skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
if i understand what you're asking then i think you'd call it an implementation. both mysql and postgresql are database implementations that can be queried using the sql language. however, both also extend the language (as defined by ansi standard) in various ways.
I didn't notice any difference when compared to regular small ovens. Well, I guess there is some accelerated crust build up if you let your microwaved food splatter around and then bake it in. If you repeat that cycle a few times, it will look really filthy.

Fortunately, that problem is fairly easy to solve. Use a cover if you microwave stuff which might splatter around.

Well, to be honest, you don't actually have to clear an oven regularly. That stuff has been burnt to a crisp ages ago. Heating it up won't produce any smoke or smell anymore. All of that was burnt away.
Books:
Book are expensive, voluminous, heavy and costly to move about. There is absolutely no benefit to actually owning your own copy when you can borrow it from your local library with extremely little effort. Get rid of them.

Gifts:
My friends and family have a new policy for gifts:
"No stuff, only experiences".
I don't want a DVD or a book, but I'd be grateful for some French lessons, or yoga classes, or a cooking class, or... (insert experience here)
Larry and the Oracle execs truly hate SFDC. They really build up the rivalry internally to Oracle employees and paint Salesforce as the big rival that everyone needs to band together to beat. Combined with the duplication of products that would occur if Oracle acquired Salesforce I would be beyond shocked if it ever happened. At that point Salesforce would be so irrelevant that it wouldn't matter.
I wonder if this is also why providers can price the Lumia 920 so aggressively at $149 with a 2 year contract (iPhone and the Galaxy III are both $199 at the least). I'm curious what price point they can buy the phones at...
The post and your comment resonate somehow, as I recently set on to travel across a country and live out of a backpack. I used to own a DSLR for three years, but thinking it would be a bit bulky to travel I ended up getting a Fujifilm X100 (and I suspect any equivalent mirrorless with a prime lens would be about the same effect). It's a step up ISO-wise, but apart from that it's basically all downsides: sensor not as good as an equally-priced DSLR would be, fixed 20mm lens, somewhat slow operations...

But really, all of this doesn't matter. It's so small I take it everywhere. I love the pictures it takes. Creativity loves constraints. :)

Caveat emptor, I probably wouldn't use it as a pro tool, but then again I'm not a photographer so it doesn't matter.
Something about this story makes me uncomfortable but I can't put my finger on it.
Hmm I can't see using a dremel to power a centrifuge working for non trivial lab uses. And as @jlgreco comments elsewhere chemistry labs have glass-working techs that make a lot of the kit - I recall being taught very basic glass-working at school.

A Lot of lab gear is very specialized when I worked at RnD organization lab they had 2 wood shops a metal shop and an electronics shop to build one off experimental kit. And we employed Very good guys some of the wood pieces they turned out where stunningly beautiful.

I could see 3d printing working for some labs but this would be the very high end ones that have decent resolution and accuracy and can work with a wider range of materials. Big question is would it be that much cheaper than cnc machining or sintering - given that labs have machine tools and technicians to run them.
Oracle and Salesforce (or at least Larry Ellison and Mark Benioff) are huge rivals. Anything Mark can do to fuck over Oracle is a plus in Salesforce's book. So moving all of Salesforce off Oracle DB technology (Orcale + MySQL) would be a huge middle finger to them.
It also depends on the circumstances, though. And I've found the problem with gym memberships is that it adds a small obstacle to keeping up exercise habits if you're moving around as often as this guy, and that can make a significant difference. If you've got to find a good gym and sign up to it and potentially have the hassle of only using it for a few months so you can't get the benefit of a 6 month contract, etc, then it's easy to decide to not get a gym membership. Running can provide a lot of the benefits with a lot less hassle.
Learnings from a disruptive businessman
I can't help but find his arrogance about being right annoying, especially when he points to how battery technology hasn't improved since Kennedy was in power, which is just ignorant and wrong. Much of the limiting growth in mobile computing power has been gated by battery power and steadily the technology has improved.

