skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The the object can be accessed (not modified, just accessed) from multiple threads, the extra instruction needs to be a thread safe atomic increment, which is hugely expensive, and becomes more expensive the more cores you have, especially in a NUMA architecture.

Also, when an object is freed, you need to decrement the reference count of every single object it points to, even objects that are referenced from many other places and clearly won't be reclaimed for a long time.
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At the risk of taking a potentially unpopular opinion on the subject, I don't think either one of those people come out looking too good.

I'm all for doing the whole "CC your formal complaint letter to several outlets in hopes that someone will take notice" approach; My brother taught me about doing this when I was a little kid. He would write letters (this was before the advent of the internet) and note on the bottom that they had been CCd to various local news outlets, as well as the better business bureau (regardless of whether or not he actually sent those additional letters). And almost always, it worked.

But I would be absolutely embarrassed to have my name attached to his complaint that got sent around. He is understandably, and in some cases justifiably, upset by the companies lack of communication and flippant nature, but this is no time to get into a pissing match. He chose to stoop to the guys level with name calling and taunting: Welcome to the internet bitch? Thats how I roll? It sounds like something you'd see on a meme, not something you want to end a complaint letter with.

That said, the guy on Oceans end is clearly the winner when it comes to idiotic behavior, as he further digs his own grave down the line. I just can't cut the customer any slack on stooping to Oceans level, however. He comes off sounding like almost as big of an idiot as the guy at Ocean.

Just my 2 cents, I'm sure others will see it differently
Yes, I've used them many time, and I know my (non technical) girlfriend does too.

I've found similar novels that I've liked through the suggestions, bands I've enjoyed and recently when buying the 'Lean Startup' I ended up buying 2 of the suggested books.

Many time I end up not buying the item I originally went there for, instead buying one of the suggestions, or the suggestions on a suggestion... depends how the reviews look.

As I see it Amazon were the first to really use this data successfully and meaningfully.

The other networks I guess would be the Amazon Wishlists which for a time were hugely popular. I still see wishlist links on personal and informational sites, as a way to give back to the site creator. That network is pretty powerful too!
Two years in Italy for everything but Apple stuff. Always looked very odd, I hope this issue will get fixed.
In no particular order, the best ones I read this year on top of my mind are:
- enchantment by guy kawasaki
- rework by 37signals
- the prince (machiavelli?)
- the 4 hour work week (ferris?)
Russia building 10-petaflop supercomputer
- "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" by Robert C. Martin

- "Physics for Future Presidents" by Richard Muller

Not really a book but I found the "MIT Guide to Lock Picking" an interesting read.
The (lack of) ease finding friends on Tumblr vs WordPress.com
China GPS rival Beidou starts offering navigation data
what is "day 1"? The day that iOS 5 got updated to devices from Apple?

Then we could say that day 1 for Samsung's Android 4.0-based software is the day that Samsung updates the first of their devices.

There is for sure a problem with many phone manufacturers not supporting their devices as long as they could. But this has nothing to do with the software that runs on the devices. When it comes to "time until update", the comparison with iOS and Android makes little sense.

Because iOS is a complete operating system, while Android is just the base of Samsung's operating system.

Some of the core applications of the device are not part of android. Some are proprietary from Samsung. Some are proprietary from Google and they get updated about once per month, even if the Android version you are running is not the most recent.
Computational thinking: Why is it that important?
Mocked And Misunderstood
I hope so, this would be a huge leap forward for the web. For low-level performance, Javascript doesn't quite cut it. Although it will of course become faster and faster, I don't think you can approach a low-level language.

NaCl will also enable other languages for client-side programming.

However... I doubt that Apple will include it in iOS, which might be a big hurdle for adoption...
Tips about how to organize mass e-mailings 
Whether you are a business professional, working at a top notch management level with a company or working from home, it is not possible to read and reply to each e-mail message. Moreover checking all the e-mails at times seem to be a waste of time. Also time consumed in replying to each one of them can be better utilized in some other important task. So, it is advisable to practice e-mail organization. If you wish to opt for a hassle free e-mail support then you should get in touch with a premium computer support company. The technical experts will help you sort out your e-mail messages and organize your contacts well.
This message is rather ominous: "Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."
What happened to talking to your customers in complete sentences?
Nope, being spoiled is getting lots of stuff. Nothing wrong with that. This article is about expecting, demanding, or thinking you deserve lots of stuff. That's "entitlement".
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I am Levis poll from California.
Defining Hobbyyist, Professional, Craftsman, and Artist
I learnt Ruby this year, because I read Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby and it made me really excited about it's simplicity and readability. I used it to build Hackerbuddy.com.
It's still not trivial even with massive parallelism. Performance is easily killed if you:

1) Completely saturate the memory interconnect between the processors and RAM chips

