skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, not necessarily. If a pair of Sun Exxx's in a cluster was cheaper, faster and more reliable than a rack or two's worth of 1U Dells then it would be a no-brainer.

Right now, for most applications, AMD64 beats SPARC. I would love to run Solaris on AMD in production. I can't tho' because Solaris x86 doesn't get tier-1 support from a couple of vendors I rely on. The choices are SPARC/Solaris or Intel/Redhat, and despite the fact that Red Hat is a complete pain in the arse, I can't justify SPARC/Solaris on grounds of better manageability and I can't do AMD/Solaris either. That is where Sun could make some quick wins.
Manufacturing Consent (the book), specifically the section in the beginning about the ownership filter.

If you do "Look inside this book" and then "excerpt," it explains it in the first few pages of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econom...
"They paved paradise.com; put up a parking page" :(
So bailout ($5 trillion) is about half of this:

http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/seventeen.asp

While these are all pennies currently in circulation ($2 billion):

http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/twelve.asp
Umbrellatoday.com sends you an sms at 7am if it's going to rain on that day.
It's already on the top page, first rank... and the author is actually replying in the comments.
A Book Organizer for Bibliophiles
I'm actually pretty upset about Sandy/Stikkit. I hope Twitter decides to relaunch the service, instead of just killing it (which is what I'm expecting them to do).

If not, I'd like to see the source released so someone can spice it up and relaunch a new service.
No indeed it isn't, nor is pointless commenting on news stories. This post was of another minimalist .com that serves a single purpose without the extra noise or cruft other sites that provide that information carry.
Gvke - GDP to grow by 7.5-8% in FY 09: Official
I learnt about the incomming subprime crisis not from those newspapers. I was from economic blogs and it was more than a year ago. Dont you think newspapers have lost some of its usefullness, if they cant see these kind of events coming?
I feel worse for the users of stikipad.com. There were paying users and the service just shut down without notice. People didn't even get a chance to transfer their data.
I disagree - I think the Economist is right about Hulu, Hulu generated advertising money not becuase it's like analog tv, but rather because advertisers want to associate their product with high-quality and appropriate content.

There's lot of brands which only advertise on large reputable sites (newspapers, etc.) rather than on banner networks for precisely that reason.

For a lot of companies their brands are one of their most valuble assets and they don't want to risk them appearing alongside illegal/questionable/poor-quality content.

No sane brand manager would touch something like youtube or justin.tv, the suicide on justin.tv was horrific enough, imagine the reaction if it had been overlayed with "Nike: Just do it". A few seconds of bad footage could wipe billions off the value of a brand.
Ask HN: What resources did you use to learn PHP?
To complement the recent post regarding Python resources, I figure this is a great time to ask what resources (books, websites, tutorials, etc) people used to learn PHP.

I really want to learn PHP and MySQL properly this Christmas, and while I've completed the basic tutorials you'll find at the major websites, I want something that covers everything in-depth and facilitates the learning experience with good quality, relevant examples that you can see yourself actually using.

So I guess this question is really two-fold:

1) What resources did you use to learn?
2) Did you like them? And if you could do it again what resources would you use and in what order?
Rypple, A Fast and Elegant Feedback Tool
Blogspam, actual site is here:

http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/ with demo here:
http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/demonstration.html

Pretty neat, though.
Why would Twitter buy the company then shutdown its services? I assume iwantsandy.com was a paid service?
I could spend an hour on that stat page.

I think the same type of people that only read newspapers won't migrate to anything better on the internet.
Why not do both? Why not reduce their power some, change the law to reduce the variability of money in the system and see what happens? It doesn't have to be either/or.

This constant argument that we have to do A only, followed by the counter-argument that we have to do B only, seems to come more from our love of arguing and being righteous in some stance than from common sense consensus-building or the urgency of experimentation and progress.
Internet advertising will be relatively unscathed in the downturn
I'd recommend double-checking mbta.com and seeing if the commuter rail or something would get you to work. Public transportation thins out outside the more urban parts of metro Boston, but in some cases it reaches much further than 10 miles outside the city proper.
it was a free service
Are todo list sites the new zip programs? The thing that everyone thinks they can rewrite better than the multitude of existing solutions?
I'm also interested in what your views are with learning inside a framework such as CakePHP?

I ask this because I can see the upsides (learning in an environment which fosters really good habits and quality code, however I can also see the downside insofar that you are for the most part 1-step-removed from a lot of the core functionality which is important to know.
As with all languages, I think it requires being goal driven -- have something you want to build -- and look up answers as required.

If you have the time, I recommend building a framework complete with a simple ORM. Nothing will give you a quicker broad overview of any language's strengths and weaknesses.

