skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with you that adding a bunch of servers looks like the simpler (cheaper, in terms of Net Present Value) option. But I worry that however they've set it up is just not horizontally scalable.

They say that a large bunch of the simulation runs on their servers. And that each city is connected (via the graph) to every other city. What if they haven't built in clean partitioning? If cities really do interact with every other city, and they've haven't already seriously planned how to horizontally scale, they're hosed.

If it were just a matter of adding more hosts, wouldn't they have done that by now? Surely you over-provision for launch and then scale down once the first sales are over and people's interest dies down.
On the flip side, I've had friends playing simcity just fine. So, yeah.
OSU's Open Source Club presentation on Distributed Version Control
Full disclosure: I work on the team that implemented this feature.

On Wave Invoices [1] we try to make it ridiculously easy for people to get paid. As such, we have a very select number of fields that are mandatory and don't require things like address, country, province, phone number, etc.

Here is an example: http://i.imgur.com/yqSUMNb.png

The payment amount is already filled in - set to the full amount of the invoice in question. The rest is relatively easy to fill out.

We use the awesome jquery.payment [2] and Stripe.js [3] on this form so you get formatted input - like on the credit card number and expiry date - and inline validation.

[1] https://www.waveapps.com/invoicing/

[2] https://github.com/stripe/jquery.payment

[3] https://stripe.com/docs/stripe.js
Marissa Mayer Got a $1.2 Million Bonus at Yahoo After Six Months
The Weather Channel's Plans For Global Domination
VonGuard,

Observing that a lot of corruption is taking place is different from actively suggesting someone to do it. You can do the first, but the second is bad!

You are not a game dev. You don't know our pains. If you are honest, I suggest you reveal the evidence anonymously. I hope all such scums get outed. This is morally bankrupt.
When did I say I want to be explaining what love is? I said it's testable in theory, and you don't seem to be arguing against that.
Thanks, I've been looking for something like this.
Looking for feedback on MVP App “Money (common core)”
That's true, but it's not what he was talking about. He wasn't talking about "one download, one lost sale" mentalities. He was talking about revenue loss in general. And if it's possible to pirate a game, you will lose some revenue from that. It might not mean every act of piracy is a lost sale, and it might not mean the game has a net revenue loss due to piracy. But there will be some revenue loss somewhere.
Apple Maps Leads the Way in Navigation
I have a lot of family living in Armenia and i never caught any discrimination when i was out and about in Yerevan. Not towards me or my mother who is Russian. And I'm more Russian-looking than Armenian, with light skin and brown hair. Just my observation. Of course a few visits don't measure up to years living there. So, i can totally see what you described happen there. I wonder if this was always a problem in USSR. Every time i hear my parents talk about the good old days, they seem to describe pretty amazing, peaceful time. Especially the 70s. And now...
Chargebacks are usually the result of fraud. Fraudsters don't use BitCoins for obvious reasons.
It's incredibly simple to download a torrent. My non-technical parents have done it in the past, without asking me how to.

In fact, from your desktop, it takes less than seven steps total to download and watch a Full HD movie of your choosing from the pirate bay.
Repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5334554
Is your SXSW trip tax deductible? (Weird comic featuring PG)
Hmm, ok, I was seeing the exact same rebooting issue. Didn't realize it was an initialization issue on powerup. Just curious, what drivers/programs are you using to control it on ubuntu?
It's Ctrl + Mouse wheel
wtf do hue bulbs have in them for $90 a bulb.
It's meant to be 3D printed.

One you have that 3D printed cuboid in your possession, you point a flashlight towards one face, have the opposite face face a white surface, and scan the resulting shadow with a smartphone– and boom! It's quite insane.
Yep. And most likely you wont be able to play SimCity 5 in 5 years time.
True. My assumption is that .co may be a tough sell for some b2b models. Interesting in finding if that is true or not.
Right. I think (please correct me if I'm wrong) the thing that prevents them from making a transfer is that the green card application gets reset. That could be a multi-year setback in their path to a green card.
I know that winpoker is not a hoax/scam for sure. I am interested in how bitcoin is gaining traction as anonymous currency but more interested about when it will get regulated.
ssh -Y would probably be an even better choice for this sort of document, lest the end user find themselves going 'Why the heck isn't this working?'.
Are you forgetting Spore? It was Will's baby, and it sucked.
I do not agree that it is a plot hole, unless every possibly important unanswered question qualifies as a plot hole.

I agree that the use of eagles is an unanswered question, that might, to some, seem somewhat surprising that it was never mentioned.

My answer is that Tolkien made the artistic choice to speak of the powers of both Sauron and the Ring in poetic terms only. The last thing he wanted to do is delve into details about Sauron's Anti-craft Aircraft potential when shooting at eagles from throne of Barad-dur, even in a passing comment. He worked very hard to shield our eyes from such details.
Looking to see if I can get some feedback. Promo codes in the post. It's a very basic coin counting app for the US right now. -- Designed for 2nd grade.
you meant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolen...
I do not think that you should claim that this is open source [1] when you have not decided on a license to release it under [2].

