skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They're the "responsibility buffer" - the guys you get to blame and fire rather than the actual executive who initiated the project and failed to provide real support and leadership.

Sorry I disagree with this. I haven't seen Senior Execs getting fired. In fact its almost always the other way round. The Execs take credit for nearly all success even if they don't move a finger to make it happen. It happens so often Excellence awards and cash rewards go to executives 'for showing leadership and successfully leading team to success'.

If things go wrong its always 'Programmers didn't do their job properly so what can one exec do?'
I would argue we, as a community, need to write a portable, yet optimised, byte order convertors. htobe, htole, htobel, htolel, htobell, htolell, and vice versa.
I love this anecdote:

Likewise, when Jobs was shown a cluttered set of proposed navigation
screens for iDVD, which allowed users to burn video onto a disk, he
jumped up and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. “Here’s the
new application,” he said. “It’s got one window. You drag your video
into the window. Then you click the button that says ‘Burn.’ That’s
it. That’s what we’re going to make.”

It strongly reminds me of Michael Wolfe's answer to why dropbox succeeded [1], which comes down to:

* there would be a folder
* you'd put your stuff in it
* it would sync

In both cases, huge amounts of complexity, and hence lots of work, where hidden by the designers and developers to enable people to accomplish what they wanted with no unnecessary work.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-...
Could be useful IN a startup, but not AS a startup.

AFAIK YCombinator is for creating startups, not for letting outside people be a part of one.

You want to prove your will? Ask your neighbours, parents, friends, people you find in the street, ask them for what troubles them, what little things they have to do what would rather not. Find a way to solve it, charging money, low enough that they would rather pay, high enough that you cover costs.

Then you either have a nice startup of your own or at least you have some experience that you can share here. Repeat until success or bust.
That's a weekly meeting where proposed changes are discussed. Most of the people not speaking are there because they have a launch to present. Each one gets a lightning round of deliberation somewhat like the one in the video, a decision is made, and they move on to the next.
Desktop PPC CPUs (when there were such things) allowed misaligned memory operations with some performance penalty.[1]

x86 practically offers it for free in newer architectures (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Bulldozer).[2]

[1] https://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/ve/g5.html

[2] http://agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf (check MOVDQU timings)
this is quite simple, but shouldn't the padding be built into the parent div, and not on the internal content?
Mitch Altman parts ways with Maker Faire over Darpa grant
The Byte Order Fallacy
Tacocopter Aims To Deliver Tacos Using Unmanned Drone Helicopters
My initial comment was made with an implied *wink, which apparently should not have been so thoughtlessly omitted, given the unfair amount of insight it then required of readers to detect my humorous intentions. After all, if both pizza vendors would simply raise the price to a reasonable $1.00 or $1.25 or w/e, they could both "afford the rent" and thus coexist happily instead of shooting themselves in the foot. Not realizing this of course, is why I called them idiots, not in a cynical, but a face-palming type of way. Comprendes? It may also be worthy to note that this reply was compelled by the presumptuousness with which my intelligence was addressed.
I'll admit that I was expecting a site more like http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com.

It's really nice to see that Mozilla is still taking this stuff into consideration. After all, memory has been a point of contention in the community since Firefox 3 or so.

I know the FF detractors are going to come out of the woodwork at any moment, but I feel that reports of Mozilla's death have been greatly exaggerated.
JSFIDDLE CoffeeScript.compile sandbox
I feel the same way. I wrote a blog post a number of years ago with a proposal: http://porkrind.org/missives/hardware-friendly-c-structures/
Well, I was fun searching using it. Took me a while to get used to the idea of competing.
The DCPU-16 specification is up at http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt

I am so exited right now!
Congratulations on your product. It really sounds awesome.
Since this post on HN got a lot of attention do you have any stats on the number of sign-ups from here?
For someone who hasn't written inline assembly, can you briefly explain what this does? ie what does =g mean?
What? People are complaining all the time that programmers become lazier and lazier and make programs more and more bloated as time goes on. Writing efficient programs requires complex tricks. I can't believe someone's complaining about that now.
A Rare Mix Created Silicon Valley's Startup Culture
OwnCloud puts data in IT’s cloud of choice
Kinect adapted to work with tongue movements
AXFR support it's on our priority list, we'll release an update soon. Please, subscribe to our Twitter feed or Blog's RSS feed and we'll make an announcement when it's ready.

Yes, it's a young service, we have launched on February 10 (in production since December 15) and we are aware of great responsibility involved by this service.
We took many measures to ensure quality of this service. All servers and services are monitored with Nagios and we are notified by email and SMS. We are adepts of test-driven development, so everything it's tested before released in production.
Did you bother to read the article? He writes that native byte order doesn't matter, not, as you botched the quote "byte order doesn't matter".

