skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would not count something as "not written by Apple" just because it is compiled with gcc.

I did neglect Apache, python, and such. I was just thinking of the BSD type utilities.

As far as OS licenses, there are cheaper ways to get a base OS than Windows or Solaris. I don't remember what I used to pay for QNX licenses back in the '90s for devices we used to build, but they were cheap enough that it didn't matter. What google does in their large farms just needs the bare core of an OS, I'm sure they could write their own for under $100M.

I'm just reinstalling a Tiger machine. I'll list off all the executable files and see if I can find a sane way of estimating author. It should make an interesting pie chart.
Point taken. I'll try to quote the whole thing next time around to make it clearer.
I understand this point, that's why there the third question :)

Would you create
A maven plugin ?
An eclipse plugin ?
A standalone application like codesmith ?
How you would protect it ?

What pricing model would you choose ?
Fuzzing TraceMonkey
Really, really, really real free markets never seem to exist, though. So the whole "if only" game doesn't seem like a worthwhile one to me - if there's a failure, it's never, ever, about the market actually failing, it's that it just wasn't free enough?

Sorry, back to the drawing board then, and design a system that works in the real world. It's probably not too far off from what we have now, and should be reasonably free, no doubt about that, but it should be designed to muddle along with the muddly creatures that comprise its actors, rather than some sort of idealized system that will never come to fruition. Those apes tend to have both collectivist and individualistic tendencies, and ignoring one in favor of the other is a bad idea.
We backup all data to S3 every 30 minutes. We are a bit paranoid about data loss as we host business critical data.
He was asking about NotePad equivalents. And to call GEdit comparable to TM is ridiculous. Emacs is a much better comparison.
Why does a language make such an dichotomy. Why not instead learn tools and apply it in the languages that you know. Use what you know not the dogma of the other languages.
I use time machine to back up data on my mac os x box. I haven't launched yet but if I did I would create a mirror on S3 since I am going to use EC2.
In US it doesn't make a difference - a "security" is any promise to enrich a person by work of others. Fixed-income vs. equity distinction is immaterial.
Going after the "typical large outsourcing firm" seems too much for us: we suck at sales.

Internet is more our cup of tea, and easier to market I think, and yes I have to admit the dream to set up a service, let it run, then sit back and collect the checks it very tempting :)

Any hint on the pricing model you would see for the online service ?
creating the site as we speak. will be up on Jan 9th. I will keep you guys updated!
"Innovation" is Dead. Herald The Birth of "Transformation" as The Key Concept for 2009
<i>Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, may have paid themselves humongous sums of money at the end of each year, as a result of the bond market bonanza. But if any one of them had set himself up as a whistleblower had stood up and said "this business is irresponsible and we are not going to participate in it," he would probably have been fired. Not immediately, perhaps. But a few quarters of earnings that lagged behind those of every other Wall Street firm would invite outrage from subordinates, who would flee for other, less responsible firms, and from shareholders, who would call for his resignation. Eventually he’d be replaced by someone willing to make money from the credit bubble.</i>

And yet that's exactly what upper management at Goldman and JPMorgan did. Goldman never bought massive quantities of ABS CDOs for portfolio. Chase never originated a single option ARM. Not all of Wall Street was so cravenly focused on short-term profits.
Ask HN: AWS or dedicated server?
So there seem to be some major trade-offs between AWS and dedicated servers, the most obvious of which being that AWS seems much more difficult to configure, while it's easier and cheaper to scale.

Considering I only have experience with setting up dedicated servers, I was wondering if someone with experience setting both up could comment on whether the difficulties of using AWS outweigh the benefits.
Anecdotally, it seems like S3 is pretty popular here for backup purposes. Does anyone care to enumerate any pros/cons they've experienced?
What, you mean I can't just project my Platonic ideology onto the real world have it work exacty as I envision?

The devil you say, David!
Exactly, my 4 year old isn't going to wait all by himself until it's his turn to get seated.
This won't work, because individuals have different incentives than the airline. The individual wants to board early so that there is plenty of space for his/her bag in the overhead bins, and also wants to board at the same time as family/friends. It's only the airline that wants the "efficient" boarding.

Now add this to the fact that zones are almost never enforced: regardless of what's on my boarding pass, I usually just go when they call "Zone 1" or
Zone 2". They've always just let me through without a comment.
Jeez, can this sound more like a marketing pamphlet please? Are you going to address the blogger's concerns, or are you trying to distract us with shiny objects?
Finding a Developer for iPhone Game
Anybody know anyone or have any experience finding a iPhone game developer? Any good forums to look in or places to investigate?

