skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Servers is absolutely the LAST thing you should worry about today. They cost next to nothing when you compare their cost to the cost of development.

If you need more performance out of Rails, create another VPS and add the mongrels to a cluster. Problem solved.
Transitive decay in social networks
ImageMagick is the ultimate image manipulation chainsaw. It has bindings for a ton of languages[1] and its own command line programs are quite good.[2]

1. http://www.imagemagick.org/script/api.php

2. http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php
I'm guessing you came from Rails, and thought that the django admin interface was supposed to be the same as Rails scaffolding.
It's interesting to collect examples of significant rewrite efforts that occurred late in the development of a new product. Evidently, well-organized superstar teams can do it.

This is a very different beast from rewriting mature products that have already been shipped.
If I.Q. is innate, it shouldn't make a difference whether it's a mixed-race child's mother or father who is black. But it does: children with a white mother and a black father have an eight-point I.Q. advantage over those with a black mother and a white father.

What is the logic behind this argument?
Assume men and women select for different characteristics--for instance, women select for intelligent men, while men select for XYZ women (with XYZ being anything other than intelligence.)

Assume that the average white IQ is 100 and the average black IQ is 85, and assume that there is a genetic component to these numbers.

The average black woman (IQ: 85) will select a white male of >85 IQ. Her average offspring will probably have >85 IQ.

The average white woman (IQ: 100) will select a black male of >100 IQ. Her average offspring will probably have >100 IQ.

Therefore, the differences in sexual selection between men and women can result in genetically distinct offspring given bm/wf, wm/bf pairings. So the logic is...there is no logic.
The two ain't exclusive.
What do they mean by London/SF? Which is it? Would I have to move to London?
last I checked Symbian doesn't even have proper exceptions.

Nokia's POS/OS
Sources close to Nokia say that Symbian is secretly regarded inside the company--even among high level senior executives--as a "piece-of-shit-OS," explaining that "Finnish people usually have a very coarse language."
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=6&url=h...
Humans Evolving More Rapidly Than Ever, Say Scientists
The depiction is decidedly not indicative of Williams Syndrome.

Rather, what I'd take away (from a cursory level, anyways) is not his glibness and glaringly ostentatious demeanor-- it's his glibness and glaringly ostenation demeanor <em>at such a young age</em>.

Rarely would we encounter such a young individual with such brazen behavior that he feels not that he's merely <em>able</em> to operate with an adult's social capabilities, but that he's in fact <em>entitled</em> to operate in such capacities.

While I realize that this boldness and brashness can be jealously misconstrued as simple pomp... this kid has true (thought perhaps not intellectual) genius and is certainly nothing akin to anything as depraved as, say, a Paris Hilton.
I don't have a position on whether they SHOULD be for-profit, but here's a list of many which are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_for-profit_colleges_and...
I just hunted down the link to the article I was talking about:

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200707/mrgreen_mailbag.asp

Note the required cleanup procedures. I think they really need to advertise these types of things a little better. My roommate broke one earlier this year and cleaned it up the same way someone would clean up an incandescent.
I typically just fall asleep
"Internet has created a world where people know nothing", says Nobel prize winner
It gives that manufacturer and product publicity though. And that publicity is linked to your interpersonal relationship with your friend. Although that isn't explicit endorsement, I would argue it's implicit endorsement, and nevertheless that affects your propensity to buy a product and your view of that manufacturer.

I have no problem with iGot's explicit endorsement, but Beacon's implicit endorsement appears to leverage your interpersonal relationships for marketing benefits, and I'm not keen on that idea.
Viaweb's architecture 
Would the architecture for Viaweb be relevant today? Would PG be so kind as to write up something that describes the architecture in a little more detail? (I recall reading about how they used Apache to talk to some CLisp process, but is there a more detailed account of how things worked?)

If the architecture would not work today, could anyone suggest a Lisp-based webserver/appserver that is easy to use and is stable?
Yes, but it's certainly a limiting factor.
Hiring someone based solely on the fact that they read this site seems like a pretty awful idea to me. Of course, if you knew nothing about them except whether or not they had an account here, the results would likely be fairly random.
Mind you, 'trasitive trust' in this context is also 'expert-oriented trust'. For example:

John (who's a network engineer) doesn't recommend XYZ firewall ... Mark trusts John ... Lisa (Mark's friend) trusts 'Mark's trust' on John ... and so on

'Transitive trust' is applicable mainly to highly specialized domains.
I'm from Seattle as well :)
The plan is to be in San Francisco, but we need someone who is flexible and willing to be in London if necessary for the good of the company. (e.g. our UK founders get delayed with visas, etc.) Its much more productive to be working in the same location.
Scheme to Destroy Your Competition with RivalMap
Shifting Careers: Finding the Money to Move Out and Up
That's the distinction I was going for, with iGot you have choice to endorse a product or not. Maybe it would be good to combine the two. If you allow Beacon to post your purchases you could then use iGot to tell your friends what you actually think about that product.

