skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So aside from changing the rules for U.N. Security Council Chapter Seven binding resolutions, which call for member states to use force to uphold them ( and which Iraq was in violation of more than a dozen of them), I believe you're saying that because people didn't like the Iraq invasion, they'd like to see the Chinese or somebody else have the capability to sink U.S. (and other nations too) carriers at will. Sort of to even the score?

(That's all I'm going to say on Iraq, and that probably was too much)

No mention of the Chinese invading Tibet? Or the Soviets taking half of Europe? Just as long as somebody comes along to take down those yanks a notch or two?

Makes some sense to me -- I guess. I know as an American I'm tired of us being the only superpower. I sincerely wish other countries would take a hint from how we grew (less regulation, more creative chaotic growth, change of leadership on a regular basis) and catch up. That seems more productive than wishing ill or any person or country, but I guess wishing the other guy falls down is easier than picking up your own pace, eh?

Not my cup of tea.

Thanks for explaining it some more. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but then again, most public opinion things don't!
So you pick the PC because there's a waiting list for the Macs?
I agree that the "best country in history" is a bit obnoxious, but it is clearly a fact that the US is the only current super power. The obvious secondary one is China, but it is not there yet, and the EU as a whole has muscle but no individual country can match the US militarily or economically.

Ironically, the current recession will likely wind up strengthing the US comparitive to the rest of the world. While we have 2 bickering parties trying to figure it out, the EU has a bunch and they are reacting more slowly than the US (now at least). China will fall because the US imports are their primary economic driver and services will pick up in the US prior to goods.
Puzzle: Apparently blank HN item ...
This link:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547772

gives me a blank entry. Any reason? Or is
it just me?
One thing is striking: An AMERICAN (I ssume) says thatcity built for driving. I am afraid to even imagine when a guyfrom have-a-car-or-starve-because-of-no-foodstores-in-walkable -distance country make such statatements, what a place it is.
Because a facebook app and an iphone app aren't websites, yet they still have many of the same issues. Websites are becoming more and more like desktop applications and pigeonholing something as a "website" doesn't make sense, unless you are only talking about websites and it does not apply to any other web connected application.
Looks blank for me too.
Becoming my own OpenID provider with 99.999% downtime
When something has been proved useful, it will reapear.
The very day of disappearance of search engines, will be the day when new ones would start popping up.
War Nerd certainly has a shtick that can be off putting. But in terms of providing no BS commentary on military and war issues, he is one of the best sources out there. The vulnerability of the American fleet is a very real issue.
The Exocet's range is what? Let us imagine that it's 200 Km. Any aircraft that gets that close to an aircraft carrier will be intercepted.

Now suppose that the Chinese come up with an Exocet-like missile with 10x the Exocet's range. You fire it at where you think a carrier group is located. How does the missile distinguish a carrier from a destroyer? Optical signature alone? Still, the missile would have to go through all the protecting ships of the carrier group.

Swarms of small boats and planes launching 100s of such missiles would be a big problem indeed. But the response could be to have swarms of UAVs equipped with anti-missile technology, covering an area within 500 Km of the carrier group.
Seriously, is there really a need to be such a dick about these things? Maybe he's right, maybe the other guy's right, maybe they're both talking about totally different things and just not noticing because they're too busy arguing.

There may well be things world for which Ruby is not the best language. Or maybe even there aren't. Why does it matter so much if someone says that there are? Even if you believe that there aren't? Are they stopping you from doing what you think is the right thing?

I kind of feel like some people have this fear that someone preaching The Wrong Way will convert everyone and leave them all alone. This fear seems to rob them of all civility. Even the discussion here seems to have degenerated to a shouting match in some parts.

Guys, discussion is good and fun, but don't get so upset about it. No one's going to take your toys away from you :)
Pearl Harbor 2.0 is coming soon, the next time we project power from a carrier group against anyone with an organized defense.

Why didn't this happen in the first Gulf War? Ballistic missiles and small boats aren't exactly new technologies.
The article is a bid to get more funding for advanced missile programs. I went to the Naval Academy, home of the Naval Institute, where Proceedings is published. I have had my ship on the cover of Proceedings. It is an opinion rag for admirals and power brokers, with the occasional essay contest to lend an air of authenticity, nothing more. The average blog cites more sources than these guys.

In so far as it is a bid to get more money for advanced missile programs, it is entirely about getting Republicans back in power. Having been in the military under Democratic and Republican regimes, it's pretty clear which causes money to run freely.

I wasn't really trying to make a political point. I was trying to offer an object lesson in taking the wool off one's eyes. Obviously I failed.
Nice one on the title soundsop! Great summary of what the article is saying in terms that are familiar to us here :p
The Incredible, Edible Hand Distribution - Coding the Wheel
I think we're in agreement without quite realizing it.

