skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I completely agree, if you are trying to run a scientific experiment. But if you're driving on real-world roads, you're faced with a different set of choices. As I said, you can't expect to drive 400 miles at a steady speed of 25 mph in the real world.

A red herring. Whatever speed seems appropriate, steady speed is more efficient than stop-and go driving. My only point is that the advice to intentionally engage in stop-and-go driving is mistaken.
HP headquarters is in Palo Alto, CA actually
Obama endorses required high school coding classes
You know what happens when I'm clicking through a SERP link and you give me a pop-up asking me if I want to download your crappy app? I hit the back button in mobile safari and find an alternate source of information.

No one wants your crappy forum reader app. Stop bugging me about it every single time I visit your damn site.
It isn't giving, it is taking. That is the difference.
How long did it take to settle on a business model that you felt had some legs? Did you go through a few iterations before finding one that worked?

I am in the process of spending the next few months trying to build a niche software product that can turn into a full time business. I don't have an exact idea yet but I'm thinking of using the methodology defined by Steve Blank to find a real niche market.

Would love to know your approach. I'm assuming you have done something related to software.
> There seems to be the profiler that is windows only. I never used it so i can't report on that.

nvvp? It works for me on Linux.
This brought back old memories.

Back then I thought those games were so realistic. Imagine if there was Live for Speed back then, it would've blown my mind.

Very nice level of polish.
It's a good response in that they are taking responsibility, but it is pretty obvious that they are reluctant to say anything about a fix. In my mind, "it's hard" isn't a valid excuse in this case, especially when there are relatively straightforward solutions that will solve this at a practical level. For example, you could imagine a naive form of intelligent routing that would work simply by keeping a counter per dyno:

- request comes in and gets routed to the dyno with the lowest count. Inc the count.

- response goes out. Dec the counter.

Since they control the flow both in and out, this requires at most a sorted collection of counters and would solve the problem at a "practical" level. Is it possible to still end up with one request that backs up another one or two? Sure. Is it likely? No. While this isn't as ideal as true intelligent routing, I think it's likely the best solution in a scenario where they have incomplete information about what a random process on a dyno can reliably handle (which is the case on the cedar stack).

Alternatively, they could just add some configuration that allows you to set the request density and then you could bring intelligent routing back. The couple of milliseconds that lookup/comparison would take is far better than the scenario they're in now.

EDIT: I realized my comment could be read as though I'm suggesting this naive solution is "easy". At scale it certainly isn't, but I do believe it's possible and as this is their business, that's not a valid reason to do what they are.
Only on your point 4,

Assuming there would be several mainstream 3D printing technologies (like HP mainstream), someone would find way to design a middleware for them. Portability is not an issue when there are standarts and communities.
Google isn't run by engineers anymore.
Finally, Startup Act 3.0 passed
I think it's an interesting and reasonable question but I'm not sure the basis of the question is correct.

First, the 2000+ years of capitalism assertion is fairly flawed, consider feudalism, but for the sake of argument lets say capitalism goes hand in hand with industrial revolution era.

Then when you say 'massively efficient capitalist system' it seems like you're referring to a "net efficiency" in terms of production of wealth, and that allows a community of grifters to benefit from that as a kind of downstream recipient.

You are touching upon a valid point, this lifestyle is a function of current society and it appears to be parasitic rather than self-sustaining. However, I would argue that this demonstrates that current capitalism is actually pretty inefficient to allow this.
They don't need to rebrand - the article states they just don't have exclusivity.
Are you familiar with a payment instrument called ... Cash?
I've been using HipChat for a distributed development project. I like this app. Incumbent Adobe Air app is nice enough for me though animations such as scrolling is not quite sophisticated.
Why can't there be a set of parsers for YAML, JSON, and XML that are tested, abused, and audited aggressively so that your interchange formats don't become attack vectors?

The current state of having a half dozen of each of these is complete chaos. Presumably nobody thinks they're accountable because everyone has the option of using another package instead if they're not happy, basically passing the hot-potato constantly.

Is there a non-Ruby project that has a good implementation of these worth studying?
Exactly. There are thousands of these proofs of concept in mice. How many times have we heard of various cancers being cured in mice?

Keep in mind, too, a dog's metabolism is very different from ours. Yes, this is good news, but we're talking about an animal that would be killed by eating too much chocolate. I'll get really excited about this once we've cured some diabetic chimps.
My perspective is this: I want to make really awesome intelligent tutoring systems. I'm inspired by Enders Game, Diamond Age, and the Aristotle essay by Hillis.
I want to do this because I think that the current model for distributing education privileges people who are already very advantaged, but an intelligent tutoring system could be reproduced over and over and over for free. I obviously love Khan Academy, which is being made static and delivered to places with limited/no internet connection.
I think that this is radical because the vision is to use technology and the fact that things are so replicable to essentially destroy educational inequality. If you could make an educational system good enough, and distribute it widely enough, then I think that would really change the world. I want to be part of making that happen, and I'm an AI and cognitive science person, so I'm working on the tutor part.

