skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most 'cloud' software like Hadoop, Cassandra, clustered Mongo or whatever makes it a point to solve that problem in userspace software, giving you a view of 'one big app' across a bunch of machines. Since that's your level of interaction with the system, VMs tend to not really make a lot of sense, they just give you new opportunities to make mistakes while imposing a small performance tax.

Now, if you have 10 legacy apps on old P4 xeons and want to lump them all onto a sandy bridge server and save a bunch of power and rackspace, then separate VMs on one machine makes sense.

Basically, a cluster of 30 servers, all running exactly one VM doing the same thing is on-its-face silly. Why even have the VM then?
Hofstadter was a genius, one of his books was called "I am a Strange Loop" and xkcd (jokingly) reported that his autobiography reads:

I'm
so
meta
even
this
acronym
I think an interesting takeaway from this article even for those who are not really interested in gaming on Linux is that the benefits of open source development can be seen even when source isn't made available to the world, but just within or between organizations.

That is probably something most HNers know or suspect already, but this seems like a particularly clean proof of that concept.
I think part of that is that CodeIgniter has much less exposure and mind-share than rails does.

Personally I've given up on php because they keep having horrible problems with the core (c) code in the stack (not all of which are unique to php, like image processing libraries) -- but I don't think it fair to write off CodeIgniter as an alternative in general.

For anyone looking for a semi-large code-base using CI, I recommend having a look at Bamboo Invoice:

http://bambooinvoice.org/

That said I would have been very happy to see more of Expression Engine published under an open licence as well:

http://expressionengine.com/

My impression is that some of the projects that might have built larger stacks on top of CI just go (or went) with EE rather than write the code themselves.
"The problem is DNS resolution isnt cached" I don't get it. It's like using http withou content-length or content-md5 and complaining about a lack of data integrity.
A DNS cache is trivial, either in your code or a local service. Or hell just use your local gethostbyname(). Your os will probably cache for you. And if it's not you'll pay 0.1ms to hit another box in your dc. But if 30ms every few minutes is still too much use a pref etching resolver like (lib)unbound.

I suppose my real objection is in not Doing The Right Thing. Yes, it may work for your current two box static setup. But small choices contribute a lot of debt that you or someone else has to pay off later. Would be a shame if someone took the message that DNS was just "overhead".
onGameStart - HTML5/JS Game Conference
"The condition handling approach just seems too magic to me."

They're nothing compared to Lisp's macro facility.
thanks! I'll go ahead and fix it.
Thanks for your advice and comments!

I've always thought the app has the potential to go viral but it's really nice to hear it from someone else. Thanks also for the advice on not over-engineering and delivering a functioning if minimal product, I'm sure we'd be wise to do that, even though my natural impulse is to add extra functionality! As for the price, I think you're right, in fact Thomas had already suggested it in previous conversations :)
There's kind, and then there's polite. I'm very kind to the people I care about. I'm barely polite to anyone.
I've read the title as "It's More Important to Be King Than Clever" and agreed wholeheartedly, then it turned out the article was about something else.
It sounds like the reason they have so many machines is because they need a lot of CPU. Compressing those machines onto fewer CPUs would not be a win.
I agree with this 100% but would add that once you understand this concept, it becomes possible to prune down the space of potential ideas to ones that you can most imagine could lead to a larger scope. I realize this is often hard to see up front, but it seems more like a way to rule out short-sighted ideas completely than to decide which ones are most likely to turn into world-changing things.
An Education in Computer Gaming
This sounds like a pretty cool product. Just wish I had it when I went on vacation last week.
"I'd rather be rich than stupid" -jack handey
Flynn’s IQ
There are two kinds of fools: the first kind says “it is old, and therefore it is good”; the second kind says “it is new, and therefore it is better.”
99% is a breeze. 100% is a Bitch.
People like it because it is LimeWire in a webapp.

Actually, scratch that -- they like it because it lets them listen to whatever the song they want to listen to, whereever they want to listen to it. As far as I know, nobody has that kind of selection anywhere else.
Thanks! Yep, this was one of the faster ones I've written. I'm doing a few experiments to see how to increase my article output :).
Why is this on the front page? It's not only horribly written, but not really full of any useful information if you want to look at actual politics. Don't disagree with the conclusion, but it does not belong here.
To be fair, there weren't as many per capita as now, and far fewer professionals making them full-time. I'm just not sure that more works each accessible to fewer people (those who can afford to license it) is an overall win.
Introducing 'Convertible Equity' Funding, Convertible Debt Without The Debt
Would that be the cooling factor, mentioned in the article, at play?
Yep, it's seeing the "Coordinates" link at the top right corner of the page.
How to: Stop producing shit
1. Produce 10 shit ideas each day
2. Throw them away
3. ???
4. Profit!

