skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I had another hard drive fail on me last week. At this point I would give part of my soul for SSD-style failure properties with sizes and prices comparable to conventional hard drives. (I mean, assuming partial souls regenerate, Xanth-style.)

I'm sure it will happen in a few years. I wonder if there's some starup opportunity here: are there any ways to take advantage of fast, reliable, cheap, flash-like storage becoming ubiquitous?

Probably you could add more fine-grained extension hooks to programs without them becoming bloated, by having plugins loaded lazily at run-time from a solid state drive. I'm convinced that the next big thing will be software that quietly integrates with other software, so you don't even have to click on an icon to use it.
Here's my advice as someone who used to play a number of MMOGs. There are three very important aspects to a voice communication system which vary in importance based on the particular game:

1. Latency and quality. These factors affect whether other players can hear you in time, and whether they can understand what they heard. These are very important for fast-paced situations where you can't afford to repeat yourself, a simple example being arena combat in WoW. Ventrilo is almost always used over Teamspeak for these situations. These sort of high-tension situations rarely have more than ~40 people involved, since once a group reaches a certain size the latency of the entire groups' action becomes higher than the latency of any voice chat.

2. Management. Can you mute people who are causing problems? Can you have a "commander-only" voice system to communicate between a few people in a channel without the others hearing? Can you kick people and ban spies? Is this all easy to do?

3. Scale. While Ventrilo is widely used in WoW, Teamspeak is used in EVE Online almost exclusively. Why? The reason is scale--there are often fleets of 100, 200, 500, or more players and the voice chat system needs to handle at the minimum a broadcast from a single commander to all of them.

Without the appropriate level of effectiveness in these categories, you won't be able to compete with existing apps.
Only to relax. I know some architects / senior coders who can concentrate better while high, but for me remembering what you did / thought about several minutes ago is more important than unnatural thinking.

Maybe it just takes more practice...
Check out http://www.orbited.org/ for TCP-sockets in the browser (though I don't think it lets you act as a server yet). As you point out, nothing yet handles public namespace allocation, and this is key; for the specific case of TCP servers in the browser, port contention could become an issue fairly quickly, in which case lifting the level of abstraction to something like XMPP or HTTP (as I've done), where the addressing model is more flexible than TCP's, seems the sensible thing to do to avoid this.

XEP0124 ("BOSH") is very similar indeed to what I've defined; the differences are (1) BOSH is XML-specific and (2) it only provides a tunnel between the client (browser or not) and the server. What I've been experimenting with is content neutral, and, crucially, not only specifies the tunnel, but also specifies how the gateway server should expose the application at the end of the tunnel to the rest of the world. That's something that I have not seen before anywhere. (Except, as you mention, by SSH in a limited way.)

With regard to leveraging existing infrastructure: this is exactly why restricting ourselves to carrying HTTP over the transport is a good idea. We get to reuse all existing infrastructure such as URLs, proxies, and of course the ubiquitous HTTP client libraries. Raw TCP sockets, even if the public namespace allocation issue were addressed, do not have an URL-like notion, and caching proxies do not exist; further, raw TCP access is in many environments not permitted or not available (e.g. within corporate firewalls, or running within a browser). Using HTTP rather than TCP is a deliberate choice to structure the network by providing not just a transport (packet-based, at that!) but a notion of addressing and a content model. HTTP out-of-the-box is a much richer protocol than TCP.

In conclusion, what I've proposed is in its transport aspect no more complicated than XEP0124, and in its name-registration aspect AFAIK not comparable to anything currently existing. The restriction to HTTP gives us an addressing model already widely supported and understood, and lets us reuse existing infrastructure and avoid needless reimplementation or reinvention.
Microsoft tried, and is still trying, with their Live Search. It's the default search in Internet Explorer, and the Microsoft brand is very well known. But you know what the problem is? The search results just aren't as good!

I tried out MS Live Search, thinking that a company with as much money to throw at things as Microsoft would probably be of similar quality to Google. I quickly got frustrated when most of the search results were nothing like what I was looking for. Meanwhile Google consistently gave exactly what I wanted near the top of their results page.

What I'm saying is that technology does matter. There are other brand-name titans in the world.
Easy And Effective Ways On How I Can Raise My Credit Score Fast
"This is largely for people that want to use HTTP as a message-passing protocol, but use it in a bi-directional manner between possibly NAT'd hosts."

That is exactly it. You've got it.

