saved, so that I can implement a custom undo manager (but only when working on objects in the context of the user editing the document. Elsewhere I want different behavior)?

----

These approaches (class methods, singletons/globals) are breaking OO polymorphism, and significantly hamstringing your APIs.

I'll try to provide an example that might matter to you:

Let's pretend that I want to add support for sharing data between users of my application. It's important to me to not repeat myself, so I want to have the same code be able to write data to the user's personal storage, write data to one of several possible shared storage destinations.

You decide you want to support this API. How do you make your current global/singleton API work for me?
Could you give your estimate of the properly used/badly used ration of copy/paste, preprocessor macros, and goto? Mine would be "too low for me to worry about".

Okay, there are some (corner) cases where they really are a good idea. But "never ever use this Chtulu Abomination" still is a damn good heuristic.
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. There's plenty of things Parse is still missing and this is definitely one of them. We're working on it!
I cannot remember the last time I read an article about a startup, technology, or general science where I paid the slightest bit of attention to what city the company/events called home. If you're an internet company nobody cares where you're from, aside from nationality and its accompanying laws. The article's author seems to have an obsession with Detroit and its image. I did a techcrunch search for my city, and again for my state. Zero articles in the past year. I don't care because it makes no difference.

I do thank the article for teaching me a new term today: "persecutory delusions."
I wonder if this includes customers who've put their account "on hold" rather than canceling. My wife decided she didn't need it anymore, but may someday want to go back. She's effectively cancelled, but the account still exists in their database.
Are you sacrificing happiness and long-term wealth for short term gains?
Interestingly though, this isn't "organ" trade, because the resource in question is replenished by the body within a few weeks. So it isn't really depriving anyone of anything to donate bone marrow.
While I agree with your point, I downvoted you because of your language. As long as you are on HN, please, stay civil. We don't need nor want this kind of discussion here.
The B-grade content they started to put front and center lost me.

I just use hulu.com and other similar sites; Mac Mini connected to my TV.
Support for conflicting dependencies in npm is an amazingly great feature because once a piece of software works you can update little pieces of your application without worrying about whether upgrading a dependency will break some sub-dependency somewhere. If your dependency graph has upwards of 50 nodes in it as some of mine do, this is a very big deal.
I'm willing to bet that a lot of those users, like myself, said "I've had these same 2 dvds for the past year. The streaming selection pretty much sucks and I end up watching B-movies when I'm bored because nothing I want to watch, and haven't seen before, is in their library. I should send these 2 dvds back and cancel".

I've long switched to itunes or Amazon when I want to watch movies because they tend to have the movie I want, when I want it, and I can download the whole movie before watching, thus not having to deal with netflix's lag-burdend craptastic streaming service.
Isn't there something about deaths happening in 3s?

1. Steve Jobs

2. Dennis Ritchie

3. John McCarthy
Perl doesn't have mark-and-sweep - instead you use weak references to prevent cycles causing leaks. The combination of Devel::Gladiator and Devel::FindRef allow for manual mark-and-complain for debugging, which tends to work quite well.

It's also possible in the case of object structures to have a sort of "ring" where the weak reference gets shuffled around said ring in order to allow a safe cycle without expecting the user of said objects to care (the trick is that objects' DESTROY methods are allowed to make new references to the object, which lets you do the shuffling just before it would normally have been freed).

I don't entirely see how managing reference counts would cause paging - in perl they're stored as part of the C-level struct for the value so the data's already nicely local to the memory you're already accessing - and when a ref count hits zero the value gets put into a "clean this up when this VM op has finished executing" array so it's pretty efficient.

I would suspect this sort of potential problem is why ObjC seems to be looking towards reference counting - the "smoothness" of not having any chance of a GC pause is probably to apple's eyes a worthwhile trade-off for the disadvantages of reference counting.

Strikes me it might be interesting to be able to mark objects as reference counted as a halfway house between fully GC'ed and fully manual, but I'm not sure whether the amount of use that would get would justify the effort involved.
Amsterdam cyclists are terribly annoying. But that doesn't mean it cannot work in other cities.

Like e.g. policy checking for cars speeding too much, police should also check the behaviour of cyclists. E.g. working lights when it is dark, running red lights, etc.

Though instead of checking for red lights, make sure the traffic signal changes quickly for cyclists. That's more effective.
Steve Jobs Narrates 'The Crazy Ones'. Never before aired.
Steve is an outlier, there is absolutely no doubt about it. There also can't be doubt that Steve did have a few strokes of luck that landed him at the right place in the right time, but I think you are also right in that the evidence of his skills are found in the fact that he was consistently successful.

