skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Pathbreaking Flight of SpaceX's Dragon Capsule, by the Numbers
Of course they can, the question is if they think it's financially worth it to them.
I would guess I'm actually above average just based on my personal sample of people who have gotten acquired.
Ask HN: ETL - packaged tools or roll your own?
Having spent a not insignificant time dealing with peculiarities of SSIS and Kettle, I sometimes question if packaged ETL / data integration environments bring more costs than benefits (in small to mid-size projects).

Although they do offer a path to automation, logging, and (sometimes) parallel execution, ETL runtimes and design tools can be harder to debug compared to a combination of plan SQL and a scripting language.

Given a choice between the two approaches, why have you chosen an ETL package over a "plain" programmatic one?
Linux sounds fast. 50ns is blazingly fast. Benchmarks I surveyed show figures around 1-10usec but they are old and processors are faster now.

Kernel entry and exit are of course contributors to i/o overhead. Also include data copy time (2K times all those main memory flushes), ip stack time (well into scores of usec now) and driver overhead.

Add the latency of the result being signalled to your user-mode application. Interrupt latency, user-mode task scheduling time and if a receive then data copy time again.

Of course router delays are negligible on the backbone, but your local cable modem etc will add something.

I think we're over 16usec now, which if I did the math right is the wire time.

Another way to estimate all this is to benchmark achieved transfer rate peer-to-peer on an otherwise idle link. Folks report from 100mbit to 300mbit depending on other bottlenecks (disk speed, bus etc), but that's often using very large block sizes, not our 2K. Even so we see most of the Gigabit rate whittled away.
This won't work. The puzzle possibilities are limited.

This is about as effective as asking a random question, it stops bots because they don't know how to deal with it. It wouldn't have a chance against a targeted spam campaign/attack.

It's cute though.
The name Collusion elicits negative connotations and my initial reading of the title led me to think that there was come wrongdoing on Kickstarter's part. I really would reconsider the name of the name of the company / product, unless this is the intended effect.
Yep, working here, but verrrrrrrry slow.
I thought this was going to be BS, as I do all numbered lists [1], but it's actually pretty good. Here's a TLDR, but the elaborations on each point are worth reading:

1. The world is trying to keep you stupid.

2. Do not have faith in institutions to educate you.

3. Read as much as you can. Learn to speed read with high retention.

4. Connect with everyone, all the time.

5. Don’t waste time being shy.

6. If you feel weird about something during a relationship, that’s usually what you end up breaking up over.

7. Have as much contact as possible with older people.

8. Find people that are cooler than you and hang out with them too.

9. You will become more conservative over time. For this reason, you need to do your craziest stuff NOW.

10. Reduce all expenses as much as possible.

11. Instead of getting status through objects (which provide only temporary boosts), do it through experiences.

12. While you are living on the cheap, solve the money problem.

13. Learn to program.

14. Get a six-pack (or get thin, whatever your goal is) while you are young.

15. Learn to cook

16. Sleep well

17. Get a reminder app for everything

18. Choose something huge to do

19. Get known for one thing.

20. Don’t try to “fix” anyone.

[1] Change the title to "Things I Should Have Known at 20" http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is outdated information; Intel chips have not used static prediction for conditional branches since NetBurst (Pentium 4).

"Pentium M, Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo processors do not statically predict
conditional branches according to the jump direction. All conditional branches are
dynamically predicted, even at first appearance."

--http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/manual/64-ia-32-archite...
Of course. But that doesn't stop anyone from writing their own interpreter that interprets the same language, as long as they don't copy any copyrightable parts of your interpreter to do so.

(Such an interpreter would likely contain a table of function names. The effect of this ruling is to clarify that that set of function names can't be copyrighted, so the alternative implementation of your interpreter can copy it. We already knew that the names themselves couldn't be copyrighted, but this ruling clarifies that also the "structure, sequence and organsiation" of those function names can't be copyrighted either.)
Yes, good hacking tips.
What is also interesting is that the Facebook comments box at the bottom of the article displays a

'This webpage is not available. The connection to www.facebook.com was interrupted.' error.