These are examples of efficiency, not scalability. This distinction isn't quite binary, and Ahmdal's law is a good approximation. But for the discussion at hand we can generally ignore the serially dependent portion of the workload.

Also, I'm speaking of systems architecture, not program architecture, so whether tail calls are interpreted or compiled doesn't really apply.

To make my point more clear: I'm absolutely certain you could write twitter in pure ruby, even at it's current traffic level. It's also likely this wouldn't make sense, as the economics would be wrong. But the economics would be due to efficiency * hardware costs as compared to programmer staff costs, not any limitation of scalability.

I would grant you that there are a few exceptional cases where the language really does constrain the system's architecture (non turing languages and jailed languages with limited connectivity options) but those are never the languages being discussed in "does it scale" debates.
To answer my own question: we're both '1' & '2'. We're actively using some of them and figuring out how to deploy more of them.

We're in the enterprise software space and are completely bootstrapped. Having taken the hybrid product/consulting path to get here, we're balancing the need to manage existing paying customers who've helped us get to this point, with a parallel focus on customer development to figure out how to take our product to a much wider audience.
Yes, but those immigrants had a better life and more opportunity in America than their homeland. They came and stayed voluntarily.
While there are a number of long-winded arguments that could be made in favor of X vs. Y, Mac vs. Windows or otherwise, it's hard to argue against the simplicity of the OS X platform.

Windows is inherently high maintenance in my experience unless you keep your installed applications to a very specific short list. Uninstalling software, or worse, drivers, can be an exercise in frustration.

I've never had an issue removing software on OS X as applications are generally quite well behaved or they're effectively managed by the Darwin Ports system.

It's also great that doing source installs on OS X is trivial. I don't think the same can be said for Windows. Tradition is to go the binary installer route there, and there's so many badly written installers.

While I respect those that choose to use a Linux-based desktop, as it can be quite a chore to keep up to date and tricky to get different apps to work together politely, I'd say that approach only works for people with intimate familiarity with the various quirks and caveats of their distribution. To get something like Debian, Ubuntu or Gentoo running in top form takes talent.

Making Windows into a productive development environment can be just as much of a challenge, too, and there's some things that can never change. The registry is a persistent horror, drive letters and backslashes in paths are an extreme nuisance, and the second-class status of things like a proper command line shell and compiler are just examples of my grievances with Windows.

While it's possible to glue together a workable environment in Windows, especially if it's just for something simple like PHP + MySQL, once you really want to stretch your legs and be more adventuresome you may run into trouble.

Although it could be fanboyism, 99% of the people I see at web-biased conferences are on Mac machines. It's the singular dude using the Dell who's doing the "think different" thing.
Geospatial Analysis - a comprehensive guide
My knowledge in this field is somewhat weak but from what I can recall Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, and Kamailio all allow for SIP communiction. FreeSWITCH and Kamailio also support Jabber.

Asterisk, it seems, has the largest developer community and support. If you're looking into using it, there is an open source version of trixbox, which should simplify the Asterisk set up and administration.
How do you think that the character traits of the writer are relevant to his case against Google?
I've read War Nerd's analysis on regions and conflicts I personally know all too well. The last thing I would say about him is that he's "no BS".

WN stitches together real facts, out-of-contexts facts and completely made up "facts" in about equal proportions, and comes out with "analysis" that has zero value - but since it does contain some truths and is written in an authoritative and original tone, manages to create the illusion of "no BS".
In my experience, blogs covering more the "music discovery" side of things are completely separate from those covering "music production" and such a 'hacker news for music' would have a problem catering to both audiences.

In addition, there is some overlap between these two groups (namely, those interested in music production are also interested in music discovery), but music prod. is nearly entirely contained inside music discov.

A 'HN Clone' for music discovery would be much more successful than one for music prod. IMHO. But I'd worry that it would just degenerate into a user-based Pitchfork (or any other music review site). How would it be different?
One idea might be to utilize Google Adwords (network sites) to find sites by demographic and then

* use Adwords to advertise there,

* go direct to the sites and see if you can score better deals,

* use various websites like Alexa to find websites just like those sites so you can go direct and talk about sponsorships

* use a combination of the above
Who is saying they would "like" to see US carriers at risk? Whether they wish that or not is irrelevant. The carriers are vulnerable, or not, wishes irregardless. I think the article is bunk, anyway, for reasons stated in the parents to this comment.

What I meant is that Iraq is a very good example of why the "braggart" could not be ignored. That's all I meant. I didn't mean to get into a discussion of UN resolutions, etc. Let's not go there, OK, it's been done to death. Suffice to say that the US has not been too interested in enforcing, militarily, any other UN resolutions in approximately forever. That was just a pretext - we all know it. Anyway, it's done, and I don't think it will happen again.