2) If your parallel collector threads are touching the same memory that your worker threads are, you're going to have some cache contention

3) One of the big challenges with cache lines that have writes in them is if they are shared between processors. For example, create two ref cells and have two parallel threads set them -- if the compiler did not happen to pad them out to cache line size, they'll be fighting for the same 64 bytes (8 64-bit words/pointers) of memory

We (Manticore) have done a lot of work to isolate the per-CPU work, heap pages, etc. (http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.2554 , MSPC 2011 proceedings should be out on acm.org soon-ish). But it's not easy and requires rearchitecting your whole compiler and runtime system. GHC is also in the middle of some similar work, and they have a much harder problem both due to the challenges of implementing laziness and they have a full-featured system and real user base, so they can't just change things willy-nilly.

Further, once you get the parallelism right, you end up in a different situation: Amdahl's Law bites. Even if 90% of your program is amenable to parallel work, if you make that portion go infinitely fast, you still have a sequential portion that takes 10% of the time and therefore limits you to a maximum of 10x speedup.

We are hitting that limitation right now in our research and going back to do more sequential performance work. I've got a small army of undergraduates implementing compiler optimizations and analyses :-)
Being a professional artist is probably the most difficult combination. Do you agree?
Why Manufacturers Should Support Jailbreaking
On a similar note I'd nominate Good Calories, Bad Calories as my book. Ferris gets my back up, especially the received wisdom that others quote from him, but Taubes really opened my eyes to the fact I could change what I eat and feel ten times better.
The first frame of the video provides attribution to the Computer History Museum.
Any civilisation advanced enough to find us & say hello would probably be surviving well on their own planet. If they are looking for more space, who knows if they need a place like earth. We don't know if an alien civilisation would even need water in the first place.
I highly recommend his other book "Why we get fat" too.
Totally agree the customer was in the wrong (at least somewhat) but I think this is more about the PR guy. The customer is allowed to be a jerk. The PR guy gets paid to handle people and what does he do? Gets in an argument with an angry customer. Anyone who has worked in customer service knows you always smile through your teeth. Worst comes to worst you can always just not respond, which would have been better than this.
The article says "in addition to reducing carbon emissions" in regard to the Tesla. I can't see how electric cars actually reduce pollution/emissions of any kind.

Typical coal -> electricity is 33% efficient, but can be up to 50% [1], electricty to battery is 75% [2], and electric motors are about 92% [3]. The typical efficiency will be .33 * .75 * .92 = 23%, with a maximum of 35%. Gasoline engine efficiency is 25 - 30% [4], so we aren't really improving pollution much with electric cars, until wind/solar makes up a substantial part of our grid.

Now it will certainly _move_ the pollution from the cars in the cities to the power plants elsewhere (which is a good thing), but it really isn't preventing pollution.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station#Basic...

[2] http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006554.html

[3] http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motor-efficienc...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=55333
Indeed, I was kinda surprised to see the thing turning into a pissing contest towards the end.
I think directive 1999/44/EC introduced that law, you can search on the EU site or here's a quick link with further info: http://ec.europa.eu/publications/booklets/move/64/index_en.h...
+1 for "Hyperion" + "Fall of Hyperion" – both are amazing books that I just finished.

Also, "Glasshouse" by Charles Stross was pretty rad too.
I see it mostly your way, only the customer has a right to be pissed off and the PR guy does not - though, he should have cooled off before sending that e-mail.

I've done stupid things when angry as well, so I shouldn't judge.

Edit: the link didn't work for me, had to go to the main Penny Arcade site.
Predictions: 6.2% marketshare for Windows Phone in 2012
Man sued for keeping company Twitter followers ~ Daily World News
It makes sense if you stand by your principles.

In some cases that's very important.
The MINIMUM is two years guarantee on electronics for defects present at the time of sale. European member countries are free to add additional protections, but 2 years is the minimum. For example, the 2 year minimum isn't specified in Dutch law because for many products (e.g. a washing machine) the buyer can reasonably expect a longer lifetime (see in Dutch: http://www.consuwijzer.nl/Ik_wil_advies_over/Elektronica_en_... ).

You can also expect salespeople to play dumb about this (or perhaps they really don't know) and to suggest the defect happened because of your own misdoing, but keep pressing them and they'll need to give in. We tend to pay a hefty surcharge on electronics in Europe (even taking into consideration differences in VAT etc., see for example http://www.asymco.com/2011/12/20/the-big-mac/ ), so in my mind this guarantee is something I've paid for and have a right to.
When you're eating sushi in a Jacuzzi with the Mayor of Boston, you don't need to type well.
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Ok this will sound completely naive but whatever happened to the customer is always right? Ok yes, I agree that is a bit overstated but in this case he was right and Gabe came out all puffed up and aggressive from the start and continued and continued (I actually like at the end when he realizes who he is emailing back and forth to). Maybe I'm just naive but I believe the smart businessman (woman) puts the customers first.
The guy must fancy himself as a bit of a mob boss/gangster. Maybe got too into The Sopranos? There's a point where you can start reading it all in Chris Moltisanti's voice.