I think being consistently successful in your ventures is a sign of true skill more so then being wildly successful, and it's safe to say that consistent success comes from experience or talent (if you are lucky).

EDIT: Technical talent is always important in a company that is based in technology. Steve's ability to design complemented the technical talents of the people he surrounded himself with, he knew that design and engineering are a nearly perfect couple with the right balance.
I guess there are not enough bike lanes?
And what is this number? Without hard facts do you count this as a counter argument? My main point is that all energy on our planet was originated from the Sun.
I would add their ridiculous claims and threats to your review and tell them that you just don't agree with their ToS, and as such will now stop using their services.
Ok sounds cool but I think you need to change your slogan and expand your intro page to include those differences. Not everyone is going to ask you directly and it's the differences from other platforms that's going to get you users not the similarities.

And maybe a good demo admin interface.
It still costs money to put in the lanes. They may last longer, but there is a startup cost. I doubt there is a study that shows more bike lanes would decrease the actual amount of traffic to make a material difference in road maintenance costs.
his daughter... assuming you mean Susan.

Does that make her AI, or merely AI's sister?
My primary development computer, over many generations of system builds, has always been named mccarthy.

Rest In Peace.
I think it's because the lack of tangibility (in any real sense) makes it seem less valuable. I had an experience where I said "pay $7000 for my service with a computer included" or "pay $5000 and byoc" and i've so far had everyone choose the $7000 option. It's just a matter of connection / tangibility. You know what starbucks tastes like, so you're willing to pay. You know what an iPhone feels like, so you can buy it. The software, while awesome, doesn't connect like a physical product you can connect with on multiple senses.

My $.02, but I think it's why it's easier to buy a big mac than Rdio.
XLDB 2011 slides are up
Unfortunately it's true. I just heard back from Peter Norvig, who says "He died peacefully in his sleep last night."
This is what I never understood - aside from the 'insurance' file that they released ~1 year ago, it seems they haven't really taken advantage of P2P networks as much as they could. It certainly would cut down on hosting costs, and it's not like the Wikileaks guys are unaware of encryption/signing.

Anybody know why they haven't gone this route?
I'd prefer having less total movies for streaming if they cut out all the B-movie crap. Or give us a [never ever ever show this again] button.
Exercise - something I'm bad at too but the more you exercise the more you will feel like doing things.
In response to the skepticism being expressed, I've just had a message from Wendy Grossman saying:

"... his daughter phoned me. I'm the
ultimate source for the wikipedia entry."
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First Interview with Jens Begemann. Founder of Wooga, the third biggest social game company, behind Zynga and EA. Enjoy.
There was one for a little while, but it apparently got removed as there was uncertainty about the claim. I'm sure it'll be back soon.
Disregarding the strange EULA, why are they calling themselves a student startup, when the founders got their master's degrees 20 years ago and it's nearer to a corporate purchase guide than a startup (as in groundbreaking, repeatable, scalable)?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/creator-of-lisp-john-mccart...
Tools have much, much more power over their users than you seem to think. Take subversion vs git for instance. How often would you merge branches with either tool?

We tend to follow the path of least friction. If a tool you use changes that path, and unless (even if?) you consciously fight it, you will change your behaviour, whether this is a good thing or not.
I feel bad for them too, but it's important to remember that if they don't work for the customer, then they're not a viable business. No sympathy necessary.
What a pity.

I sense a black bar coming.

The last few weeks have been terrible, one icon after another has fallen. What is different from other fields is that computing is still a young enough field that almost all of its luminaries except for the earliest ones are still alive.

I fear the avalanche has only barely begun, and at some point the frequency of these will become high enough that either we will stop to notice or we will have that black bar on here more or less permanently.
Of course, you don't really 'own' the movies through iTunes or Amazon either. And Netflix's stream servers have plenty of bandwidth to serve up. I use it daily without issue and HD programs, so it's not the servers. More likely, it you're internet connection or their overburdened peer connection to Netflix's peer. Either way, not something really in their control. As most internet service is getting more unreliable (instead of less), this isn't that surprising.
How Home Businesses Can Generate Leads Through Blogging The Affordable Way
To the extent that browsing a website is a restricted act under the law of copyright (see NLA v Meltwater for a ridiculous UK holding along those lines), I suppose you have copyright infringement if you engage in a restricted act without fully complying with the terms of the licence. If a judge were to rule similarly in the jurisdiction chosen for the dispute, and, like the US, there were statutory damages, I guess an award could come from there.
That's farfetched and, IMO, based on bad law, but even an action for breach of contract that ended in a nominal award for damages (say, $1) could be punitive
(on costs) in a loser-pays legal system.
To be absolutely fair, though, NFLX should in no way, shape, or form be worth anywhere near $300 a share. Even $50 is pushing it.

