skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, I posted this because I've noticed that is what happens -- someone comes here and waits for a Google employee to wave their magic wand -- but I am well aware that people will get sick of seeing these on HN (and a company the size of Google offering products people rely on should not have the only contact method being "go to the secret club and say the magic word").

If there were additional authentication methods, or if it even just stopped you from sending mail (if they thought activity volume were too high), that would be... better, at least.
get out, get in, get in shape, get laid, get up, get down, get http://example.com/file.zip

It really is poor engineering, any non-letter prefix would have been good enough.
Someone must have gotten hold of your email+password combo. Mine got stolen once, Ive no idea how but suddenly all my friends started texting me saying they've been receiving spam mails from my account all of a sudden.

Google might be reacting to similar?
It would be helpful to everyone if we made it a habit to always refer to the GO language as GoLang (Instead of just sometimes). It's still quick and easy to say while also being much more specific.
Iconorator - Create custom CSS sprite in a few clicks.
Facebook of B2B durable goods might be a good one to get it on.
Yes, it appears to still do that. I can also still access my account via ActiveSync on my iPhone (but not IMAP or the web interface.)
C does have issues, but lots of people are complaining about things that are easily solved by using the proper tools. Turn on compiler warnings and/or use a lint tool.

(For reference, a project I have at hand is compiled with -std=c99 -pedantic -W -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-parameter -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align -Wchar-subscripts -Wfloat-equal -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wwrite-strings -Wundef -Werror and uses lint to check for improper conversion between types.)
You do it all with money? No, money can help, certainly. But I think the point of the (grand)parent post was life is more important than its hacks. In this, you seem to be in agreement.
I think it works out pretty well- if you're working on a Very Serious Project(TM), you point it at a URL that's your project's closely managed fork.
Thank you. When the "DriveForLinux" grumbling and whining started, my response was simple: "Since when do we whine about things and not just do it ourselves?" The response I got back was mostly "because [insert excuse]."

I'm not in a position where I could've done this (openly), or helped. (Contributing to open source is in a contractually grey area for me... may become my employer's property, so I avoid it. [Yeah, yeah, because [insert excuse] ;) ] So I'm happy to see somebody step up and do something. Sure, it's not full-service. But it works.

So again, thank you to those responsible. Maybe now El Goog will decide to release their Drive client for Linux.
I think I am more in favour of the un-elected House of Lords than you are, but I rather liked the proposal in the recent draft that elected Peers serve for 15 years. Having long terms would make them less influenced by the political wind (I would hope).

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201012/jtselect/j...
An Android shop in China
It is universally known that the members of the Olympic (tm) (r) (truly sorry) Commitees would gladly kill their mother to protect their intellectual property (which the ancient Greeks built but who cares).
Goodbye global lock – MongoDB 2.0 vs 2.2
Is it legal to do what MixRank is doing, spying on others Ads?
Hi,

I would like to know how MixRank, the company which spies other companies Ads is legal, aren't they doing page scraping and other things which are against Terms and Conditions of most of the Publishers(not to use their data for commercial purposes). How to they manage to get out of this?

Thanks
Wait, you "closed an oversubscribed round shortly after the events of this story"? How on earth was that pulled off? Was the $15,000 the signal other investors needed to get on board?
I feel like I'm only being told half of the story here.
On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action?

ON a planet where you get high-performance email services for free, apparently. I feel for you, but the lack of personal response (IME) doesn't mean that your communications are being ignored, just your need for a response. This is still far from ideal, but typing out responses take time away from simply fixing problems.

If you pay for gmail storage or an apps account, then obviously the above doesn't apply.
On emacs, you can C-x C-f /sudo://etc/hosts and it'll do what you think that means, including prompting for your password only once in $TIMEOUT. It's the same base mechanism that lets you C-x C-f /user@host:path for remote editing through ssh.
> on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action?

On the planet where you're the product rather than the customer?

The financial truth of 99% of their business is that users to the extent that they look at ads. And since ads aren't worth much individually, people must look in large numbers.

All the people I know at Google are great folks, and they sincerely want to serve users. But customer service is expensive. So is writing special-purpose code for weird edge cases.
One solution is to add version to url. Some examples from Google API for Golang (http://code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/):
code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/tasks/v1
code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/books/v1
Video: Launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 to ISS
Eben Moglen calls Zuckerberg "a thug in a hoodie", says FB is a MitM attack
Might this include some improvements to the dreadfully designed Sphinx?
Thanks for reminding me of that 'gun'. I was recently noodlingly around with the question "Can the Navy's rail gun launch projectiles into orbit?" [1] The production gun is expected to us 64 Megajoules. The challenge is that you have to impart all the energy you can before the projectile leaves the gun (because you then lose your source of acceleration) and drag (or air resistance) is proportional to the cube of the velocity. So the faster you try to make something go, the harder the air resists it moving.