TBH I actually agree with these 4 steps, but they're exactly the reason people should continue producing shit. It may not make you rich this time around (it could have the opposite effect) and may not have a huge impact, but there's a basis to the 10,000 hours rule, and you're working off some of those hours (or, in oldschool parlance: you're learning from your mistakes).

The value is in producing ordinary work, but being able to recognize why it's ordinary, and to improve upon your mistakes (in the idea, in the implementation and in the execution) the next time around. Usually, the first time painters pick up a brush, their work is shit; the first time musicians pick up an instrument, their work is shit; same goes for developers. It's not a reason to not pick up the brush - to tell someone to stop sucking and start being awesome isn't really advice. I think that this advice is better:

Practice, practice, practice.

It's much better to be constantly producing shit (and learning) than just to sit around and consume it, and it's not a case of deciding "oh, hey, maybe this time I'll make something good, just for the sake of it".
He never claimed he was proud of his selfishness or expected people to applaud. What he's claiming is that others shouldn't look down upon it. There's a difference.
I literally conceived of this idea a month ago. My day job is in finance, so this break is the first contiguous block of time I could find to put it together. As far as audience is concerned, its true that the audience is smaller but that's good insofar as emergent problems can be addressed before people come back on Tuesday :)
This article makes the common mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Some data points might correlate but that doesn't imply they cause each other.
They will often make you re-interview for your own job as a pretense to remove people without degrees.
>or us having an outage due to another AWS problem and switching providers.

Why, because the other providers (or a roll-your-own solution) will not have outages?

Or because the customers cannot tolerate even the more or less half a day of outage per year AWS has?

Even critical businesses like banking have work stoppages far more often than that for tons of reasons, in both the physical world and the digital/networked one.
Citroen DS3 Cabrio has been unveiled before its time
Please Stop Working on Ads
One thing I'd really want to see in an email client is a set of "reply today", "reply tomorrow" and "reply later" buttons, linked to my todo list or calendar.
More: http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/zynga-recruits-online-gamb...
The problem is at $50/month+ the service expectations become much more expensive to provide -- even though a dedicated member could get it back into the 30s.

Edit: what I mean is that if price ranges from $30-60 the average cost will be a lot nearer that range that's perceived as upscale gym. Whereas ranging from $0-60 would at least appear to be nearer the ordinary $30/month average. It would entirely depend on usage, obviously.
The problem is that, usually, for people with experience, awards, etc, the probability of other people surpassing the former is pretty small. "The next big thing" is a strict subset of "Maybe the next big thing".
>My authority: I hold a Ph.D. in the applied math of stochastic optimal control. I've taught math in college and graduate school. I've published peer-reviewed original research in applied math and mathematical statistics.

With all those one would expect better reasoning and/or better wording.
Decorators in JavaScript
You mean like those Follow Up flags in Outlook that are one right-click away?
It's kind of hard to cite Elon Musk in an argument against building ways for merchants to connect to customers. How do you think Elon got the capital to make SpaceX and Tesla possible? Those are his second act.
There's an option to turn on/off the auto responder. Checkout the second image in the slide show: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/illgajkjilbddcllil...
I think there needs to be a differentiation between "stop producing sht and being happy with it as the final products" and "stop producing sht in general."

The first is a cancer on all startups/businesses/etc.

The second is a necessary step in evolving as a business, company and person. If you don't create something you're embarrassed about first, you'll probably never start at all. Very few people hit a grand slam their first day in the majors.
WP themes in 3D + dom heaviness
The most interesting part to me is the effect of wording in the Facebook ad. I wish they'd said how strong the effect is:

"they compared two versions of Facebook ads for a real stand-up comedian. In the first version, critics said "he is the next big thing" and "everybody's talking about him." In the second version, critics said he "could be the next big thing," and that "in a year, everybody could be talking about him." The ad that focused on his potential got significantly more clicks and likes."
To Bank or Not To Bank
Oops, I down voted this when I meant to up vote.
My son is a Jazz nut, often playing for hours just for fun. The rhythm section is always the most challenging for him. He usually plays to a CD that has a bunch of different rhythms. I can see him and his friends having a blast with this. Let me know when I can buy it!
I currently work as a PM in a big company. Yesterday I've got slightly over 200 emails; it is a typical day.

Granted, some of those were CC:, and people like to have one-line replies, but I still have to read each one nevertheless just to make sure it is not something I need urgently respond to.
too many ads on that page.
I looked into a related, more advanced version of this a couple years ago. It's basically impossible. You can't do it on patient records directly (HIPAA) and if you do it through case studies in PubMed, for example, the copyright holders (e.g., NEJM) will destroy you on licensing fees.
I'd say it's not necessarily the length of the school year but the size of summer break being several months. Teachers spend a lot of time getting kids back up to speed in the fall. Lengthening breaks during the school year and compensating by trimming summer break down would be wise.
> I got overzealous with x^5, some (not all) can be factored

All polynomials can be factored but only some of the fifth or higher degree are solvable by radicals--a crucial distinction.

