skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The issue that you're complaining about was due to the incident linked at [1].

I can't go into the technical details as to why this happened, but I can roughly explain that it was due to the CAP theorem, essentially "Consistency, Availabilty, Partition Tolerance. Choose two." [2]

Furthermore, you have to choose partition tolerance [3]. The delivery delays that were seen yesterday is because we choose consistency over availability in our systems.

In fact, most of the outages I see people complain about on Hacker News related to Gmail are because we won't sacrifice consistency of user accounts. It's a different problem than huge scale serving of web search indexes or facebook timelines because in those cases if you're missing a few entries most people won't notice or care. When you're searching for an email, you know what email you expect to find and you'll get angry if it isn't there.

Users won't stand for an email showing up one day, disappearing next hour, and then coming back later (which is what could happen in some designs for eventual consistency when serving from different datacenters).

Thus, Gmail availability is lower sometimes because we make sure that all of your data is there all the time. We're insane about it, and we have huge jobs that run constantly on our systems to ensure that we're even resilient to bad hardware. With those we regularly find single bit errors and bad CPUs.

So, as a Gmail engineer, I'm sorry that there were delivery delays yesterday, and all I can say is that every time these happen we tweak and redesign our systems to make these more rare and to improve Gmail's uptime. We'll never have the snappy response and perfect uptime[4] of a computer under your desk. But at the same time a hurricane could take our one of our datacenters and we won't lose your data.

-Andrew, a Gmail Engineer.

1. http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=13...
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem
3. http://codahale.com/you-cant-sacrifice-partition-tolerance/
4. For some definitions of perfect.
PlanGrid (YC W12) is looking for engineers in SF
PlanGrid makes tablet apps for construction. We’re being used on construction projects as small as a McDonald’s and as large as a $700+ million hospital. Our users are project engineers, superintendents, electricians, and plumbers, and they love our app (because it's easy to use). PlanGrid is a tool; people use it everyday to build real things.

We've been around for a year and we're growing fast. Unlike a lot of early stage startups, we measure our growth in revenue, not users, and it's been exponential since the day we launched. Our market is also one of the biggest on earth.

We're looking for front-end engineers with design sensibilities. Our front-end tech is iOS and backbone.js. You will be our tenth employee and fourth member of engineering. Send a resume and examples of your work to: jobs@plangrid.com

We tackle really challenging UI problems. Our software is used by smart and talented people who aren't necessarily tech savvy, but still need to wrestle with a ton of data. Our product is as enterprise-y as you can get in a startup, but we develop PlanGrid to be as easy to use as Instagram.

We're in San Francisco where you will work 4 days/wk from our office (1 day/wk wherever you want).

Send your info to: jobs@plangrid.com
Another factor that isn't often acknowledged when making comparisons of 'household income' over time: households are shrinking.

To contrive a stark example, say 30 years prior the median household size was 4 people, and the household income was $100K (in real dollars). Fast-forward to a later period, median household size 3 people (due to later marrying, fewer children, more people living alone), and median household income $90K.

A politician or publication wanting to preach stagnation will run with the headline: "Household Income down 10%!". But in actuality, the household income per household member has risen from $25K to $30K, a 25% increase.

(Real-life effects are much subtler than this, but I believe in the same direction for most recent analyses of 'household income'.)
What could someone expect to pay for a 2 person private dinner?
If his offense was because of drugs/alcohol abuse (which is likely as something like 80% of crimes are), he should seek out Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous. His incarceration experience there would be commonplace.

Many people in those groups have "run-ins" with law enforcement and a large percentage are themselves felons (DUI/Drug possession) and are on probation.

I would also recommend he focus his energy (initially) on trades which have a rougher edge, like construction & oil services, metalworking, etc...They are tough jobs, no doubt.

However, these fields have plenty of opportunity, a chance to make a decent living, get paid weekly (sometimes in cash), and the people are less subjected to background checks.

Once he is off probation and can explain his "gap" with real work history, he will be more likely to be accepted in society. He can then focus on education and re-training.
we've had a bunch of new parts created today as people test out the site. Please feel free to signup and contribute.