The debate has been going on since the browser was created, and it's really not a debate at all, the HTML to render a text box and the iOS native code to do so all call the same operating system library anyway, it's just a matter of where the development team decide to draw the line between ease if install and development vs speed and a richer user experience. This is fluid and shifts over the years as browser technology becomes more expressive.

But I dislike reading articles that are just full of weasel wording, no examples to back up his points and technology inaccuracies.
Hi David, I definitely agree with you. But there have been a few occasions, at least, where I've seen a great product and they have initial downloads, but it's tough to keep sticky. Again, this isn't an apology, but I believe the burden rests solely on app makers in this case.
It's more like this for me in regards to the NT line:

NT4 (Good) 2000 (Not) XP (Good) Vista (Not) 7 (Good) 8 (Not)
I always wanted a top-down naval strategy game like this.
Highly recommend Modern UI Icons http://modernuiicons.com to fill any gaps.
I've been using the 'async' lib in Node.js (I switched from 'step' lib) and I find the Promises' .then() method chaining and exception throwing really similar to async:

async.waterfall({
'step1':function(next) { next(null,1); },
'step2':function(num,next) { next(null,num,2); },
'step3':function(num1,num2,next) {next(null,num1+num2);}
},
function result(err,num) {
if (err)
console.error(err);
else
console.log("the number is:",num); //output: the number is: 3
});

If any exceptions get thrown, the chain is interrupted and the last function gets called with some err. That's just the 'waterfall' style. There are lots of other methods that make the callback hell very manageable. In fact, I don't know why I would use Promises over what async provides. Can anyone provide a reason to, aside from _some_ syntax sugar?
The update to XP was not just an upgrade, it was also a clear separation of duties in the overall infrastructure. Back then, power users just had "the latest and greatest" as their OS; with XP, Microsoft introduced real, substantial, hardcoded differences between "clients" and "servers", with different development roadmaps that got more and more out of sync with each other. This mapped much better to the needs of corporate IT than the previous status quo, so they were happy to jump on the bandwagon as quickly as possible to put order in their ranks.

Also, XP had an uncommonly long life due to the "security crackdown" imposed by Gates. Microsoft decided to release a more refined product (XPsp2) rather than more experimental offerings, in order to shore up their much-maligned approach to security. This meant that software vendors could spend more time on a stable platform, resulting in a better overall experience for IT personnel as well as final users. And of course, its release coincided with the Golden Age of personal computers, which became even more "personal" when laptop replaced desktops.

XP was given more time and chances to succeed than any other Microsoft OS, so it's hard to compare it with anything else.
There's two variants I've observed with the term "distributed locking", which this article kind of gets at, though IMO not enough to make it clear to someone who also needs to read a section called "What's a lock".

Most of the time, when people talk about a "distributed lock", the emphasis is on the fact that the clients are distributed. You can set up a Redis server, and lots of different hosts can contact it and hit the SETNX message to see if some key is locked.

But then other folks would say, that's not distributed at all - because the redis server everyone's hitting SETNX on is a single point of failure. It's the servers that need to be distributed. That's a harder task, because the servers need to coordinate on whether or not key "X" is truly available or not in an atomic way, and that's the "consensus algorithm" thing that doozerd and I've also heard Zookeeper does, which I can only start to imagine how that works.

Based on the DynamoDB docs at http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/amazondynamodb/latest/deve... it seems like conditional updates work across distributed replicas, though it's only implied.
Guess I'm there. All I own is a backpack full of dev hardware and a carry on roller bag full of clothes, shoes, and toiletries. Have been renting cheap shared places off airbnb past 3 months instead of always paying to have a private place too.
Ask HN: How do I find local hackathons?
I love these things. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any in my current location and I'm not really sure how to search for them either. Googling "local hackathons" doesn't return much and I can't find any on the local university websites either.