But even this vision has so many things that other hackers are working on. Just making the net more efficient, or creating better wireless systems, or cheaper technology (or even better, technology that people can make themselves). Or empowering people to use Arduinos and to hack their own open source stuff. Or producing pedagogical content and translating it into other languages. I feel like a world in which everyone has total access to an amazing education is a world-changing proposition, and lots of hackers are working on things that really bring us closer to that.

Also I personally think that the thing that is wrong with the government is unequal application of laws and illegal hiding of government activity. I'm not convinced that there's not a place for laws, police, and taxes in a totally just society. I think that anyone who is working to destroy the (really widespread) lies and spying and unequal treatment and unjust policies and sociopathic violence of the government is doing something that, if it succeeds, will result in a truly different world. One where the laws aren't different for people depending on their class, and violence by the state is not tolerated.

I'm not claiming that working for education, diy technology, government accountability or a total overhaul of the legal system is more revolutionary than being an insurrectionist or running a totally awesome Food Not Bombs. I'm just saying that there's this idea of a better world, a fundamentally different world where things make sense and capricious cruelty is gone and everyone is essentially free to pursue the future they want and self-actualize instead of worrying about where the day's calories will come from or if it's safe to go outside. If we can have that world, I don't care if it's in an anarcho-syndicalist form, a set of independent microcountries, or just a very very reformed version of the constitutional democracies we have now. I see cheap, open source 3D printers and Food Not Bombs as having a similar mission.

I'll sum this up with a quote from an Evan Greer song
"I want something that's better than this, and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think that we could build it if we try together."
Can someone explain, to people who know nothing about scaling infrastructure, why routing to idle dynos is a hard problem?
Heroku has been owned by Salesforce.com since dec. 2010
Amazon S3 dynamic expires headers
Supposedly, savings for merchants can get passed on to customers. For example, I have heard that prices on bitcoinstore.com (which is a big consumer electronics site) are significantly cheaper than elsewhere. I haven't tried to compute that myself, so I don't know if it's actually true.

Also, when paying with Bitcoin, I don't have to reveal my name to the merchant. That can matter a lot for certain things. For example, I wouldn't want to make any kind of "adult" purchases using my real name.
The naive approach would fail badly if they didn't have some way of supporting a healthcheck. A customizable url path (/healthcheck is often used) where the app would return 200 if things look good would work. Otherwise you may wind up with dyno that's quickly sending back 500's where not appropriate, and since it's handling lots of requests the router would keep giving it more.
Stack Exchange > Quora in every way possible.

Also, what quora is doing here REALLY seems like a black-hat SEO technique. They're baiting you with the link and then switching on you to download their app.

If I were Google, I would blacklist their whole domain for this crap and explain again what cloaking is if I were pressed on for an answer: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
Not with current management and mission I would guess. Maybe moreso Pixelmator or one of the more commercial apps.
PBS Documentary: The Founding of Silicon Valley
Direct link for the lazy: http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_lat...
> This is seriously making me want to move to SF, because events as artfully crazy as these simply can't happen with any regularity in Singapore.

If you're serious, I should tell you that SF is by some estimates the most expensive city in the world:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/most-expensive-city...

Also, having lived there myself for years, it's cold most of the year except in August and September, and because of its setting it's difficult to get to or from anywhere else (bridges and crowded freeways). And finally, it's very pretty and it has enormous charm.
I think you're mistaken. New Bamboo apps can't be created, but apps that were created as Bamboo or migrated from Aspen to Bamboo before Bamboo was turned off are still running.
First U.S. artificial retina approved; device could restore some sight to blind
Nice. Nice again, I say.
No I guess you are right actually. I think I should have said "the government for allowing Adobe to take complete monopolistic control of an industry".
> There seems to be the profiler that is windows only. I never used it so i can't report on that.

You mean nvvp? Idk about earlier versions but it ships with CUDA 5 for Linux. I've used it too, works just dandy :)

Edit - Beaten to it by "gosu"
I think this PR has already hurt Heroku & caused them to lose customers.
Bump Now Lets You Share Files To and From a Computer
I have never heard of severance being used to artificially extend the termination date (and I expect health insurance vendors would crack down on it), but I have never heard of termination date mattering in terms of getting the next job anyway.
We should call it "insecurity by default" (in contrast to insecurity by design). A major problem is that nobody takes responsibility or pays attention for default choices.

