skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Did you even read what it does, or are you just spouting out other arbitrary ways to crash systems?

There are a host of ways to run out of memory and crash a system. Why not list every single example, if that's your intention, because the fact that it runs a machine out of memory is about the only thing it has in common with a fork bomb.

In fact, a fork bomb doesn't even imply the system runs out of memory, but only that the system runs out of a finite resource.
I'm a Windows guy, so maybe this is a stupid question. Don't you eventually have to call mmap to get more memory committed to your address space?

Also, it seems weird to me that the heap pages are marked as executable by default.
I'll have to wait 60 working days for the DUNS number. My app got finished in october, we only managed to get all documents D&B asks in november.

Right now, it takes at least 4 months for non-US companies to put an app in the app store. This is ridiculous, immoral.

Relevant http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977889

I took this to local authorities, but they are not willing to act on this yet.
Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades.
I disagree - distilled intuition is priceless.

Intuition is why I learnt most of what I know about hacking came not from university courses () but from scouring the internet for interesting reading, studying open source and RFCs, and reading blogs. Intuition is why I come to HN and and stackoverflow (or formerly to the c2 wiki and usenet) instead of reading ACM journals.

The programming landscape is vast, and there are a 1000 ways to do the same thing, but a few of them are beautiful, and I want to know why, and what guided their design, and how should I think about these things.

Research is mostly silent on this, and when there is research it's hard to tell how credible it is.
Whereas if Bram Cohen writes something about networking, I listen up, because having created bittorrent is a way stronger signal of credibility than having an X citation index.

And yes, I'm deeply biased. E.g. I read Stevey's Rants because I share a lot of his beliefs, and love his writing style. So I get confirmation of my beliefs, and they may still be wrong, but at least now I have a good vocabulary* to discuss my beliefs, e.g. "liberal"/"conservative".
I loved the Unix style before reading TAOUP, but now I have clearer definitions - and names - for the qualities I admired.
BTW, the Jargon File is an early example of hackers seeking out a shared vocabulary of intuition.

(*) SICP was an outlier (as were some other courses my university borrowed from MIT). Written by exceptional hackers, talking about design principles explicitly, and exemplifying elegance on every corner (it wouldn't be half as great if it used CL instead of Scheme!). "Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." - SICP didn't cite research to support this intuition, but I'm ready to repeat this one as fact.
What was bullshit was an OOP course taught by a CS professor who doesn't code much and TA'd by a Java drone.
And when all 5 crash because of an identical null pointer? In a library you didn't write? That is why no black box.
Huh. So, honestly: I think that was actually a horrible decision. I just found the box, and the only thing related to this in the manual is the fairly overly-typical "use only the USB charging unit that comes with your Nexus 7; using a different power adapter may damage your tablet" warning. It says nothing about the cable.

I, like many people I know, end up having multiple cables: even non-technical people I know often end up buying an extra cable, so they aren't screwed if they lose one. A lot of people who splurge for Android tablets probably also like Android enough to have an Android phone, so they will simply already have a micro-USB cable lying around anyway.

Assuming this is true for a second (and I currently have no reason to disbelieve you), I have a friend who was actually complaining just a few days ago that "my nexus 7 is really, really bad at charging". We were all discussing it, many of us commiserating that the Nexus 7 seems to be the worst of all of our devices when it comes to charging.

However, now, it could be that we are all just using "the wrong cable", because no one at Google thought it important to mention "this cable is a magic voodoo cable; the manual might claim it is micro-USB, but you cannot use a normal micro-USB cable to replace it". At least with Apple, I can look at the cable and tell if it will work for me or not.
Show HN: A service for /dev/null-ing email
Sad it only has 237 votes as of my visit (waiting for my acct to validate so I can sign).

The problem is, I think the US has already declared itself to be metric to little effect.

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

It's not the do-nothing congress this time, it's the learn-nothing public.
Good idea, but a bad writeup. A serious "lol" at the metric system being more precise. Easier to use does not equate to "more precise".

In many cases, the metric system is less precise, as it demands that all measurements fit into base 10. Base 10 makes it easier for us to do calculations in our head and understand, but it does NOT improve precision. In many cases, it removes precision in exchange for the base 10 ease of use.

And anyone who thinks a metric conversion will do anything for science obviously knows nothing of American science -- which has used the metric system almost exclusively for a very long time.
I don't see this ever happening. There just isn't a push from within to do it.
Open webOS.
I don't think politicians would ever allow this, especially during these times, since the proposed change would cost millions in change of signs and anything where the imperial system is used.
Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers.

Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote.
Automating the setup of my perfect developer environment on OSX 10.8
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster
According to the IEEE, another geomagnetic storm like the ones that happened in 1921 and 1859 would take out power grids continent-wide, for years: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-perfect-s...

The main problem is high-voltage transformers, which are built mostly by hand by highly-skilled labor. There's a fairly simple way to protect them, but no utility does it.
I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial.

We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.
The Money Quote:

Every consumer problem out there can be solved in one of three ways:

The ‘stuff’ approach: How can we create more stuff whenever the problem crops up?

The ‘optimization’ approach: How can we better distribute the stuff already created to minimize waste?

The ‘platform’ approach: How can we redefine ‘stuff’ and find new ways of solving the same problem?
Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope.

The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.
That wasn't his goal. He was teaching himself assembly on x86 Linux and this was more interesting to him than adding two numbers together...
Funny you should mention beer – I've noticed an increasing tendency for pint glasses to be marked "568ml". Milk also doesn't come in pints any more, but does come in 568ml and 1 litre varieties. Still, as a nation we ask for and think of our beer and milk in pints.
Registering a business name seems to have much the same effect, so I'm not sure it's merely DUNS.

Similarly my wife at some point had to register some kind of entity to get reimbursed for speaking at a conference and immediately unleashed a torrent of spam. (Correction — my wife's torrent of spam was from DUNS :-)). But hey, mine was just a normal business name registration, and i got the same result.

The US is plagued with cold-calling spammers — just part of the American Experience.
related question to people from the US: did you actually learn the metric system in primary school? did you learn it besides the imperial units? I believe as Tloewald pointed out that the adoption really depends on whether people are learning it and not what politicians declare to be the standard.
ISO 216 paper sizes while you're at it, please!
I have to say that has not been my experience. I've been keto a few times and have been now for maybe 6 weeks. By far my longest run at it. I dropped 7kgs and at the moment your rules as above do not apply. I can eat more total calories (as fat) than when not keto-eating (i.e. more calories from carbs) and have no weight gain. When I up the carbs (>50g/day) I get the water gain, and presumably if I increased the carbs I would return to my previous state, roughly 17%bf and 75kgs.

Perhaps its context... I don't see things, where I am, as simple as you write them above.
... but will it work?
Bingo.

I'd reserve judgment on anything before having a good shower, dressing in fresh clothes, and eating some real food. Plus lots of water and a nap or workout, if necessary. Biology > Internet ;).
The way I explain this one to my European friends is:

Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.
At the same time, if this $1-2m/y company has the typical 80% profit margin, I think it makes a great basis for starting the next company. Just hire a couple of people to keep the lights on, and get working on the next idea, now safe in the knowledge that you have the cash to pay for most things you want already, and you're doing the new idea for the fun and extra profit of it, not to put bread in your mouth.
Without monads?)
The 2 cartons of milk in my fridge right now, say "2272ml 4 pints" on them.
Aren't their much easier to use? Conversion between units is straight-forward, there is connection between length and volume units, and probably much more common-senses-ness. I mean, the ft+inch system for human height is absolutely horrible.
Cell Phone Use Linked to Decline in Crime
Founder of Function Space here. Function Space aims to provide deeper understanding in Math, Physics and Computer Science with the help of a dedicated community, apps and books. Today we're sharing the core concepts and screens of the community. We hope you like them! :)
Truth not true. Basically he is saying if you follow Buddhism the Philosophy, but don't ascribe to Buddhism the Religion then you are doing it wrong.
Also in the UK.

Apart from lengths (feet vs. metres) I don't really find myself needing to calculate between the different units. I couldn't tell you how many litres in a 4 pint bottle of milk (or a pint of beer :)) but all other milk (or beer) is sold with those units, so I can easily compare.

I mean, we are supposed to be metric - but there are plenty of imperial measures in use (height, is another obvious example).
The present, which meditation allows you to experience, is truth because it's about experiencing what currently is without any subjective interpretation or judgement. It is what is, nothing more, nothing less - quite honestly the truth!

To meditate for any other reason would mean ignorance, partial or full, of the present. The title of this post is a hood example: you shouldn't meditate to get shit done because that is a goal, a fabrication of the mind and is based firmly in the future which means its most definitely not about experiencing the present.
Author here. Some comments before I go catch up on sleep.

