skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I appreciate the sentiment, but it's worth distinguishing between the design and implementation here. Cassandra does take a lot of inspiration from the Bigtable and Dynamo papers, so we benefit from the thinking of a handful of very smart engineers at Google and Amazon, respectively, but the actual code is our [Apache's] own and for the battle testing you need to thank companies like Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, and others. [1]

That said, part of the reason Cassandra was attractive to me from the beginning is that unlike master-slave designs like MongoDB (or Bigtable/HBase, for that matter), a p2p design doesn't have the many corner cases around failover and recovery that complicate troubleshooting so badly. This is a primary reason Cassandra has had a very good reliability story since very early on.

[1] http://www.datastax.com/cassandrausers
Add avatars to your website (Gravatar + Identicon replacement)
Wow, sorry to hear about the assault and damage to your property. That is quite a way to wreck an otherwise pleasant vacation. I will say that I am glad to hear that I am not the only one to have been treated in a rather hostile manner at a McDonald's in Paris. My wife and I went there on vacation a few years back. My wife was filming my clumsy handling of the french language as she made me order (she is actually quite good at french) and an "employee" took her camera, shoved us out of the restaurant and then smashed our camera on the side walk. I'm not sure what they think they are hiding.
The article is more of numbers take on: if the quota is finishing up quicker every year, then shouldn't congress realize it and do something about it. I think what the author means by end of the race is:

"It took only 10 weeks this year to reach the FY2013 visa cap of 85,000. Last year, it took more than three times longer, 33 weeks. "

SO employers are 'racing' to get the H1-B applicants in, and due to the ridiculous quota, the race is over in a little over two months. So anybody hoping to get a H1-B visa, who is not employed at a really lawyered company will have trouble staying in the country.
I'm a big cheerleader for NY tech (hence why I live there now), but you see a different flavor of "goofy problems." Instead of social apps, you get advertising or fashion startups. Companies on the west coast (SpaceX, Tesla) are tackling big problems just like companies on the east coast (Foursquare, Tumblr) are tackling "goofy problems."

Ultimately, tackling serious problems involves understanding your own values. Some "non-serious" startups handle incredible architectural issues and produce amazing technology (memcached, Cassandra, Solr) that improves our lives in subtle ways. Similarly, serious startups produce can have high-risk, pie-in-the-sky goals (SpaceX) that may not materialize.
Well, at least it isn't XP. Windows 7 will be able to run IE10.
> visit Paris

> go to McDonald's
The thing about imeem and picplz is they seemed really stupid and insignificant at first too. But the issues they tackled ended up being about something very important and fundamental. At least in my opinion.

Such a cop out. Any start-up founder of the most stupid start-up could reframe like you have and claim to be working on something "very important and fundamental."

You can't be the guy hating on ad start-ups and turn around and suggest your own ad-supposed start-ups were exceptions because you found them "very important and fundamental."

Of course, you have every right to love your own baby even irrationally(every founder must have some dose of delusion to not give up). But too much of it doesn't help us achieve clarity about your position and message on this topic.
The thing is that certain forms of 3d printing technology brings the costs down so far for manufacturing certain technologies, that not restricting it as a society means that you will win technologically overall, compared to more restrictive societies.

They are in basic form, the first generation of digital replicators and some of the open source variants are already under $500, with dirt cheap print costs.

Who only knows what the patent industry is going to do, because certain sections of it are now screwed far, far worse than the recording and distribution industry ever was over people downloading MP3s, especially given that the mashup and resharing of different objects will probably be an extremely common use of desktop manufacture-to-order technologies and is easily accomplished over many existing and popular MMORPGs, alongside all the standard web channels, so is an absolute nightmare to try and police.

And that's without even considering the issues raised by laser scanning, photographic 3d, or just artists with a good eye and memory.
Since Office 97 was released, I haven't noticed any features that I use on a day-to-day basis that have changed or improved much. I'm sure many things have changed in some subtle way; it's just that I really don't see any difference in day-to-day usage. I know that the UNICODE support added in 2003 was a lot of non-trivial work.

I haven't noticed a single feature within Excel that has changed the way that I work.

In word, all of the mundane features every beginner uses also appear to be functionally identical. Other more involved items I use daily such as styles, outlining, headers and footers, footnotes, indexes, templates, merging and so forth also appear to be unchanged.