I'm sure someone on here knows of some webapp that lists these things and when they're taking place.

I appreciate the help!
When doing the tasks this seems to be targeting, Jansson has worked well for me.

http://www.digip.org/jansson/
Others often claim that the current public education system is a direct descendant of a system set up specifically to create docile factory workers.
The Psychedelic World of Old Computer Ads
Right, there's a simplifying assumption of fungibility in my post. In your counter example, you go to the other extreme, where its either a successful but low-social-utility business, or an unsuccessful high-social-utility one.

In reality, the entrepreneur is going to have to make some tradeoff between likelihood of success (given motivation) and utility of success.

But entrepreneurs intuitively make these sort of tradeoffs all the time. This is just another judgement to make.
Siteless Website Possible?
Forego the cultural references here. (Should be obvious, but you have to assume the attacker is familiar with you in specific and can guess what you'll know.)
The Economics Nobel, Marriage and Kidneys...
Uninstall Microsoft word gratis
A Blind Date with Knowledge
I'm curious where the most perceived "value" is. For example, is it in the internal structures of the database? Is it in the query language? Is it in the fact that everything is packaged together as a "system"?

I have seen a database that uses an SQL-like language but it is not a RDB. It's said to be much faster than Oracle, but it certainly doesn't need the SQL syntax to work. Needless to say, the speed doesn't come from the SQL syntax. :)

It made me wonder about decoupling the language from the interpreter. Without the SQL characteristic, would anyone be attracted to the MySQL, PostgresSQL, ..., WhizBangSQL systems?
Ask HN: Anyone using Azure VM's in Production
I have a client that wants to place their core site and related services into Azure, would likely be 1-2 VM's to start with plus SQL as a service. Complexity of the app is moderate, VM is needed for some custom components and services that run background tasks.

First, can you share any examples of apps that are using Azure in Production (VM especially)? I did some searches but only saw Microsoft solutions running production in Azure.

Second, I would appreciate any advice, guidance or suggestions based on your experience in Azure or knowledge of it.

BTW - I do have plenty of experience in AWS for production apps, and have tested apps in Azure. I can't see how/why it would be a bad thing for this client, but I also want to be able to feel confident that I am not missing something with Azure specifically. I recommended using AWS to them but being Microsoft centric they would prefer Azure.
This trend is not new, although it's certainly accelerating, which is natural given the current media landscape. The marriage of content and advertising gets around a lot of issues, such as ad blocking and banner blindness. Any time I hear proprietors complaining about ad blockers, I tell them they need to reconsider their content/business relationship.

It has worked for TV, movies, and respected magazines are also on the bandwagon. Monocle magazine, for example, seems to blur the line a lot, and you end up with entire supplements written in-house promoting a country on the behalf of a tourism or business board. They're well produced and the angle is clear. Lots more about this model at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/media/24carr.html...

All that aside (and I think it's a step in the right direction anyway), PR flacks have been achieving similar ends for decades by bribing, coercing, or even entering fully fledged business relationships with journalists and publications. At the least, most modern attempts are reasonably transparent, rather than pretending to be something they aren't.
The physics of baseball as illustrated by Fox's new 5000 fps camera
Correct, and that is why they are much better examples than curing Malaria. That was my point about the blog post, it says "Be like these guys!" and then presents problems which the target audience has no realistic chance of fixing, so they simply switch off.
The hardware cost is sunk, but the additional electricity you use by serving things out over bittorrent instead of idling isn't.
This is really more a philosophical subject which really are looked down upon on HN as HN tends to trend towards science. To the extent that it attracts a portion of it's readers that see no value in philosophical pursuits. The reality is at some point though we all take philosophical leaps, some are more aware of that fact, some intentionally deny it and yet others are comfortable with the fact that every day we rely on philosophical reasoning. The following is a good read about the concept of Physicalism often confused with a materialist view http://www.serendipity.li/dmt/physicalism.htm (for the record, I don't advocate for psychedelics, but good points are made in this article about our assumptions based on the tangible, I also don't personally agree with every conclusion drawn in the article but it suffices as an example of my point, that there very well may be stuff beyond the human experience and the testable)