The fella making the complaint was hardly better, but seeing as the guy he was talking to was being unprofessional (at the very least) right off the bat, his only fault is letting his frustration get the better of him.
I think Apple got in trouble with Chinese authorities over warranty time too. Every computer sold in China has to come with a 2 year warranty for main components (screen, mainboard etc). iPad was marketed under portable computer category. Apple changed its policy to comply with China's consumer protection law.
I learnt python. It's awesome.
The best part about this is the refreshing level of discourse in the comments. Can you even imagine what the world would be like if political discussion sounded like THAT instead of what you get when you Google 'SOPA'. It brings a tear to my eye.

Also, respect for frankydp and the appropriate title of this link. No spin at all. This is how I imagine the internet when I'm dreaming.
"Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography" by Julian Young.
Neuropath - R Scott Bakker.
It's definitely more about the PR guy, no question. Above all else, those people are paid to be polite, courteous, and to relate to the customers.

He dropped the ball big time
Also includes a stunning misunderstanding of the halting theorem. Doesn't really help with the whole node.js stereotype.
Warranty is not the same as the protection the law requires. The warranty companies offer are often more generous than what is required of them by law, but also more limited in duration.

In Germany the problem is that the burden of proof reverses after twelve months, making the protection afforded by the law practically useless after a year. I think the individual countries get a lot of leeway in how they implement those EU directives, so details in those laws might be very different in different countries.
It's a bit different thing with that EU law. EU does not force to anybody offer any warranty, BUT EU demands that:

"If the item you bought does not look or function as it was advertised, or if it is not satisfactory, you have the right to have the item replaced or to get your money back if the re- placement was not completed in a reasonable time at no extra cost."

Warranty by large means that manufactures promises to repair your item (or replace). EU forces seller, not manufacturer, to take action.
Touch
When you mean ‘have an effect on’, use affect (NOT touch): ‘How will these new taxes affect people on low incomes?’ ‘Farms in the south of the country have been seriously affected by the drought.’
Get in touch with = communication with (someone) by letter or telephone: ‘Don’t wait until Christmas before you get in touch.’ ‘Mrs Tylor wants you to get in touch with her.’
Come into contact with = meet: ‘In my profession, I come into contact with a lot of teachers.’
some of us still have a lot of bad taste in our mouths after the windows mobile 6.x incident?
GitHub for Mac as CLI
What does "definite" mean? Greater than zero? That's useless here. Either you made it to orbit or you didn't. Either you're pregnant or you're not. Either you are alive or you are dead. There is quite a lot of binary stuff happening in the universe, and none of it relies on things like "0.24% likelihood". SpaceX's record is abysmal, and you forgot a few facts.

1) Soyuz is a government project with the pride of a nation at stake. SpaceX is a personal project with the pride of an egomaniac at stake. If SpaceX fails, it's merely another startup gone bad. If Soyuz fails, it's quite a lot more.

2) Did Musk spend any of his billions on purchasing any of that hard-earned Soyuz flight data from Russia? If not, then he does not care to learn from history, which means that the long-term failure rate of SpaceX vehicles will likely be higher than that of Soyuz.

3) If I am right about #2, then the fatality rate for humans under SpaceX will be higher than 2%, and even 2% of a million people is already quite high, especially when you consider that most of them will not be trained to the levels of the people who have already gone up.

4) If Musk was grounded in reality, he would shoot for the moon, then Mars. Risking fewer people, closer to Earth, is certainly a much better strategy than what he has announced. If something goes wrong on the moon, help is a few days away. That might still not be good enough, but it's far better than the stretch of time required to wait for help on Mars.

5) Musk has very little experience building rockets, and none at all when it comes to building habitats for extreme environments. Take the full documentation (parts, computers, software, maintenance, and whatnot) of the latest Boeing jet, multiply that by about 100, and you might have what it takes to successfully fly to Mars and live there. This kind of endeavor will require a deep rethink of how we handle big projects. SpaceX does not have this ability.

A few years ago, we had the era when Google could do no wrong, and any criticism of Google would not be tolerated by its many fans. Now, that same mindset applies to Musk, except this time, people will die.
Prime Obsession : http://amzn.com/0309085497 - a great introduction to the Riemann hypothesis with chapters alternating between the history and impact of the claim, and a dive into the mathematics behind the claim. I have a mediocre background in math (i.e. up through Calculus III in college) but I had no trouble following the chapters explaining the maths behind the hypothesis.