Here's a fun puzzle that also serves as a gentle introduction to the central idea of Galois theory: Show that any palindromic quintic is solvable by radicals. A palindromic quintic is one of the form ax^5 + bx^4 + cx^3 + cx^2 + bx + a. It might be useful to know that if you have a polynomial equation f(z) = 0 and make the substitution z -> 1/z and multiply through by z^n, you get the reversed polynomial. On the Riemann sphere, this inversion symmetry reflects the northern hemisphere onto the southern hemisphere and vice versa, interchanging the north and south pole, which are 0 and infinity in z coordinates. Therefore a palindromic polynomial is one that "looks the same" from either vantage point.

This idea of looking at the behavior of a polynomial simultaneously from the vantage point of 0 and infinity is also the basis of how the fundamental theorem of algebra is proved. The general model is 1 + z^n. Once you understand that polynomial qualitatively near 0 and infinity, you can understand every other polynomial by a simple perturbation analysis.
Not if I do it first!

... Which sounded less horrible in my head. Ugh.
The manual method:

1. Create filter "subject(*)" -> Skip Inbox, Apply Label "INBOXPAUSE"

2. There is no step 2

To "unpause"

1. Delete filter (too bad you can't turn them off/on)

2. Go to label "INBOXPAUSE", select all, move to inbox

Works for web-based as well as mobile, which is nice. The primary benefit of this extension is that it reminds you that you're paused with an overlay.
Codeigniter was the first php framework I learned. It was really easy to understand and extend. However it just doesn't feel right and I'm starting to think I'm just tired of php. I've seen bamboo invoice before. There are a few other robust projects I've seen but nothing that you could compare to 37signals apps or github.
Please stop writing articles telling people not to work on ads.

I don't disagree with the point, but we've seen a deluge of these recently and not a single one has had something fresh to say. Pissing all over people working on ads, is the new working on ads.
I think it can be done without aiming, assuming the light detector uses a wide angle lens. You just have to illuminate the scene observed by the LIDAR with a few watts per square meter of laser light. That's doable today, and easy in the future.
I can recreate your "writing directly to a socket" in a couple of lines of code in any language. So it means nothing to me.

The post however is about a whole new server. It's also written in an interesting language. This I might use. This I want to learn more about. I'll go on a limb here, and say that more HN people want to here about the new webserver than about how "one can do it as fast by writing to a socket".
It would be really great if they did the same for their EULAs.
Horses absolutely do sweat.... however, this is where the bipedal aspect comes into play.

Not only is a bipedal gait more efficient over long distances, but the fact that humans have a mostly hairless torso which is directly perpendicular to the direction they are running means two things: a maximum amount of surface area of sweaty skin is being exposed to moving air vs. body mass it has to cool. Much greater than a quadraped's.
No, my reasoning and wording are fine: Instead, "Things should be as simple as possible and not simpler"!
jQuery 1.8.1 released
I don't learn the syntax or function names in languages or libraries or frameworks, I read about what that it's particularly good (or bad) at and tuck that away in the back of my brain.

When I have a problem and I get to pick what I want to make it with, I consult all this information stored up in my head combined with a bit of research on google.
Meta: Nice example in correcting someone in a nice way.
I read 0% of 100% of the Terms of Service I encounter because they're not worth my time to parse. I actually read through this one. Anecdata.
Can't you have doctors enter data into the system (without giving any patient identifying information), for example like the article here? Then, if you want more specific information, you can control the doctor perhaps.
The problem not time in school, the discussion should be about motivating students. As long as the student is motivated to learn on their own, then more time in school might result in less learning, in the same way that continual 80 hour work weeks result in a drop in productivity.

My wife taught school in a lower income area. For students that could care less about learning, the parents treat school like free day care, and the students forgot a lot of their newly acquired knowledge over the 2 week winter break.
City of Heroes closes down
You might want to check out our core product, Boomerang. You just choose a date when you want to see an email again. It kicks the message into a label until that time, then brings it back to the top of your inbox, so you can reply when you're ready. We think Inbox Pause goes well with the same core theme.

(I helped write Inbox Pause)
Kodiak PHP - iPad app with offline PHP code execution
It someone is feeling faint it is standard practice to lower their head to increase blood flow to the brain. Presumably her husband knew this. I felt faint after donating blood recently (I have low blood pressure) and they have a standard piece of foam to lift your legs up while lying on a bed.
I think you've completely missed my point.