That being said, I personally feel that the possibility that their is extra dimensional consciousness beyond what we are currently able to experience on a day to day basis given that we are constrained to 3 and 1/2 dimensions, and have no way to even conceptualize the extra dimensions that are theorized to exist. Now in saying that, just because I hold out the possibility that such could exists does not mean that I subscribe to ghosts and seances or ingest hallucinogens in blind faith that it is opening up the ability to perceive additional dimensions, but I do feel that one cuts out a lot of possibility when they take to rigid of a Physicalism type view. The more we learn about reality the less real it becomes. It's fascinating to ponder, but the problem with pondering is everyone has convictions one way or another yet no one has proof, so there is never a resolution, so I tend to take the view that it is something best discussed among a group of peers that are interested in pondering the currently unresolvable. There are just too many opinions one way or another on a forum such as HN for the subject matter.
Applying new laws retrospectively makes me nervous. Why should anyone be compelled to follow laws that don't currently exist?
The money quote of this article is:

"I propose to term such correlations... the serial correlations for the given series."

The basic idea here is that observations in a time-series are not actually independent because each observation is highly correlated with the previous observation, and so the usual significance tests and standard errors do not apply.

Some links if you're interested in learning more about analyzing serial correlation and time-series data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoregressive_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newey–West_estimator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prais-Winsten_transformation
Twisted (the asynchronous framework for Python) has an equivalent structure called a "Deferred":

http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/defer.html

It's very similar to the "Promises/A" system described in the article, except that it has different method names (instead of .then(), it has the more prosaic .addCallback() and .addErrback()), and you generally have only one of them (instead of the callback-adding function returning a new, fresh, clean instance). Deferreds have the same ideal of composability, and the same mapping to 'try/except' statements in synchronous code.

However, there's one particularly handy thing Deferreds do that I don't see described in the article: when "fulfilledHandler" gets called, it can return a value which gets passed to the next callback in the chain, _or it can return a Deferred_, in which case the callback chain pauses until the new Deferred fires and produces a value, at which point the original Deferred picks up and carries on.

This comes in very handy for things like this:

def getReservedBooksForUser(username):
# Look up the auth token for the library service in the DB
authTokenDeferred = db.runQuery("""
SELECT authToken
FROM users
WHERE username = ?
""", (username,))

# We know the DB result can only have one row and one column.
authTokenDeferred.addCallback(lambda resultset: resultset[0][0])

# When we have the auth token, use it when querying the library
# service.
authTokenDeferred.addCallback(
lambda authToken: web.getPage(
"http://library/books?authToken=%s&user=%s&format=JSON"
% (authToken, request["username"])
)
)

# Extract the list of books from the returned document.
authTokenDeferred.addCallback(
lambda page: json.loads(page)['books']
)

return authTokenDeferred

Note that the second callback (the web.getPage() one) is immediately called with the results of the first callback (the resultset-unpacking one), because the first callback returned an ordinary value.

However, the third callback (the JSON-unpacking one) is not called with the Deferred returned by the second callback - instead, the callback chain is paused while we wait for the second callback's Deferred to fire, then that result is passed to the third callback.

Is this kind of thing supported by JS Promises, too?
I do events and cannot send iPhone photos to people who pay me.
Just added the endpoint needed for that.
Can't wait to see some dox released where someone actually used this one. :)
See now this is an example of how US cell phone consumers have been successfully brainwashed. A $50 difference on the subsidized cost of a handset is not "aggressive" discounting; it's inconsequential.

Chances are you'll be paying $60-100/month for 24 months when you take out any smartphone service (or less if you go with T-Mobile or Sprint). Assuming $80 that's:

$199 + 24 * $80 = $2119

vs

$149 + 24 * $80 = $2069

which is less than a 3% discount. Now the service obviously costs something and you may not have it for 24 months (which probably means you're paying an ETF anyway) but that should definitely be how the consumer looks at it: would you rather pay $2119 for an iPhone and service or $2069 for a Lumia and service?