The biggest change I've noticed was with Powerpoint 2007. They added gobs of features and options that didn't exist before. But, I probably do 5 to 10 presentations a year, so it's not big win for me.

I would love to see greater stability in Word. Large and/or complex documents have been a weekly problem with all versions for Word for as long as I can remember. I haven't noticed much difference in stability since '97 as long as Word is hosted on an NT-based OS.

In the reporting of this new version, the announcement was made that this version is mostly interface changes and some add-on options.

Has anyone noticed a mention of any core functionality changes, re-writes, etc?
I worked at Yahoo 2003-2005, and back then I used to tell everyone who would listen that a big part of the problem was that the engineering team at Yahoo believed that Yahoo was a technology company, while the product team treated it as a media company.

It was an ongoing tension while Yahoo was still desperately clinging to the fantasy of regaining the search leadership, or at least stopping Google in its tracks - search was to a large extent Yahoo engineering's claim to legitimacy for the idea of a tech focused Yahoo.

Without it, what was left were mainly support functions for a massive content operation, but with a team still to a large extent seeing itself as the core of the company.

Yahoo wasted tremendous amounts trying to do technology for the sake of being a tech company rather than to support revenues; a lot of little fiefdoms in engineering were allowed to exist seemingly because it looked internally like Yahoo was building an impressive technology base, while it often instead was creating tensions in the business and costing ridiculous amounts.
Great! Really helpful. Thank you and continue the good job!
No, he meant he wanted Office to use WebKit instead of Trident (IE's engine) or 'Microsoft Word' (the rich-text editing framework that it uses currently).
It is possible to do separate functions form data in OO languages.

It is less convenient than it is on other languages, where the wrapper class is not needed.

Separating functions from data is not the natural initial solution in an OO language, and is done as a refinement. It is not promoted as a default solution.

At some point the language is getting in the way and it better to go with something that supports what you are doing.
More than anything else there needs to be an open source alternative to OneNote. Ironically, it's always been the least popular Office app and the most likely to be supplanted by an open source file format. Once tablets finally become mainstream I believe OneNote will be the most important in the Office suite. OneNote has the potential to replace paper; it'll be the default note taking app for students! It frustrates me no end that we don't yet have a digital replacement for a moleskin notebook.
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/05/desperately-se...

(Google should have staked out a spot in this inchoate note scene when they introduced pen support in ICS, and Samsung launched the Galaxy Note, but stock Android doesn't even have a bundled Notes app much less something to compete with OneNote)
Small correction: Steve Mann is Canadian.

Also, he has photographic evidence of his documentation being destroyed.
From the post:

> "I tried on many occasions to contact McDonald's but have not received any response."

> "I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck."

IMO going to the court of public opinion is acceptable when nobody who should be dealing with the issue is actually doing so.

This is practically why we have modern media, blogosphere or otherwise.
These things are also more than just justice. It's helpful to get some insight into the nature of a big company, so that you can make your own personal decisions on whether you want to continue to do business with them in the future.
PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote are more important to my job (I teach) than any other program. But none of those features will improve my work, and the impending subscription service makes me want to look at other options.

I'd be interested in seeing recommendations for alternatives.
The World's Ideas, Visualised
Game theory around Prisoner's Dilemma
No. So please stop trolling us with your Transcombinator nonsense.
Yes. There's a big difference between a genius who's also a jackass, and someone who thinks they have to be a jackass to be a genius. Jobs was solidly in the first category.
Complain to the Olympic board as McDonalds are a sponsor of the Olympics and the Para-Olympics.

In parallel write/email to the newspapers etc.

Also talk to your embassy who can advise how to proceed in other ways.

You have a vision problem and need a visual aid to combat that disability. McDonalds not only commited assualt but also did it systematicaly and premeditated way indicating they are not a suitable sponsor for the para-Olympics.

If they won't deal with this issue responsibly, then sod em and shame them as publicly and in as many ways as possible; you have done nothing wrong, nothing and they are all to blame so shame them.

Also few links on FB and twitter with liberal abuse of #mcdonalds #imlovinit #mcd and the like will soon garner this issue the attention it needs and deserves.