HTTP makes an almost ideal message passing protocol: it has a rich and battle-tested addressing model; it is asymmetric in a helpful way (really! the response codes are similar to ICMP messages, where the requests are similar to IP datagrams); it is widely supported and deployed; it is content neutral.

It doesn't even have to be inefficient ;-) (http://www.lshift.net/blog/2009/02/27/streamlining-http)
Are Men Funnier than Women?
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/10/cto-vs-vp-engineerin...
I confess that I find it surprising that some people here on HN freely admit using Marijuana. Worst-case scenario, couldn't YC be subpoenaed by the feds and requested to provide each user's email and IP address?

I know this sounds a bit too draconian, but didn't the last administration try to subpoena Google?
Indeed. Programmer productivity is nearly impossible to measure, and so subjective, how would you even perform this kind of test?

That being said, I'm 100% sure that I'm far less productive after smoking pot, and I suspect that any reasonable measure of programmer productivity would show the same results for just about everyone.

But I'm also less productive after a few beers, or while watching a movie, or having sex, or eating dinner, or riding my bike. There's more to life than cranking out code. Marijuana feels good and is mostly harmless. Enjoy in moderation!

I have found that my productivity suffers when I lead a less balanced life. Since we programmers tend to fixate, it can be challenging to remember to take a break once in a while. Sometimes, if you don't over-indulge, the things that impair productivity can, in the long run, make your productivity more sustainable.

Or maybe I'm just rationalizing getting high and having fun ;)
I read the article in question, and it said that marijuana didn't have much effect on "chronic" marijuana users. I suspect that if you smoke pot occasionally, it will totally destroy your programming ability while high.

You need to look at this study carefully. Essentially, it says if you are a pothead, pot smoking isn't so bad for your cognitive skills. But, that isn't to say that the long term effects of pot didn't already impair you... it just means that once you are used to it, it doesn't hurt you to be smoking it.

The article makes perfect sense really. There is certainly such a thing as a "high-functioning alcoholic." That doesn't mean anyone can get drunk and work well, or that alcohol helps you work. It just means alcoholics have a tolerance.
In most parts of California, it's effectively legal. While it's still technically against the federal law, the state law says that anyone with a prescription can buy it at a store and smoke it in their home.

Getting a prescription is as easy as picking a doctor off a list, paying for an appointment, and saying, "I get headaches. Pot helps."

It's available, reasonably priced, and you can have it without being hassled by the authorities. As long as you're not a total idiot about it, it's pretty much just another alcohol. No one cares if you smoke pot on the weekends, as long as you do good work.
Diamond Drill
Poll:  How many of you (coders) use marijuana?
Some people requested a poll for jgalvez's ask HN post. Here it is:
I never use marijuana
I only use marijuana socially
I only use marijuana whilst working
I use marijuana socially and whilst working
Ask HN: Implementing Test Adwords Campaign?
I read on here that a great way to test the market for a potential idea is to create a landing page with email signup and run an Adwords campaign. If you get people signing up, then you know that there is at least some demand (one step closer to making something that people want.) What I was wondering is: what kind of conversion rate would signify that this is something people want? What CTR? How much of a budget makes sense to dedicate to this kind of market research? Do you include a link to a survey?

Thanks.
We used to have a boss who obviously was into drugs. extremely volatile, and he'd often email 'the team' at weekends, with long incoherent rants about how badly we're all doing.

California does seem to have a culture of pot smoking for some reason.
Nutrients in a hydroponic system
Hydroponic gardening requires an energy source in order to grow. Different types of artificial lighting are selected for specific plant varieties and optimum plant growth characteristics.
I don't and for me, most breakthroughs come as a result of letting questions/ideas jump around in my brain for a bit of time.

I used to attribute it to activities that I'd be doing when I have the breakthrough... but I've realized, its not the activities. It's just enough time to process things differently.
I wouldn't go as far as saying California has a culture of pot smoking... just as I wouldn't say that New York has a culture of being assholes.
The future: tiny3G, electric cars, your house, and the cloud
I'm high right now
Your main points are worth emphasizing but they _were_ reflected in the article and we should appreciate what a fascinatingly detailed study of human behavior this is.

I would hazard a guess that in fact you have mastered the nuances of flirting and just aren't conscious of the degree to which your successful behaviors are reflected in the guide or when your rule breaking is not beneficial.
> If your marginals costs are so low, and you can charge $49+ (whatever) for what is essentially air, that means more money in your pocket.

If it's that profitable though, competitors will show up. Indeed, there are plenty of 37signals competitors. What really differentiates 37signals is how very visible they are (their oldest, most popular product is their blog), which makes it easy for them to get enough people to sign up to turn a tidy profit. That is their barrier to entry.

