skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe I'm too optimistic.

If someone close is spoiling for a fight using a pretext, I believe there must be some reason that person wants to fight, other than pure spontaneous hate. The fight is an opportunity to find out what this reason is, and if something can be done about it.

Disagreement is not exactly the right word for what I meant. It's too specific and makes it sound like a matter of opinion. Often it's not clear why animosity sparks up, it might be some feeling that you only discover by expressing it in a fight. Let's use the word 'problem' instead.

The fight I started with that friend could have been a discussion, but became a fight because I found it too hard to keep my self-control. As a result we made some of the mistakes Crichton describes. Still, it was an attempt at solving a problem. It was not a disagreement about facts or opinions, the problem was that I felt insulted by some of his behavior. What I wanted was either that he showed some kind of regret, or that he explained why I was wrong to feel insulted. I would have considered both of these outcomes a win. I'm not sure what you mean by losing a fight.
Apple has been doing 10.x for a while now. Most FOSS stuff (well, at least the stuff I program for) doesn't change the number before the dot unless there's an API incompatibility. I'm sure there's lots of Microsoft detractors that would just want to say, Windows 7 really is just Vista (and therefore just as bad) because the number has changed so little. Please. While I'm not a Windows user and definitely not an MS fan, arguing the merits of software based on the version number is just silly.
Yeah I used to use F12 with Tab Mix Plus until it was swallowed by Firebug, and that's when I discovered Ctrl-Shift-T, which is arguably easier to hit than F12 as well.
Actually, even under the "correct" interpretation of the host's actions in the Monty Hall problem (where he knows where the car is and will never open that door and the participant knows this), there's still an analogy, an even closer one, to this ambiguity.

Just as here, if you ask the question in a certain way, the choice of the person, when they have the choice, becomes important (which gender to announce in case of GB/BG), in Monty Hall, if you ask the question in one common way of asking it, the choice of the host becomes important. The host can choose which door to open if they're both goats. If, in that case, the host will pick randomly, the probability of a win by switching remains 2/3. But suppose you picked door 1, and the host will always prefer door 3 when he can, for whatever reason, and you know this. Then given the information that he opened 2 or 3, the probability to win is 100%/50%, respectively. So if you ask the Monty Hall question this way: "I picked a door and the host opened another, what's my probability of winning now?", to get 2/3 the question should include the information on the host's random selection between 2/3 when the car is in 1. Admittedly that's a bit pedantic, but there you go.
As a British engineer who is not English it can be seen as offensive.

Here's a nifty diagram to illustrate: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/British_...
I appreciate that you're basically defending me here, but your distinction between libertarian anarchists and leftist socialists is a false dichotomy. As governments grow more socialist, socialists blame society's growing problems on capitalism; libertarians blame them on socialism.
mdasen, i frequently learn from your infrastructure comments, and find myself wanting more. I'm sure all sysadmins wish you had a blog/book in your profile :D
It's true: People don't keep their contact information up to date, don't make backups (or do so infrequently), and don't always read (or act on) that super important e-mail until too late. To me, that's precisely what makes AOL's actions inexcusable. These are predictable, human faults. If some users are stupid/lazy/inattentive, then AOL needs to deal with that fact. Acknowledging reality doesn't excuse you from dealing with it!

And dealing with it doesn't seem that hard or expensive. It will take some effort (== money), but this can be made up for by happy users, placing ads on shutdown messages, and/or other means.

1. Give users more time to export their data and send reminders for any users that have not exported their data about the impending shutdown.

2. On the date of the shutdown, replace the public side of the sites with a message about the service's discontinuation.

3. After the date of the shutdown, retain the ability for site owners to login. When site owners login, just send them the export of their content. Leave the service in this "export-only" state for at least another month.

4. Continue to send reminders for anyone who still has not availed themselves of the opportunity to export their data.

5. Finally, cut a full backup of user content and shutdown the hardware. Replace the whole site with a message telling site owners to contact customer service if they need their data. Customer service can explain that the data is still available, but will take time to recover from backups. Keep a queue of the stragglers, and every two weeks or so, spend a little time to recover data for these users.
Written and Created Destiny
Don't worry, he was just trying to get his 10,000 hours in.
It's really nice to see him promote Posterous (as opposed to Google's Blogger) as the easiest way to blog thoughts.
This is a very serious question as you clearly know what you're talking about from experience: how do you find it cheaper to run dedicated hardware? The reason I ask is because I've priced out 4-core servers with 16GB of RAM at SoftLayer and ThePlanet and they come out to around $700/mo with 2 drives and RAID 1. Amazon charges $750 for an Extra-Large instance (15GB RAM).

