skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dumping/Backing up Mysql Databases (Innodb) without locking tables.
Jobs was exactly the same way, he just happened to lose the PC battle. Bill Gates famously tried to help him license the the Mac OS to other PC manufacturers (displacing DOS!) but Jobs thought he could beat them all across the entire stack.
I sort of built my skills in unison (had an interest in both programming and design since I was a kid), but my career has tended towards the development side, so I guess you could say that I am a programmer by trade that picked up design on the side. Whether or not I am "kickass" is subjective, but people seem generally happy with my work.

The biggest challenge I find is that people do not take designer programmers seriously. Those who do just enough programming to support their interfaces seem to be respected, but as soon as I dive in writing some low level component in C, as an example, my design skills are immediately discounted, it seems.

Programming is design, in my opinion. The way you structure your code, getting the indents and spacings just right to be pleasing to the eye, are the exact same skills you need when you're shifting pixels in photoshop. Thinking about how the next programmer will interpret the meaning of your code is the same skill you need when thinking about how a user will use your interface. I feel the only thing limiting a programmer from becoming a good designer is practice.
Of course I was referring to the apparent value based on the metric used in the article, and not any socially normative value.
Mobile Morning Coffee (01/27/12)
Bringing galaxy-scale magnetic fields down to size in the lab
If you like that sort of thing you might like my "GNU Make Standard Library" which provides all sorts of additional functionality all written in native GNU Make: http://gmsl.sourceforge.net/.

Also there's my interactive GNU Make Debugger (all written in GNU Make syntax): http://gmd.sourceforge.net/

Or even my book: "GNU Make Unleashed": http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/gnu-make-unleashed/293...
UK Court Says You Can Copyright The Basic Idea Of A Photograph
Vimeo nuevo diseño
Diet is HUGE, I agree. I'm surprised there aren't more "Hackers should eat more Spinach" posts on HN.
Looks cool. I'd love to see a price range on the home page as well, just so I know if this is something I can afford. Maybe even a/b test different price points on a splash page (unbounce) and see what sticks.

whens the first box shipping?!

now i don't have to buy clothes anymore
I tell people it's half right :-)
I was going to bed around 12-4, waking up between 10 and 12. I found that my evenings were too distracting & busy, and it was hard for me (personally) to get back into the workflow.
What is the Spring Integration framework?
Update on Google's use of data from Mocality’s site in Kenya
That's fair, but PHP has the same level of WTF, and is (I'd argue) less elegant than JS.
"generally knowing where stuff is" has been my favorite part of using Arch. I started out on redhat systems back in the day, and kinda figured out where the really important stuff was, but never wrapped my head around everything. Adding things piece by piece as I need them to Arch is much more instructive.
Hooray for ad-hominems and sweeping generalizations!

I've found the Arch community to be EXTREMELY helpful because they are encouraged by people who want to know what's going on and not just taking whatever is pre-packaged into the distro and shoved down their throats.

The beauty of Linux is that there's something for everyone. We could speak with equal pejoratives about distributions that do everything for the user but the reality is that Arch is around because there is a community who wants it --- and they're not the "necbeard crowd."

What OS do you use? I'm sure we could hurl insults at you, too. That wouldn't be a constructive conversation, though.

Here I go again ... feeding trolls. Sorry folks.
Try XtraBackup, it takes a little time to set up but its great and can be automated.
Famous NYU Finance Professor Teaches Free Online Course
Can you opt out of months if you don't want the particular schwag and not get charged $15?
I find your definitation of "creating things" narrow and shallow.

There's a tremendous amount of creativity that goes into customizing an OS to meet every need you have --- and ONLY those needs.
45 Years Ago - Apollo 1: The Fire That Shocked NASA
But there can still be an order of magnitude difference between what these large companies do. Just because they all fall short of a "utopian-fairy-nerd" standard doesn't mean they're all equally reprehensible!