I don't think Facebook makes Beacon data available to App developers but it would be interesting to play with.
Shame it doesn't support darcs.
Malcolm Gladwell is probably my favourite non-fiction author of late.

I wonder if you can subscribe to the New Yorker in the UK. I'm starting to appreciate that magazine more and more.
I can see how the argument may be confusing . . . Gladwell's mincing words a bit, trying hard not to explicitly call out the racism inherent in the arguments put forth by some in this tired IQ debate. Allow me to paraphrase the statement, kid-gloves off:

There are a lot of pseudo-scientists out there who claim that IQ tests are perfectly accurate, not at all culturally biased, and are in fact objective, innate measures of intelligence. According to these folks, black people are just fundamentally less intelligent than white people, that's why IQ scores are so correlated to race. This theory would predict that "tainting" pure white blood with "intellectually inferior" black blood should yield children who are stupider than their white counterparts, without regard to cultural factors. In practice, though, the evidence appears to point to a more nuanced explanation, as there is a statistically significant difference between IQ scores when cultural factors (such as race and gender combinations of the parents) differ. In other words, IQ may not be statistically independent of the non-genetic factors surrounding the test-taker.

That might clear it up.

If not, the remainder of the paragraph that you quoted may elucidate it further:

"And it shouldn't make much of a difference where a mixed-race child is born. But, again, it does: the children fathered by black American G.I.s in postwar Germany and brought up by their German mothers have the same I.Q.s as the children of white American G.I.s and German mothers. The difference, in that case, was not the fact of the children's blackness, as a fundamentalist would say. It was the fact of their Germanness--of their being brought up in a different culture, under different circumstances."
"There are only a couple of keybindings to remember for day to day usage; C-x v i, C-x v v, C-x v =, C-x v l, C-x v m and C-x v g"

That's about 6 too many for my taste...
But why not parallelize repeated questions? Clearly those interested wouldn't just comment "I'm in". They would email.
Generally, it will be interesting when parents can choose the genes of children. Some fear homogenization. I think that betrays a lack of trust in the desire to be unique. Just look at glitter on MySpace.

There is also an empathy angle. If people still treat folks in the LGBT community with disrespect, a parent might be neutral on the issue but not want avoidable difficulty for their children.

My guess is that this particular issue is quite generational. By the time people are making the decision to customize the genes of their children, most will find gay/bi/straight to be perfectly normal.
"... Django has a clever admin interface that gives you easy access to every data model you can dream up, but this is only a really neat hack. ..."

The best thing in django IMOBO is the admin & the fact it makes you concentrate and work on the data first. On the other hand the template engine logic (at least the way some users uggest you use it) [0] is pretty ordinary and unrealistic (LJWorld is mostly read hence static templates). I still think I had a better time using tt2 (TemplateToolkit).

[0] http://www2.jeffcroft.com/blog/2007/aug/09/myth-content-and-...
You're assuming a whole lot more than that, most notably that the researchers used incredibly poor methodology, forgetting to control for the IQ of the parents.
If you consider the historical genetic variation in humans through our expansion from Africa and then spreading throughout the continents. Differences in the development of intelligence due to the different environmental factors makes little sense. Likewise the overall genetic of variation in humans is extraordinarily small and interbreeding extraordinarily high compared to other mammalian species further reducing any likelihood of significant variation between the continental populations.
Ask YC: How hard are personalized video ads?
Facebook is sitting on an ad-targeting gold mine and media companies are looking for new ways to monitize their content, so why isn't there a "TV" tab in Facebook that has shows with ads specifically for me built right in?
Before you comment on the "jaw-dropping compensation", Please read this:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_50/b40620387...

"...but says that the going annual rate today for theoreticians of his caliber is $400,000 to $600,000, which includes salary and research support. This is for an assistant professor, the level at which Yale does most of its hiring. The price tag for top experimentalists, who have far more extensive laboratory needs, is $1.5 million to $2 million, according to Shankar, who remains on the Yale faculty."

So there you go. Its all about talent!
The Dangerous Wealth Of the Ivy League
This is not a very recent article. Still, it's good to hear PostgreSQL worked well for Brian.
Probably because repeated questions isn't a problem yet.
I would be utterly shocked if they controlled for anything--most social experiments like this use what data they can get, and are, as you say "incredibly poor". The closest thing to a reasonable experiment in this regard are studies of separated twins--studies Gladwell obviously doesn't mention, as they show exactly what everyone knows, that intelligence is largely inherited. The German study that he brings up at the end has been dredged up over and over and over for many years and is apparently not easily repeatable. Again, most readers can't tell the difference between a data point and a proof.

