skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> x86 will die out and RISC architectures will dominate the market

It wasn't just Tanenbaum who was wrong about that. Billions of dollars were dumped into RISC architectures on the assumption that x86 wouldn't scale. Microsoft committed to an expensive rewrite of Windows (or OS2) to make it portable. Apple considered x86 and decided to bet on RISC instead.

So this wasn't just some wacky college professor opinion, the industry thought RISC was a sure thing. (Linus of course didn't really care, he just wanted something to run on his 386 clone.)

edit: it bothers me that this debate is always presented without context. Torvalds is a PhD student busy reinventing a 20 year old unix kernel design, and Prof. Tanenbaum is pointing out he isn't advancing the state-of-the-art, which is totally correct. The fact that Linux turned out to be really useful and popular is mostly aside the point - the advancement was Torvald's open source management, not the kernel design.
I'm in the 0%! But in all seriousness, I think the problem here is that these were actually introduced back in the early 80s on high-end cars. So it took a lot longer than 7 years to become widely adopted.
The 'birdman' is FAKE
I don't buy that at all, it's just semantics. Why can't multiple OS images be a "unified system"? That's what a web app is, after all.

And the fault tolerance argument applies both ways. That's generally the reason behind VM sharing too. One simply separates processes along lines visible to the application (i.e. memcached vs. nginx) or to the hardware (FS process vs. display process).

Potato, potato. This simply isn't something worth arguing over. And it's silly anyway, because there are no microkernels in common use that meet that kind of definition anyway. Find my a consumer device anywhere with a separate "display server", or one in which the filesystem is separated from the block device drivers. They don't exist.

(edit rather than continue the thread: X stopped being a userspace display server when DRM got merged years ago. The kernel is intimately involved in video hardware management on modern systems. I can't speak to RIM products though.)
Apple CEO Tim Cook: a Report Card
There are no drawbackS! Consume Away! BEEP.
Startups: a hidden lifestyle at MIT
Internet Download Manager 6.11 Beta Include Patch | Andra Little Notes
The author (Thom Holwerta) is more of a troll than all ZDNet writers combined... Just read this piece: http://www.osnews.com/story/25264

I failed to understand what the connection between the quoted text, and Newton's idea being stolen is. He just seems to have read about Newton's true history somewhere and was so eager to share it on his credible website that he just put some random quote there to make his article seem more professional and have a point!
Gridpak - The Responsive Grid Generator
Its an issue that can lead to a chain reaction. Facebook is protecting itself by protecting its users.

Employers make 'facebook background check' hiring policy
-> FB users/prospective employees become more conscious of this
-> User engagement drops as users are more careful about posting anything under the sun
-> FB loses
One thing to remember in the US is that health insurance companies drive a lot of the drug testing. They offer it for free to employers, and in return get the benefit of never having (suspected) addicts try to obtain employer based coverage.

Obviously, this is not a relationship that exists in Europe.
Also don't forget employees of small, profitable companies.

I work for a small, profitable company right now. It's great. The pay is good, it's low stress, and I have a lot of control over the direction of the product and the work I do. There's no expectation of crazy hours, and we have time to do things well.

Yeah, I won't make a bazillion dollars, but I've already worked at two startups, and clearly I'm not a bazillionaire.
Studies published in Nature typically have flashy science. Coupled with the fact that their relatively short format makes it difficult to determine what exactly was done, much less replicate it, I'm actually less inclined to believe something in Nature as compared to, for example, Cell or PNAS.

It's also worth considering that there's a positive correlation between impact factor and retraction rates. http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/is-it-time-f...

All in all, while Nature doesn't publish obviously bad science, it's less clear that it publishes better science than average.
A challenging puzzle...
They have grounds to sue someone that logs into / uses their service using someone else's password even if that person gave them the password. It's also a felony, but the feds rarely take up such cases.

It's probably OK for your boss to tell you to log in and then tell you where to click over your shoulder, but IANAL.
Hey Vidar. I'm afraid I don't own an iPhone. I have a few friends who have one though. If I can persuade one to let me install your app, I'll report back with my feedback. I'll even share theirs, if any. :)
Facebook may sue under 18 USC § 1030(g) (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030#g) for unauthorized access to its computer systems if the employer obtains an applicant's password and then accesses the applicant's account using this password. It is unsettled whether the applicant's permission alone would be a defense. In fact, may be a federal crime even if accessing the account was expressly authorized by a state court; see http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-...
I didn't downvote, but my opinion is this: if you don't want your design copied, make a product that can't be copied easily.