There is the potential that you don't want to delve into what you're paying for stuff too much, but it just seems like AWS is charging similar rates to ThePlanet and SoftLayer which are the two dedicated hosts that seem to have the most credibility in the community. Even if you were provisioning your own 1.7GB instances on a larger dedicated box, you would still only fit about 8 or 9 of them in 16GB of RAM (leaving room for Xen and such) which would make it the same price as AWS. The only thing I can see is that the included bandwidth could save some money. Maybe I'm not good at looking for dedicated server deals.
This just saved me countless minutes. Great.
Really free markets do exist and have existed in many times and places, and they work really well. The reason they work well is because they have the proper incentive structure to realize good outcomes (as judged by the participants in the market). The "if only" game is worthwhile because it allows us to see the outcomes of different incentive structures without running costly (and sometimes fatal) social experiments.

Our financial system is a wreck; it's time to change tack. If you want to sail with the wind, it helps to know which way it is blowing.
Seems like a no-brainer from an engineering perspective.

- They use 7: It says "7.0" when you look at the version number on the About Windows dialog, which nearly no users look at anyway.

- They use 6.1: All the programs that have a hard-coded check for "6" keep working and you can claim complete application compatibility with Vista.

Windows XP was 5.1 to Windows 2000's 5.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Timeline_of_r...) yet few would claim that Windows XP was not a significant release.
Sony Ericsson T700 Silver 3G Smartphone Unlocked 
The Sony Ericsson T700 is a real reason to celebrate. Imagine this: a phone that feels equally comfortable in an office as it does at a party. Now imagine that, the same cell phone is in your possession. Now nothing can stop you.
Is It Time to Let FeedBurner Burn?
I wonder what the root cause of these findings is. It seems to be a combination of attention diversion and something else-- after all, trees and buildings (presuming no extra stuff like birds, shouting neighbors, etc.) seem about equally distracting. One thing that occurs to me would be to do studies with subjects who are blind, deaf, both, and neither, as well as possibly autistic vs. not, etc. Also, comparisons between different cities, especially if you include small cities (still fairly urban feeling, but not a million people either) would be interesting to see.
I think the idea is simplistic.

I have had the same $10 Wal-Mart cooking knife for a few years now. I'm sure it won't last more than a few more years. However, I bought it in poverty, and it will last me through poverty until I am making good money. Then I will buy a nice knife. There is nothing wrong with that.

Grad school is hard. It requires a lot of my time. A sewing kit is not cheap, and sewing is time-expensive. It is probably a net positive for me to throw out socks with holes in them, even if they cost me a few extra dollars over the course of three or four years.

I understand the urge to simplify. This is the land of Henry David Thoreau, after all. But sometimes it carries an assumed moral tone without justification. People feel it's right and don't question it. If nobody bought from Wal-Mart, people would have a lot less stuff. Some of that stuff is valuable, it saves people time and makes them more comfortable. Often cheap stuff is bridging a gap for folks caught in hard times. There is no need to moralize against them.
Why? I intentionally get on the plane as late as I possibly can.
The free market would eventually fix all these problems, albeit after a period of suffering and very likely, many deaths. Industry standards and associations would crop up after a string of failures, and consumers would eventually move towards firms that are endorsed by the industry standard bodies. eg. chartered accountants.

Regulations are just there to try and avoid the transition period of pain (and death).
A sort of related anecdote: one time I was on a plane where there was some sort of medical emergency in the back, so we had to wait to let paramedics get on. Eventually they had the patient stabilized but needed to do more work before he could be moved, so they allowed the plane to be unloaded as long as the aisles could be cleared quickly if they needed to get through. In order to allow this, the crew only let one row at a time to stand up. I wish I would've timed how long it took, but it was definitely much shorter than the time it usually takes to get off when there is no organization.
I put everything in git repositories and push changes to a clone on my slicehost slice.
I thought it was more interesting from the change control perspective.
No one is denying Archimedes/Ptolemy or any of these great scientists. The point the Western world must ask itself is why does it present science in such a way so as to indicate that during its Dark Ages, the scientific world was infact flourishing. Muslims built on this history and w/o us, modern science would have stagnated courtesy of popes and bishops.

It must also be thought, how come after so many years in darkness then all of a sudden Europeans made these discoveries. Not for one moment do I believe that Leonardo DaVincis discoveries were inspirational and not built upon past work.
Having burned through $5M in the early 00's at a startup doing exactly this, I think you're in for a tough ride.

Environmental agencies hardly ever actually enforce the regulations on small businesses that would purchase your product. In our case, we found that the only way you could actually get the EPA interested in auditing your facility was if you used our software to file your paperwork. The Agency was interested in finding out how accurate our software was, so the end result was that our customers got picked on.