Using the math from "Rocket Propulsion Elements" [2] it seems like for anything other than a needle shaped projectile it would not be practical.

[1] http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy_railgun_test_0801...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Propulsion-Elements-George-Sutt... Pretty much everything there is to know about rockets that isn't classified.
Yeah, services are one of the types that have leaked out of DDD (and probably leaked into it from somewhere else).
I don't get why these models get bloated. If there's a language that makes it east break up classes into any number of components, surely that's Ruby! Mixins, open classes, modules, etc..
That's terrible. What are some better options for web-based email?
Sir, you are going to have to come with us.
I've been using Go for a performance-critical part of a production system and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. But certain things have been odd and frustrating.

One trait that I find frustrating is how pedantic Go is about types.

For example, if I have a float x and an int y, I can't write x / y, I have to write x / float64(y)†. The intent is to force awareness of type conversions that introduce subtle gotchas, but I don't see how it applies to the case float / int.

A better example of the same phenomenon is that alias-style types need to be explicitly cast to their aliased types, which introduces pointless noise into what would otherwise be a nice way of 'marking up' the semantic role of variables and arguments (think type index uint).

†Notice there is a common-or-garden 'int' but no common-or-garden 'float', apparently because one should always be aware of precision. Unfortunately, because of the alias type issue I mention above, 'type float float64' doesn't help.
Why does Ben Horowitz use so many hip-hop quotes?
Can we still save the term "life hacker"? For me, that'd be someone without a cellphone.

That would be me.

I don't own a cellphone since 2004. I've got tired of being constantly available (and disrupted), so I ditched the damn thing. It may not be practical for everybody, but it works for me. The world has its own pace and I have mine.

For me, the biggest inconvenience of not having a cellphone are those businesses (websites) that insist on a "cellphone #" being a required field during a sign-up or when requesting a quote.

Disclaimer: I run my own show.
Poul-Henning Kamp: My Compiler Does Not Understand Me
I agree its maddening to be locked out of gmail for no specific reason. I imagine the customer to employee ratio is a billion to one, so even if they had a ticket system, it'd be overwhelmed in a short amount of time.

What are the chances your account was hacked and is now being used to pump out spam? Turn on two-factor authentication if you haven't already, once you are able to get back in.
Linux Mint 13 “Maya” released
I'm sorry for the trouble you're having. I have on idea of what's happened and why but thought it timely to point out for the benefit of those reading this thread:

I highly suggest you use two-factor authentication with GMail:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-secu...

Or Jeff Atwood's post on this:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hac...

Your email is too valuable to be left open to attack, hijacking or theft.
(EDIT: I don't know anything about this subject, the below is only a naive question. See response.)

are you sure about this. to me it's pretty obvious that if you receive a million dollars in stocks and, say, 48 hours later it goes to 0, then insofar as you owed taxes on the million due immediately, you have also just lost a million in taxable income; so you write the million loss off of the million in gains for net 0 increase or decrease in your taxable amount due to this gain-and-loss.

I know the IRS can be daft, but surely if you lose the exact amount you just got, then you've just netted nothing, taxable at your marginal tax rate on that gain for that type of gain, times nothing = nothing.
Worcester MA Roofer, Roof Repair Worcester MA
Right, you made estimated payments, and it was exactly the right way. You paid based on a reasonable estimation.

The point is it's pretty hard to just avoid paying taxes all year (either by plain not paying your self-employment taxes or misrepresenting your situation on a W-4), bank it, and come out clean.
The Dream Of Low Cost Health Insurance
3 Key Software Principles You Must Understand
Mixins/modules and open classes do not separate your class in to multiple components - merely multiple files. As I explain in the article, for separate components to be useful, they have to be "protected" from each other - encapsulation, in other words.
Can't say I'm a fan of single-method classes. They always make me ask "why isn't this just a method?"
Here's a serious question - how much would you pay per annum to be able to talk to someone when you have an email problem?
I note (for completeness) that if you pay for your mail service you get an escalation path that goes to a human.