The Undiscovered Self : http://amzn.com/0451217322 - A distillation of much of Carl Jung's lifetime of research in psychology into a short book. The blurb on the book jacket sums it up best: 'In his classic, provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung-one of psychiatry's greatest minds-argues that the future depends on our ability to resist society's mass movements. Only by understanding our unconscious inner nature-"the undiscovered self"-can we gain the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism.'
Catalogue of FOSS applications for Android
Live at the Internet Archive
I'm not sure.

Admittedly, I genuinely try and avoid getting into pissing contents. Nobody wins, and you both get wet.

In this case, though, the guy at Ocean seems to think that he's far more important than anybody else at the table, including his customers.

As a business owner, this is not only a horrible attitude to take, but very dangerous. It's exactly like being the toughest kid in the neighborhood, which is great, until you meet the tougher kid from the next block over.
Christmas Day Online Spending Up 16.4%; Mobile Sales Up 173%
'TSA Arrests Me for Using the Fourth Amendment as a Weapon'
Ask HN: Advice on courses for a MS student?
I'm a Masters student at a US univ. I can only take a fixed number of courses every semester, but I'm interested in a lot of things...( for example, I am currently agonizing over a choice b/w a course on computer vision v/s computational geometry, as I kind of love math as well as coding). I'm not sure about what I want to be in the future (i.e entrepreneur or academic ) but I do know that HN folks are the more intelligent and practical people.
So what I'm asking is: what things should I keep in mind when selecting courses? Any views/comments would be greatly appreciated.
SOPA is but a battle in a war. The "war" is the corruption in the US Congress. Go check out what Larry Lessig is doing nowadays... he's trying to fight the war, not the battle.

His comments on why he's "MIA" in the SOPA battle (despite being an open source software and copyleft activist) shed light on this. I'm with Larry... SOPA, the USA PATRIOT Act, DMCA, all that BS are just symptoms of a disease. I'm not saying we "netizens" shouldn't fight SOPA tooth and nail, but some effort should be put into the 'war' as well, to avoid only seeing one or two trees and not the forest.

https://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-is-lawrence-lessig-m...
'Xoom 2' is no iPad 2--and that can also be a good thing
It's the same reason the NFL supports it. They
make their money on merchandise and knockoffs from China sold via the Internet is a huge problem
One Year Ago - HN Predictions for 2011
Best book is hard. Best technical book is either:

Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming: http://www.amzn.com/0262220695

or:

Programming in Scala: http://www.amzn.com/0981531644
Careful, there's an app which will delete all your tweets
It is enabling an improvement in "total" efficiency which in the end is the only thing that matters.

The sum of the different parts being greater than the individual components...
Steak-in-a-can!
Launch an experiment, plant a flag
The whole thing seems too incredulous to be true and feels like a PR stunt.

If it is true, and it makes this guy's products even more popular, then I fear for fate of humanity.
Speakergram Shuts Down
That's why the Jesuits both benefited from teaching religion and from controlling education and knowledge in several countries in the past.

> Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality"

Not necessarily, but it surely opens a window for irrationality, and what goes through that window depends on the stuff that happens to you.

That's usually called 'the call from God' and it is generally something bad like sickness or a the death of someone close.
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Apple iOS holiday activations reach lofty heights
It's cheap and pretty much does the job from what I hear. Obviously the author's and his family's experience was a bit worse than most people report. But honestely, returning something is a huge pain in the ass. It requires work and backing out of a decision. Very few people ever bother returning things. Just like some percentage of people never mail in rebates.

With apps, you can offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, it will increase conversion, and few people will ever take you up on it. It sucks that it means a business doesn't have to please everyone completely, but the business is in it for the money anyway, not pleasing everyone. I think, from a business perspective, it was right to launch and capture the holiday sales. Subsequent versions will get better. I have a first generation Kindle and later versions blow it away. My version has freaking black text on a dark gray background, worse than cheap newspaper.
12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
A startup’s plan to sell solar like cell phones
¨an ego tripping blogger who not only publishes a private conversation but picks a side and joins the fight¨

This describes it perfectly.
> And in Amoy, a language from eastern China, the records carry this message: "Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."

Come and munch out on the human race?
Part of the problem is that the HN community would like to see a great improvement in University classes. For the most part, what is taught in University is not practical or used in the workplace.

I am sure someone will give you a recommendation.
Got it. 2x the speed of C is very interesting... this could come in handy the next time I need to write a physics/math computation script.
KickStarter is gonna be big? I kinda thought is was already a success.
You are doing this:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority...
Consider the Lobster - essays by DFW

Startup Nation - discourse on startups in Israel

Tempo - narrative strategy by Venkatesh Rao - REALLY good read, distilled and full of gold