> Why do you think Microsoft is such a cash cow?

Because they have a monopoly. Operating systems and office software have a lot stronger network externalities than project management software does.
The VP need not marginalize the CTO, often he just removes tedium from the CTO. If you get a VP Eng and modify the company org chart, and at the same time your influence in the company dwindles, I don't believe it will be causation.
And 8 Gigs of RAM on the box.

How big could the index on 50GB of text be?

I don't see any claims that the SSD is even being used in the searches.

Not exciting.
> Simply because something costs nearly nothing to make, doesn't mean you should sell it for nearly nothing.

Software costs a lot to make, what is low is the marginal cost: the cost to create one extra copy. The reason costs tend to zero is: if the marginal cost is zero, it's very easy to get into a price war. Maybe you won't sell it for $49, but your competitor might be willing to sell it for $29.
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One of the most important components missing in Joomla is the ability to install components and templates directly without searching all over Internet to manually locate and install the components you need. With the Easy Installer, you will never have to spend time searching for component again. All you have to do is install a copy of the Easy Installer and update the add-on list from our server and you are ready to start installing and managing your Joomla site. You can search by name or by a keyword or simple browse the add-on list to locate what you want to install. Once you find what you are looking for just select it and click on install.

This component will also let you see if the add-ons installed on your system are older than the latest versions. If they are, you will have the option to update the add-ons already installed with the latest versions. Again, this is done by one or two simple clicks per add-on.

Main Features:

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How the heck could iPhone prototypes wind up on eBay?
Business Credit : Getting an excellent Corporate Credit
Business Credit, When you have a small company or a business, you would be managing your small business credit account wisely. You will want to spend prudently and carefully to help your business grow and establish itself firmly in the world out there, so a good financial future can be assured for your small business or corporate establishment.
Sounds like you just haven't run a successful advertising supported website. This whole "advertising is doomed, get people to pay" meme is getting really tiresome. Especially since it's coming from people who don't seem to have made a living from advertising before. Perhaps they tried, and failed, and now assume that it's impossible to make money from advertising. It's not. It's about as easy/hard as it has been for the last 10 years.

>> "The recession is the straw that has broken the camel’s back."

I'd be interested to hear why you think 'paid for' will survive a recession better than 'ad supported'. Do you think if money is tight, end users will keep paying for various websites? I'd wager not. Do you really think you're in a good position to know if it's broken the camels back or not? Is advertising revenue down, or up?

Also, alexa100 isn't important. There's tons of websites that don't even register on alexa, that make a living for their owners or far more from advertising. It's all in how targeted your traffic is. If you only get 5 visitors a day, but they're all ready to sign up for a gambling website through your affiliate link, that's more than 'ramen profitable'.

You should try it :)
thanks for the write up.. interesting to see how things develop in the real world outside your own domain.

I'm surprised the big G hasn't just paid some money to get that data, given their plan to scan all the worlds books.

I wonder what percent of all text is legal or medical.
Welcome to Karoo, the local portal for Hull and East Yorkshire
This is what drugs do to you:
http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm
> Marginal cost is simply not a useful metric with startups. There are plenty of similar industries, and the notion that this means anything at all is garbage.

I read the 'marginal cost' stuff in Varian and Shapiro, the former of whom is the chief economist at Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian

It's a worthwhile book, because it goes into a lot more depth that any comment here could, and comes directly from the horse's mouth.
No Joke: These Guys Really Do Work Out of a Cardboard Box
Ivan Krstić on Languages and Security
". Similar situation happened to myself, except I wasn't the CTO but the de-facto "lead architect" of a major project/death "

Ohh that brings back memories. A Senior Vice President at one of the largest software companies in the world asked me to meet him because he was looking for a "lead architect" for an "elite group" he was putting together. I met him and went over what he needed in detail and it seemed like there was a good fit (and the senior VP was a very nice person).I specifically asked him " So who makes technical decisions? " the answer "You do of course, you are the architect. You'll be reporting to me so just keep me in the loop". So I accepted the offer.

By the time I joined a week later, I found that I would be reporting to a (newly hired) "Director of Engineering" and would have a "dotted line reporting relationship" to a "Chief Architect" (who in turn reported to a [Company] Chief Architect. The VP Engg chap I reported to (he turned out to be a very Dilbertian middle manager type) reported to a VP India, who reported to a Senior VP, Emerging Markets, who reported to yet another VP who reported to the CEO. The "Chief Architect" who I had a reporting relationship with was a very nice person but couldn't code to save his life and always spoke in very abstract terms like "scaling Enterprise SOA across business units".