I'd think settling somewhere between 30-40/shr. is a good premium. They have to have multiple pipelines of revenue aside from "streaming non-recent movies and tv shows."

Here's a strategy they can try: If they can score some day-after-airing TV shows a la Hulu and have them available for 30 days, then moratorium to let the studios "monetize" the episodes in reruns and in syndication, then "re-release" them in streaming the entire season, that will be something. They can angle it to subscribers as their own personal "Tivo". They can pay content owners per viewing, as Spotify does with music publishers.
This is neat. Take it with a grain though.

http://foundrs.com/calculator/index.php
You kind of have to do that to make Hulu and similar sites actually work in the living room due to the ridiculous licensing restrictions on a lot of their content disallowing phone/Xbox/360/Wii/set top box usage.
ClassParrot makes it OK for students to text in class
Which cites... this thread. Hello TC!
When you said "not impossible" it implied that the other fork was impossible
FBI looks into Olympus paying 2 bankers $687 million payment in "advisory fees"
Section 10

1. Disclosure of information pursuant to this Act
shall not take place insofar as:

a. this might endanger the unity of the Crown;

b. this might damage the security of the State;

c. the data concerned relate to companies and
manufacturing processes and were furnished to
the government in confidence by natural or legal
persons.

2. Nor shall disclosure of information take place
insofar as its importance does not outweigh one of the
following:

a. relations between the Netherlands and other
states or international organisations;

b. the economic and financial interests of the
State, other bodies constituted under public law
or the administrative authorities referred to in
section 1a, subsection 1 (c and d) and
subsection 2;

c. the investigation of criminal offences and
the prosecution of offenders;

d. inspection, control and oversight by
administrative authorities;

e. respect for personal privacy;

f. the importance to the addressee of being the
first to note the information;

g. the prevention of disproportionate advantage
or disadvantage to the natural or legal persons
concerned or to third parties.
Let's hope that it is limited to 3. I get terribly antsy just thinking about who else in computing has reached their 70's and 80's.
Honestly curious, where did those users go? Back to $40 shitcable?

RedBox for Blu-Ray.
6 Ways to Master Entrepreneurial Uncertainty | Copyblogger
Real 'Sybil' Admits Multiple Personalities Were Fake
IBM doing Hadoop as a service in its cloud
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Simple Awesome Ways To Create Buzz for Your Business
it's not unique on the Web:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=c&ie=UTF-8&q=%22I...
An Integrated Apple TV Could Change Everything
I have friends who were outraged at Netflix price increase. And I mean serious outrage.

I did notice that the ones who were really outraged are running tight on money. One of them works and goes to school full time so an extra $8/month after tuition, rent, even though it's marginal seems like a LOT and for no additional benefit.
A memory leak is pretty terrible, and having to either a) disallow cycles or b) specially handle them in user code is also pretty terrible IMO. Loads of handy graph data-structures, all sorts of fun caching techniques just got either impossible or much more difficult. You definitely can work with those systems but it's like stepping into a time machine (one spitting you out around '94 at an MS COM presentation), why make do unless you have to?

I never claimed GC's solve all leaks either (they do a pretty good job with finalizer semantics honestly), but they're awfully awfully handy for solving very common (and sometimes tricky) ones.

I also did not mean to imply that our 40ms cut is a hard limit, it's a target average with a desire to minimize variability (Marc's work on which lead to this post); one that we're hitting pretty well. If you're working on a real-time system, you're right that you shouldn't be using these non-deterministic GCs.
This is my position, I feel. I am debating whether to continue attending classes for my BS AND juggling my full-time well-paid development job AND single parenthood, or drop the former, since I'm pursuing the former to get the full-time well-paid development job.

For me it's all about opportunity cost. The time I'm spending on coursework is time I'm not spending doing self-enrichment stuff I actually enjoy, and is far more useful.
> I'm assuming they're all talk

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Stormfront is not all talk and their actions have easily endangered more lives than Wikileaks has. This is the largest online community of neo-nazis on the web, for fuck's sake! What do you think they do, drum circles and interpretive dance??

I'm glad for you that you obviously live in a part of the world where hate-crimes are not much of an issue, but take a look at North East-Germany for instance. There's whole villages occupied by neo-nazis after they chased away the population that wouldn't salute the swastika flag. Yes, in the 21st century. And yes, they do assault and/or kill Jews, Gypsies, Muslims, Blacks, you name it (the ones not in those villages, obviously nobody goes there willingly).

They just don't happen to affect the lives of the super-rich and powerful very much.