For example, bitbucket copied githubs design for the most part, but people still use github because there is so much more to their product. BB can copy them all they want, but github will have the users and will be considered good design while BB gets called a 'clone'.

If you make a blog platform, which is simple to clone, just open source it and move on. This is a case where imitation should be flattery. Bask in the glory of knowing the world is switching from wordpress to your platform.

(theres also longterm revenue possibilities in that case for a savvy businessmen)
It is NOT what the author of thisSvbtle wanted done with his project. He explicitly stated that it wasn't ready for the punlic yet and would be available when he worked things out. He might have seemed smug, but Im apalled that bulk of the HN community seemed seemed to be OK with someone essentially copying his project outright. Im not able to frame my answer better but this is not how how mutually respecting communities are built.
Regarding founders and hard work, it's of a different nature from the typical image of people working hard. It's not like an investment bank where people are fired if they aren't in the office from 8 to midnight. Startupers tend to spend 80 to 100 hours on their startups, but no one is "making" them do it. It's extremely focused engagement.

I think it's still counterproductive and unhealthy to work that much (although 60 is sustainable and not unhealthy when you enjoy what you're doing and have a lot of autonomy) but it's not something that happens because startups really require huge amounts of work. They require a lot more commitment and energy than average jobs, but 60 hours is more than enough in most cases (except for people involved in fundraising, which is a hellish and time-consuming slog I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy's tapeworm) to get things done.

What causes that insanity in hours is that the extremely high stakes lead to a persistent sense of needing to do more. This causes a lot of people to have serious anxiety, and you know what's a good antidote to anxiety (in moderation)? Work. (Work itself is not very stressful: most people like their work; what they hate is the political and interpersonal stress associated with high-stakes organizational social-climbing.) They subsume themselves in work because it gets them in the zone and happy, whereas when they aren't "working" they are thinking about work stresses and unhappy.
Hardcore Maker's Schedule
The problem here is that Americans haven't ever experienced a competitive mobile telephony market where all carriers use the same network technology and switching networks is trivial. That's probably why our coverage is terrible and we pay 3-5 times more than people in other countries.

(North) American telco misregulation is a disaster.
Thanks for your reply. Haven't thought about providing documentation about that, just adding an option to do it.
I don't mind to write tutorials on how to export the client's data to competing services...
As a personal note, I'm kind of getting sick of it. There is some variation of it in almost every store near me and it just grinds my gears to see it overused so much.
"PS. I apologise for sometimes sounding too harsh"

:D
Teleportation from Jux - Fullscreen Interactive StreetViews
Ridejoy's looking for a friendly full-stack engineer (YC S11)
Using Parse and Trigger.io for cross-platform apps without pain in the back-end
Our first class definitely has practical application, but it is still taught by a PHD and covers more ground at a higher level than the current college or university standard.

If teaching applied material makes you a trade school, someone should tell Harvard: http://cs76.tv/2012/spring/

As for the use of the word "college", well, it's the most accurate descriptor of what we are building. We're not there yet, but we will be soon, and having to print a whole new batch of business cards is just too darn expensive. We could have chosen a more startup-ey name, but we hate startup-ey names. I could have named it after myself as well, maybe something like "Huffman Coding". We checked though, and that was taken.

While we're discussing it though, singularity university isn't a university, and clown college does not cover the theoretical aspect of clowning sufficiently. Also, University of Maryland College University is mildly redundant. And why do you park on the drive way and drive on the park way?
Very interesting. Those really are pretty stunning words for a business relationship as big as this. If I understand correctly, Nvidia has nowhere else to go since TSMC is so far ahead of other independent foundries (I'm not sure how independent GF really is - is it conceivable for Nvidia to work with GF?) and it can't very well go to Intel given the amount of competition they are engaged in. Maybe Samsung?

Also, I'm not clear on the arguments presented in the slides. The transistor normalized price curves for 20nm and 14nm do eventually cross over the preceding curves, unlike the 40nm curve. And even putting the same transistor count on a smaller process node can result in lower power consumption once the leakage problems are mitigated, so the value is increased.