Wonder how many sites this is going to impact..
This is the original Pentium Pro with the full speed L2.
Don't forget the TLB when parsing the data.
But it has to be available to those multiple cpus, right? So it has to go down to memory and back up to cache. Contended or not.
> It's okay for Helvetica to be common because it doesn't scream "Hey look at me, I'm Helvetica!"

But it does scream that at me.
The "LG Smart TV" box isn't (usually) Android, it's LG's own Smart TV platform.

(LG has announced GoogleTV/Android support, and showed samples at CES this year but AFAIK isn't shipping them yet).
I agree that reCAPTCHA's mission is a noble one. That being said, it is REALLY annoying sometimes. I think even solutions that contribute to a noble cause will fall to easier and more intuitive ones (if they exist of course). Not that I necessarily think this is the answer, but a step in the right direction.
True, but I think the effect will even trickle down to smaller cases. That is the benefit of having a clear precedent set. For example when Big Co. now tries to sue Small Co. for implementing their API Small Co. will be able to stand up with much more confidence and tell them to go away. Even if that could have been interpreted from previous legal doctrine, having such a clear and and recent statement on it will bolster anybody in that situation to defend themselves instead of caving.
Even uncontended, the value has to be reconciled between cpus/caches. So it has to be plumbed down thru all the caches, then back up.
I've given some thought to the inertia of which you spoke. You're probably correct. I've decided to proceed with writing the software anyways; however, it's going to be open source. I still intend to build a company around this idea, but the software is not what I will be selling. I will be selling expertise in building risk models that are implemented with the software.

I believe open sourcing the software will eliminate the inertia, as the software would be free (as in beer), fully auditable, and fully customizable. The money that used to go towards an expensive contract can now go towards buying expertise in the construction of the models the software will implement.
There's a free version too if you'd like to try that. You can only add one word but it's a good way to give it a whirl without dropping $2. I just posted an update to the app (it was crashing on very high resolution images). Give it about 30min to update on the Android Market, then give it a shot ;)
Could you please go into more detail?

I'm curious because if you're saying a bot would be stopped at this solution, but not a human, then wouldn't that also apply to recaptcha as well?

Or are you saying one could automate a solution around this over that being impossible with recaptcha?

Would like to hear you thoughts.
2012 chanel bags
meaning stayed longer than average?
Rome2rio’s angel round: a tale of capital raising in Australia
The physics syllabus looks quite good. Let's hope they go into the details. Physics is quite simple once you know what derivatives and integrals are. Then you get to understand where the equations come from. F=ma, so given F_net, you can find a of an object. And a is def as dv/dt. So if you integrate a, you get v(t) = at + v_o, where v_o = v(t=0). And v is def as dx/dt, so we integrate v(t) to get:

x(t) = 0.5*a*t*t + v_o*t + x_o.

They should use Feynman's lectures on physics as the course textbook. That stuff is gold.

@moistgorilla yeah some code along with each lecture would be really cool. You explain theory in four pages, then you say "check out these functions" and you show for each equation in the theory sections is implemented in code. For example. x(t) = int( int('a',t,initval=v_o),t,initval=x_0). can simpy do the int part?
not necessarily. sometimes people just need a break to sit around and think/relax before diving in again. plus, if you have the money sitting around to chill for a while, this is an appealing option.
I would like to hear your thoughts on Clojure's serious design flaws. I'm currently learning the language and haven't come across anything warning me of such things.
Startups need design co-founders.
#21: Floating navbars are an abomination and make your site incredibly frustrating to read on a mobile device -- especially in landscape mode. At least put an X button on that thing.
Thats a really great question. I've wondered the same thing myself. I think a really simple ETL tool would make an excellent open source project.