1/
The response by the community was amazing. You guys are great! Especially the ones who are nitpicking and fact checking me! I love it.
http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/HN_wave_Jan1_Jan2.png

2/
By popular demand, I created a PDF version of the book -- mostly changed the font and added more space on each page. Preview is here: http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/noBSmath_preview.pdf
PDF is available on gumroad: http://gum.co/noBSmath

3/
Will write up a detailed post about the experience later today here:
http://minireference.com/blog/

4/
The notation "∈" stands for "is an element of" and is covered later on in the book. See http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/set_notation.pdf for more info.

Thank you everyone for the feedback and the support.
Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they are convenient measurements.

e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?"

(I'm British, btw)
73 Chinese academics urge political reform or risk violent revolution
So before creating a petition and asking Americans to sign it, if they agree with it, we should first ask Americans if they want it? Preferably with a petition of some sort, right?
Big Data Lambda Architecture
Well, you don't have to be so drastic. Just teaching metrics in all schools and requiring their use in higher education would be enough for the next decade or two. Only then you can start thinking about something as the petition asks.
Down for me.

CheeseHammer:~ josephredfern$ curl -o- http://givesimp.ly/
curl: (7) couldn't connect to host
I'm not in the US, I'm in the UK. Cold calling is against the law to TPS registered phone numbers and very rarely happens.

DUNS is the main exception in the time I've been in business.
How 2 African Tribesmen Make Almost $7000 per Month Online
The US Marine Corp's readable little doctrinal manual Warfighting succinctly describes strategy as the process of identifying weaknesses in your enemy's system and exploiting them.

(Which reminds me, I really must read that book again).

Making the electrical grid robust against deliberate attack is much more expensive and difficult than making it robust against natural disaster. Given how poorly our systems deal with natural disaster ...

It might not even worth attacking power stations. Some smart , well-educated engineers (of the kind who were recruited for the September 11 attacks) could easily point out critical chokepoints in the industrial system. Maybe there's a single plant which produces the most common antibiotics -- or maybe they all rely on a particular ingredient of which 90% is only found in one place. And so on and so forth.

Modern society -- every society -- largely works on trust and a fair amount of spit and duct tape concealed under polished chrome exteriors.

I mean, a rich, resourceful industrial society like the USA could easily spring back from even a very large, well-coordinated surprise attack by a motivated, intelligent attacker. But not before losing a lot of lives and money.

Compared to what a calculating and malicious sort of person could dream up, the attacks so far have been movie plots.
You learn it, but academically. Growing up with everything in feet, miles, pounds, etc... you get a feel for whether to put on a sweater if it's supposed to be 60 degrees out or not, or how long it might take to drive 10 miles on the freeway, or about how far 20 feet is. So even for someone like myself who has lived in Europe for a long time, metric units don't feel quite as 'native' or ingrained, except for temperatures, because you deal with those every day.
quite frankly this is deceitful, a lot of Americans already use the International System daily for their work, and I would bet that a very large number of Americans have some knowledge of it. Whereas the Euro was completely new, the International units have been here for years.
Are you certain? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
What you just described - - someone doing skilled work on behalf of others who might not know how to do it - - is called "hiring someone", and in every other sector is accompanied by the regular income tax.

Remember, carried interest is different than capital gains, which would suit your argument better.
You would save that pretty easily in not having to write separate software/everything for the US and for the rest of the world. Not to mention things like http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric....
Ha sure, next time. I'll try to find some better uses of rotation, but this one was good for tonight. ^^
That can't, but with https://gist.github.com/605891 you can, using syntax like:

[(1..6),(4..6),(7..9)].comprehension { |a, b, c| a + b + c if a % 2 == 0 }

And if you go to extremes like https://gist.github.com/3356675 you can use Haskell-like syntax:

[a + b | a <- ['n','p'..'t'], b <- %w[a i u e o]]

Ruby's blocks and method_missing are very powerful.
On Spain we just say "one fifty five", not much longer and it's still easy.
Yep, learned metric as well as imperial, and how to convert between the two. Primary school was ~20 years ago for me.

High school science was all in SI, of course.
Then you would end up: "Not about, how exactly tall he is?", "Oh, five foot and 5 cm."

The 30cm unit would improve absolutely nothing, it would only complicate things. If you want to use approximate measurement, just round it to tens of centimeters. Or you can use meters with one decimal place, whatever comes more natural.
I remember watching the first episode of "Connections" when I was a kid and being pretty badly frightened by the power-loss scenario that James Burke described: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOp-nz3lHg
Switzerland's bunker policy is the logical extension of that country's historically defensive posture.

The Swiss have deliberately made it very, very difficult to perform a conventional invasion of their country; the geography makes it a natural fortress and they've studiously added to it.

If conventional invasion is impossible, then the next option is weapons of mass destruction. Relatively cheap and effective. The Swiss have no WMD deterrent of their own, therefore they have to bet on survivability. Hence the bunkers.