China's record is terrible, as is Russia's. But America is a western liberal democracy and is held to a higher standard, as it should be.

I think we actually agree on many things. America needs a counterweight, it needs to play a game with an opponent. If it sits too long on the throne of absolute power, it grows corrupted by it, and its best attributes wither. The rise of China could be the best thing that has happened to America in half a century, and I truly hope that America's noble character comes again to the fore.
New Advertising Model - Pay Per Chat
Online Brokerage Zecco Pretends To Give Away Millions, Panics When People Start Spending
How much experience goes into these ideas? They are quite astounding. I have the bias that physicists would make the best programmers. Anyone else?
I have the impression that it's much easier for a specialist to go general than the other way around. As such, I would like to believe that you are much more competitive than most generalists. Is this not your experience?
But how much context is necessary?
I.B.M. Withdraws $7 Billion Offer for Sun Microsystems
Don't, though, it will just make you miserable.

(Do, but be prepared for a very dystopian and worryingly likely feeling future)
So what are your favorite sources of information about global affairs? War Nerd has been consistently more right than sources such as the NYTimes or CNN. But if there are sources much better than War Nerd, I'd love to know about them.
The Impact of Dropping the SAT
What makes this a suitable post?
Of course there's always going to be confirmation bias, but I look at people who work on CS related stuff like Graham and Powers as proof. Also, I find that great programmers often develop an interest in photography, music, or writing later in their career. Is it then that hard to believe that they could have studied these topics originally and still developed into great, even excellent, programmers? The fact that English and Philosophy are concerned with representing ideas (i.e. the act of programming) is undeniable. The fact that people are not naturally good at representing ideas is also undeniable. I personally would go with the fields that have a better track record at producing people that think well in this way. Honestly CS has a pretty poor educational record when it comes down it it.
Lessee... Why buy a Mini when it's underpowered compared to and more expensive than a Chevy? Why buy steak when hamburger is more lean and costs less per pound? This game can be played ad infinitum.

I use Linux at work because I prefer an environment I'm familiar with and it lets me do what I want more quickly. I prefer a Mac at home because I find them easier to use than Windows machines and they come with software I like using. The fact that they can appear unix-like as well is a plus. I use Windows because I have to.

The danger with marketing on price (negative) vs. features (positive) is they're risking people carrying things to extremes. If they succeed in making the OS irrelevant, why buy a Windows machine at all vs. Linux?

As a software company, they're supposed to be commoditizing the complementary product - hardware. Not the reverse...
Compared to "OpenCable", the iPhone is open.
This Hacker News site has a library of essays and articles:

http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

(The link appears at the bottom of the main page.)
First the SlideShare fiasco (http://mashable.com/2009/04/01/slideshare-april-fools/) and now this. April Fool's on the web is so stupid. I don't know why companies are so willing to bet their reputations for a chance at hilarity.
Log into your Flickr account or your "My Pictures" and produce printed copies of the hundreds of digital photos you took together. That is a solid place to start.
99.999% downtime? Sign me up!
I like being an American. I think Americans have always liked being Americans -- long before the end of WWII. I'm perfectly happy with 19th century America: mostly agrarian, no income tax, weak federal government, little or no world power.

Back in those days Europe was the place to go for nationalism and jingoism. They had war after war. Intrigue was thick. Quite frankly Americans were sick of it and didn't want anything to do with it.

After WWII, America was deeply concerned that the Europeans not draw them into another world war. At any cost, they wanted a stable Europe. What ended up happening was that they got exactly what they wanted: Europe has basically no capability for force projection and is peaceful even in the face of terrible atrocities. They simply don't have the ability to do a lot. The Americans were left holding the bag that Europe had in the 1800s -- projecting force, ensuring trade, meddling in foreign conflicts.

In general, I'm not buying into a pretext argument unless a person can demonstrate some kind of ulterior or true motive. Otherwise it's just arm-waving and innuendo. A legitimate reason is not a pretext. This was not Germany invading Poland. Having said that, there is a great difficulty is trying to pick a single reason for a legislative body to vote the use of force. There are probably dozens.

So yes, I'm totally happy with America sharing the world stage. Wouldn't it be much better to share it with Australia or France though? Aren't there dozens of better choices than a country stuck with a political system that is bound to collapse at some point?
Optionality can assign monetary value to intangible benefits too - Like work satisfaction, Happiness, Good Team and Social networks
I have to disagree. Let us take an extreme example - Erlang.
It has very interesting design, which enables you to create highly scalable but quite ineffecient program. There is something in Erlang, that affects _system_ architectures that you can create with it. The notion of scalabiliy - it is how it scales, how fast the performance degrades with number of users, and for some paradigms there is a necessity of support of them in the language. erlang exists only because people wants scalable solutions even though quite slow. From what I said it seems for me that it is obvious that some _languages_ do scale and some do not.
You're dead wrong. If the code you write in Ruby tends to be shittier than the code you write in Scala, then you're a damn fool if you continue to write your code in Ruby.