If you want to do one I'd be up for helping.
This is fairly trivial to break. The number of puzzles are low and they repeat.

I could refresh til I get a desired puzzle (shoe matching). Then write a simple cursor controller program (say using Java Robot API). It would scan across the static shoe area on the right looking at shoe colors. Then scan across the shoes on the left. When it matches a color shoe, drag across to match.
Interesting idea of challenging people/bots to complete higher-level tasks to prove they are human. This just needs keyboard accessibility (I couldn't tab to the start button or handicap symbol link).
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance (Dave Barry)
To expand on that I don't think its worth writing one off programs to do it. Believe it or not I think ssis would actually sa e time over that.

But making your own sane ETL software is a good way to go.
You can deploy Meteor as a dotCloud service too: https://github.com/jpetazzo/meteor-on-dotcloud
To this outsider, your question sounds like exactly the reason Google needs this sort of process. Even if an employee were working in an area that was theoretically competitive with something, an official determination by Google should trump theoretical arguments - providing valuable certainty to both sides.
Build your startup with SmartUP Mobile SF June'12. Apply until June 10th
What he is saying is that captchas work solely on the fact that computers aren't fantastic at character recognition yet, so there isn't much way to have bots force their way in. This method will work temporarily, because it's new, and obscure. But if someone specifically targeted a website that used this, they would just have to figure out how many puzzles there are, and design a more simple application to solve it each one, rather than create a groundbreaking solution to better OCR (optical character recognition).

This system only works if there are unlimited, non repeating puzzles.
It is a pretty solid list.

I am 25 and these are things that would have helped me at 20.

I am trying to accomplish some of these now.

3. I used to read a book per week. I stopped and now I need to get back.

9. I never thought I would be a conservative person. I see the difference between my younger cousins and I.

10. I am jobless. I definitely am trying to eliminate costs.

13. I started taking Udacity classes. I have a business degree. It has been harder than I imagined. I still am motivated to learn more languages besides python.

14. I go to the gym six days per week. I ride my bike everywhere I go.

20. A very simple statement. That is very true.
I found this out during my interviews at Google; after I solved a problem using Python the interviewer gave me another and said "this time use a real language." Ouch.
Zombies Eat Republicans
I assume you're saying a targeted campaign/attack would be effective because a human could train the bot to recognize the "right" items in the game.

I believe you're underestimating the concept. The current implementation is a simple game that asks a human about domain-specific knowledge. Here are the areas a generalized bot would need to succeed at:

1. Broad domain-specific knowledge base (at least as hard as IBM Watson on Jeopardy)

2. Image-to-text transformations of low-res images, with a very short time limit

3. The ability to adapt to the "rules of the game" at random

The current setup is limited, true, because the degrees of freedom haven't been fleshed out. I do think that's a fair criticism of this approach: the system needs a _much_ larger database covering different game engines, different knowledge domains, different assets (audio, images, videos), etc.

The other weakness I see (do you agree?) is that the game runs in client-side javascript. It should be fairly easy right now to attack the client-server interactions. I assume it's not just a "yes/no" response sent from the client to the server, but anything that reduces the complexity of the problem (i.e. simulating a thousand virtual games to learn the game mechanics) is probably not worth the effort to code up.
A lot of things out there are very dumbly implemented and you can implement them better easily. Patent-heavy code is fairly rare (maybe 10% of all enterprise applications) in my experience.

To go back to my question, there are a lot of entrenched players out there who rely on an age-old user base to keep afloat. If you can provide a better implementation without asking them to rebuild their client applications, their customers will have an easy road to migrate towards your implementation.
How Clipboard.com's Web page clipping works [video]
Empowering American Families - Code for America
2X Powerful Slimming 
2X Powerful Slimming Burn Body Fat-32 Capsules(authentic, real,effective)*30boxes By Taking (1) Capsule Before Breakfast For the First Three Days Then (2) Capsules Before Breakfast From Then On, Resul
A bot would only be stopped by this because of novelty. Recaptcha can easily be bypassed by using human solvers, which are available for $1.50/1000 captchas last time I checked.