You could see a lawyer, but it's hard to find one who can deal with this. I'd go the press/PR route (then a good lawyer will come to you) as your doing but with a few nationals who will happily run this story. Now is a good time given there large marketing event called the Olympics, leverage this time and educate McDonalds.

Last time I went to McDonalds security told me the toilets were for customers only too which I pointed out that in a civilised World we wash our hands before we handle our food and I had no desire to take my food into the toilet or leave it unattended as I had no confidence on the security being able to saftly protect my food/possesions. He appologised and I left to eat elsewere.
You'd need to make your claim more precise, in order to prove it, but a proof might go something like this: assume that an anti-bloom filter starts empty, and that it over time sees some small fraction of the possible objects (because objects are 64+ bits, say). If the anti-bloom filter usually reports "yes" for a significant fraction (even just 1%) of the seen objects, then an information theoretic argument tells you it must have size around the number of objects times the object size.
I think he's well within reason. If you were assaulted by a cashier at McDonald's, would you just ignore it and continue on? I'm pretty sure I would try and get the perpetrators fired and possibly charged, and have the company pay for any damages to my property.
There is still hope for you ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism
I'm the person who wrote the "HN is not your mommy" comment, and I'd like to take a moment to clarify a bit what I was trying to say with that.

Most importantly, I definitely wasn't decrying all instances of people bringing a situation that has gone some flavor of shitty to the attention of HN. In fact, it's in no small part the fact that the HN community is so willing to help one another out that keeps me here — particularly among the alumni, but I think their conduct just sets the example for the rest of us.

That said, I've started to feel a few times lately like that willingness to be helpful is being taken advantage of — or at least people are trying to do so. The "I didn't win the contest! Waaaah!" was just the most egregious example I'd seen in some time, and I felt the need to call it out. Given that it was the highest rated comment I've ever posted on HN, I'm clearly not alone in that.

This situation isn't remotely the same. This is a clear-cut case of ignorant idiocy escalating into physical assault, and the louder and more forcefully the fact that that kind of thing is fucking wrong gets shoved in McD's face, the better.
Dropbox - New options for shared folders
Apparently you can't read.
Show HN: Tehda, an iPad TeuxDeux client
An introduction to mapping in ElasticSearch
Can someone illuminate why a recording device would illicit such a harsh reaction? I can understand businesses wanting to avoid someone stand there with a video camera, but does France take this more seriously?
>This really didn't work for me. I found needing to parse the command ("Move backward a word") broke the memory that I have built up over 15 years of using Emacs. Instead of naturally moving backwards with a flick of the fingers, I had to concentrate on where each finger was and on the key I was pressing. ...

>Now, take @gruseom's idea of a visual "goal" that you are chasing, and I think this could be intensely valuable.

I made exactly your suggestion to the author a while back, since this site was posted on HN about a month ago. A few days after that, I went to a TrueCar Ruby meetup where the author presented his shortcutfoo app, and when he asked for input, I made exactly your suggestion:

Since, I reasoned, you never go from "verbal description of alteration" to "keyboard input" in actual practice, I said that it would make more sense to give some visual representation of what the desired change looks like, since that is a lot closer to how people use these shortcuts (although not an exact match, of course). Someone else then followed up by suggesting that it display "before and after" pictures (what the text/cursor look like before and after the modification), which would be pretty easy to implement.

I don't know why he didn't take that suggestion, but it's unfortunate that he hasn't.

Earlier post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4007096
The doctor's note is presumably to explain that the glasses cannot be removed easily and are actually implanted in him.

A few years back he had airport security physically pull out wires out of him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/circuits/14MANN...

(apparently "a few years back" is 10 years ago. Yikes.)

Edit: a link to an old (1997) article about his glasses:

http://www.wearcam.org/ieeecomputer/r2025.htm
Every link in the chain should be over TLS. Otherwise, you can change the unencrypted part to point somewhere else. Both the form, the site linking to it, and the URI it submits to should be over TLS.
This. IMO Yahoo's days as a technology company have long since ended (if they ever really existed in the first place). They have never been a heavily algorithms-based company like Google is.