"Reliable, high performance, correct and maintainable" has _tons_ to do with choice of language. Maybe not everything, but it's ridiculous to claim that there's no correlation between any of those factors and the language you use - there are various tradeoffs with different languages, and again, you'd be a fool to ignore them. There's a reason people don't code Web 2.0 stuff in Assembly, and there's a reason people don't code graphics drivers in Python.

That said, what is best for Twitter is probably not best for you. Your Ruby code probably _is_ better than your Scala code would be, and maybe it runs more than fast enough for your purposes. That's fine. Twitter has blown up practically from nothing into one of the stars of the Internet, so obviously they have different priorities. I doubt many people have ever had to deal with scaling issues like they have, so their experiences are pretty much irrelevant to the rest of us.
In software, optimizing this type of garbage collection for low pauses usually results in reduced application throughput. Evolution in general clearly does not favor "low pause" sleep patterns.

However, there are anecdotes of rare people that subsist on "low pause" sleeping. Allegedly, Thomas Edison had a 24 word day and frequently cat-napped. Contrast that with Einstein who allegedly slept 10 hrs a night.

For modern garbage collection systems (e.g. the JVM), there is no single setting that is best (or even acceptable) for all applications. The same is probably true for sleep patterns.
ditto. Right tool for the job and all that.
You may not be familiar with Google's unusual share class structure, but it insulates them from pressure from outside shareholders to a very unusual extent.
Recent mass shootings have left 43 dead and many asking why
Web Site Makes Millions by Connecting Cheaters
Ask HN: How to block links created by URL redirection sites
Is there a way to block traffic from links created by URL redirection sites? Last week, a short URL was posted to Twitter that erroneously told the world about our staging site. It was later deleted but the damage was done (it shows up in Tweleted and has been saved by countless Twitter clients).

I haven't been able to find an answer to this, in spite of all the recent attention that URL shortening services have received lately. Detecting the HTTP referrer doesn't work since referrers don't appear when there's a redirect. Sniffing the browser history (with Aza Raskin's SocialHistory.js trick) doesn't work either, since URL redirection sites only rarely and unpredictably serve images.

Is there anything that can be done other than moving the staging site?
Cisco is entering the market for server systems. Maybe they'll make an offer.
I admit I stopped after the first page, but to use a chess metaphor, this article is about how the chess game is over before it starts because black's bishop is doomed because white has a queen. Even if every word is true, it's an analysis so myopic that the value of analysis is a flat zero.

Besides, I remember similar analyses before both Iraq wars. Today you can get away with describing that army with various denigrating terms, but I'm old enough to remember how the Iraq army was the world's third-best at the time of the invasion according to pundits everywhere. (To be honest, I have no idea if it was true, and it's doesn't really matter since I'm specifically talking about the punditry and commentary.) People who know what they are talking about sound sober and realistic, not hyperbolic and bombastic. (And of course merely "sounding sober and realistic" doesn't prove they do know what they are talking about.)
An Aesthetics Reading List for Programmers
It depends on the specialization. I've got a friend who's a complete expert in object oriented ABAP and doing consulting for large banks. Unfortunately for him, he hasn't written anything of significance in a programming language that can be used outside of an SAP system in almost a decade. He's bricked himself in to doing SAP consulting for the rest of his career.

There are some specialization which are just harder than others. Systems programming is just harder than web programming. So if you take an average systems programmer and an average web programmer, statistically, the systems programmer is probably going to be smarter. That's not to say that there aren't brilliant web developers, just that there aren't many dumb systems programmers. It's kind of like saying if you took a biochemistry student and a history student, which one would you bet on for learning a new technical skill? Probably the biochemist.

Beyond that, it's easier to fake being a generalist. If I need to learn a new skill to a superficial depth, I can in a few days if need be. This doesn't mean that I'd have all of those things in my tool-belt like a true generalist would, but under appropriately lax conditions I can still get the thing done.

It's almost impossible to fake being a specialist, at least when it comes to completing a job. If you've never used an SAP system, you're not going to learn how to emulate my friend mentioned above in a few days. Hell, I worked for SAP for 4 years and I can't really understand what he does.

So, to go back to your question -- are specialists more competitive? If their specialization is in demand certainly. If not it mostly depends on how smart they are.
Sun, IBM $7 billion acquisition talks on brink of collapse
Staywell Cat Flaps - The Perfect Cat Flap
> Cisco is entering the market

That means they won't be making an offer.