So far the best I've found are:
- idevgames.com
- forums.indiegamer.com

I'm just starting my search and am open to all suggestions. I haven't had the best luck with rentacoder (etc) so I've been avoiding those...
The Onion's Already Obsolete Tech Issue
What if the consumer dies of a bad pharmaceutical purchased on the free market before getting to change vendors? What if his house wiring (done without codes or regulations) burns him and his home in his sleep before he gets to send out the correction signal to the market?

Hominem ūnīus librī timeō.
Because the FCC auctions off portions of the wireless spectrum, and various municipalities control where you can build cell towers, and so a hypothetical telecom startup devoted to the cheaper text message rates must jump through a lot of bureaucratic red tape just to setup the basic infrastructure. Most startups won't bother while there's low-hanging fruit in the unregulated Internet market.

I'm not sure I buy the whole "truly free markets will save us all" argument, but the particular text-messaging argument has a very simple explanation in terms of government monopolies and the cozy relationship between entrenched players and the government.
Imagine an airplane whose ceiling opened up to reveal a completely empty cabin. These planes could be parked underneath their gates at airports. At the gate itself would be the entire cabin (seats, overhead storage, etc.) as a complete unit which could be accessed by the passengers at any time before departure. At departure time, the floor of the gate opens, the cabin is lowered into the waiting plane and the ceiling of the plane closes.

That would be the fastest way to load a plane.
Layoffs In Venture Capital
The 486!? Wow
I like WPF a lot. It has its issues, but overall it's quite good.
i use mercurial for everything (code, images, generated html/jpg, etc) ... maybe i should put some in .hgignore especially the generated bits

so there are at least 2 copies (colo and desktop) ... and dvd

i do still tar on structural disruptions (jquery update, openbsd upgrade, data structure change, etc)

that's per site, every morning, semi-automatic (i still prefer to ssh and then manually hg update shrug)
This was addressed in the article. It states "The outcome is fairly robust in the sense that it's relatively insensitive to deviations from it, say, because of couples or families being seated together." During ticket purchase, families could be noted as such and all given the lowest group number amongst them.
Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
"Make: television" We made our own TV show
Make: television debuted over the weekend online and on public television (broadcast / cable tv). The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode hopes to inspire viewers to think, create, and, well, make. Each episode can be viewed or downloaded DRM-free, in HD on makezine.tv - the show is also available on Vimeo, YouTube, blip.tv and iTunes.
Teamwork: project management with (JBPM) process management
"conflating it with ... anything "new.""

That's all the word means.
This is a perfect example of where a computer fails to interpret the intricacies of real life.

For reasons such as groups sitting together, too many divisions, etc.

Planes have rear and front doors. Why don't we start by just splitting people into front and back and filling in from the middle - assuming this really is an issue which needs to be solved.
Programming: Like Pulling Teeth
Perhaps the 3 subsections they present is too many; imagine it with 2 subsections resulting in 12 groups. Using an organized line-up system like Southwest, you could reduce the ready-time. First, groups 1 and 2 would line up. Once the group 1 line is clear, group 3 would take its place, then group 2 would load. This would also reduce the number of people per lineup, something that in small terminals still plagues the Southwest system (with their 6 effective groups).
Yes it is..
We will give you more details shortly.

Keep in mind that it's not a P2C lending website, but rather an investment fund (2 separate companies) managed on the Internet. It makes a huge difference.
At every airport I've ever been they are smart enough to call the next zone before the previous zone's line is half way done. And even when the line dwindles, the next zone people are all huddled around and ready to get on.
Luckily, people are easily trained by enforcing the rules. If airlines actually enforced zone rules, people would learn that it's easier to obey them than to chance the hangup they would cause by a failed attempt to cheat them.
Sex in zero gravity
I don't see how AOL did anything wrong here. They offered a free service that millions enjoyed, and when it came time to close it down, they notified users using the email addresses the users had given them.

It's not AOL's fault if people didn't keep their contact information up to date, and two weeks is ample notice.

What could they really have done differently, save not closing the service or never offering it in the first place?
It's legal but don't think it's easy to start up this kind of project.. A lot of work and lawyer's fees.
Browser Alternatives Besides IE, Firefox & Google Chrome
Traveling Ryanair or other budget airlines, you get a "sequence number" which is the order in which you've checked in, theoretically this is also the order in which you board (seating is unassigned). But then you get there and they say "families traveling with children board first" and as this is an Irish airlines that's, umm, everyone but me. Which is understandable perhaps if people want to sit together, but hey, didn't I pay for my ticket too? So if you're going to have a free for all then do that, don't sneak in seating policies by the back door!
Interesting browser i have been searching.. Wipe out Chrome and IE now...
I hate flying, and in terms of plane loading, I think the best strategy is to get loaded prior to boarding the damn thing.
For simplicity, his model assumes a plane with 120 passengers seated in 40 rows, each with a central aisle having three seats to the left and three seats to the right of it.

