skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let J be a random variable ranging over software jobs and distributed as in nature. Now let c(j,k) be the penalty for having to work around a lack of knowledge k while holding job j.

You seem to be saying that for certain values of k (e.g., k = “basic probability theory”), E[c(J,k)] is large enough that not having k qualifies a “deficit.” But the empirical evidence suggests that there’s a sizable set of respectable jobs X for which these deficits don’t matter. That is, for those exact same values of k, E[c(J,k) | J in X] is so small that the market effectively doesn’t care enough to withhold those jobs from people lacking k.

All of this is to say that when you say “software developers,” I think you’re imagining a set of people which is a lot narrower than the set the market actually maps to that job title. Today, “software development” admits a lot of jobs that don’t have a large dependence mathematics or computer science. The guys hammering out HTML and CSS all day long probably aren’t suffering for their probability-theory deficits. And yet most people do consider them software developers.
Actually, it's more along the lines of getting away from the license fanaticism of the FSF.
Perhaps showing a fork as an icon, and then a simple recipe of a different variation along each prong might help visually?
In JavaScript, every function is varadic. The problem is one of contract, not language. Passing varadic functions to higher-order functions without checking whether the types are compatible will cause a problem in every such language.

The problem is parseInt, not map. Consider:

// using lodash.js (http://lodash.com/)

_.mixin({ args: function () { return _.toArray(arguments); } })

['10','10','10','10'].map(_.compose(parseInt, _.first, _.args)); // #=> [10,10,10,10]
i read until the backup process and gave up reading through, for cold backups of online databases, you should use percona's extrabackup, its open source and free and works perfectly. http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/
if you are using mysql a simple googling "hot backup mysql" will lead to that, i guess author didn't even bother to search.

besides, you need to use replication and connect a couple of slaves if you care about being online and backup from one of the slaves - which is a common practice for all databases not for mysql. if you are trying to dump from the master without slaves good luck with any database.
Vaccine will give drinkers an immediate hangover if they drink booze
Chrome extension tracks how you feel after you use Facebook
As the nice man said:

> MySQL is riddled with these sorts of surprises, and apologists lean very heavily on the "that's documented" excuse for its bad behaviour.

For a database, defaulting to safe behaviour should be the default, not something you need to look up.
Just wanted to confirm something. You say you have no single point of failure but you are running everything in one data center ?
Fighting forum spam
I think the reason for the response to Aaron's suicide is that people are finally opening their eyes to the behavior of our government. Justice is no longer the prerogative of our legal system. This has to change.
>We aren't very rational, when it comes down to it, because rational people have trouble making decisions.

Do you have a source or something for this? (I want to know more.)
I love this. Every time I look up a recipe, I read the comments to see popular modifications and tweaks to the original recipe, and thought it would be awesome if those could branch off and become their own, with the most popular 'forks' floating to the top (even dethroning the original recipe, if they are indeed better). I'm glad to see this come to fruition!
The only beef I have with cloud/VPS hosting is the price.

Conveniently, the data center I've worked with for years[1] supports a hybrid setup, where you can use their cloud hosting combined with coloed physical hardware all in the same VLAN. It's hugely effective, since I can have physical hardware there to deal with the high-load/high-memory stuff there (like database servers) affordably, while at the same time, using VPS for less processor intensive/more ephemeral-load type stuff like webservers.

The result is that I drive to Chicago to work on hardware significantly less frequently than I previously used to, and it's fully worth it. If their cloud system goes down for whatever reason, I know their staff is on it, and I'm not worried in the slightest.

When I was 100% hardware based, I lived in a bit of terror of being out of town. If something happens, I had to get there. Now if something happens while I'm out of town, as long as I have internet access, I'm okay with it. Eventually, when prices go down enough, I'll go 100% virtual, and I'm not looking back.