I agree that it would be nice if the free accounts had this option too but having been inside the chocolate factory I can also see why this is not practical.
Comeon, the IOC is by far the most aggressive ip owner in the world, even counting all other sports events. It s more Like "protecting the rights of Adidas to say I sponsor Olympics" than protecting the ancient Olympia
Wow. And Bluetooth is just another $1.19.
http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-USB-Micro-Adapter-Dongle/dp/...

Those would be two good additions.
As a Texan and alumni of the University of Texas, I also don't understand his comment about orange not being popular in Texas considering it is UT's school color.
Jaded - I got tricked by an ad when I was 5 and haven’t trusted them since
Using Data to Add Value for Your Customers and Drive More Business
Mixergy Interview - Grubwithus: Eddy Lu
Agree with most of the points. But isn't it more of a rule these days than the exception ? Not much documentation, everything being urgent request etc. etc. Question is: How do respond to such requests.
Indeed, go is a keyword in the language, for launching said "goroutines".
So much of my life is on Gmail, I HAD to setup two factor authentication, and it was easy.
There's actually a big support team for Gmail. For enterprise customers.

Here are instructions: http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/
You can't pay for @gmail.com addresses, or else I absolutely would. If I'm going to make everyone change the e-mail they send me things at, I'm sure as hell going to change it to a non-GMail address now.
Ah but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Corner_(Intel)#Knights_...
Show HN: Stack Overflow tag correlations
Because of SRP.
Jobs did work for Atari, and they trusted him enough to do design circuit boards so IMO he was probably a competent electrical engineer. However, he did use Wozniak who was ridiculously good at circuit design so he could focus on other things. Still IMO, that's like having Einstein help with your math homework if it's an option you take it.
But it's sort of what you meant. I see "Open in Dropbox" and "Open in Camera+" quite frequently. Here's more on how that works: http://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2012/01/tip-missing-apps-i...

The URL style technique is supported as well, you can send data to another app by using it's URL scheme.

It's not a perfect implementation (you can't change the defaults like mail://), but I believe that's intentional.
Site revamped with simplicity
Yeah, /get or :get would have been way better commands, and they have precedent in preexisting social media like IRC and MUDs.
Darn it... SF = Science Fiction in this article... not San Francisco. :( Moving on...
I do pay for GMail storage, so the predictable parade of "WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FOR FREE?????" (answer: exactly what was advertised, a working email service) is tiresome -- and besides that, there isn't even a contact form for this issue.

There is no way to communicate with anyone or to even raise an alert of "hey, I have a problem". The only way that it is going to get fixed is for someone to manually intervene, and the only way to make that happen is apparently to complain loudly here until a Google employee waves their magic employee wand at my account.
Should You Build or Buy Your Hydroponics Growing System?
Forcing the typing a command character on a ten-digit phone pad might have caused enough friction to have put Twitter on a very different trajectory early on. Given how long Twitter has had this feature and how little issue it's caused, I would argue it was good product design.
$50, the same they charge Apps users. You can't buy support for @gmail.com accounts.
Just like for you upgrading the keyboard was huge, for me upgrading the browser was huge.

The fact that the platform encourages this sort of thing is key.
> https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020#

When I saw that I thought, "Wait, there's actually a manual for this thing?". Of course there is, but I wonder how many people have actually read it. <1%?
Switching to a custom domain is a good idea even if you don't pay for Google Apps. Because if Google kicks you off for whatever reason, you just change your MX record and your email is fine.
1) A big reason why Facebook was not excited to IPO.

2) Facebook probably doesn't care that much since it got its money at very rich valuation and now can just go about its business (ideally the lawyers will handle all this with minimal distraction to the company).
I watched this over lunch and found it really interesting. Particularly:

* History of the retail site, early architecture. Originally ran on DEC hardware.

* How the retail side began to adopt AWS services for internal projects, non-critical features.

* Some details about their continuous deployment infrastructure (Apollo). "How would you manage deployment if you had infinite capacity?" New versions are stood up on clusters of new instances; the old instances are kept around for a while to allow for fast rollback.

* As of November 2010, all front-end webservers run on EC2.

* Scaling costs:

"The cumulative amount of data stored predicts long-term hardware
spend more accurately than transactions per second"

Slides: http://qconsf.com/dl/qcon-sanfran-2011/slides/JohnRauser_Rea...
So close to zero as to be zero; my password is strong and I use 2FA. My account works on every other Google service but GMail.
...real systems' makes it sound a bit like a 'no-true-scotsman'

Isn't there a meta-fallacy here? Sometimes there are things that experienced people don't say, but some, like inexperienced undergraduates, do.