Also, most of the 'learning' about PHP is wrapping your head around the included gigantic library of function calls and methods. There are a lot of people who don't. When I was first learning, I'd search for ways to get specific things done and almost always come across code where people manually implemented things and I'd find out later that there's a function call that does the job. Sometimes thats due to people not knowing about the fucntion and sometimes that due to the post being outdated, so always look for the dates on which advice is given. There are PHP5 ways to do things and pre-PHP5 ways to do things.

Because of that, spend a few days browsing the included library. And, make sure you browse the comments people have left in the online documentation. They are generally good quality, contain code samples, etc. If someone posts bad code, others are quick to point out the flaws.

In the case of PHP, there is a lot of bad advice out there in general, so choose wisely.

And, there are a few things that are hard to search for because they require searching for single characters and search engines generally suck at it. Some examples:

@ as in @function(x,y) - used for error suppression.
& as in &$foo - pass by reference instead of by value (automatic with objects but not arrays)
$ as in $foo(x,y,z) - dynamic function calling. the value of the string is the name of the function that will be called.
$ as in $foo->$bar - same thing with object methods.
$$ as in $$foo() - double dereference function calling. yuk.

Finally, I'd also browse around http://www.stackoverflow.com and look at the php-tagged questions and answers.
My visit to the Apple Store
PHP learning tools
I am starting to learn PHP, any good blogs on the subject?

Thanks
Worked for me. Berlin - Germany
Just asked the same thing...Thanks everybody for the help
Do people really associate a brands reputation with the content of the site on which they may be advertising? Internet cynicism aside, I honestly don't think most people do because they understand how banner networks and keyword advertising work.

Example: On reddit there was an article about a boy who ordered McDonald's and ate it at the scene of the fatal accident he had caused. Later it was reported he had fled police custody and on the news site that reported this, a McDonald's commercial was featured prominently.

http://i34.tinypic.com/20ifms7.jpg

While seemingly inappropriate (and funny), it in no way reflects on the McDonald's brand.

Even if the case was Justin.tv and Nike:Just do it, I think that most people are sensible enough to see that it's just a case of coincidence.

Anyone who gets seriously offended or angry in these cases is most likely trolling for attention or is completely clueless as to how advertising works on the internet.

"wipe billions off the value of a brand"... really? come on!
Ask HN: 37 signals loathing mixed content - A possible solution?
I read the 37 signals piece on mixed content, and remembered a brainstorming session I had last summer where I designed a scheme to solve this problem.

http://eiman.tv/misc/http-content-signature.html

Basically it's a couple of HTTP headers with a signed hash of the content, letting the client verify the integrity of the content. This allows the content to be served from a non-HTTPS server, a proxy or a cache while maintaining some of the benefits of HTTPS.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear what you people think of the concept! If it works it'd be a useful addition to the web.
It's fine for me to the precise town, but I'm on a static IP and someone's probably put it into one of the databases in the past.

At work, opening Google Maps zooms you straight to the exact work address. Now that's spooky.
yeah goingtorain.com wins. It has location detection and you can use it outside the USA, which is handy for me since I've only spent 0.04% of my life there.

I am a lover of putting 90210 as my zip code though, I did it by reflex to try out umbrellatoday.com haha
Ever hear the term "computationally expensive"? Here's a hint, modular exponentiation of very big numbers is an extremely expensive operation. Encrypting a block of plaintext with a bulk cipher is a very cheap operation. Thanks to the marvels of HTTP keep-alive and TLS session resumption, serving the content over HTTPS is almost guaranteed cheaper than employing this crude hack. This is not even to touch upon the problems not addressed like the HTTP response is designed to be mutable, or that this "solution" offers no replay protection. Also, two words; Hash MAC.

Want a real solution to the problem, here: http://www.sun.com/products/networking/sslaccel/suncryptoacc...
no, i don't think "any data" could be used for that purpose. they were thinking of scenarios like this: developer writes app that can be extended substantially with scripts. somebody else writes a script that extends that app into a combination phishing scheme and porn viewer.

and no, apple does not review an app's source code, just the finished binary. a little surprising, because it seems like it would be far easier to detect malicious apps by looking at the source. i guess they decided that would be going a little too far.
I'm afraid that with a political system that encourages something-for-nothing and zero-pain benefits, the idea of selling something of value to pay for national debt is a complete non-starter.
So then, you're not too fond of his suggestion?
How Dell visited me

This was two years ago. Unfortunately since then I did not have any troubles with my Notebook, so I had no opportunity to call in the Dell support. Actually back then I did not have a problem either, but I was not sure about that. My notebook's hard drive would emit a faint clicking sound occasionally - only noticeable because being fanless, this was the only noise the notebook would create at all.

Apparently it is normal, but when I called Dell about it, they insisted on exchanging the drive just in case. Because I was contracting at the time, they offered to come around to the office at the company where I worked. When the Dell technician arrived the next day, I went into an empty room with him and he exchanged the hard drive within minutes. Then he left.