Here's a part that's pretty complete.

https://circuithub.com/parts/MOLEX/87715-9006
Google refuses to censor search results accusing police of covering up crime
+! on succeeding Goodwin's law with tiresome and prejudicial accusations of autism spectrum disorders (often by people who really don't understand how offensive and insulting they're being

The fondness of this community to use words like retard and retarded as insults and use implications of special needs issues as forms of abuse is disappointing given the overall level of smarts of the community. But at least that's obviously offensive. The folks trotting out autism spectrum disorders don't even seem to realize they're being just as problematic and perpetuating unhelpful stereotypes.
I agree, but the level of care required for an "aspie" vs that for somebody with severe autism is night and day.
Is there a factual claim made you take issue with? I'm having trouble understanding how the sponsorship of a personal injury law firm discredits what's said in the piece. Are you implying that these lawyers actually believe antibiotic use in livestock to be harmful to humans, but publicly state otherwise to get customers?
They are usually met with long-winded responses that boil down to "nah".
who is Heather Arthur, and why they hell does she have 3 posts up on here about some people's opinion on her project. get over yourself, and move on, seriously.
> If someone hands over you a free glass of wine, which they've tried their level best to make it perfect, you just drink it instead of trying to suddenly become a food critic

I think this is a bogus argument. If someone hands me a free glass of "wine" and it turns out to be undrinkable swill instead of wine, I'm pretty sure I would point this out.

With regards to email, people expect email to be fast, and if your email servers routinely take a long time to make a delivery, you are not giving people what they would expect from your service, free or not.

I say this as someone who was a sysadmin for a number of years and maintained email servers. If our email servers took two hours to deliver a piece of email, and it was the fault of our servers, I would have considered this to be an urgent issue to resolve.

All this being said, I'm pretty happy with Gmail myself.
When Lisa Loeb hit #1 in 1994, less than 50% of Americans approved of Black-White marriages. Maybe 1994 really isn't modern.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-...
As a developer trying to gain more insight into proper design methodology this really spoke to me. With all the articles and discussion around "design" really focusing more on aesthetics, for some time I thought that was all design is about.

For example, I work mainly on mobile apps, and it took some time for me to view another app's design with an eye for more than just "looking pretty". You really have to think a bit differently to begin noticing the small things the designer did to make the experience more enjoyable.
http://i.imgflip.com/dk9r.gif
No, the carrier does not "own your phone"--they're taking a risk that you'll abide by the contract.

Even if you get out of your contract early, you have to pay a termination fee, which is effectively the remaining part of your carrier subsidy. AT&T is going to get their money one way or another.

Also, going to Europe for 2 weeks doesn't mean you stopped paying your AT&T bill for those weeks, either. It's perfectly reasonable to expect your phone to not be carrier locked.
Looks like they're already cleaning it up a bit. Code samples are gone from search.
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In the early 1970s, WSJ writers could have written an article pointing at how much better the middle class in the US had done over the past 40 years. Now they have to resort to this sophistry. When they admit the average hourly wage of nonsupervisory workers has remained about the same, what that actually means it is lower than it was in the early 1970s, adjusted for inflation.

So one point they make is workers are paying more to their HMOs than ever, so the % of fringe benefits to wages has increased. This is proof against a stagnant middle class?

Then that a one income household can not cut it any more is mentioned. What does this have to do with a stagnant middle class? "The U.S. economy was [and is] flexible and strong". No kidding, I can see GNP going up as well. This has nothing to do with a stagnant (falling, actually) middle class.

The mention of 32% of disposable income - again, money is going to HMOs that went to nicer housing, cars, clothes etc. Also, I don't know what NBER report they're citing, those numbers look much lower than other reports I have seen. To believe this you would have to believe the middle class today has 68% play money with the 32% covering housing, cars and essentials.

"Joe Six-Pack when making a similar trip on a commercial jetliner. But unlike his 1970s counterpart, Joe routinely travels the same great distances in roughly the same time as do the world's wealthiest tycoons."

I know many people in their 20s and 30s with middle class jobs, many of them have never been on an airline ever. that airplanes have been improved means little to them.

The article sounds like just a lot of sophistry. The fact is that inflation-adjusted hourly wages are lower today than they were in the early 1970s. Even if you don't give a flying fuck about the average American, it means there are less consumers to buy new commodities coming out. They can go into debt to get it, but we all just saw what happened when the whole system is gamed so that these now poorer middle class people can buy houses with sub-prime mortgages.

Personally I don't have a Robert Reich/Paul Krugman/Keynesian view of this. My personal view is the economic system has much greater essential underlying weaknesses that little Keynesian measures won't fix over the long run. Which is just to say that just because I think Boudreaux and Perry are wrong doesn't mean I think Reich's suggested minor tweaks to the economy would work either.
3G on your smartphone whilst visiting the USA
Fair enough. I wrongly assumed that you are out with the pitchfork.
I've been using Zoho mail myself for a while, and it's worked out fairly well.
Twitter Launches Vine
Ask HN: How long from verbal job offer to formal job offer?
After interviewing at medium sized startup (> 10 employees) I was told they'd like to make an offer once they had checked my references. It's been a while (in the low weeks) and I'm wondering how long such offers normally take to materialize. And out of curiosity, what goes in to the process of assembling a formal offer? (Sorry to be vague in the details of my case, but I imagine many others have had this experience.)
Thanks =) I certainly know what Django is (although have no experience with it whatsoever), but was a little surprised as to why it is so popular here, specifically. However, that list of Django projects is impressive enough, I guess.
It comes down to intention.