[1] Steadfast Networks in Chicago: http://www.steadfast.net
So Coulton composes some music, to which he sings someone else's lyrics. I don't see why he's not due composer's royalties. I'm not in the industry, but I'd read some place long ago that the composer gets his cut, the lyricist gets hist cut, and the recording artist gets his cut. And as soon as someone records it and releases it, then anyone else can record it, too, under compulsory licensing where the composer and lyricist continue to get their cuts (based on the rates in the compulsory parts of copyright law.)

What I'm not seeing here is a good explanation of how this all actually breaks down now. It seems to me that I'm way off from the current Way Things Are Done. How does Coulton's "arrangement" not qualify as an original composition that's deserving of copyright protection and compulsory licensing payments? Assuming I'm right, attribution isn't part of the law, license payments are.
What you've done is define your own number system, I do not believe you are representing what "base 1" might be.

If a base means, you can write numbers of this form:

abc

Where the value is:

aB^2 + bB^1 + cB^0

and you can only have B symbols, then your one symbol for base 1 would need to be 1, still useless, but not completely:

1 = 11^0 = 1
11 = 11^1 + 11^0 = 2
...

Note that you cannot represent 0 in base 1 with this method.

If you choose 0 as your one symbol for base 1, then the only number you can represent is 0. I assert this is even more useless than selecting 1 as the symbol.

0 = 01^0 = 0
00 = 01^1 + 01^0 = 0
...

As far as I can tell, the example was trying to interpret "10" as base 1. 10 has two different symbols which truly does not make sense in base 1.

I assert that base 1 is not a valid base, because you cannot represent all integers in it.

Additionally, the "unary point" or whatever it would be called, would serve no purpose:

1.1 = 11^0 + 1*1^-1 = 2

I'm not sure how that might disqualify something for a "base" but it certainly doesn't help :) Probably the strongest argument is the inability to represent 0.
Not true. When making a purchase using a credit card, you are not giving "arbitrary access to your bank", rather you are giving access to your line of credit. There's a difference. In the case of fraud, the credit card company still has to collect from you. You can always not pay and dispute the charge.
This is why I prefer credit cards over debit cards. In the case of a fraudulent debit transaction, my money is gone, and the burden to recover it is on me. In the card of a fraudulent credit card transaction, the bank is out the money, and the burden is on them to recover. Furthermore, federal law gives credit card holders protection to dispute charges over $50.
Does Heroku actually charge the face value prices for real customers with that level of need? I would think that discounts would readily be made available to keep the business, but I have trouble finding anecdotes from people who have spent a lot of money on Heroku.
vs. 16 hours a day with a bunch of finance & government type-a's with even worse hazing rituals?
One data point: I teach at a small liberal arts college. Our endowment is roughly of the same order as our annual budget. Annual draw-down on the endowment is 4.5% or so, which means that the rest of the budget comes from tuition. If enrollment cratered (but didn't go entirely to zero) I suppose the administration could draw the shortfall from the endowment, but the board would pitch a fit, (and likely not approve that kind of move) and it's a sign that the college isn't going to be around long.

The full sticker price (Tuition, Fees, Room and Board) just passed $40k/year last year, and it's having an impact on our ability to recruit students. Since so much of our budget comes from tuition, though, a shortfall of even 30 students from predicted numbers (out of a total student population of about 1400) can cause a serious budget crunch.
Is it OK if I just don't care and keep my Facebook account anyway? I've never used Instagram (why would I want a camera app with built-in filters to make everything look shitty when I have a perfectly good camera app that makes everything look OK?) and I don't keep anything private on my Facebook account anyway.
It's also worth watching the film "Exit through the giftshop" on Netflix. Goes over Banksy in decent depth, as well as some other famous street artists.
Python Web Framework Session Management: from LFR to RCE
The cost of the database to an enterprise is not dominated by how much the license for the software costs, the hardware costs, or the electricity costs. It is dominated by how much you have to pay in headcount to manage it. At many companies, that app would have two people whose full-time job would be "Do everything Heroku ops would do, except slower and suckier."