My notebook has worked without any problems ever since.

I didn't tell my girl-friend about it, because she doesn't care, but whenever I see a chance to recommend a Dell product, I wholeheartedly do so.

Hm, this would have made a great blog post, but now I wasted the story on HN already. Ah well...
I think "pointless" is going a bit overboard, it's up to the client to decide how long to cache a feed, and the cache policy for the feed should use normal HTTP conventions - the Last-modified, If-modified-since and Expires headers.

If the feed expired in 60 minutes that would be enough to update for changing locations.
SplitTweet - Multiple Account Twitter Management
#space when there is a shuttle launch or other interesting live NASA TV coverage
Yeah Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has radar images online as well:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR663.shtml

Shows actual rainfall though, not clouds, so it can be grey and dark outside but look clear on the radar.
I believe it's actually possible to get from Boston to Washington D.C. via public transportation (with a little bit on Amtrak between Providence and western Connecticut), so yeah, it reaches much further than 10 miles. ;-)

The problem is time. I live in Bedford, and while it's technically possible to get a bus+subway from here to the financial district, it takes about an hour and a half. That's compared to 35 minutes driving (no traffic), ~55 minutes driving (with traffic), an hour driving to Alewife then taking the red line in, and an hour and a half for biking to Alewife and taking the subway in. Not much point.

Commuter rail is similar - it's like 1.5-2 hours to take the commuter rail from Concord to Porter and then transfer to the red line. Might be a bit better closer in to the city, but commuter rail coverage is a bit spotty - it's faster to drive to Alewife from Bedford than it is to get to the nearest commuter rail stations in Concord or Lincoln.
Why I might not want to use Flex
Ask HN: Is Gmail crashing your browsers too?
As soon as I login to gmail(the gmail proper as well as google apps) the browsers hang. Safari, FF 3.04, Camino and Opera all spun the wheel of death on my mac and had to be forcibly quit.

Any body else experiencing the same thing?
Colleges reduce cost of teaching, raise tuitions
It's not a zero-sum game. :)
I think that would be a fair assessment, yes. Classic case of person with no security training or experience trying to do security. The more I read it, the more painful it seems. You have to do a TLS handshake with the server anyway to get the bloody keylist (apparently the idea of certificate extensions is a bit too much to grasp) so if you have TLS, and you've already established a session why on earth would you need or want to employ this hack?
Nope. I run Firefox 3 on Ubuntu and have no problems with gmail.
...but if it's a free service with no revenue model and you tell everyone about it, doesn't that speed its demise by increasing costs?
"I know it doesn't work but it's done" - a story about the definition of done
Hey, I've been casually following your blog but didn't know you lived here in Toronto. Good stuff!
New Drug to Fight Cholera Epidemics
Nope - FF3 and Chrome both OK
I think this speaks to the power of online reviews and the confidence they can build, online you can do things that would make you feel like a "shill" in the real world.
Godaddy does provide its own nameservers - been using it for years.
Good for him. I own three Macs (iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air) and two of them broke a few times. I live in Russia and Apple's service is terrible here.

I have waited more than 50 days for a replacement part (battery) for my Air to arrive, and -- since it didn't arrive -- thanks to the local law, got a replacement Air. It broke two months later (sound card) -- it's been in service for three weeks now.

My MacBook Pro's hard drive failed -- it took two weeks to replace it, and I paid for it even though I had a warranty (they said it was my fault that the HDD failed). The next week after warranty expired the battery broke, and I had to buy a new one. Even though they had a recall program for batteries that broke with the same symptoms, my battery was not eligible for recall because of a different serial number.

My girlfriend waited 5 (!) months for a replacement battery for her MacBook to arrive. (Local laws that require no more than 45 days for repair didn't work in that case, because she bought her MacBook in Scotland.)

Ask me why I still love Apple products. I don't know.

Ask me why I have three Macs. It's because one of them is always being repaired.
Mile of London Tunnels for Sale, History Included
Oh Where, Oh Where Has Autonomy Gone?
Seth Godin video: The Importance Of Being Remarkable In Marketing.
is it one of those "NOT" jokes?
"The Onion is funny... NOT!"
my boss always told me you can either save more or make more, and to ways treat those atleast as equals because the savings usually come with free time. I found this advice better than the 10 but that's probably cause I know my boss; I don't know warren
6 Business Ideas
How fast is your temperature in the UK?
IE 6 mobile standards compliance tests
It's always nice to meet progressive Oompa Loompas
I'll repeat something I said here a while ago: the startups I've encountered in Boston (including my own employer, MetaCarta) tend to do B2B or government-contracting work, often bootstrapped with consulting or SBIR money. The Valley startups I've read about seem more focused on consumer-facing applications. So if you have a preference for what kind of product you want to be contributing to, that may affect which city you should live in.
could you have a corrupted shared library.
So, my wife and I lived in Providence, RI for 3 years.