As a country they definitely take the very long view.
Are you looking for docs on Chef-Solo, or setting up multiple VMs to use as a Chef Server and additional nodes?
Teaching it academically is different from 'living' it. See my other answer above/below:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4996402
I don't find this to be negative, though.
"For example, engineers are largely insulated from the maddening world of government bureaucracy."

What field? Not my buddies in civil. Not my EE buddies. Absolutely not my MechEng buddies. ChemEng? LOL.

He might, possibly, be talking about "network engineers" but any WAN ones will have all kinds of fun with the hyperregulated telcos and any supporting exotic wireless will have all kinds of fun with the FCC. At a previous employer when the SEC said "jump", the software engineers said "how high?" so they don't count.
Sorry I should have been more clear. I'm thinking about modern webapps written in Javascript, living in browser, on top of a modern OS pushing all that around (while managing security and virus scanning everything crossing through I/O) with dozens of services running, listening and/or polling various bits of hardware controlled by a scheduler -- once had a printer driver that ate 100MB of RAM and 5% of CPU time background checking to make sure I had paper and enough ink. Sure the convenience of all that is wonderful, but I can't help wonder if things should be much faster than they are.

It really does seem insane to me that I can, at times, type faster than my computer can keep up.
We ask for a footlong, a quarter pounder etc when we go out for fast food.

Our fat friends are 16 stone, 17 stone.

We live miles away from each other.

Penalties in football are taken in the 18 yard box.

We use cup measures for flour, sugar etc in cooking.

The average penis is ~6 inches when fully erect.

I've got two 4 pint cartons of milk in my fridge.

I could go on. Imperial units are absolute muck and I cannot wait for a entirely metric world.
If you are using an app for sexting would you really want it transmitted through the same network that your parents holiday snaps are shared on
I think I'm largely blind to such things when it comes to TV entertainment (and mostly movies). I never even thought of diesel engines not needing electricity, but that did not stop me from finding the show entertaining. I think I just naturally assume that since it's fiction anyway, the rules do not have to be followed. If entertainment and fiction always had to follow the rules of physics and our world, we wouldn't have anything like magic.
The part at the end of the article about Sheri took a strange turn.
I only live in Metric-using country and I have no slightest idea how tall is five foot, whereas 155cm instantly comes to my mind as, ah, at around my eye level. It's all about familiarity.
The linked story is a story about love. My post is a story about rejection.

My intent is not gawking. My intent is to confront everyone with the reality that they're indirectly shunning one of their own (if anyone fits Hacker News, it's someone who wrote his own entire OS/language/demos/etc) due to mental illness. Due to the way that hellbanning works, he continues to reach out to us, and we ignore him.

I consider this to be one of the great failures of this community.

Furthermore, as you can see by some of my sibling replies, many people are _not_ actually aware of Terry or his accomplishments. SparrowOS is actually pretty amazing, for a number of reasons, and so I wanted to draw attention to them in a time when it's conversationally appropriate.

I am not religious in any way, but since Terry quotes the word of God so often,

> “Then the King will answer,
> ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here,
> you also did for me.’
>
> Matthew 25:40

Terry, like the woman in the story, needs our compassion and support. Compare the HN shadowban with the way that MetaFilter engaged him: http://www.metafilter.com/119424/An-Operating-System-for-Son...

I'm not saying the right answer is to un-shadow ban him either. I don't know what the right answer is. But I can tell you that I think about him and it a lot. I wish more people would. Frankly, I saw http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png this morning and almost cried.
> deceitful

I'm telling it like I see it, please do not ascribe malice to what I'm writing. I wish we had the metric system in the US, but the units just aren't as meaningful as familiar degrees F, pounds, inches, feet, miles, and so on. That's true for me even after having spent a lot of time living here in Italy, to varying degrees, depending on how much I use a given unit.
As a long time user of Streetcar / Zipcar, I really hope Avis doesn't fuck with the model too much. For densely populated urban environments, the car-sharing model is just too useful - I don't miss not owning a car in London - no more worrying about break ins, theft, insurance, parking spaces, etc.
This is only because you're british and because of the way you learned how to measure things when you were young.

I'm totally unable to represent in my head how really tall "about five foot" is whereas 1,50m is totally understandable for me, easy to visualize.
Private property, financial instruments and corporations are also built on coercion. Literally, they all exist by government fiat.

You can tell yourself whatever Rothbardian fables you like, but the only real business you're building without any participation in a modern, "coercive" society is a subsistence farm.