Reminds me of something pg wrote in "what happened to yahoo"

http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

"It's hard for anyone much younger than me to understand the fear Microsoft still inspired in 1995. Imagine a company with several times the power Google has now, but way meaner. It was perfectly reasonable to be afraid of them."
How to Game the Crap out of Google using SPYW
Looks really good. First thought - you need some sort of feedback to let the user know that their files are downloading - I've linked my Facebook account and it's downloading hundreds of photos, but I thought it was broken as it just created a bunch of empty folders. The only way I could confirm that it is working was by checking my used quota. I'm using OSX Lion by the way...
Ask HN: Where can I find small bits of work?
I was wondering if anybody would hire a freelance programmer to complete very specific portions of work (coding an engine, a port etc.) or if there is a service that allows you to hire out this sort of work?
Perhaps the "neckbeards" and "outcasts" you refer to prefer to fix the motorcycle when it breaks, instead of paying somebody else to it?

http://google.com/search?q=zen+and+the+art+of+motorcycle+mai...
Setting up a lab in your agency
US spy agencies look to cloud computing
US spy agencies look to cloud computing
maybe in bad taste, but made me think of this 'art' http://www.astronautsuicides.com/
Visual app development tool holds app creation contest
A similar version of this idea is also in the gnu make manual, at:

http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Eval-Funct...
Good question. The wordpress blog (webstartup.me) is on a cheap server. Freelancify is hosted on Heroku.
I could see this being very popular. Whenever I wear startup swag (especially Twilio or Foursquare) I have people ask me where they can get it. When I say I got it at a user group or conference they seem disappointed.
Twenity – when online influence measuring meets gamification
This is a great comment and the key phrase is "for my purposes..."

Many people look at a particular OS, decide that it's not right for what they need or want, and jump straight to "that OS sucks because it doesn't meet my needs." It should be fairly obvious how that is just a silly thing to think.

Different OSs meet different needs. We should strive to understand our own needs and to understand our options so we can make the optimal choice for our particular situation.

As an arch user myself, I like (and can afford the time) to tweak and fiddle with my setup so that it's just right for my workflow. Another reason I use it, is that it's a great way to learn more about linux.

Arch probably is not right for people who need lots of stability or don't have the time to fiddle and tweak the OS. And that's ok. There are many other options they can use. It sounds like Debian is the right fit for you and that's awesome.
History of personal checks
How to Become an Expert: Creative Problem Solving
He mentions Fusion-io drives getting faster. What's interesting about iodrives is that you don't have to buy a new one to get more speed, just updating your CPU or RAM will speed up an iodrive:

"Because VSL leverages powerful host CPU cores and memory for block mapping, ioMemory performance automatically improves as organizations upgrade host CPUs or memory" (http://www.fusionio.com/overviews/vsl-technical-overview/)

VSL (Virtual Storage Layer) is the Fusion-io software that makes an iodrive look like a block device to the OS, among other things.

(Yes, I'm an engineer at Fusion)
This is a great concept. Visibility is key for any startup's success and thoughtful, on-the-ground swag is a huge part of this!
Id Software's Main Linux Game Developer Resigns
Did you check out Freelancify?

http://www.freelancify.com/

I just saw it here on HN, in a startup story link re: learning Ruby on Rails:

http://www.webstartup.me/learned-ruby-rails-12-weeks-launch-...
You may also view PDFs within the Firefox browser with the Acrobat or Foxit plug-ins.
Dans 10 ans tu regretteras n'avoir pas essaye?
"We are going to have failures. There are going to be sacrifices made in the program; we've been lucky so far. If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." — Virgil 'Gus' Grissom.

It seems like most of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era astronauts felt like their lives came second to mission success. I'm sure there are plenty of astronauts that feel the same way today.