Anyway, I think the point is that the common perception of object systems are likely those commonly used in Java, C++, and C#. I say 'likely' simply because I am guessing that those are the more popular by volume of code written. Go has a different approach than those.

There may be some selection bias here. "Everyone I know who does real work with Objects" is by happenstance mostly working in Smalltalk. The pragmatic approach most people take there involves quite a bit of duck typing. (And lots of grousing about how those interfaces aren't documented.) There's also a lot of bad legacy code that needs a refactoring cluestick there too, tbh.
It's slightly more complicated than that -- depending on how the track was compressed or limited you end up having to make a decision to apply that light compression/limiting (possibly altering how a musician wanted their track to be heard) or 'compromise' by lowering the volume of all tracks to give enough headroom for the especially quiet ones to be scaled up. The more 'uniform' you want your tracks to be, the more aggressive compression you have to apply.
Protip - complaining about your karma just makes people want to downvote you even more.

Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [1]

1. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think they meant "grisly", though it may well have been gristly in the bargain.
This all happened during the final negotiations of our round. That last bit takes obnoxiously long as lawyers have to talk to one another. That was the awkward chasm we fell into: running out of cash as the final documents for the round were being finalized.
Part of the problem is the use of Sphinx and its search engine (at least this was the case a year ago), where searching happens client-side in JavaScript. This limits how complex the search engine can be, before it is to slow or require to much data to download. Last time I looked it had a simple inverse index with a Porter stemmer and limited ranking of results.

This is great for documentation of most projects as it can be supported with only html+css+js, without a need for a web framework and hosting. But for the documentation of a major programming language I think something more advanced is expected.
cough If any Googlers are reading this, Google often phrases error messages more like that quote ("Us us us us us us, ergo, you don't get what you need") instead of like cletus did ("You you you, you you you, ergo, we're going to take this action on your behalf".). Dale Carnegie, Cletus, and every sane copywriter on the planet strongly suggest rewriting that prompt and related ones.

After taking baby steps like sounding like one cares more major interventions like actually caring may be called for. (I enormously respect the Googlers who I know that that line will discomfit but this is criticism that you guys have gone out of your way for years to earn.)
This is a general problem with Google and their customer-no-service attitude. It's just deplorable. It really is. You have to wonder: What is it going to take for them to give a shit and actually do something about it?

Very soon the word gets out that HN is where you can get your Google bullshit problems fixed and we'll be treated to pages-upon-pages of people with Google problems.

The general issue is that of account suspension or closings without any recourse. It seems that the most damage is being done in the AdSense/AdWords ecosystem.

I've said this before, with the introduction of services like Google Drive, one has to really think hard before jumping in with both feet. If you have your email, documents, advertising, revenue generation, file storage and other important services with Google you might be risking a lot. At the present time you have to assume that all of those services could evaporate and go "poof" overnight and you'll never know why. That's why I don't use any of them. I have better things to do with my life than to have a heart-attack because a Google algo decided to shut-down my business and cut me off from all of my data.

Seriously, Google, Larry, Sergey, this is embarrassing (and evil).
Ask HN: Raspberry Pi Server Farm with Load Balancing
Hey HN,

I am a Web developer with only rudimentary knowledge of how a server farm is physically designed and maintained. Nevertheless I would like to build a tiny rack filled with about a dozen Raspberry Pi computers (when suppliers allow buying that many at once.) I would like to use each as its own modest server instance, akin to Webfaction, and use another to manage the load balancing across them.

I know this has been considered before, but I would like to ask HN about advice and resources. I have never had to run an application distributed on more than one server so any materials on horizontal scaling, building and managing a small farm would be appreciated. Also, it will need to account for more storage than just a small SD card in each RPi. What's the best way to mount a harddrive RAID into this setup for shared storage?
Good story, good moral. The understanding that you have to ask them is a tough one to swallow. I still don't know if I'm there yet - I sort of go on autopilot.

> As founders, we have a disproportionate share of the upside of a business, but we also have a disproportionate share of the downside.

Disproportionate to what? You're the founder.
Someone broke into my gmail account in 2009, changed the password, and I've never gotten it back. I tried to recover it using their standard form, but they ask all sorts of ridiculous questions like the day I started using gmail, the day I started using Google docs, etc.
So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not?

My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't make that case in your original argument.

These flames get really tiresome.
Why APIs? On doing Business in the Full Context of Customers