Edit: For historical background, here's a fascinating conversation from 5 years ago between Morris Chang (founder and chairman, TSMC) and Jen-Hsun Huang (CEO, Nvidia):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-x7PdnvCyI
Awesome! Much appreciated! The more feedback, the better! :) Thanks!
Release notes here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.4/

Some things to really dig:

* better password hashing (bcrypt, etc...)
* time zone support
* built in selenium testing support
* bulk insert Models
* prefetch_related() (efficiently join m2m)
* SELECT FOR UPDATE support
* easy signing of cookies
* better project templates (basic scaffolding)

There are lots more... big release. Thanks to the all folks behind it.
Nice conspiracy theory, but why would his main persona act like such a bumbling fool while his foil persona gets the respect?

and a large amount of hate, but the scale is tipping mostly in his defense
Eesh I need to be more careful when writing on an iPad.
This complexity make my head hurt. Who created this mess of complexity anyways without leaving so much as a code comment or design document to help us sort this all out? Intelligent design my ass.
But is that -- the substantiveness of work -- a reason to stop the copying of informational-goods?

If they are indeed 'goods', more copies/variations/etc. makes them more available. Why stop that?

One might say that the creator loses exclusivity and so can charge less. That would be a reason for the creator -- it would be good for them. But the restriction would be bad for everyone else (and creators themselves are 'everyone else' to other creators). Only being good for one set of people does not make it a good rule in general.

The only plausible reason seems to be that the work would not otherwise be done without such exclusive control -- and so we would all lose it. Is that the case here? It seems not: the first sentence of the original blog-post describes that the work had already been done from another impetus.

And if one seeks appreciation, surely any restrictions of exclusivity will do the exact opposite. The more copies the better: more credit, more links, more recognition.

(As a fundamental baseline: if we all share what informational-goods we have produced, and all grant everyone freedom of use of them, we all gain -- we all gain more freedom and we all gain more good stuff.)
Yes, I'm on Firefox. I have installed the all-inclusive add-on. I now see Disconnect drop down icon next to my address bar, but when I login to Faccebook, it doesn't show me anything that is blocked. When I login to Gmail, the dropdown doesn't even work (I keep on clicking and it doesn't drop).
Poll doesn't go high enough. 26 years here.
I'm not sure if it's official policy or not, but in my experience at least it's 72 hours after you realise. In the past I reported payments from my card that I hadn't made dating back several months and I got them all refunded without it costing me a penny.
Facebook purchases IBM patent following Yahoo dispute
Steve Jobs Tried to Hire Linux Creator Linus Torvalds to Work on OS X
Of course I'm not giving up open source software (we use it in our YC backed startup). But the attitude of this community has changed since four years ago... for the worse.

In the past, when someone submitted something to the community, they got feedback. Today we get mindless copying, downvoting of dissenting opinions, and rationalizations why it's a good thing to take people's work and then taunt them about it. I suspect this attitude will result in good people backing away from HN and it will definitely reduce the positive exchange of ideas. It's not just "not nice", it's mean. And it's the opposite of the experience that I had at YC and continue to have with YC founders. There's a spirit of camaraderie and helpfulness that's almost completely lacking in this thread and has been present in every story about a startup being acquired. In a way, it's very un-YC. I'm not sure how useful a community like this is to people who create things and want to share them with others. The Haters have stormed the gates and have taken over.

When's the next time you think Dustin will share a valuable or interesting concept he's working on?
Not really. All the writes go through a single server (which can have a hot failover). If you can't talk to that server then you can't write.

In theory it should still be able to handle at least the same write load as a traditional db whilst offering more flexible modelling and distributed queries.
Synchronised video, map and DOM manipulation
Video playback synchronised with a map marker and StreetView panorama, built using the HTML track element.

samdutton.net/mapTrack

Apologies for shameless self promotion, but I think there are lots of potential use cases for this kind of temporal/GPS metadata in track cues: climbing routes, mountain bike trails, history lessons...

You'll need Chrome Canary.
PointCloud SDK and Browser documentation available
Awesome plugin for Wordpress
gotcha, I didn't think about that.
I'm sure there's a lot of interesting dirt here. But some of the analysis is a little weird. The cost-per-transistor metric isn't the right one, for a start. Imagine a world where you could get all the 1975-era 5v 74HCxx chips you wanted for free, with zero manufacturing cost. Would you choose to build a smartphone out of them? Of course not. The newer transistors are better (faster, lower power) and the products built out of them are more valuable.

So yes, production costs have increased. And that may have (is having, I guess) effects on the speed at which new technologies are adopted (i.e. the crossover into "worth it" is delayed).

But isn't that just a way of saying that semiconductors are finally becoming a mature technology? That's not really such a shock, nor does it justify the poo-flinging at TSMC.