The byte order of the input data obviously matters, and nothing you've said here disagrees with anything he wrote.
I hear you and nice web app too, but basically you are telling me that Excel and SP are more cost effective than a good app made for the specifics of your needs.

I don't know, in finance at my company with put huge ammounts of man hours in crafting, correcting, dealing, with tons of excel files. There are analysts that spend most of the time putting data in Excel sheets from the data warehouse system and shipping in outlook or uploading on SP. Is this cost effective? I doubt it. It is also an horrible way of working, you have no programmatic/easy way of comparing data: start trying to understand where a certain variation from the forecast, from a certain account, came from out of 30+ entities. It just drives people mad.

I think that some way in the middle is the solution...
While the article is rant-y and some details sloppy, I have to admit his core point is pretty good. Rather the writing #ifdef'd code, why not write code that works the same regardless of endianness?

That seems like a good idea. Not for -all- the reasons he mentions, but for the simple reason that it's one code path so easier to code and easier to get right.
I'm sure somebody somewhere is actually using that to clean up a table in some sort of wonky proxy setup and will cry foul if that header is ever removed.
Fashion and You: The paradise in online shoppers mind
Fashion and You which was started only 2 years ago and today it is one of the strongest and most visited online shopping portal for men and women as well as kids. It is definitely a worthwhile portals considering the schemes and discounts it offers.
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@notch: The DCPU-16 specs are up, with some sample code and a memdump: http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt
Erlang has this type of thing I believe, part of its Telecoms heritage.
Your reply contains some weird non-sequiters. Nvidia is right on target when they say there is no "magic" autoparallelizing compiler. The autoparallelization they talk about, and the scheduling issues you talk about, are completely unrelated except that they both contain the word "compiler" :/

As for double-precision performance, it is also well known that the GTX 680 is only for consumers. The HPC version of Kepler is due later this year and I will not be surprised to see it offer much improve double precision performance compared to current Teslas. Intel MIC is not a consumer product, so it is unfair to compare it to consumer products like GTX 680.
How sad. A remake for 500k? Really?

The 8-bitness of the old-school games gave the old sierra games their magic. I would have loved to play a new larry game, but this just makes me sad.

What a waste...
Sass has a spaced syntax and SCSS, curly-braced.
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Software protection
Freely available decompiler such as software protection can give anyone access in seconds to the full source code of your .net libraries and applications. Most protection solutions offer various protection methods like body protection, native code protection or assembly encryption to protect your applications.
This sounds similar to ogame only for hardliner geeks. I like it already. But i guess it will all be in the interface, i hope he nails it right. This could be very interesting.
I think that skrebel is trying to say that doing as the article suggests comes with an unnecessary performance penalty hit if your CPU has the same endianness as the data stream.
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Why Google Re-ranks Any Search Results Based Upon Time-Based Data I Query Logs
Sorry can't use Python instead of Perl. Basically because Python is not Perl.

Now if you want to just change a language for the sake of changing it, its Ok. But Python and Perl have opposite philosophies. And the actual problem while changing from Python to Perl occurs there.

To me Python looked like Java with a haircut and french beard. That fact simply keeps hovering over me, even in this tutorial all those variable = something.somethingElse.someMethod() thing gives a strong Java vibe .When I used it for the first time, It looked like a language for people who were frustrated with Java but at the same couldn't learn Perl either. It looked like a language designed for such people.

Parsing a program visually hurts my eyes. Especially for large code blocks. Inability to provide easy ways of writing throwaway command line hacks is just not acceptable at all on Unix machine. That's precisely where Perl won over sysadmins during its early days.

Having to bury each statement you suspect under piles of try/catch statements doesn't feel like a scripting language. No multi line lambdas is a major turn off.

Regular expression support looks totally alien and its no way closer to Perl's way $line =~ /<match something>/ and not just that, Matching is just one part. Extraction, substitution et all all part of regular expression operations. Now regexes combined with map/grep functions make parsing a whole lot easier in Perl.

Scoping sucks big time in Python. There is nothing remotely comparable to CPAN.

I don't know which versions to Program in, 2.x or 3.x? There is nothing like Moose and other associated modern perl packages in Python.

Lastly I never needed another C based language for scripting. What I needed was a more extensible language(like Perl6).

Python doesn't serve my scripting needs on Unix. But I agree it has good web frameworks and it may be helpful there.
Just out now here http://0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt
Warren Buffett's $50 Billion Decision
Reasons not to use SQLite?

1) Very limited ALTER TABLE support.
2) Very limited JOIN support.
3) No real multiuser/multiprocess concurrency support. Limited concurrency in-process with WAL.
4) Poor query optimizers, compared to PostgresSQL and even MySQL. Poor index analysis in complex queries.