IMO Yahoo's best bet is to reinvent themselves as a world-class product company, and rent the relevant tech stack from someone who can actually do a good job of it.
C++11 does have anonymous functions

http://www.cprogramming.com/c++11/c++11-lambda-closures.html
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7627098/what-is-a-lambda-...
OK... so maybe it is hard to slide the box components apart but some of these people look like idiots. Cutting the tape/sticker with a collar stay? Really? I didn't see anything odd about how it was packaged. Yet so many people struggled with even getting those two tape things off. At which point I question if they are even good (or typical) examples of the "out of box" experience. At least the guy with the huge freaking bread knife had the right idea.
I think this is mostly correct. Afaik, the swf (instead of as3) target was provided because the standard compiler (flash) was closed source. Nicolas Canasse, the Haxe language author, wrote an open source as3 compiler called mtasc, and then used his experience to make an optimized compiler for Haxe to swf.
No worries, it was mostly tongue-and-cheek anyways. I went from being a maestro at the keyboard to hunting and pecking with the switchover to the OSX version. This is nobody's fault but my own.

I'm very curious to try the Windows version though, what are some of the bigger changes? (Aside from the better pivot tables, better sharing, and smart-fill on the product page).
The actual assault description is extremely lacking in detail. Are we to believe someone walked up unannounced and tried to rip the eye glasses off!?
His eyewear appears to record or take pictures, so he likely has evidence of them destroy the documents.
I don't see in the article where the writer claimed there was a prescription involved. Just documentation that probably described things like what the purpose of the glasses was, how they were physically attached to his skull (that might require a note from a normal dr. perhaps?) At any rate, in a foreign country I would imagine it is a good idea to carry plenty of documentation for an augmentation like this just as with one's controlled medications. My two cents, I am sure he is on the level and definitely deserves some sort of acknowledgement and perhaps an apology from McD's.
No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it.

The way the employees behaved is consistent with this explanation.

Edit: I should have said no more than that the excessive reaction of the security people suggests there may be something dubious happening at this McDonald's that they don't want filmed. But there are other less dramatic things they might be doing besides money laundering: using undocumented labor, for example.
> I find it really hard to believe that Steve Mann would have some kind of medical condition that would lead a normal Dr. to prescribe that Steve Mann wears the computer vision glasses that Steve Mann invented.

Not necessarily as huge a coincidence as you seem to think. If Steve Mann has a medical condition that is not easily rectified by existing technology, and assuming Steve Mann is reasonably intelligent, then it's no stretch of imagination that he might be compelled to do research on something that personally impacts him. Since he's a professor at the University of Toronto, I don't find it hard to believe that he is reasonably intelligent, and so this is not necessarily so hard to believe.

But on a second reading, it doesn't seem like he even necessarily has a medical condition. He refers to a doctor's letter which is for explanatory purpose. Since this device is apparently permanently attached to the skull, no doubt a doctor was involved at some point. In other words, Dr. Mann has done research into augmented vision, created a device, and had the device installed onto himself. While potentially risky, we all know people do far crazier things.

Which isn't to say that this isn't a media attention grab, but it's not as farfetched as you make out.
Just because something can be summarised in a simple way, doesn't necessarily make it simple to begin with.

Think of all the simple and obvious things we read, write and discuss every day: "find customers before building a product", "don't solve problems you don't have yet", "write tests first before writing code".

These are all "simple and obvious" but you couldn't possibly derive any value from reading only those statements without any discussion or analysis of what they really mean.

Likewise, if we take the stuff Covey says about being "principle centred". Reduced to it's simplest summary this says "base your character on unchanging principles to avoid fluctuations". So simple it's basically axiomatic: of course if you base something on an unchanging foundation, it will be less subject to change than if you didn't.

But without his discussion about what the other options are, what it means to be centred in money, self, family, work etc. you don't have a good enough reference point to judge what action you would need to take in order to change your attitude, behaviour or character.
Upsetting but I don't think there's much that can be done about it. The local police or gendarmes are unlikely to have the time to pursue it and I doubt any witnesses will come forward (from the staff at least). Just a case of three "beuf" (as the French would say) taking a dislike to a geek. Sadly, there's a sub-section of young(ish) male French society that is extremely macho and very closed minded when it comes to people not fitting the mould. They're the same jerks that will harass a girl if she's wearing a short skirt (because obviously that means "she's up for it!")