Anyway, he's the one making a claim, and he's the one who needs to show that the methodology is sound, not me.
" . . . studies Gladwell obviously doesn't mention, as they show exactly what everyone knows, that intelligence is largely inherited.

You're misconstruing Gladwell's position. He's not arguing against inheritance of intelligence; he's arguing against a biologically innate and immutable race-based component to intelligence.

"Anyway, he's the one making a claim, and he's the one who needs to show that the methodology is sound, not me."

Actually, you made the latest claim. You set up a somewhat absurd strawman for what Gladwell argued and then tried to lampoon it and make his position look illogical when, in fact, the interpretation you constructed relies on the researchers literally ignoring the most basic of statistics. That needed to be pointed out, lest people buy the strawman and actually get swayed to believe that black people are biologically less intelligent than whites.
Good point. However, if he builds enough contacts between now and when he's twenty, that won't be much of a problem.
Is it easy for someone from the USA to get a work visa to work in London?
We are (http://www.rescuetime.com). We're on that list, but higher up (in the 40s right now I think, but we're gaining!)
I hardly made a "strawman", which would require a construction of the form, "Gladwell said XYZ", which I did not do. Rather, I showed a single example of how different kinds of pairings could result in different kinds of results. Here is an example of a strawman argument, for your reference:

There are a lot of pseudo-scientists out there who claim that IQ tests are perfectly accurate, not at all culturally biased, and are in fact objective, innate measures of intelligence.

Anyway, as for

researchers literally ignoring basic statistics

Their statistics may be pure as a mountain spring. It doesn't matter. What I suspect is that there are factors they completely didn't account for--something that happens to every scientist. It tends to happen more to scientists trying to prove political points.

he's arguing against a consistent, innate, statistically significant, race-based component to intelligence

He needs to quit picking-and-choosing studies then. I've seen the German study, and I'm glad to take it into account, and if there are repeated examples, I'll take them into account also. Well, here's something most of us have probably seen already:

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

...the thing to reflect upon here isn't that innaccuracies exist (because they do). Rather, the gross consistency of the results--why do poor countries like Thailand and Malaysia have passable scores compared to Africa? Do Africans suffer from a particularly racist sort of poverty? Why does a country like Iraq--living under a dictator, facing decades of war and mass starvation and international isolation have a higher average IQ than every African country? More racism?

Why would China, a country that still has hundreds of millions of peasants score much better than every African country? Compare China to Hong Kong--areas with racial similitude, but vastly--diametrically--different histories and circumstances, with every advantage going to Hong Kong. Should not the difference be greater than 7 points?

Eventually, the question is, "How much evidence does it take?" and the answer is obviously, "No amount of evidence is enough". It's an idealogical question.

Let me present the inevitable extremes. The list of Jewish scientists (which wikipedia warns is "incomplete") is broken down into numerous sections:

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

The list of African Americans:

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

...contains no scientists at all. Yes, I know some exist, but no one thought well enough to add any. Blame the community, I guess.

Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..?
You pretty clearly set up a strawman by saying that Gladwell ignored a study because it supports the idea that intelligence is largely inherited, a position he's not at all trying to refute. Then, you took the position you manufactured and discredited it in hopes that people would get confused and dismiss his real argument. That's the textbook definition of attacking a strawman.

The statement of mine that you quoted, ironically enough, is not a strawman. It may be an ad hominem attack, but it's definitely not a strawman. ;)

Not to belabour the point, but Jews are numerically inferior to African-Americans, and have suffered a fair amount of uncomfortable circumstances. So, how to explain the wild differences? Again, when does the evidence become overwhelming..?

Thanks for revealing what you believe. I respect the fact that you're willing to come out and admit that you think blacks just aren't as smart as whites. Now we're getting somewhere! You're allowed to believe that without needing to justify it with pseudo-science.

I'll let this sit for a while -- hopefully you've got the courage not to delete it -- and I'll finish my coding tonight. Tomorrow, if I'm up to it, I'll retort.

...

You know, on second thought, I don't think I will. I can't help my position anymore than you already have.

-You practically conceded (or at least haven't adequately rebutted) the points I brought up against your characterization of Gladwell's article as illogical.

-You've weakened your position in an argument about the measure of biologically innate and immutable intelligence by resorting to bringing up a bunch of cultural phenomena that anyone on this board can easily rebut using vast socioeconomic factors. (If you really want to take it there, by the way, you can repost this to a new YC discussion thread questioning the legitimacy of the claimed non-biological factors that have stunted the economic growth of African-Americans and I'll address it there.)