I spent 5 years using linux as my only OS, I am very well aware of the issues it has, specifically in the area of display management. The reason I stopped using it is that I don't care to mess with it any longer. I've spent hours mucking with the internals of Xorg and writing sleep/hibernate scripts in an attempt to duct tape something together that works. I've spent hours trying different combinations of kernel + Xorg + driver to figure out which one won
t randomly peg a CPU core at 100%. I've spent hours researching parts to look for compatibility, I've wasted $ on parts just to work around issues with linux.

What I realized and why I have no interest in linux as a usable desktop anymore is that while this time spent may scratch a nerd itch, it is actually a complete waste of my time and detracts from actually doing something productive, like using the computer to produce, the very reason I own it.

So I don't give a shit at all why it doesn't work anymore. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, I don't need to do massive research to say "it doesn't work". I don't need to be "well-informed" to say it doesn't work, not working is pretty obvious. In fact doing research goes completely against my goal, which is to spend the least possible amount of time thinking about my computer and the most possible time producing.
Researchers find critical vulnerability in Java 7 patch hours after release
Looks like a bug. Dalian should lead to Liaoning.
> We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society.

Problem is, schools don't do that in the first place, for the most part. So a longer school year may make things worse. For examples, schools don't teach negotiation, setting up a basic business, what to do if police ask to search your car or home, credit card management, and many other things arguably more important than today's school subjects. I need my kids to have less time in school so that I can teach them those more important things. I don't want them to be educated only to the level that they can toil away in a cube farm for MegaCorp. I also want my kids to have plenty of time to not be concerned with excelling in a global society; e.g. exploring national parks.
I agree. My son just started kindergarten this year and they get 3 breaks of 1 week or more in addition to all of the national holidays & teacher work days. But they only seem to get about 9 weeks off during the summer.

Regardless of what changes are made, though, some people won't like the new schedule. It's just a fact.
This reductionist philosophy is mostly inappropriate when talking about programming language features.

Yes, from what I understand about Conditions (IANACL), they can be implemented with first class functions and dynamic variables. And dynamic variables can be implemented by passing an extra argument to every function. And function arguments can be implemented with well-named global variables. And functions can be implemented with computed gotos and a reified global stack variable.

But the point of a language is to create a common vocabulary with which programmers can think and talk to machines and each other. Try to reduce everything to a simpler form and everyone ends up reimplementing the higher level concepts in incomplete or at least incompatible ways with everyone else. There is a need for experimentation and turnover to figure out which higher level constructs are best, but this is entering the realm of language design and should not be a required part of application programming.
Am I the only one who refuses to take an IQ test? I hate being tested - especially with a time limit, I rarely play games (chess and logic puzzles being the exception) but above all I don't understand how anyone could not have an emotional response being told 'your IQ is x'.
Alternately, noting them but not sending them an email at all.

Much like a gym membership, the people who don't use it at all but feel like they should someday (as long as they're not nagged about not using it) are one of the most profitable subscriber segments. Sure, they'll leave eventually, but they're not using your service anyway, and until then it's free money.
In my experience, Teachers spend a lot of time in the fall teaching kids that never really learned what they were supposed to the year before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

This is a video of human hunters (Koi San, an African ethnic group that has been pushed to extinction over the last millennia by the Bantu tribes) chasing down a kudu antelope. Antelope are great runners, but they can't cool themselves as efficiently as humans. It's a beautiful video, and the way the hunter reacts after the kill is very moving.
"Lies" doesn't work.
Thanks for this insight! :)
>Facebook and Twitter are different. Not many people think: “I want to buy a Veeblefetzer. I’m going to Twitter / Facebook to start my research.”

Likewise, I'm not sitting on the couch watching prime time television and thinking, "I need a new car, I'm going to start my research by watching car commercials." Nor is it my intent to "start my research" for any product that appears in magazines, or road side billboards, or any other similar form of advertising. Of course, that's not the purpose of those forms of advertising and OP seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding about the subject.

I don't have a problem taking checks from advertisers as long as they're willing to write them and neither should anyone else.
Honestly I do think that Samsung is guilty of copying Apple, so I'm not trying to explain it away. The fact that the jury determined the percentage is probably the part that peeved me the most. The numbers are so clearly based on anchoring (Samsung said 12%, Apple said 35%...) there's no way its accurate.
I'm not exactly a fan of that either
Microsofts Proprietary CORS Object
Question: Does this openness also include the things that WebOS was amazing at? Like Swipe Up to close, card stacks, etc?

Is, say Google, allowed to use that without paying royalties? Or does HP still own those software patents?
Superworm Crisis eats Macs, VMware and - shock - Windows
I remember listening to a special segment on the AMC cable channel about "unofficial" film archivists who were willing to break the copyright law to preserve old films. A lot of them ended up getting hired officially to continue to do their work once the movie studios found out they could make money on old films (vhs/reruns/etc).
Ireland calls for minimum Internet speeds of 30Mbps