With a pool of astronauts willing to take reasonable risks to advance space exploration, it's the NASA management that has been responsible for disallowing the more dangerous missions. On the one hand that's tragic, but on the other it makes sense from a PR perspective. With each spaceflight tragedy there has been a backlash from taxpayers and Congress. Politicians will use spaceflight accidents to push agendas that cut funding, etc.

NASA has to walk a fine line between keeping the program safe enough to maintain funding and adventurous enough to make gains in space exploration. I think in early NASA it was easier to justify the human cost of accidents because of Cold War pressure, but now there is a harder time with this justification and thus the huge emphasis on safety.
Probably because of comments like what astrodust is spraying everywhere.
Any kind of feedback would be appreciated! :)
I'm not saying you can't do it. Make is really powerful and fun once you take a few minutes to think about how it is supposed to work (rules that generate file outputs), but a lot of programmers don't (who treat rules as procedures resulting in a file thats 90% phony rules). You have to be very careful with define to generate rules. Just be aware there are syntax pitfalls, compatibility pitfalls (between relatively recent versions of make), and just confusion if you aren't clear on what you're doing.
is it so that as you are getting older - its getting harder to learn programming, say over 30 yeards old ..
really cool.

will there be more t-shirt styles/hoodies?
All the evidence is that nature does implausibly difficult computations all the time. Multiplying by pi has nothing on calculating the evolution of a quantum system.
> Every shopping centre has a sign in their carpark saying that they don't take liability for any damage to cars parked there, but if someone drives into your car in one they're still liable for damages, despite there not being any guarantee of security originally.

That doesn't sound right. Why would a shopping center be liable for someone else's actions, specifically someone hitting your car?
SenseiDB 1.0: an open-source, distributed, realtime, semi-structured database
The transition from python 2.7 to python 3 bit me in the butt.

Having said that - it was resolved quickly by some friends in the community.
I love the idea of a startup raising money by selling their own shirts.
Once you get through the basics, think of a couple small programs to write to test out your new skills and you'll be sure to encounter new problem. Some of the first programs I wrote in PHP included sorting and ordering a list of numbers and letters that were entered, a pig latin converter, and then to get the hang of MySQL, I created some simple database entries.

For the first month I was constantly referencing other code online to figure out how to create my programs. After a while I found myself looking less and less at existing code and I was able to simply type away.
It sounds just like the now defunct Valleyschwag from 2006, http://techcrunch.com/2006/05/04/get-web-20-schwag-from-vall...
This article answered for me one of those things I'd always wondered but never took time to figure out: why no one has been back to the moon even though our technology has advanced exponentially in the last 40 years. An irrational emphasis on risk makes perfect sense.

Still doesn't explain why no other country has done it, though. Well, except for the boring explanations about high costs and no immediate benefits besides bragging rights...
it almost seems as if the demo web interface was lifted directly from IFTTT too.
You can try posting your question in http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/
Hacking stunt: Stealing smartphone crypto keys using plain old radio
In England: You can't disclaim liability. Thus, putting a sign in the car park saying "we're not liable for anything that happens to your car while parked here" means nothing; if something they did makes them liable they're still liable even if they have the sign up.
Nice! We will have Twilio and hope to get Foursquare as well. Both do an excellent job of coming up with high quality gear.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I was stoked to see 1.0 was out, but after doing just the simple quick start I was disappointed with the lag between popups/transitions.

Let me know if you find a fix!
It also misses things like: What's the cost of a million schoolchildren watching a space shuttle explode?
"...russian-doll architecture of nested caching that I’ll write up in detail soon."