Meanwhile, businesses that simply ignored the regulations or sent back the paperwork incomplete were let slide.

In short, I'd check to make sure that you are solving a real problem with real consequences. In my experience, Environmental for the Small Business doesn't have any enforcement, and is thus not a real problem for which people will pay money.
when i first read the title three meanings came to mind:

1. how do you back up data?

2. how do you back up 'progress' (eg, code commits, releases)?

3. what is your plan B (eg, this startup failed, what do i do next)?

maybe it's just me, but verbal communication is funny.
Deep Throat Meets Data Mining
Ask HN: Do you guys use speed reading techniques?
There are more books worth of reading than time to do it.
And since improvement on any area (hacking, swimming, etc) requires improved techniques and practice.

I was wondering what speed reading techniques, software, courses, etc. do people in HN use and recommend?
Interesting, there is a longer story behind this project. I would be interested in briefly talking to you about your experience. You can reach me by email jbrun @ nimonik . ca

Thanks in advance.
I use and recommend Slicehost.

I'll tweak just one thing and that is that SH offers backups only for slices upto 2GB - for the 4/8/15G slices, there is no backup option. I am not sure why though.
Yet Posterous is not one of the featured services on Friendfeed (you can do it manually via RSS).
I'm so incredibly sorry about that. The contract for InputStream.read is very clear, that was needlessly sloppy.

New version is up. Also includes the unit test that should have been there in the first place. grumble

http://3banana.com/pics/S3BackupTest.java
I lived in Chicago in my 20's and thrived for a number of years. While I was living there, I couldn't imagine how anyone could be an intellectual and not live in a city. I eventually had to move away, however. Living in a large city took too much effort and the crime and violence was pretty overwhelming. (I was working as an ER nurse).

Now, I'm in my 30's, living in the Valley and loving it. It seems to have hit (for me) a sweet spot of livability and intellectual stimulation.
I'm not trying to moralize against anyone, nor am I trying to sound like I am in any way more "right" than someone who cannot afford to simplify as much. I only stated that the quality of these items these stores sell is generally terrible. You are entirely correct in your statement that places like Wal-Mart bridge a gap or present a temporary standby until someone can afford to "upgrade" and simplify.

As it stands, I'm likely going to be buying Ikea-produced furniture next year because I need to furnish an apartment cheaply, and I will only be keeping it for a couple years. I don't have the money or the means to buy furniture that will last me a long time at this point...but that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about what I am doing. I still am aiming to buy as little furniture as is necessary, and avoiding anything I can do without or simply don't need.

Yes, the idea is simplistic, but that is the point: if you can reduce and purchase quality then you should, and if you can't, at least have an awareness (and perhaps simplify another aspect of your life). I'm at a point where I can do both, but understandably, not everyone can do that.

It's all about reducing as much as you can, within your current circumstances. I'm not trying to say that you need to buy that $100 knife now, but in that case, perhaps you could do with one or two less forks (this isn't a literal example, mind you). Less waste and less worry, without entirely sacrificing comfort.
I like(and hate) the author so I try to see if I can get a preview online before I buy and sure enough http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Dark...
How an explorer of the South Pole did his employee recruiting
maybe. it would be interesting to see what trends occur in vastly different cultures than the western individualistic, self-centered one.

for example, the Great Law of the Iroquois states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

i am completely ignorant of Iroquois economy and lifestyle otherwise. nonetheless, the optimist (or perhaps sci fi reader) in me imagines a (near?)-future in which people are motivated not simply be money, but also by joy, inclusiveness and sustainability.

the effectiveness of rules depends on cultural context (or complete domination of free will).
Stick in it. Adapt to the market, when you are no coding, you had better be selling and when you are not selling you had better be marketing. And be patient.
"single spacing is the norm in all professional typography, on the web, and in the vast majority of email"

That's most likely due to the fact that unless someone inserts a hard-space, most whitespace is compressed, so I'm not sure what "on the web" means. Did the author actually check the HTML source?

I've been using two spaces after a sentence full-stop forever, and I think it helps differentiate between the use of periods within sentences, like for abbreviations, and the end of the line. Unfortunately, this doesn't come through with HTML though. The additional space also helps me to tell the end of the sentence easier, in the same way that indenting a paragraph or a blank line between paragraphs help communicate the flow.