-Most importantly, you've shown the people reading this that, indeed, there exist people who think that blacks are intellectually inferior to other races by their very biology. This is useful evidence I can point to every time someone says that racism no longer exists except amongst the most uneducated segments of society.
Voyager 2 probe crosses interstellar boundary
It's really annoying that `Scheme' here, could have had two meanings, and that I first read it as `R5RS type Scheme.' I've become quite the fan of `R5RS type Scheme,' and it would be great if there was a `killer app' which would help you destroy the competition. RivalMap, though, does look quite handy for `Scheming.' I can imagine that the stuff it does could eliminate some very boring jobs.
This reminds me of the article in Harvard Magazine a couple of years ago about "applying science to gun control". As soon as I saw the title, I had a sense of foreboding. Regardless of the merits, based solely on the publication you know which way the argument has to go. To his credit, the author of the Harvard Magazine article waited until the second paragraph to note that the scientist in question considered himself lucky to live in a safe state like Massachusetts, with its "strong gun-control laws". You can guess the conclusion of his "scientific analysis" of gun control...

And so it goes with The New Yorker: when you are deeply emotionally committed to a position, it's virtually impossible to trust anything you say. I admire Malcolm Gladwell, and enjoy The New Yorker, but really, could this article have gone any other way?
Ask YC: Anyone want to make a website?
I'm bored. I've got some skills. Ideas?
Dangerous wealth?

I was always rather impressed with the size of the funds these Ivy league schools have. They have enough money that they can sustainably increase the quality of their services year over year. Imagine having a few hundred million in profits from the fund alone each year to work with, you could support a lot of research, equipment and grants.

I don't see the problem with these schools having a huge amount of money. Of course the money could be misallocated, but that would be rather unlikely in such an institution (or i am being naive).
vast socioeconomic factors

Snore. Sub-sahara Africa has been near-100 percent black for many millenia. There's no one else to stick the blame on, even if you want to bring up "society" and "economics". Hell, the only country whose socio-economics can be traced to white people is the only one with a decent economy. And, what do you know, another one, Zimbabwe, took a nose dive right after its ethnic cleansing of whites. Shock. Horror.

Thanks for revealing what you believe.

I believe the facts, sure. If there is anybody here who thinks that blacks and Jews are genetically equivilent in intelligence, raise your hands. Please, I beg you. But you have at least 2500 years of evidence fighting against you, so bring some counter-evidence first...unlike pius.
I'm surprised you've chosen to point to IQ and the Wealth of Nations. It is not exactly the paragon of scholarship. As has been mentioned before, for the majority of those nations, no study was even available, they extrapolated from neighboring nations. As the result we can posit that the lowest scoring nations (at least those distant from one another) actually had studies, of some sort done (let's not question that validity of said studies for the moment, even though they should hardly count as IQ tests).

Let's examine the neighbors of the five lowest scoring nations:

Zimbabwe, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea.

Each of these nations are fairly distant from one another (ie: at least two hops on the world graph). Yet if you flood fill at a depth of two from each of them, you discover something pretty interesting: nearly all of Africa is filled! These countries were given a score of about 64, a bit more than two SD's below the world average. If an averaging of the scores of nearby nations took place, and it must have by the author's own admission, then the mere presence of these five low scores depresses the scores of the entirety of Africa, and this negative influence spreads all the way to the middle east. There's your consistency.
They rake in huge revenue, but most programs are in the red. Former UMich president James Duderstadt wrote a book (Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University) where he claimed that the reported profits for most college football teams are bs, and in several supposedly-profitable Rose Bowl seasons, the Wolverines lost millions. Mostly the teams get so much $$ based on perceived (yet statistically negligible) alumni donation increases based on a team's success.
You raise a good point . . . articles on either side of the issue almost always have passionate activists as authors rather than dispassionate scientists.

People who believe in the equality of human beings typically believe in it strongly enough that they find it difficult to objectively analyze putative evidence to the contrary -- they're damn stubborn. Meanwhile, people who are racial supremacists of any kind in this day and age have self-selected themselves as pretty headstrong, stubborn individuals themselves.
Why is the night sky dark?
There are plenty of other practical use cases for this kind of control. For example, casting an array of byte[]s to an array of int[]s.

It's not hard to convert using a ByteBuffer, but its still annoying. You and up duplicating a ton of memory for no good reason.
Linus: Talk is cheap. Show me the code
Confessions of a Terrible Programmer
object serialization is horribly inefficient in java.
C--: a portable assembly language that supports garbage collection
Something's Fishy
This is more of a design rewrite than a code rewrite, though. I'm sure they had to rewrite a reasonable amount of code, but the engine would have been pretty much untouched (except for evolutionary changes).
Engine Yard Bets Big on Rubinius