In my opinion, it would be easier to automate this than recaptcha because this uses common elements that don't have nearly enough difference between them to make it a challenge. A solve rate of <5% is effective for spammers. How is this going to stop anything when a spammer can simply cycle through to a game they know how to beat, and fake the mouse movements and timing?

Recaptcha is difficult to beat with OCR because it is designed to withstand attacks by OCR considered 'state of the art'. It is impossible to beat with off the shelf solutions. On the other hand, this would be rather simple to automate using pixel matching. The shapes and colors don't change (Take the pancake example, for instance).
The current latency isn't a CPU issue though. I'm not sure of the refresh rate of the iPad (60Hz?) but the hardware has no trouble updating the display in a single frame.

It should be noted that unless Microsoft had a 1000Hz display running, there was something fishy going on with their 1ms update.
So has this unfair treatment happened to you, Infinitivium? Anything that you can share to help clarify what went wrong?
A few guesses other than the man in the middle one. One is that China might then just block Google ssl requests completely. Another is that if China did block Google ssl requests completely, it would also break any other google.com services already on SSL, such as gmail. Though of course google could host these on different domains to solve that problem.
Right, because everyone watches those videos.
Please don't put words in my mouth, and please don't immediately assume the very worst interpretation of what I say.

For example, when I said "there is business value to usable apps", I actually didn't imply "there is no business value to casting a wider not". To say nothing of your "quick buck" comment.

It's dishonest to play tricks like this, so I would ask you to rewrite your comment as if your target audience was an intelligent human being looking for an intelligent discussion.
Microsoft' s new tune: We love Linux
I can understand the need for the process; I just don't understand how Google ever decides it's OK.
Check the FAQ[1] linked at the bottom of the page.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
It's going very well, actually. There was just a release a couple of weeks ago, and IBM just donated the source code to their Symphony product - which was derived from OOo. Symphony apparently has some really nice UI features which will hopefully make it into the mainline of Apache OO.

There is talk on oo-dev about starting the process of graduating from the Apache Incubator, which is an encouraging sign.
Wow! I'm assuming building this required a little bit of programming. So, because this is the same girl who learned to program in the last 3 months, we can infer all of these projects were completed in the last 3 months. Damn, that's impressive!

Or, this girl was already pretty smart and knew a lot about computers before three months ago.
Facebook is down, write up by a website monitoring company
No Copyrights on APIs: Judge Defends Interoperability and Innovation
Hacker News Toolbar: It would be great to have, but there's no API
https://github.com/walropodes/hackernews-companion

This would be awesome to have, could someone give show this developer how to access article ID's?
You would be more impressed by a Wacom penabled tablet or phone, like the Galaxy Note.

My Wacom penabled tablet/laptop convertible PC was invaluable at taking calculus and economics notes in Word 2007 - You can type all the text, then pick up the stylus and draw formulas, graphs, and symbols where you want.

It was such a powerful use-case for me that I don't understand why nobody has copied it yet.
Funny you mention this -- this was almost exactly what I and a friend did for a final project last semester. we did it in Go, which was probably much more enjoyable than C :)
No exceptions. Like C, it's not failsafe. That is, if you don't check the error status of (say) I/O operations, you lose.
So then why sue Google for using Java in Android?

The staff lawyers were getting bored and Ellison fell for the old "must defend our intellectual property or lose it" routine?