So this only works with 50% occupancy? 120/(40*(3+3))
This is pointless, because boarding time does not waste any time. When a plane lands, it has to stay in the airport for quite a bit of time in most cases - even if you made boarding more efficient, you would not save any time. Refueling, getting in the right take off slot take longer than boarding the plane.

And the question is - does this method feel better to the passengers getting on? I don't know, but I kinda doubt it.
I'm also in Montreal. It's good to know that some people here are doing interesting stuff.
It depends. If you have a big carry-on, it is in your best interests to get in the plane as quickly as possible, so you don't have to gate-check your bag. This is why first class and elites get to board before everyone else, even if they'd rather be surfing the intarwebs.
Where are the actual facts here?
It could be:

a) hardcore hacking attempts trying to remotely gain access.
b) Emailing a suspect an attachment containing a keylogger etc
c) Port scanning, checking for public shared folders (p2p included), and scanning them.

Or any number of other things. So far the articles on this news story are just spreading FUD about, but it seems pretty likely it's b) and c) - big deal.

It sounds likely that they'll just email you over some attachment/link to website/exploit/etc and hope you bite which is hardly a threat to anyone who has a clue.

Also calling that "remotely access and monitor any PC without warrant.", or "hacking" is an extremely big stretch, but then it's all about what sells newspapers...
The good news is that exit rows are desirable, and children and their keepers are prohibited (in the US, anyway) from sitting in them. So they can pre-board all they want, and not take away any of the good seats.

(Of course, people are idiots. The one time I flew Southwest, I was on standby and boarded last -- the only remaining seat was an exit row. I was amazed.)
My point about brands was that this kind of thing is VERY bad for the companies at fault and they work hard to avoid it. Another point about regulation is that is actually doesn't solve much. Not only do people die from drugs both from failures in testing despite regulation, but they also die from NOT taking drugs because of delays in the regulator process.

Most business take pride in what they make. Most people look for that, and look for recommendations from peers. That system is remarkably effective.
I just did it and it was up to 41.95
Libertarians and socialists seems to be the internet equivalent of cowboys and indians.

Sure, it's been about a week since we played. Ready, set, go!

[insert the same discussion as always here]
Like free email? Like open wifi networks to send GB of data?

And the other reply is right. The space is incredibly regulated. You'd be arrested for trying to compete in the restricted spectrum.
Ask HN: Rate my Web-App/Start-Up
Over the past year I have been reading HN pretty regularly and gathered a lot of great comments, posts etc. on start-ups. I would very much like to get comments from the community on my new start-up, particularly the UI, pricing, and other technology features.

Info and sign-up at http://www.nimonik.ca

Further Description of the Site:

For the past few years, EEM, an environmental consulting group, developed NIMONIK as part of their environmental legal compliance business. NIMONIK is an information service on Canadian environmental regulations, centralized in an online database. It has worked well and served our clients well, but it is time for a new generation.

We saw an opportunity to move the business in a new direction, make the service easier to use, more dynamic and much more affordable. In May 2008, we formed a new company which bought NIMONIK, and since then we’ve been working hard at shaping a richer website that we hope will be a community hub for Canadian environmental managers.

We’re confident you will find our new service quite unique. Our aim is to reduce membership fees, allow users to import/export information on ISO 14001 requirements, and upload corporate documents. Users will also be able to add comments, rate articles, and literally create some of the content - building institutional memory for their companies.

On this project, I am working with Yves Faguy, a lawyer who also worked at EEM, and Paul Maclean, the president of the consulting group. We also have a fantastic team working on the content and the software with us.

Soon, NIMONIK will become a community driven website for Canadian businesses of all sizes.

Press Release found here: http://www.nimonik.ca/2009/01/press-release-nimonik-announces-new-version-of-subscription-service/
Ideological concerns aside, I don't really see that much of a problem in law enforcement hacking personal computers. For one thing, it just might stimulate the crypto and computer security industries. For another, there shouldn't be anything to hide, right? I mean, if they start cracking down on pirated software and whatever, that might be a little bit of an issue...

...but not if you don't pirate. ;)
This looks great. The number one question for me is: Will it operate outside of Canada? I'm from Israel, will I be able to invest/borrow?
rsnapshot (http://rsnapshot.org/) against all of our openbsd servers over the internet (via ssh) to an off-site machine. runs every few hours and keeps 6 hourly, 7 daily, 4 weekly, and 3 monthly backups. once a server's initial full rsync is done, the incrementals finish very quickly even on servers with lots of changing data (mail server messages, web server logs, etc.)

regular mysql dumps are taken from all databases on all servers every so often in case the rsync'd mysql binary files won't restore.
I was not at either Commodore or Atari, but I had to deal with Jack Tramiel as a third party ISV. He was a genuine ahole. He would lie, bully, and break promises. He would start off giving you a verbal good deal and then take it back bit by bit. Of course nothing was ever written down. I had a bad feeling about our deal and pulled out before we had spent any real money.