If you intend to only use someone as an example of what not to do to others, then you don't see value in politeness.

If your critique is meant to help the person or at least change the criticized behavior , then you should be polite. Politeness works wonders.

I think people intended the former and forgot about the real person.
Perhaps minorly important: I don't believe the '21 to drink' thing is federal, but rather something the federal government pressures all states into adopting themselves.
Took me a second to understand that you meant "marker" not "market".
How can you begrudge me my opinion when the only facts I have corroborate it?

http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2010-09-24-trolling-is-a-...

This post was from 2010 where he admits he's a jerk and can't help it. I think that pretty clearly is a victory for my thesis.
I'm more afraid of the nebulous criminal underground or national entities than I am of Barracuda's competitors. I'm not referring at all to Bitcoin (or putting companies out of busines...), it's surely cheaper to just use available "cloud cracking" assets directly (which I'm also sure is already being done).

Since it's apparently unclear, I'm not talking about taking action myself, but I will say that due diligence for any company using Barracuda hardware means that they should be asking the same question themselves.
13-15 year olds can't work in the US. And the unemployment rate for 16-19 year olds is pretty dismal. Officially it's over 25%, and I'm sure in reality it is much higher than that.

Sure, if you're one of the lucky teens who can get a job but doesn't have to rely on it to live, you could probably save up for an ipad pretty easily. On the other hand I've never met a teenager who did. Every single teen I've met with any sort of electronic device was given it as a gift by their family.
I see many comments from people saying that they are more hesitant about participating in open source after this. That they have been working on some code and will now think twice before they put it out in the open. It makes me sad.

Please don't let this deter you! I know how it feels. I was literally shaking when I put my first project on GitHub. Literally. The second time too. And the third. Still am. Still scared of making a fool of myself, but I know what a great learning experience it is and that it benefits my career, so I force myself to do it. Add to that the fact that it is a ton of fun, and every single star a project of mine gets (and the stars are few) makes me proud.
An App That Helps You Accept Your Body
The WSJ has lost all credibility with me. This and the picture of sad faces of people that will pay more in taxes, but all of them had ridiculously high incomes, were the last straws. They have moved from somewhat impartial to full-on a promoting the GOP agenda.
It really depends on the chef and city you are living in. In Santiago, Chile service prices start at 10,000 pesos ( ~20 USD ) per guest. If the size of your party is larger the price can be lower however that is generally the starting price. One chef in Santiago ( Chef Nancy Bavestrello [1] ) delivers meal packages at a lower price if the order volume is higher.

[1] https://chefsurfing.com/en/chefs/chile/region-metropolitana-...
I've not done quite what you are proposing (I've "done all weekend", not hacking though), and from my experience I would suggest "Be rested going in". You are trying to peak here, I'm guessing you are hungry to do this, have the energy too. Maybe try and not eat too much sugar, thus to avoid ups and downs.

Maybe that advice sounds off, but I would adhere to it.
Great comment. I love Nassim's writings.

This is fascinating. So you're saying that bitcoin doesn't have any inherent value (like real currency) and that the value of bitcoin is essentially in security and openness? Is that a fair analysis.

Many of the points you make would apply to traditional currencies if the systems were less obfuscated, which is where I'm beginning to see a niche for bitcoin.
Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design
I'm reaching the end of my knowledge, but I would guess that there's a good tradeoff between reducing the number down to 2% vs culling down to the "best" remainder. You also give your immune system more time to catch up and take car of the rest for you. If you can, with antibiotics, kill off 98% and prevent growth over a week, you immune system can probably handle the rest and you transfer 0 to the next person.
Just as you say: What he wants and what he has have nothing to do with each other.
I want my pocket to contain 1 million dollar. It's not how it works, unfortunately :(

Look, there are many many reasons why an email may not arrive in time or at all at the destination. To say "i lose so much money but i rely on such an unreliable protocol" is just not the mistake of google.

And as i said, for 50$ dollar you can easily buy 2 virtual machines in two different locations, one domain and have virtually a no-downtime mail service for your own. Add some roundcube, clamav, spamassassin and there you go. Setup takes a bit, fine, but that's about it. I guess it wouldn't even take that long.
It won't guarantee delivery as well, but mails won't be stuck in some MTA ;)
Thanks; sounds like I really should learn at least some.
This guy right here...he knows his stuff.
But then where teenagers lived before? In 1960-70-80? At home with their parents. And if parents had middle class level income, their kids would spend money on "toys" same as right now.
95% of non-spam email is delivered within 5 minutes of being sent. This number is made up for the purposes of argument, but I think it's fairly accurate. I've administered mail machines for many years.