4 is really a big one. It's surprisingly easy to hit situations where SQLite is orders of magnitude slower than real databases, fails to make proper use of available indexes to narrow range queries, does terabytes more write traffic than was necessary, etc. And unlike MySQL/PostgresSQL, the query planner inspection tools are horrible, too.

On top of that, some SQLite features (R-tree, slightly less bad index analysis, ...) must be enabled and aren't compiled in by default. This complicates deployment.
From what I understand, they rewrote it from scratch.
Geez. I am a lawyer, and there is no need to hire or contact one. You can either ignore the C&D letter or take the first person's advice and write them a terse, polite letter explaining (briefly) that you have nothing whatsoever to do with the site in question. That's it. (and send it certified with receipt.) If they should file suit (in which case you would be served) that asks for some monetary damages (as opposed to an injunction of some sort against the site in question), then, and only then, do you need to consult with an attorney. The chances of them doing that, or anything else for that matter, is almost nil.
I'm glad they are doing this because they need to do something about memory usage, but there are some problems with this approach.
-websites change over time. If a site gets redesigned, it'll throw off test results unless they're rerunning the tests on old builds too
-this still doesn't capture how users actually use browsers so could miss some serious leaks. What about clicking around on the same site, opening links from the same site in multiple tabs, leaving a tab open for a week, etc?

Additionally, they keep saying that extensions are a huge source of leaks. I feel their pain because they don't have that much control over them, but they need to come up with some sort of a solution to deal with it, because let's face it, who's going to run FFx without any extensions?
Skype is a big Postres user, including contributing back.
Install Horde 4 Webmail For ISPConfig On Debian Squeeze Through PEAR
STOCK MARKET CALLS | ANALYSIS | NIFTY OUTLOOK 4TH APRIL 2012
Cord Cutting is Real: 1 Million TV Subscribers Lost to Streaming Services
I wish I'd thought of this analogy when I was working for a big development agency.
Creative Role Of Public Relations For Technology
Mac DVD Ripper Pro: a pro DVD ripper for Mac.
Well a first person shooter engine only really needs an (x, y, look-at) tuple for each player, certainly putting thousands of players on one map is doable. You're dreaming.

Assume for a moment a team of developers spend several months if not years doing infrastructure build-out to support the imagined CPU simulation system. Now they just have to implement the rest of the engine, the part powering the actual game, in which all players, CPUs, and other elements are active and interacting with one another at all times.

I'm hoping Notch succeeds, but lets be realistic -- the closest anyone has got to offline simulation is effectively "event queue and timer" and not for lack of trying.
Because:

99% of the time what the client want is "similar" to the other features there are already out there not "exactly the same".

100% of the time they want something that isn't on the standard template that is a huge pain to work into the template you choose from, while it may be alot easier and faster to do it form scratch.

120% of the time the update of the template you choose will break your modification and you have to choose between having a non secure website or fix your modifications (every time)

Template and CMS only work if you know what you are doing and you understand that you are compromising your ideas to fit into the Template/CMS you choose.
> The problem is that you need to replicate the struct entries in the pack/unpack calls as well

Don't you only need the (generated) format string? Ideally, the macro could generate some wrapper function of some sort as well, which would unpack, fill and return an instance of the struct.
Just so you're aware, there are now programmable computers in Minecraft courtesy of this plugin:

http://computercraft.info/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Extensions should be given an aggressive memory limitation to work with, and a profiler should be made so that extension developers can see what they're using and where it's spent.

Constraints are good things.
It also breaks the browser history in Safari, which is really frustrating: http://i.imgur.com/pOQmo.png
Watch DICTATOR Movie Reviews Trailer - Online Streaming HD | 69news
Their FAQ [1] states that they were fetched last year and stored locally for testing. So changing sites shouldn't affect the result. I presume they will switch the set of sites in a few years, statistics don't need to be over 10 years to be useful.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Buildbot/Talos#tp5
Sounds as if I can program the computer to play for me? I'm in! Wanted such a game for decades (former Corewar player here).
The Sandbox : banning LaTeX from the Mac App Store
Started a github repo at https://github.com/alexchamberlain/byte-order.
Easy way out - if you estimated 3 days and it turns out to be 3 hours ... simply sit on it for 2 more days ;-)
> fun and easy

He said it was quick, not that it was fun or easy. That's probably what he was missing in the top post. What is it specifically that makes it fun and easy?
Not yet, but getting there.

Also the bazillion extension that exist for Firefox are not really helping.

A "task manager" to be able to keep on eye on all extensions memory consumption (and be able to kill the extension from the browser) should really be helpful.
The fact that you're looking at the site is all the feedback he needs.