I have recently been finding myself going back and removing, what I do acknowledge as extraneous, spaces when the input is limited. I like to blame twitter for this.
from: http://chikolara.multiply.com/journal/item/56

THE RULES:

1. The female always makes the rules.
2. The rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.
3. No male can possibly know all the rules.
4. If the female suspects the male knows all the rules, she must immediately change some of the rules.
5. The female is never wrong.
6. If the female is wrong, it is because of a flagrant misunderstanding which was a direct result of something the male did or said.
7. If rule 6 applies, the male must immediately apologize for the misunderstanding.
8. The female can change her mind at any given point of time.
9. The male must never change his mind without written consent from the female.
10. The female has every right to be upset or angry at any time.
11. The male must remain calm at all time, unless the female wants him to be angry or upset.
12. The female must under no circumstances let the male know whether or not she wants him to be angry or upset.
13. Any attempt to document these rules could result in bodily harm.
14. If the female has PMS, all rules are null and void.
Western culture owes more to the Muslim scholars of the middle ages than many realize. Aristotle, whose works had been lost in the west, was reintroduced by Arabic scholars translated to Latin from Arabic rather than Greek. This had a profound impact on the development of science.
No need for the time travel. Try to survive nowadays within an isolated tribe in the amazonian forest.
I think the question of more or less regulation independent of what that regulation is is basically meaningless. It'd be much better if that extremely abstract argument was much less common than a real look at the specifics.
For books, I often use a very basic technique taught by my HS history teacher:
- Read the first and last paragraphs of every chapter.
- Read the first and last sentences of every paragraph.

This obviously doesn't work for novels or dense technical reading, but it is very effective otherwise.
The company I used to work for has a similar product aimed at Australian users, but still to fulfill what I think was the same ISO standard. I can say from experience that yes, it is a niche that most hackers probably won't understand, _but_ it should be an attractive one. A lot of businesses signed up for our product because they didn't want to have to understand the legalese of the compliance regulation - they just wanted a site that said: for this situation, here's how you manage it.

I think it's a great field to be in, as it basically involves rewriting regulations into plain English and adding examples, then charging to access them. Nice, passive income :)
actually isnt that supposed to be "micro" rather than "macro" economics?
mass email like facebook email systems
For a book of vague generalizations, you should be able to mine a much more relevant quote than the above :>
If you use Google Desktop, and enable the 'Search Across Computers' feature, they don't even have to 'hack' your machine. They can just ask Google for a full index of what's on your machine!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Privacy
Did MSFT pick up some insane executives who previously cut their teeth on Java's numbering scheme(s)?
Great use of Clojure. Looking at the code, it's mostly a wrapper for an already implemented Java library that computes PageRank. But I feel confident in saying that writing this in just plain Java would have been much more verbose and taken longer.
Well, there are a few considerations here (all of this is in reference to Softlayer, whom we use):

- Depending on your storage requirements, 2 drives + RAID 1 (which is more of a convenience than anything and I almost never recommend getting) is often times more expensive than an iSCSI LUN which is far superior and offers zero-setup cross-country replication and snapshots (if we're going to pretend that RAID 1 is some kind of backup solution).

- When ordering, if you choose the lowest clock speed CPUs, you're practically guaranteed to get the highest rated (more expensive ones) for free. This is either due to scarcity of low-end CPUs or Softlayer loves me. I have ordered numerous boxes from them and this has always been the case.

- They always have "specials" which are usually pretty ridiculous. For instance, 16 of the 32GB of RAM we have was free, as in beer. Right now (and most of the time) they have free double RAM and HDD. Kiss the cost of one of those RAID drives away.

- There are non-monetary considerations, such as support. Softlayer has without a doubt the best technical support I have ever been provided, and I've been through countless hosts in my tenure. We're talking about an Unmanaged host that has better techs than any Managed host I've come across. Not to mention conveniences such as automated OS reloads, private network, inter-DC OC3 backbones, VPN, secure backups, optional CDN, etc. (AWS has most of these afaik, minus VPN, but this goes to equivalence)

- Your 4-core server, if you don't make use of deals, would likely be equivalent to AWS. Once you start getting into high core-counts, that changes fast. As a huge proponent of parallelization, many of the processes run for TicketStumbler make use of multiple CPUs; this means a lot of what we do is CPU-bound, thus the need for higher core counts.

- 2TB of bandwidth is included; I also have no idea how this affects the cost overall. Edit: I added a couple TB of transfer to the AWS calculator, plus 80GB of storage: $854.10 per Extra Large. The difference in cost between this and our machine now amounts to nearly nothing.

So, at the end of the day, the hardware we have is nearly identical in cost (within $100, IIRC) to the Extra Large Linux instance you reported, while having twice the number of CPU cores and twice the amount of RAM. We're also afforded all the other luxuries that come with the myriad services and support the conventional dedicated host provides.

The dedicated hosting environment also allows me to setup and administer the hardware in the method I described in my previous reply; i.e., I don't have to setup a single Extra Large Instance (well, technically two) to handle a dozen different jobs.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Depending on how advanced he is I would recommend he go through Hackety Hack. http://www.hacketyhack.net/