A ton of packages have default choices that are inherently bad/insecure (mail servers listening on all interfaces by default, SSH servers accepting root login by default, and so on). Packaging is just as important as development.
Huge meteore blew up over Chelyabinsk, Russia
Honest question, why would Rapgenuis still be on Heroku if the y needed 100 dynos? Why not go directly to AWS at that scale? The cost savings would be pretty significant. Am I missing something?
>> it's about stopping processes from having control that the owners don't allow

That's why I run Linux in the first place.
I'm not sure that should be a concern at the routing layer or even necessarily a concern of heroku. It's not their job to ensure that your code isn't blowing up.

That being said, health checks are nice for other reasons and could be used outside of the routing layer (which you need to sail along as quickly as possible).
For my first incorporated venture, I went to my personal network and had someone refer me to someone he was close to in law school. You should know, I went to school in the Bay area and my college roommate went to Stanford. So, his referral was from the best of the best, who went to a major tech / startup / vc firm and already had a bit of experience.

Now, any major firm that works with startups will defer costs until a raise or early exit (save the incorporation costs to the state).

Now, you'll always have tradeoffs. A personal relationship with an attorney, even if it's a friend of a friend, gives you better access and stretches the amount they are willing to help, especially when it comes to advice or referrals. However, if you don't have an in with the attorney, you'll have to cultivate that relationship like you would with any other contact.

Now, do you interview the attorney? Absolutely! And make sure you interview both the partner and the associate, if you choose a larger firm.

The most important criteria is trust. You can't expect the attorney to spend countless hours customizing docs for an unknown startup, that has yet to warrant the labor, nor will likely have the ability to pay (after all, if you don't raise / exit, they write-off the costs). However, good advice, availability and willingness to make an intro (if they think it's germane) is important...so talk to other clients in your situation.

No regrets.
I have never seen this happen when someone quits a job, but I am sure it happens in some places.
Are you one of the development team ?

I've just started looking at Julia. I've read the 2 blog posts on Shell sucking. A couple quick questions:

1. Reading from STDIN. I only succeeded with "readlne(STDIN)". All attempts to use open() failed. i tried open(STDIN,Int64) but had to Ctrl-c out of it.

2. How to read one character from STDIN. Is there some getch() alternative. I tried `read -k` etc but all attempts to call the system `read` failed.

3. How to execute a system (zsh) builtin?
e.g. i tried:

readall(`print -rl -- *`)

(the backticks may not print here.)

I did read that the shell will not be able to expand the asterisk. Is there any way to execute this?

4. Is there any direct way of getting directory listings and details other than using `ls` which is not standards across systems and does not use a proper delimiter for separating columns.
Can they allocate in the office?
Is it me not understanding disqus, or did Heroku's moderator just deleted my comment?
Actually, that's the only one that smells like BS to me. The others have clear meaning and goals.
"Wait, so those guys were on Bamboo, and complaining? Fuck, that is so not cool."

That's a non-sequitur given that Heroku still supports it and didn't advocate migrating in their response.

It's fair to complain about a bug in Lion or in Windows 7 or in other products that are stil being supported. It's unfair to rail about a windows 95 bug, for example, but not something which is still being supported. And I'm surprised heroku didnt suggest Cedar in the response itself.
Ops guys cost a lot more than just using Heroku, not to mention the cost of simply having the responsibility of servers (even if they are virtual). Never underestimate the value of just not having to think about something, especially when you're small group of people.
What Console Game Development is Like
excel as a functional prototyping tool.

I have no problems with this. The internal logistics of a business are better a codified mess then legend and arcanum amongst the locals.
> We've been on cedar ever since it launched, and been running puma threads or unicorn workers. The idea of one dyno per request is bullshit, and I wasn't sure if they were on cedar or not. A dyno is an allocated resource (512mb, not counting db, k/v store etc)

It doesn't matter if you think one dyno per request is "bullshit" or not, Rails isn't multithreaded, so what do you propose they do? Using unicorn_rails on Cedar lets you fork off a few subprocesses to handle more requests on the dyno queue which gets you a constant factor bite at the dyno queue lengths, a few weeks or months of scale at best - it's not a real solution.

Heroku knows that Rails on Cedar is just as affected by their inability to route requests and they're only not copping to it in this blog post because they don't have a customer running Cedar complaining so loudly. Which is cowardly.

> How ballsy of them to complain when they are doing it wrong.