Just in the hope of picking up a little short term cash by shaking down the deeper pockets in the Java community at the expense of making .Net look to 3rd parties like a legally safer ecosystem?
If I could go back to when I was 20, i'd have myself memorize this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)

Would have saved me 3 agonizing years.
The Most Successful E-mail I Ever Wrote
According to this, I'm actually doing pretty good for being 21.
WTF, Microsoft, WHERE IS THE STAND-ALONE INSTALLER?
I personally like how nyan cat becomes vampire cat when you turn off the light...
Run the iOS emulator?
I had a play with this and it's essentially a two dollar stylus that can also emit high frequency audio based on pressure, with the iPad attachment having a couple of mics in it to receive audio. This enables the stylus to transmit pressure levels as inaudible sounds, resulting in the ability to draw thin and thick lines.

The software was ok, but the biggest problem is still that typical stylus lag on iOS. Not much you can do about that due to iOS restrictions. It's early days for Collusion so i'm sure they'll come up with something.
Plus if Gabor doesn't come up with another successful idea before he needs money (which I doubt), he can always get a day job again to pay the rent.
I actually think W8 is ultimately going to be a disaster for Microsoft because it's so consumer-focused.

Microsoft has been a juggernaut for the past decade because of the enterprise. Part of the reason for this are technologies like Active Directory and Exchange built on top on the Windows stack. Another big part of it are enterprise applications that are also built on top of that stack.

Windows RT (aka Windows on ARM) doesn't support AD management. It's instead employing a self-service style portal that's meant to address bring-your-own-device situations rather than corporate device management.

Additionally, Windows RT will only run applications written targeting Windows Runtime; traditional W32 apps aren't supported.

So here's the thing: from a corporate IT perspective, what does Windows 8 give me that other devices like iPads or Android tablets don't if I'm going to give up full device management, especially if I'm trying to address the BYOD problem? (And from a corporate IT perspective, wanting to run line of business apps on iPads etc is probably the most frequent request I hear from end users).

From an ISV perspective, if I'm rewriting my app to target a new platform anyway, why not just go ahead and move as much as you can server side, present the UI as a webapp, and then be able to support all these non-Windows devices that users are clamoring for anyway?

W8 really feels like Microsoft painting themselves into a corner by chasing the consumer market while doing a poor job of addressing the market that's made the company what it is to date.
This may not be such a great alternative — it allows far too many attempts which make it susceptible to cracking. (a video showing this being beaten by a bot [1] was posted on HN [2] last week)

[1] http://spamtech.co.uk/software/cracking-the-areyouhuman-capt...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4025791
Question was why was it being downvoted; being accurate wasn't one of those reasons. Easy to frame the original opinion without the snark, make the same point and avoid downvotes IMO.
Interesting that in the initialization loop it sets A[0 - 1] to true, yet in your blocky code it appears to be iterating from 0 to n. In fact it always seems to be offsetting by one in array access ... 1 based indexing maybe?
Microsoft is merely following Apple's shitty lead on that.

Microsoft is finding new ways to hinder usage all over the place. The "+" symbols in Explorer that used to tell you which folders had contents are missing now. Oh, unless you happen to roll the cursor into the left pane; then they suddenly appear.

WTF.
Here is a youtube video showing that some of the puzzles can be beaten pretty quickly through brute force. http://youtu.be/Ahu3fvW2H0E
Light Table reaches 300k necessary for Python support
Demos as Part of a Development Process
I always loved ETL softwares, they are flexible and offer a broad range of features. But if you think about it, you can do most of it yourself, especially logging and automation. The only huge advantage over in-house ETL solutions is parallel execution which is really hard to code properly.
Even thought ETL softwares are amazing, they clearly do not justify their price, and you will always love your own code better than a tool that may or may not have all the features that you need.
Roll your own.
http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
Hola Amigo, the party is starting and you're invited
Interesting list, but the presentation and layout is terrible.

Limiting the size of the page horizontally improves readability.

Limiting the size of the page vertically is just annoying.
YouTube's codebase is largely python, but it was sort of grandfathered in. I'm unsure if it would be used if they were to rewrite it today.
Notes from a failed attempt to port LaTeX to iOS