The VP who hired me led a "product development" group totally disconnected from what we were doing.

I found I could make hardly any decisions but had to attend plenty of meetings about meetings. A memorable meeting was when I had to deal with the "General manager (SCM)" to demand Licenses of the company standard proprietary Version Control system for my team and he asked me "Do you really need Version Control? Couldn't you just use directories? Make a directory per version and save your code in it. We back up all the directories every day "(!!).

Long story short, I felt like I was working in Arkham Asylum
but the money was good so I stayed a few months and left with a nice bank balance and am now back in consulting mode.

Getting back to the point, from what I've observed of company politics it looks like the CEO has a two step plan to get rid of the Original Post-er. First, cut away your power base by having all the dev chaps report to the new guy and then ask " so what does he do here anyway?". He probably just wants to keep you around for a while as "insurance" . If I were you (depending on how much power you have with the board/founders) I would either (a) make sure I had some real work to do as CTO (in the corporate world this often means having people report to you )even after the VP chap were hired (b) make sure the hire didn't happen, in practice this depends on how much clout you have in the existing setup or (c) start making plans to leave.

The good news is that even in he case of option (c), you have some time to make your move. If you have a sound enough financial base, you should probably quit immediately.

My 2 cents. But ultimately only you know the finer details of your situation that make a difference.

Good Luck man!
Steve Wozniak's First Dance on "Dancing with the Stars"
Hijacked Twitter Accounts Used in Webcam Scheme
A new threat to Twitter users came to light yesterday when hundreds of compromised accounts started sending spam messages that advertised an online adult webcam chat service.
A good sleep and a little bit of exercise helps too. I went for a blade yesterday and it really cleared the head, was exhilarating and I could think a bit about life.
Supplement is a word invented by the government.

There are three types of things that people consume. Food. Medicine. Supplements. The government has a list of every object encompassing those categories. If it is not one of those things, you are not allowed to discuss consumption of it because it is not on the list.

Supplements, like piracetam, are blessed to be on the approved list. It's not a drug, it's not a food, but you buy it at the grocery store and eat it so it must be a supplement. Wikipedia does classify it as a drug but it is not treated as a drug in the USA.

Herbal medicine is something of a different category but just about everything recognized from Eastern medicine is on the Supplements list anyways.
we're hiring -- send me your resume! email in my profile.
Guerrilla Marketing for Startups
work on your resume dude, and start going to lots of parties. Or just suck it up and make yourself as useful and unobtrusive as possible (times be rough out there). The CEO wants to sideline you; you're not his guy. He needs someone malleable and loyal to him only.

Read The Prince.
THE SOCIAL NORM OF LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT DOWN: A GAME THEORETIC ANALYSIS
It sounds like use in moderation might make it easier to rapidly leap around the conceptual problem space, perhaps reaching apparently unrelated insights. This tallies with the stereotype of being good for creativity.

At higher doses, this would be overshadowed by the negative effects (leaping too far around the problem space, into nonsensical ideas, deleterous effects on memory and motivation.)

I presume an experienced user could differentiate, judge their own reactions and moderate accordingly. I don't believe I could.
Lesson learned from being laid off
Open Up Government Data - Data.gov is coming: Let's help build it
Shop is a fairly traditional (slang-ish, more like jargon) term for business. Talking shop and all that.. Still, I agree, it's not as common to hear these days and does have weird connotations now.
Generation Open
A VP Eng is responsible for providing a human API to engineering the CEO can understand. Its all about creating predicability out of uncertainty, and if the CEO doesn't feel predicability coming out of engineering, that puts his job on the line.

Some CEO's just get it, some need Gnatt charts and resource allocations on slides, some just need to to speak with confidence and act like an alpha male, etc. In short, if you can figure out how he communicates, then you're likely to get along. If not, it's unlikely you're going to make a great API/interface - and that's ok. Better to let someone else take on the role than to be frustrated.

Although I hate to advocate this, having a CTO role is a nice way to vest for another 6-12months, relax a bit and start looking for new opportunities.

Help them find a good VP, if you like the person then maybe they can help run interference with the CEO and let you focus on the things you like. If you don't like the new VP, then it's really time to move on to a new company.
The Book vs WebSite analogy is good.

The free+ad vs charge model is like OpenSource software vs Retail Software.

The free model has the best scalability.