I get this same question from some potential customers for AR, too: "Why would I pay you $X a month when I could buy a competitor's dedicated appliance for $X and then just pay for phone calls?" "Who is going to maintain that appliance?" "What do you mean maintain?" "Like, if a security vulnerability is discovered in a technology AR uses, I stay up all night. Do you have a guy like that?" "... No." "Do you know what a guy like that costs?" "... Uh, plumber money?" "Doctor money." "Shoot."
Insanity #4; Your data could be accessed by the country the cloud host resides in.

Oh, wait, that's not insane, it's the opposite. It would rather be insane to give a government that's known for wanting access to everything–legal or not– like the US your sensitive data.
Ask HN: better ruby on rails hosting service
I'm looking for a ruby on rails website hosting.
is there any place where I can look the comparison of prices and features they support?

or your own experience with them.

thanks!
Crowd Wisdom (Article on Ushahidi / Crowdmap from Index on Censorship)
The cloud based MS Exchange product that's offered to Australian businesses uses servers based in Singapore.

Whether or not the risk is real or not, the perceived risk of your data being seized due to laws or actions outside your own country is a major point stopping take up in my opinion (at least in Australia anyway).
I'm trying to understand why this is on the front page, and what it means.
Show HN: Video-Less Youtube Song Linking
That's using a different notation than our more familiar number systems, though.

If we were treating it like base 2 (or 10 or 8 or 16), we would evaluate 0000 as 1^30+1^20+1^10+1^00 = 0. A number system where the only number you can represent is 0 is a bit less useful.
Atari US files for bankruptcy to separate itself from parent company
just read this in index on censorship (the dead tree version). the link is to the author's site.

here is the software - http://www.ushahidi.com/
This is only true if you think that the likelihood that an arbitrary student from Podunk University is qualified to work at competitive tech firms is the same as an arbitrary student from MIT. Do you think it's true? I don't, personally.

These companies hire more from MIT because MIT has so many great candidates, but they are not shy about hiring qualified students from all over (as you personally demonstrate). There is some evidence (from Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale's study) to support the claim that where you go to school does not generally matter (with a few important caveats related to class and ethnicity -- poor black and hispanic kids do benefit a bit from brand name schools).

EDIT: I should also add that since the elite schools have such great financial aid, the problem with the rigid class structure starts and ends in the K-12 years, like hkmurakami said. The middle and upper class kids get the best schools and academic support network while growing up, so they're the ones that go to Harvard, even though Harvard will always make sure you can afford to attend. This is very disheartening: I agree.
I really don't know where to begin with such a stupid comment.

How about you start with listing which of these companies needs educating: http://www.mysql.com/customers/

Facebook ? Twitter ? Amazon ? Flickr ?
Atari bankruptcy is another lesson in how the US squanders skilled workers
Minecraft like voxel engine but in Three.js format
If you look at Gmail though, one of the most successful SaaS apps, its great value for small businesses. Many don't pay for it.
I work as a PHP developer, but for personal projects I create apps with Java on Android, and have also created iPhone apps with Objective C, I disagree with you.
PHP has some issues (like the ones presented here), but its also a great language for specific projects. I do prefer Java syntax honestly, but I'll never use JSP for a website, PHP is more adapted for that.
PHP is not for newbies, it is easier for newbies yes, but you can be a hardcore programmer and still use PHP.
And the average visitor would end up asking themselves "What does 'git sypes' mean?"
Talking, Walking Objects
Then there is always the Percona or Twitter or millions of other forks around.
> In some specific cases, for verification purposes, we request that people upload a government issued ID in response.

Verification of what?
I wonder how many banks and stock-brokers are buying into handing their net operations over to a third party?

Anyway, once the words "delusion" and "insanity" got dropped, I realized how desperate the clown-computing crowd is getting.
The 35 number was invalidated awhile ago anyways once the amended charges were filed (when the maximum sentence would theoretically be 50 years). So if you see 35 without qualification then they don't know what they're talking about.