So the real question in my mind is whether TSMC is having problems that the other foundries (Samsung or Global Foundries, say) are not. Given that Intel has been sampling 22nm parts already, it seems like the real news hers is that TSMC sucks and the bit about production costs are just ammunition.
Honest question: if a hacker is talented enough to create software to steal thousands of dollars, are they not talented enough to make multiples more legally?
Wasn't it Picasso who said "Good artists copy, great artists steals"? Is this good or great?
From the time I arrived at MIT in '08 to the time I left in '11, I witnessed a pretty huge shift in the interests of MIT students towards startups. Many people who probably would have gone into finance or defense diverted themselves to the startup world. The 100K competition at MIT and things like StartLabs have gotten big. Dropbox being homegrown was a big thing.

For me, it's been awesome to see the best engineers doing their own companies instead of joining defense contractors or GS.
Drug testing I've only ever seen for retail jobs and ones where you're responsible for the safety of others, that being said I've not seen very many jobs. I can understand them in those cases as with retail jobs there's a serious problem with drug users since they're usually easy to get jobs that don't require much in the line of skill. For the safety aspect I know that most states have the school bus drivers at least take regular drug tests since it's a serious liability if something were to happen.

Credit checking on the other hand I see as a complete invasion and I'm not convinced it would even give you anything useful, certainly not in this economy and likely not even in a good one.
That was my reaction too. I like your brevity.
I am a security layman; whenever I create a password for an account I tend to just use very long sentences. To log into my laptop, I have to type something completely unlike "oh man here i am again logging into this stupid thing".

I've always wondered if this is any less secure than some nice mixed meta characters. "SS7s$@a8" as it were.

I can remember my sentence very easily and type it far more quickly than I can henpeck the pure random mix.

Also, I am very curious - if the encrypted password ends up being a uniform length N, is there any value having a passphrase longer than length N, if by that point the correspondence between the encrypted passphrases might be many-to-one with their unencrypted counterparts?

I feel there is so much more coffee-talk understanding to cryptography I have before I could even begin the barest math essentials of understanding it. Perhaps my naivety is founded by low math self confidence. shrug
Continuous Code Improvement Using Ratcheting
Direct Link: http://gridpak.com/
Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age (1985) [video]
Internationalisation with Rails 3
The other downside is spending 25% of your engineering time over the next two years supporting a high-profile client with requirements that vastly exceed all your other clients. It's an easy way to get spread very thin.
* *args and **kwargs support for template tag helper functions
Remote Login Tool Reviews
Rhetoric aside, Nvidia is the designer who keeps breaking transistor count records and is a dominant OEM supplier. That makes them both a technology and business leader among TSMC's customers, so it makes sense for TSMC to devote resources to them, since the experience they get in working with them can't be gained elsewhere and is applicable to their other customers down the road.
Direct Link: http://miniapps.co.uk/blog/post/tapjs-a-lightweight-tap-even...
Mine is defo new enough that it supports that! Anyone know if you need a new sim card to support 4G services?
Excuse Me, But Is Your Leg Ringing?
I don't understand that distinction.

In selecting a typeface, you're also necessarily selecting the font, so why make the distinction?

From an artistic and technical point of view I get it, but from a user perspective the two are not separable quantities.
Direct Link: http://www.daytona.se/ignition
Any recommended resources on getting started with Django, or are the official docs sufficient?
ZeroVM: lightweight containers based on Google Native Client
it can't very well go to Intel given the amount of competition they are engaged in

That's not the reason. Intel's fabs are at capacity producing chips with much higher margins than GPUs. Check the price per die area on Geforce card vs. the CPU that goes on the same motherboard, and then remember that the video card is assembled and stuffed (with a ton of DRAM) and board tested where the CPU just has to be packaged and shipped. The economics simply wouldn't allow it even if Intel wanted to play.
15   Astonishing Collection Digital Art Wallpapers
Doing Business As (DBA) Program
Climbing the App Store Charts is Easy. Making Money is Another Story.
Facebook asserts trademark on word "book" in new user agreement
Facebook is trying to expand its trademark rights over the word "book" by adding the claim to a newly revised version of its "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities," the agreement all users implicitly consent to by using or accessing Facebook. The company has registered trademarks over its name and many variations of it, but not on the word "book". By inserting the trademark claim into the Facebook user agreement, the company hopes to bolster its standing in lawsuits against sites that incorporate the word "book".
I think it's interesting how old ideas can become new again. Graham's ideology (as portrayed in the article at least) seems to be along the lines of Edison's.

Edison Quotes:

"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others. I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent."

"Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."

"Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."

One could make the argument that the "startup factories" of today are analogous to the invention labs of yesteryear. Either way, it seems like it was a winning formula back then and continues to work to this day.