My wife worked as an admin in a startup for 2-3 weeks in Cambridge, and hated the job, hated the commute, hated the culture so much, she quit her job and went back to school to finish her video production degree. She had hoped it was like her job working at US Robotics/3Com, but it was very, very different.

The thing that we really struggled with in New England was the "Townies" and the culture. There really are two different classes of people in New England:

*"Townies" (people born and raised in the towns of New England)
* "Gownies" (People who move to New England to go to good schools and then settle in and work white collar jobs or get their grad degree and leave).

We never found to many Gownies like us to hang out with, and spent most of our time hanging out at work/school with the townies. And, while they're really nice people, hardworking, fun accents. They tend to be rather insular against outsiders. We were there for 3 years, and I don't have any friends I'd consider going back and visiting.

So, where you live in Boston-land is important. I think that if you're living in the East Side of Providence, or Harvard Square in Cambridge, it can make all the difference in your social life. It's really hard to get a vibe about that until you've lived there. Each town has a distinct flavor, and a distinct attitude towards outsiders. Choose wisely.

Silicon Valley: I've almost lived here longer than anywhere else I've ever lived: 3 years. And, I'm not planning on moving anywhere in the near future. I really like it here, and I'm not moving away unless I have to. That's never happened to me ever before. (I've moved over 25 times in 35 years.)

The people are great. The chance to meet other people and make friends with others that are doing the same things is astounding. I started http://hackersandfounders.com as a meetup group, and it's doubled in size every month but the last. There's just a ton of hackers interested in founding businesses here.

That means a ton of emotional/cultural support that you really can't put a price tag on. Services are also really easy to come by: like it's really easy to get groceries delivered, getting a maid is rather inexpensive and very much worth it. Prepared foods can be outsourced pretty easily using something like Dream Dinners or Dinner A'Fare. You're never very far from really cool things if you need to take a day trip and get away to recharge the batteries.

And finally, housing. If you're considering moving to SV, you really should take a look at renting a house with someone. We live in San Jose, and we split rent on a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house for $2k. Not only do we have a ton of space and a back yard, we turned the formal living room into the startup office. Not bad, when my friends are paying $1700 for a nice one-two bedrooms in an apartment complex. And, you're away from the fun cultural stuff of San Francisco, but it's only a 75 minute drive without traffic, Mountain View is 30 minutes away, and a bunch of restaurants, coffee shops, movie theaters and a FedEx/Kinko's are 3-4 minutes away. Pretty ideal for a startup if you ask me.
But some of us want to see the temperature in Fahrenheit no matter where we are, such as expats or travelers.
Robot Thespians Take to the Stage
Calculon?
Did CNN Shut Down Gizmodo's Bad Post About Them? | My Philly Network
I'm a little biased (I'm the author of webgen :) but I think webgen would suit your needs. You can install it via `gem install webgen`, it runs on Ruby 1.8, 1.9 and JRuby, supports Markdown/Textile/Haml/ERB/... and is easy to use:

* Create your website:

webgen create my_site

* Render your website:

cd my_site; webgen

The built website uses only relative URLs, so you can preview it by just opening `my_site/out/index.html`. Adding a page is as simple as adding a file with the extension page to the my_site/src directory. The styling of the site is done via templates, the main template being my_site/src/default.template. You can select from several different styles when creating a website (see `webgen help create`).

Menus, breadcrumb trails, links to translations of the current page are all automatically generated.

You can, if you need/want to, use webgen from a Ruby script:

require 'webgen/website'
ws = Webgen::Website.new(ws_directory) # ws_directory would be the my_site directory in the example above
ws.render

For more information have a look at the webgen website.
Know System's Maximum RAM Usage And Windows XP Not Recognizing Full RAM Capacity
Windows XP SP3 machine refuse to recognize the full RAM and displayed only 2.87 GB as usable.
But then if they have a large user base that really cares for the service, it should not be that hard to monetize it.
People might even be willing to pay for the service than to see it shut down.
Thanks to all for your comments. We built prioritiz'd for the Rails Rumble, and as you all mentioned, there is more we need to do with it, including links to OpenID providers, and providing an option for creating a traditional username/password. We are currently working on a single sign-on application for our entire suite of applications, that will cover that last part.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. Please leave any other feedback on our support site so we can continue to improve the app. Thanks.

http://getsatisfaction.com/atlanticdominionsolutions/product...
I haven't read this, but Nasim Taleb talks about it a lot in Fooled by Randomness. For example, Thomas Stanley, the book's author, states that risk taking is a common characteristic that rich people have. Nasim basically says "Yeah, sure, but what about the masses of people who are poor because of their risk taking?"

I recommend reading Fooled by Randomness first and then, if you're still interested, The Millionaire Next Door.