The judge could assign more than 2 years (if convicted on all or most charges) so I'd be careful against suggesting that was the likely sentence. Given that the prosecution had mentioned pushing for 6-7 years I'd use that as the worst-case upper bound with 1-4 being the most probable band. However, both previous cases involving CFAA and the particulars of Aaron in particular (who had no malicious intent toward MIT) seem to argue against prison sentences as long as 4 years being a possibility in this case, but that's just my opinion.
Well, I'm happy it would only work for up to a year. Otherwise I'd be afraid that parents would inject their children with these vaccines—you know, 'for their own good'.
There's an implicit assumption here that consistent behaviour within a corporation matters. I think this is wrong. Corporations' interests are served perfectly well by them behaving inconsistently whenever it suits their interests. There may well be executives in Fox who know about the inconsistencies here who simply don't care, because it doesn't affect the bottom line.
I checked wikipedia to make sure that it was indeed the organization I was looking for. So if you mean "did I read the webpage?" yes I did.

I did a quick control-f on the high school social studies standards for some terms of interest. (Eg. 'Creationism' 'Religion')

If you mean "Did you read all of the standards in their entirety?" no, because I honestly don't care that much.

With that in mind, this will be the last post I make defending myself against whatever it is you're trying to accuse me of.

EDIT: Unless it was the wrong link, but taking a second look it appears correct.
36 Hours in Marin County, California
I bought his version of the song. I hope he uses the proceeds to sue the shit out of Glee/Fox.
this is my favorite MySQL "decision", that the GROUP BY keyword by default (that is, unless you turn it off with the late-added magic flag ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY) will gladly select an essentially "random" (well, the first row based on INSERT order, which in SQL is as good as random) row for you:

mysql: create table data (token_a varchar(10), token_b varchar(10));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)

mysql: insert into data (token_a, token_b) values ('A', 'A');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

mysql: insert into data (token_a, token_b) values ('A', 'B');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql: insert into data (token_a, token_b) values ('B', 'B');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql: insert into data (token_a, token_b) values ('B', 'A');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql: select * from data group by token_a;
+---------+---------+
| token_a | token_b |
+---------+---------+
| A | A |
| B | B |
+---------+---------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Note here the value we get for "token_b" is based on whether or not "A" or "B" were inserted first. The second "token_b" for each "token_a" (as well as any number of other rows that might follow it for that "token_a") is just discarded.

The scary thing is that I semi-regularly come across applications in Very Important Industries that have large amounts of SQL that rely upon this behavior of "picking any old row" for you, rather than selecting a MAX() or MIN() of some column and then joining to a subquery of the GROUP BY + aggregate....because joining to a subquery in MySQL also performs like crap.
That's a detailedand well documented article sir. Nothing like FUD.
Don’t guess; Just ask
No one ever has trouble finding work in a free country.

Depressions are not caused by the weather. The depression will remain until we get rid of all our policies which are causing it.

Since when did we believe that our right to vote (on hiring a common defense), changed into a right to vote (on the things we want to force other people to do?)
If you have not watched Laurie and Fry's TV Series "Jeeves and Wooster", make it a point to do so. It's really a funny, intelligent series. The use of language is clever and the two have their characters nailed down. My wife and I just finished going through it for the 3rd time.

Wooster is a rich nitwit, Jeeves is his valet. They get into impossible situations usually involving Wooster or one of his inept friends getting into trouble with the law or a woman and have to get bailed out in some equally impractical way.
Good point. It's not wrong to the sql standard, just wrong to mysql. That makes the silent fail even more brain dead.
La Jolla Airport Transportation San Diego 858-224-5474
"We can kill 100 percent of the bacteria"