There are all sorts of reasons why the other 5% doesn't zip along, and some of those reasons are persistent, some are fixable, and some of them are essentially never going to be tracked down. Does Gmail have an internal problem? Maybe, maybe not, but there's not enough data here to find out.

If you want instant communication, use a direct connection under your control. It's still not guaranteed but at least you'll see the progress or lack thereof.
If real compensation remained constant since 1970 (or whenever), then basket of goods available to Americans would today would be the same as in 1970 (or with substitutions of equivalent value). That's simply the definition of real compensation.

Do you believe this is actually the case?
Over the long term, in a society where technology has been improving at the pace that ours has, something like the CPI is almost forced to overstate inflation. Things like my iPhone weren't available at any price 10 years ago, and certainly had such a useful device been available, it would have cost several times what it does today. But you have to put it in the CPI basket as telecommunications or what have you, and it's being compared to an old AT&T Princess.

Similar issues crop up in industry after industry, and are basically impossible to "normalize" into something objective. The best you can do if you're worried about making sure folks on COLA-adjusted assistance don't starve is weight for the essentials (bread, milk, gasoline, housing square footage). But now you're not capturing huge swaths of quality of life improvements.
This article is pretty much geared for people who can't do math (ironically, considering the ostensible target demographic of the WSJ).

1) Pointing out that things have gotten cheaper is specious. Things have gotten cheaper for rich people too. One would expect technological progress to make things cheaper over time--what does that have to do with income distribution within the country?

2) Average worker productivity has increased since 1965 while real wages have stagnated. You can't use the "women and minorities are dragging the average" down there, because they are included in the worker productivity average as well.

3) Most importantly, the share of national income earned by the middle class has decreased: http://www.interest.com/files/2012/08/pew_income_distributio.... Technology makes things cheaper, sure. Is it enough that the middle class can afford more widgets than they could before? The real debate is who is getting the benefit of the fact that Americans are working longer and more productively than they did 50 years ago. Prices are irrelevant to this question. What the data shows is that the upper class is receiving the vast majority of the increased production. Why is that the case? Are that much smarter and harder working than they were 50 years ago?
Current cars are personalized which makes sense given who uses it and how much they cost. Sharing is annoying for logistical reasons and because you don't want people messing with your stuff.

Driverless cars have many possible solutions. A simple one is pricing - it costs $5 more if you refuse to share. (And another $5 more if you want massage seats.) It is possible to completely partition the seats from each other so each one is effectively its own cocoon where you can play your own music as loud as you want and are completely isolated from the other passengers.

Heck it is even possible like many current electrics to have a base chassis that includes the motors and batteries in the floor, and have pods that mount on top. You could have your own personalized pod you keep at home.
Fill Murray - Bill Murray Placeholder Images
It's wheel reinvention - same idea, different UI. But that's not always a terrible thing in programming; in fact it describes most of our software.
This article also lacks any economic literacy based on one simple fact: When statistics report that middle class wages have been stagnant for decades (by this article's own account, 48 years), remember this figure is already adjusted for inflation. This means that the buying power of the 2013 dollar has already been normalized to the power of the 1982 dollar (or whenever) primarily against the price of the costs of necessities like housing, clothing, transportation, food, etc.

So, in the end the author is basically saying "Quit your grousing, middle-class drones, you may still be struggling to house and feed yourselves (just like the good old recession days of 1982) but you can get the latest, spiffy cell phones and HDTVs as the rich. So, what are you complaining about?"

Clueless. So, it bears saying again: One of the clearest indicators of a civilization's downfall is income inequality (not that it exists at all but the sheer magnitude of it). Prosperity should be floating all boats to a degree but when only the gold-plated yachts are rising, we're all in danger.
It is fundamentally impossible to provide enough evidence or preemptive apologies to find redemption once someone starts playing the Identity Victim card. Don't even bother.
Boudreaux is presenting an absolute view of the economy when we've always looked at it from a relative perspective. Yes the dollar value of middle class wages have always gone up but it's still a big problem if they haven't risen in line with inflation or the overall growth of the economy. Economic gains are not sustainable if the middle class doesn't have the buying power to keep up with it. One reason our recovery has been so slow is that the gains from when our economy was exploding did not trickle down to the middle class which in turn did not create the demand needed to bring the economy back. The right likes to say that businesses aren't hiring because of regulations or economic/tax uncertainty. But the fact is if the demand was there, they'd be hiring left and right. The middle class just isn't capable of providing that demand right now.

He is also ignoring the effects of the average households going from 1 working adult to 2. Obviously, when household income doubles that family will have much more spending power to buy expensive i-devices. But the loss of a stay at home parent whose full time job is to take care of the home also has severe consequences not always seen in economic indicators.