Even worse, I see people who will pay $2119 for the iPhone 5 and $2019 for the iPhone 4. It makes no sense.

Here's another way of looking at it: that $199 iPhone 5 costs ~$650 unsubsidized. Your ETF is (IIRC) $350 (-$10/month on the contract). If you terminate immediately you've paid $200 + $350 + probably $80 so basically full price anyway. If you do so after a year you pay $200 + $230 + whatever you've spent on service. $430 from $650 means they've discounted the phone $220 for you but you've also spent $960 on service.

To compare: when I got my iPhone 4 in Australia the 64G model was A$1000 at the time (the exchange rate was at the time a lot worse than it is now). Also, that includes tax (10% GST). Instead I bought the phone on a Telstra Business 24 month contract which was $50/month and $299 for the phone with a $100 store voucher (from JB Hifi), so $199 + $50 * 24 = $1399 - $1000 retail cost means I really only paid $400 for 2 years of service or alternatively the phone was discounted $800. Either way that is "aggressive" discounting.

Seriously, cell phones are an utter ripoff in the US. It still astounds me how expensive it is.

Oh and in the US you pay to receive calls. Not true in Australia and most of Europe that I'm aware of (certainly not the UK, Germany or Switzerland).
Metrix Create Space isn't a co-op, but they do sell memberships. It is open to the public from noon to midnight seven days a week in Seattle. http://metrixcreatespace.com
Your comment obviously adds nothing to the discussion, having no explanation.

You obviously didn't get the same kind of education that some of us did.

:)
It always surprised me that Nokia made such a public announcement that they would be killing an existing product line that was selling fairly well (at a solid profit from what I understand).

While switching from Symbian to WP7 may have been a good idea, to publicly announce that you're dumping the platform of your best selling phones seems like a pretty big blunder.

Yahoo's approach seems better to me. I'm sure that Marissa has a game plan for products that they'll EOL and directions that'll change but they're keeping it close the vest to not shake things up publicly too much.
I'm American. Since the US Embassy site says I can only stay for 90 days without a visa, I was curious if there are any issues getting one.

Are you also American, but living in the Philippines? How do you like it? Why there?
Facebook's API is out there. If "they built a terrible iOS app and blamed the technology", how come no one has come up with snappy fast HTML5 client against their API?
Based on the aggressiveness of the cancer in this story, my (non-medical) guess is that you wouldn't have seen the cancer any earlier unless you scanned every two months. This thing came out of nowhere and came fast.

Even if you did see it... what would you do? Surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy... these things don't stop a metastatic cancer this aggressive.

Without a cancer treatment that can stop the progression of an aggressive metastatic cancer within a week or two we are powerless to stop this type of death.
It's easy to explain: it's just a media narrative. If I know in advance that the next product will be much better than the previous one, why should I read any "news report" or "analysis" about it? I'll just enjoy the goodies when they land. But if there is criticism, well, I better read up so that I can react accordingly -- here's my money and my ad impressions! The same will happen, in reverse, with the following release.

Even Apple is subject to these media cycles (see antennagate, batteries exploding etc), they just manage to deflect them to smaller items, stuff most people don't care about. Microsoft seems to struggle much more when trying to control product perception across media channels.
My two latest HTML5 apps, http://appeio.com for App.net which made it into the Apple iOS store and brand brand new http://podglass.com which is my personal solution to podcast headaces.. and a reason to start pushing boundaries with <audio> and <video>.

It's getting there, in two years a good HTML5 app will be very close and in some situations a better choice. Native will improve also but browser tech is due to leap by 2014.

iOS will have a good run and so will Android but the web is open and will never get obsoleted.
Mobile Device as Presentation Controller