Didn't read further. There's no such thing as "100%" in medicine (even pure alcohol does not). They're not scientists.
I don't think I said anything close to that, actually. It may be that the BMGF is doing exactly the right thing to improve overall quality of life; but I would like them to be explicit that quality of life is more important than quantity. Saving a baby just so that it can starve to death later in life is not a good outcome.
Or build a website that can account for geographical data, sending you only relatively close peoples messages in order 'store' and potentially transmit only the ones that are important.
Holy 1997, that's an ugly webpage.
The author was speaking more about SaaS (like Google Apps), and not just IaaS hosting (like EC2) or PaaS (like Heroku). EC2 and Heroku don't compete primarily on price, but on the flexibility to scale up/down as needed. If you can offer more of a commitment, there are much cheaper options available.
Could you provide a source? I'd like to learn more about this. (The politics of open-source software is interesting because the underlying motivations are probably still around and motivating other people).
Or "joins are too slow". Well, yes, they can be. But some database systems have smarter plan builders than others.

Take, for example, this gem:

> Joining and ordering by rows from multiple tables often forces MySQL to dump the whole join to a temporary table, then sort it -- awful, especially if you then use LIMIT BY to paginate the results.

This describes just about every standard page-with-comments schema ever devised.

It struck me with particular force because perhaps I've been unfairly blaming Wordpress for the failings of MySQL, vis-a-vis the atrocious performance of the Recent Comments Widget.

I see horrible join performance on tables with about half a million rows, which is chicken feed. The query cache "solves" my problem, but it's amazing that it should be necessary for very trivial joins between 2 or 3 tables.
Vinepeek makes Vine just perfect. I see thousands of great shortmovies coming.

Vine is the first who does the 'Instagram for video' right.
Have you tried other RDBMSes?
You say ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY was late added. But there are posts talking about this setting in 2002.
Sorry HN: Activation emails and reminders have now been sent.
Apple deletes app for 'porn' -- what it means
That's not the xbox leak that the present specs are from. I've managed to confirm the newest leak (8 Jaguar cores, 4MB L2, 12 GCN CU, 8GB DDR3, 32MB fast local pool) from a guy who works on a game for it and who I trust.
This is a great article.

But I really wish it had sources for each of the claims. I would be interested to read the relevant documentation, because some of these directly describe problems I've had with running a Wordpress installation.

And I've been blaming Wordpress for it. There's possibly a big mea culpa brewing; but I'd really like to look at the specifics.
To be fair, if you want to change the datatype of data in a NoSQL system, you have to rewrite it as well.
> It's a documented behaviour.

In other contexts, these are sometimes called "Known Bugs".
if anyone is curious - http://hg.pidgin.im/pidgin/main/file/eb0eb02fce71/libpurple/...

tbh that's the first time i've seen something quite like that. i am not sure this is so common a pattern (usually, imho, you can be more explicit and have a struct that associates a known callback type with named, typed values).
"This is only true if you think that the likelihood that an arbitrary student from Podunk University is qualified to work at competitive tech firms is the same as an arbitrary student from MIT."

A brilliant, hard-working student who goes to Oklahoma State will have fewer opportunities than a brilliant student who goes to MIT. The "average student" is irrelevant to my argument.
Yes, but that case comes up less often and isn't what I see NoSQL people complaining about ;P. (Also, when I've listed that as an explicit caveat recently, I often get corrected that they changed the ramifications of that recently, and it only sometimes has to happen, so I figured I'd just explicitly list the situations where you clearly should never have needed to rewrite the table.)

Generally, though, this is related to be able to do table changes under transaction locks: I have often enjoyed being able to, under an atomic transaction, replace a table with a view over that table, or make modifications to indexes and columns that I then rollback if there's a mistake.
To be fair I'm surprised how often I see a rack mounted solution sitting in an office somewhere with no patches applied since ~2005.

"Your email has always been slow you say? That's because it's been running a botnet C&C server for some considerable time"
Node.js's most complete "utility grab-bag".
For a few hundred dollars you can build something that approximates a (very-slow!) supercompute cluster. Great for education or testing/debugging concurrent code. See the Limulus project for a slightly more upscale approach:

http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/