A.k.a object orientation? (Maybe an explanation is due here, or do other HNers grok and agree?)
If you have multiple client browsers yourself, js-test-driver might be a good fit.
http://code.google.com/p/js-test-driver/wiki/GettingStarted
I signed up for this last week and I'm excited to start receiving some great swag next month. Living in Victoria, BC it's not so easy to get your hands on some shirts from the companies you use, follow, and hear about so this is a great new service. Thanks Frank!
Is it necessary to just pick one role model? or admire just one guy? Instead of admiring people as a whole, can't we just admire (and pick, emulate etc) habits/principles from many people (and ignore the 'jerk' behavior etc)? For example, Jobs had excellent taste, believed in creating simple/beautiful products etc. Gates is doing amazing work with his enormous wealth and so on.
Yep, it is similar, but we print most of the merchandise ourselves. Valleyschwag shut down and Startup Schwag ended up being the next in line, and I hope Startup Threads picks up where they left off when Startup Schwag shut down in 2010.
Well, its not the "best" in terms of academics but I have found Thomas Edison State College to be the best in terms of catering to transfer students who are in similar situations to you as they are rather liberal in accepting transfer credits and actually applying them towards a degree and they also allow testing out of classes and do provide some sort of credit for work experience. I am in a somewhat similar situation, although haven't been working nearly as long, but I basically have a whole pile of credits from a bunch of different colleges and have recently enrolled her to finish my degree online. Its a state college that caters to students nationally and has reasonable tuition rates. I've just enrolled now and start my classses soon.
Agreed. We're working on a better menu bar icon. Will have small blue rotating arrows :)
I've been using Arch on my HP Mini since May 2010. I haven't had any serious stability issues. Once in awhile I have to resolve differences between old and new system configuration files.

Arch is easy to set up with the installer. You get a minimal shell system which is good for focusing on code. Most things work out of the box if you just pacman -S the-package-you-need.

The hard stuff (wireless) is very well documented on http://wiki.archlinux.org/. Failing that, community on #archlinux is very helpful.

I'm sure it's not for everybody, but I like to spend my time creating things in code, and not arguing about what's the best environment to create things in.
Debunking the myths of Quality Score
astrodust, do you really honestly believe that people mostly use arch because they want to stroke their (neckbeard) egos and lord it over everybody else?

Maybe it is more likely that they use arch because it's the tool that meets their needs and that they enjoy using...
Yah, I just installed one. Having spent a little more time looking at the problem since I wrote this post, I think my Achilles heel was memory usage by Wordpress. Once I dial that down I should easily be able to handle another surge without extra hardware. Thanks for the info!
Car control software chaos revealed in major safety study
The article is thought-provoking, but marred by an enormous and unsupported leap of logic at the outset:

Yet despite vastly superior technology and hundreds of billions of dollars in subsequent spending, the agency has been unable to send anyone else farther than low Earth orbit ever since.

Why? Because we insist that our astronauts be as safe as possible.

Safety concerns undoubtedly carry a cost at NASA, but they are hardly the central reason there have been no manned missions beyond Earth orbit. During Apollo, when presumably the agency wasn't so safety conscious, NASA's budget (adjusted for inflation) was twice what it is today, and as a percentage of the Federal budget it was over 5x today's level.
I will definitely add the price to the home page.

First box ships at the end of February (its in the FAQ but it needs to be mentioned elsewhere)

My wardrobe is mostly startup t-shirts now.
Great idea. I've been waiting fOr a sErvice like this.
the multi-decade preparatory exercise adopted as an alternative to real space exploration has already cost the lives of 14 astronauts, and will almost certainly cost more as it drags on...

Seriously? Does anyone have more information on this? I like Reason but sometimes they can be a little biased. If there's no missing context and we're literally killing astronauts in safety training then there is no excuse not to just get them in space already.
1) Glad you're charging because it makes me feel like you'll be around.

2) I'm trying to sync 1 file and it's taking over 20 minutes (so far)

3) It'd be nice to allow one-way sync. I don't want to flood my MB Air's tiny drive with every photo I sent to Flickr, but I would want to upload all of my Air's photos.
I thought this was great, and rather humorous. Funny thing is, unlike #1, I just bought a bookshelf less than two weeks ago.
Hmm, I hadn't thought of this but you are the second person to mention this. Its something I'll definitely consider but havent added this functionality yet.
Learning is the process of failing repeatedly in the pursuit of achieving something until you finally succeed.