It's interesting the first iteration of the site was actually on April fools day, a good way to withdraw the idea if it sucked (no withdrawal needed ; ) ). I'm guessing but I wonder if there are more sites out there with slight variations on the idea to determine which one gets the most exitement and spreads the fastest
Ask HN: Networking Opportunities (April 2012)
I thought it'd be a neat idea to have a place to post events/mixers for hackers, business-types, designers, investors, and startup enthusiasts to get to know one another.

Please lead with the city the event is taking place. Make sure to include venue, date, and time.
Maybe Carrot2 http://project.carrot2.org/ is worth looking at
I'm disappointed that Android users have flocked over to Instagram considering they've been running on the iPhone happily for a long time now without any real wish to ever bring their service to Android. There are many similar apps already on Android and considering the Android community I would have imagined them to not back Instagram's move out of principle.

Personally, I wouldn't ever use the product, but I'm glad to see that they've finally brought it to the Android platform after so long.
Why should there be a any performance penalty? A good compiler (and I've worked with at least one that could) would know the machine's endianness and could optimize away that sequence of selections, shifts and ors when it isn't needed.
I can obviously only speak for myself, but generally I agree with you. I come to that conclusion because up-votes are generally very concentrated on a few posts, rather than more evenly distributed. even though that that might be a result of the actual interestingness of an article, i highly doubt that it is so conform, especially considering that one out of very similar articles gets often picked out. even though it might in the end not represent the best source of information on that certain topic.
I hope its not only possible to acutally explore the ships but to integrate the virtual CPU to the controls and environment. Like guns, stearing, doors...

The virtual CPU could then be used to control the ship guns. A better software would mean more accurate hits or perhaps improve the power / force / firing rate ratio by adjusting it automatically. People could even create their own auto pilots.
First SOPA then PIPA, and now: CISPA (Even worst than SOPA)
Working in a warehouse
I used to have loads of problems with Firefox, it was so slow... took several minutes to close, it would freeze regularly etc. I got so sick of having to clear the cache every few weeks.

Then one day I noticed their hidden profile manager, created a new profile and used it instead. A few months on and everything is still working like it should. No need to clear caches, it quits within seconds, no crashes and so on.

It's worth a try if you get something similar. Obviously something was screwed up with my profiles, it took a really long time to delete the old profile.
And where did I ever say one should use SQLite over Postgres. I wasn't comparing the two.

I was simply stating that SQLite is also over looked by corporate America.

None of your reasons would impact, say, a department running their departmental "internal" blog on SQlite.
> In fact swapping the byte order is _one_ CPU instruction.

That's one machine instruction, I'm pretty sure it's more than one microcode instruction ;)
The big deal for me:

Upgrading Postgres between major versions requires a dump and restore or using upgrade tools, meaning potentially long downtime, unless you set up some really ugly replication solutions.

I have servers I'm upgrading to 9.1 now, from 8.x, and we have wasted lots of time on it on some really hacky solutions because taking the downtime required to do an offline upgrade is just not acceptable.

We'd have paid thousands to avoid that problem, as that's what the time spent on avoiding that downtime is costing us (well, our clients).
For large code blocks and if the levels of indentation go a little deep. White space makes readability very difficult.

Also besides semicolons don't cause any problem at the first place, so why eliminate them?
Would be fun to have a market for functions (literally programming functions)

Let the original author keep the insides secret, maybe the protection decays over time (say a year)

Sounds a lot like copyright but sensible and the false constraint is only to make the game fun : P
I'm glad they are working on that. Right now I'm not using Firefox because after a day or so typing into a text box starts to stall. I'm not sure it has to do with memory usage, but it has been that way for years on my Mac. Not on Windows or Linux interestingly.
Our engineering team's motto is "if you measure it, it will improve".
> why doesn't PostgreSQL see better adoption from the big player (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)

This is speculation on my part, but I believe its because those companies have huge engineering organizations, and see their engineering talent as a competitive advantage. So their priorities are very different from other large enterprises.

Organizations like Google, etc., are going to have huge architectural diagrams, and then use whatever tools fit most nicely and perform the best as a component of that architecture. And they have the engineering resources to shoehorn it in there, and work around all of the bugs, misfeatures, caveats, and usability problems.

In other words, such companies are never looking for a complete system, because they are the ones building the complete system.

But for organizations where engineering talent is more of a supporting role, even at very large enterprises, the equation changes. Those companies simply can't afford to hire google's engineering team and put it to work in a supporting role. So these organizations are looking for something a little more complete, safe-by-default, extensible, adaptable to their environment, robust, low-maintenance, etc.

I believe it's a big mistake to misjudge what kind of company you are. For instance, blindly following Google's technical choices may be a disaster if engineering is not the central focus of your business.
Yeah, let's just go with the quick and easy version. It's really all we need anyway, I mean it's not like we're going to release it as a product to the public. We just need a demo for the boss right now.

<three months later>

Why is that thing not working? I thought we finished it three months ago!