Stormfront is quite objectively more evil than Wikileaks no matter how you spin it, unless you're ignorant or have neo-nazi tendencies yourself.

Skrebbel is pretty much spot-on in his assessment.
Hastings should have stayed the course with his decision. Can't just impulsively react to every analysts opinion and run your company that way.
Raise prices as needed, you will lose subscribers in the short run but in the longer run you will hopefully keep providing better content and will then start gaining subscribers.
They also maybe should have made a play for Hulu.
I'm guessing that's most of it: people with disposable income that were paying but not using, simply because they never bothered to cancel. All the news about the price hikes brought the small monthly expense to the attention of these people, and even though most could afford the higher price, it was just the nudge they needed to cancel a service they rarely use.
"Ok. What`s depressing -- what`s depressing jobs is that the world supply and demand for labor has changed. In other words, there`s a lot more people working as China came on and India came on and they are competitive. There`s a world supply of labor has change -- has increased and technology has had an effect.

So we`re in an interesting era because I think almost and if you think of a person as -- in a machine, an economic machine as being tool, a part of that economic machine the demand for labor has changed in a very profound way. It`s an interesting question. We might enter into a period in which we don`t need people as tools. So what does that mean?"

So he is concerned about the breakdown of the Luddite fallacy. Interesting, considering he has everything to gain from promulgating the guarantee of infinite employment opportunities for average citizens. I believe this is a fair canary in the coal mine for the structural employment nightmare we shall face in the coming decades.
Agree, it does feel like there is a lot of B-grade stuff on Netflix streaming.

Paradoxically, the unlimited movie buffet might be their undoing. There is a limited number of movies that are truly excellent and worth watching. Once you go through those good ones, you're left with the crap. Having unlimited watching quickly moves you from the good stuff to the crap, and then you cancel your subscription. Neflix faces a scarcity disconnect: its unlimited model says there is no scarcity but out in the real world good movies are still scarce.
Julian Assange Says WikiLeaks May Be Forced to Close
The users balk because they understand that their effective monthly/weekly price was jacked up, by a lot. Regardless of how much Netflix pitches their "unlimited" plan, users understand that their time for (movie) entertainment is not unlimited. Therefore, from their perspective, they see it as it is - a huge price increase - and they move on to better deals or something else entirely.
8 times what?
Replying to your original reference: http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128584398642757632

Just to add to that - I've had a message from Wendy saying that McCarthy's daughter had 'phoned her with the news, and Wendy is the ultimate source of the wikipedia edit/entry.
Sorry to phrase it poorly.

It was actually quite a great experience. More of my lack of thoroughly researching the query capabilities. Everything from integrating the SDK to importing data went very smoothly.

I realize this is not a top priority feature since it isn't too difficult to work around it in most cases. Any idea on a time frame?
I am deeply saddened with this loss to our community. He was such an influence to computer science as a whole.
I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. I didn't and I am grateful for your comment.
Are you sure they are really all two-bit patents? Microsoft has been making mobile devices since the era of "handheld PCs" back in the mid 90s, and smartphones -- starting with Pocket PC Phone Edition -- since 2002. It would be surprising if they didn't have a strong IP portfolio in the area.

P.S. (not directed at you, jsnell) Is there really anything that warrants downvoting my original post other than an unpopular viewpoint?
nndb has been very fast for reporting deaths in the last few months. A few hours at most.
I actually respect the CEO very much who realizes he has made a wrong decision and backs away from it. It shows the type of humility that almost no one in that position has. Furthermore, companies exist to make customers happy, so if the customers were unhappy from this decision I can hardly blame him for reversing it.
This says things about the prices at Starbucks as much as it says things about the web. :)

Also, with food, even if it is terrible you can still eat it. It's a no/little risk investment.
Sheen decepcionado de "Two and a Half Men"
Or: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.1
*Portuguese
How early product failures led to huge successes
Siri Co-Founder Leaving Apple
No where did he mention concerns about owning a movie. I personally can really only stand to watch a movie once, I don't really care to own a movie.

As for his internet connection, that probably should be Netflix's concern. Most people aren't going to go through the hassle of changing their ISP for Netflix & it would be rather silly to expect him to continue paying for a service that doesn't work with his ISP or his viewing habits.

Netflix needs to be more aggressive with ISPs & content providers. They've seemingly rolled over time & again to ISPs & content producers while irritating their customer base.
"Não há detalhes sobre a causa de sua morte" = "There are no details about the cause of death".
Not understanding your customer in this day and age when there are so many effective ways of doing so is inexcusable.
Steve Jobs At Obama Tech Leader Dinner
It is truly a sad day for AI and LISP. I can only hope he did not suffer in his last moments.

RIP