That sounds fine as a definition, but that doesn't imply learning can't be fun. The "proof" provided seems to rely on "like" being binary, it falls down because you may like succeeding so much that it outweighs the dislike of failure, or you may like failing that little bit less each time. Having learnt quite a few skills so far I can honestly say learning, even as defined above, is fun.
Sure. But unless you're deploying custom Linux builds, what does that get you, exactly? I have a number of packages on my computer I don't use, and I am not being hindered by their existence. I instead use my brain cycles for creating new software & systems, not retooling the existing one to no end.

edit: Please understand that I'm not saying a fully customizable Linux doesn't have its place. It absolutely does. But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way. Well, it gets in my way, at least. :-)
Hiring Difficulties
As he barely acknowledges, the problem isn't necessarily that NASA is too risk-averse when it comes to human lives, it's society at large. After every failure, there is a massive outcry along the lines of "how much money did we give you again? And you still couldn't get it right?"

The argument that the money could be spent elsewhere has been around since the beginning of the space program, I think. Do the people making this argument know that NASA's current yearly budget is around 0.6% of the entire budget (and only ever as high as 4.41%[1])? So really, the question should be flipped around. Think of what we could accomplish if all the money spent inefficiently elsewhere were instead given to a space program (not necessarily NASA, because I won't deny it has its problems)

It also seems silly to me to use large-number probability analysis on what are usually one-time occurrences. If a $2 billion mission fails immediately after launch, and it could have been prevented by $0.5 billion in more testing, then spending the extra money does make sense, especially if the failure would also cause public outcry. And it would not mean that an identical mission would also have the same risk. If the failure was due to bad design or a systemic error in a part (the more likely scenarios than a random failure[2]), then that failure would also happen in the next mission.

So yes, I agree that NASA needs to have a focused goal and shorter timelines, but I think this article might have been better directed at the public, then scapegoating NASA administrators.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

[2] Source: a talk by the founder of AeroAstro, sorry it's not online
Please direct support requests to martin@socialfolders.me

I'll take a look at your account to see what went wrong - send me your email.

Agreed on the 1-way sync. Good idea!
Interesting, but I thought it sort of built a straw-man argument in that the main premise, that all the delay on a Mars mission is just to lower risk to the astronauts, isn't really substantiated. The calculation that ends up showing that the cost of a Mars mission is a hugely inefficient way of reducing risk to human life assumes the entire cost is to lower human risk. So it's only an upper limit, and there is no way to judge whether it's a useful upper limit.

Besides, the fact that there is a difference between risk to human life and risk of mission success is only relevant if there is a significant probability of mission success. You can only play the game with multiple missions for redundancy if an individual mission has a probability of success reasonably close to 1, otherwise it doesn't buy you much.

Of course, this whole affair assumes that we actually have some hope of a priori estimating the risk of failure of complex systems. I doubt it's possible, and I think that's confirmed by the observed 2% shuttle failure rate compared to what the "acceptable risk" of the mission was supposed to be.
No, that's exactly what it's not missing. Our fear of catastrophe is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. Probably no single event in the history of space exploration contributed more to that fear than Challenger (and to a lesser extent, Columbia).
There's also a ton available on the intarwebs ...

I'm just describing my own path through the material, which started with curiosity, a few google searches, investing $15 for a dead tree book, and after about a year of practice, trying out a one-day seminar (for which, as I mentioned, my results were pretty '-meh-').

And what's woo about Natural Language Processing? ;)
We don't really have any evidence at all of exactly what nature computes or how it does it.

We do have models that mimic observations in nature, and those models do include some very difficult calculations. However the map is not the territory. We can't be sure that the models' inner workings mimic nature's inner workings, any more than you can conclude that two watches have identical mechanisms because they keep the same time. So there's the possibility that any or all of that difficulty could turn out to be epicycles.