If you mean that deploying a rails app to Heroku is doing it wrong - a sentiment many are agreeing with right now - then yes, you're correct!
Interesting random photo of a custom built computer in the antec mini case. Most major valve games won't render on a computer in that case, it can't hold a video card.
I wish html5 games would at least be considerate of mobile devices. Some kind of virtual input at least.

I can't be the only person using their internet on a phone.
Because to be intelligent, you have to have the router talk to all the dynos to calculate load. Doing that in a performant way can get tricky, especially since people can hit a button and get 100 workers. The bigger the n, the more resources are required to track everything and the more things can go wrong.

It's not an intractable problem, but it's not trivial, affects only a small percentage of customers, and introduces complexity for everyone.

I feel pretty confident that there is a reasonable solution, and as someone that just spent the last 3 weeks building a custom buildpack and a new heroku app for an auto-scaling worker farm, I am happy to see such a quick, hopeful response.
Bar raising "policy" like that is a morale gimmick, not reality.
You know what? Maybe the Tesla S is too hard to use for most journalists, who aren't exactly known for being the smartest people on earth.
Thank you , I have been heard of this web site, now I have bookmarked it. It seems very few people were interested to answer those questions I have asked , maybe I should post this somewhere else to get better input? I sincerely appreciate your time spent here typing comments for me.
ya got me there. the only thing that matters in any debate is how it makes me feel about my tribal identity. I forgot that for a second.
FYI, there is now a mention on the news list (also shown on the front page) which links to the blog post.
Does anyone here invest in stocks, little bit, use that to run the show?

Just curious. Obviously risks are there.
Notes on "how to clone delicious in 48 hours" (2010)
Tokenadult is consistently the top ranked commenter when he pastes her boilrplate into every education or hiring discussion.
That is the funniest geek story I've heard in a long time :)
My recollection is the same as stcredzero's on the battery comments. What are the cc company comments to which you refer? (Google results seem saturated with more recent events).
Yep, this is a part of our documentation for the case.
I believe it's not enabled by default because there are still some security vulnerabilities present, is that right?
Rap Genius cofounder:

Random routing is still wayyyyy worse than intelligent routing even if you're processing multiple requests simultaneously on a single dyno (see http://rapgenius.com/1504222)

Requests will still queue, but since time spent queuing at the dyno level doesn't appear in your logs or on New Relic, you'll never know it.
To assume that your customer must be intelligent is the biggest mistake you can ever make.

I worked at the Dell technical support call center some years back and our training said very specifically until you ascertain the caller actually knows what he is doing, you need to assume they are dumb. This saves a lot of trouble.

There are countless times when some one calls and I have to explain them they can get internet on their computer only if they a internet connection. It takes a lot of patience, to explain to someone that the the CD needs to be put in the CD drive with the shiny side facing down. Many people don't understand that they need something like VLC player or a codec to play a video.

Many people would view a computer as something similar to a TV. They simply expect things to work out of the box. There are times when I have assisted the elderly in creating email id's and teaching how to use email. There was one elderly woman who had literally become friends with me, I had to call her everyday and practically tutor her. The managers were OK, because many times this sort of calls bought in sales.

And this is beyond real issues that we would solve.

You can't adopt a programmers approach of RTFM or get lost approach or act like 'I know it all' with ordinary people.

In this case not everyone will understand enough chemistry behind how batteries work. That is simply too much to ask from an ordinary user. Your product automatically needs to check for the temperature around, do the magical calculations and tell the user EXACTLY what they need to do. And when someone calls you for help you need to first ensure they are safe before beginning to do any trouble shooting. At the call center, we would specifically instruct the customers to shut down their machines before trouble shooting for any thing more than a trivial software install. In this case the guys at Tesla should have asked him to get this batteries to be charge to 100% before investigating or advising him any further.

And yes customer support is a part of the product not something apart from or outside it. Its all a part of the package. If you a sell a great car with bad customer support, you are ideally selling a bad car.
Show HN: Easy email notifications for major security vulnerabilities.
The "manufacturing things entirely using software" dream died a little for me after I looked at this guide (which is excellent and clearly a labor of love, BTW). The amount of variables in meatspace that you have to account for (that I simply had no clue about) -- like total indicated runout, reach length, cut direction -- was mind-boggling.
You know this is like a tutorial/demo right?
This is the most defeatist post Ive ever seen on HN. Your experience doesn't transpire to be the truth for all other similar situations.

I am a bit leery but you paint a real cynical picture.
Not in the slightest, sadly. Being a volunteer firefighter and being heavily involved in that world was a big part of my life for about 10 years, and I kinda miss it. But I'm just too busy for it these days.