I never saw the yelling, verbal abuse thing, but if anyone says it happened, I would believe it.
This consumer talks on my prepaid voice account and saves lots of money over texting. Or I use the email I already pay for to send people text.

Substitution sometimes works just as well as attacking any one product's pricing model.
I don't think the average person flies frequently enough to really get a feel for the rules. They hear "my flight is boarding" and feel like the flight will leave without them if they don't hang around the gate. Even I get a little worried when I arrive after boarding has begun (and I fly at least once a month).

The demographic that flies frequently enough to learn the rules probably already has elite status, and gets to board first anyway.

(I imagine there is a small number of people that fly frequently, know they need to beat the rush to get their carry-on stowed, but for some reason don't have elite status. Maybe enforcing the rules would train these people -- but there's really no incentive for them to not break the rules, so they will probably try anyway.)
I think if the boarding area contained a large vacuum chamber, and the plane cabin were heavily pressurized before docking, explosive decompression could be used to remove all passengers, or their remains, from the cabin in a fraction of a second. A similar technique could be used to load the plane.
After spending 5 minutes on your site I barely understood what it did. After reading the About Us and watching the video I had a better idea, but I'm still not quite sure why I'd pay for a service like this (I realize this isn't geared towards me).

My only suggestion would be on the front-page tell me why I need your site. Something like:

Keeping up with environmental regulations is hard. Let us help. We simplify the process to let you focus on stuff that matters.

Then tell me how you do that.

Overall interesting idea, good luck with it.
Ask HN: What's wrong with Ruby-programmers on Win?
I always had this weird feeling, there's something definitely wrong with people programming Ruby on Windows with NetBeans or something. Partly this might be because of this holywar thoughts, which is wrong, of course.

But there's something else, because I also do not like Mac, but I'm okay with those of you (probably, the majority) who's coding Ruby on Mac. Could that be because Windows isolates programmers in a mostly unalternative GUI interface and provides no opportunities to explore and manipulate things and tweak them the way you could do it with bash, vim, textmate and all that nix stuff? And that way programmers tend to grow professionally less.

Or what is it, do you think?
I'm getting tired of populist vilification of finance. We went through a bubble and too many resources were devoted to finance lately, just as too many resources were devoted to technology in the bubble of the late 90s. However, finance is not a "talent graveyard". It is "useless" only as your circulatory system is "useless" to the "real work" of your body's organs. Allocating resources to all available investments in society is valuable, which is what finance does. It creates value even if that value is less visible than the product of the coal mines that your grandpa used to work in.
One problem with any crypto technique is that you can never know for certain that it hasn't already been broken, you just know about vulnerabilities that have been disclosed.
We will first start in Canada. Regulations are different in every country. If we could we would target the world, unfortunately we cannot afford it for the moment.
Thanks and good point. The target market is mostly manufacturing industry who is already pretty familiar with these issues, but I like your suggested sentence.
(Most) planes use the skin as a load bearing structure to reduce weight. Punching holes in it is therefore mostly avoided, and those holes that are required (windows, door) tend to be designed to minimize stress points.

Your proposal would require a massive increase in weight (or reduction in strength/rigidity) that would most likely offset any benefit from improved loading times.

Aviation is all about trade offs. Even when I was doing systems software any benefits from software upgrades were compared to weight/power/cooling/operating costs religiously.
I saw it once, soon after Chrome launched.
Yeah. Think Tide detergent and use innovative instead of new and you get the picture. He says the suits have spoiled the word and people should be talking "transformation" because it has deeper meaning. I say let the suits have transformation and we can keep innovation. I don't see that you are going to have transformation without innovation anyway.
Key loggers can be tough to beat. While getting a software key-logger past me would be laborious (set BIOS password-reset jumper on motherboard, enable CD boot in BIOS, boot from rescue CD, figure out my RAID settings so you can mount my root partition, install key-logger and kernel rootkit to hide the process, restore what my desktop looked like so that I don't notice), it's pretty likely that I wouldn't notice a physical one before it was too late.
For the S3 users here, if you don't mind sharing: how do you actually do it? Do you use duplicity, Jungledisk, s3rsync.com, the s3sync utilities, tarsnap, something homegrown? Do your backups require incremental updates, snapshots, encryption?