[1] http://opensource.org/docs/osd

[2] https://github.com/emailbox/minimail_mobileapp/issues/1
Imagine one as a gate keeper and one as a patrol. In one you need to get past the gate keeper. In the other you need to be constantly vigilant everywhere because the code is fully DRM integrated.

Games that utilize internet connectivity for DRM only can simply fake the internet connection.

On Steam, this is done by tricking the copy of the game that the .dlls and relevant Steam .exe are running and everything is in order. Comparatively trivial to do, and these games are cracked very quickly.

However, games like Simpsons Tapped Out, Sim City, etc. go a step further and prevent you from playing without an internet connection. This means that instead of just needing to fool the game initially and cruise from there, you can't just surgically remove the DRM. It's too integrated into the back-end code. The only solution is to fake a server. Much more difficult.
I can't believe this past has sort | uniq when GNU sort (important distinction, the BSD version and hence OSX can't) has a -u flag so sort -u == sort | uniq
I concur with everything I've read by Bruce Schneier re: "security theater" as practiced by the TSA, and I think the TSA could/should backtrack a lot further than merely re-allowing small knives.

Post-9/11, a small knife is not a threat to airline safety if for no other reason than (a) the policies are explicit that threatening a hostage will never again result in control of the plane, and (b) the bad guys know that.
most of those games are not sub games. they are just matchmaking and DRM.
It's actually very unlikely. What is likely is that all the tech guys will be laid off because SimCity didn't meet financial expectations.
Guess that just goes to show you how long it's been since I've downloaded a torrent :)
Shira abel
Each organization is going to be different.

If you have a team that already rocks on PHP, migrating people to Python is likely to be a problem.

Depending on where you are located, finding good Python programmers could be difficult (stats: over 10x more PHP programmers than Python.

If your project is pretty far along, translating to Python might carry with it a non-trivial cost.

In general terms I think it might be easier/cheaper to launch an MVP in PHP with a sensible framework (like Yii) and then migrate to Python + web2py or Django for the "real" product.

I prefer Python, but it is hard to ignore job market statistics when considering what it might take to put together a team.

I'll go out on a limb and piss off a bunch of people in the process. I'll venture the thought that most PHP-only programmers are really bad programmers. Someone not formally educated in CS or having no experience in a variety of languages (and paradigms) before adopting PHP will probably be "challenged" as a programmer in more than one way. I have a feeling that, because of the nature of the language, a larger percentage of Python programmers are really good "traditional" programmers with a good balance between theoretical and practical knowledge.

Let the flaming begin.
Answering the salary history interview question
Recently I blurted out my current salary when asked at an interview. It's hard for me to lie, but I don't need to kick myself -- friends have been doing it for me for the past two weeks. One guy 5 years my junior has jumped his salary 40k in two years by lying about his prior salary at each of two job changes in the same city. But if you do lie, how do you come up with a believable figure? And if everyone lies, why do employers bother asking?

According to Robert Half Technology's figures the location I'm in pays 0.7x of the national average, and since I seek desperately to enter a major city --- some with factors of 1.25-1.41 --- telling my true high 30's salary makes me seem like a lunatic demanding double salary. In fact, double would be just enough to maintain my current standard of living, no gain aside from a better location. Advice!? I have 5 years work experience.
Wow. All I have to say is wow.
Keyczar has support for Java, Python, and C++ and uses the usual suspect standardized algorithms: AES, RSA, DSA, HMAC-SHA1. Google has been pretty active in maintaining Keyczar lately. ECC support should be added at some point.

As bascule said, NaCl / Sodium are using DJB's suite of algorithms, which are going to be faster and have smaller key sizes.
> this is the same thing you would end up doing for Go too.

No, you'd just need to copy over one binary. Go programs compile to a system binary.
So your theory is that problems with friends list are keeping people in 30+ minute queues to play the game? Because otherwise you are straw manning me.

I agree, just throwing AWS at the problem doesn't solve it, as demonstrated by this catastrophe. On the other hand, many people, including OP have managed to build scalable gaming systems on top of AWS where EA/Maxis for the moment appear to have failed quite dramatically.

Yes it's a hard problem, but it doesn't seem off base distilling the OP's argument down to "they have done the cloud wrong".
Mobile Ad Revenue in App
Building an app that rewards users for performing a series of actions. I don't want to get too in depth right now because I am still working out the major details. However, one problem I am running into is attempting to estimate if in-app ads would generate enough Revenue to not only pay for rewards/shipping, and keeping in mind that not all users would earn enough credits to receive rewards?
I switched from Linode to Digital Ocean due to price, but I'm not familiar with which of those two descriptions fits them. Could you elaborate? I haven't experienced anything yet that would lead me to believe they are "far worse;" their network doesn't seem crippled, and my IO-heavy site (imageboard) isn't throttled.
If you are working to handle operations, it is important to know what you are responsible and accountable for. If this has not been formalized, then there will be responsibilities that will fall through the gap. Titles are one thing, but roles and responsibilities are different. This has to be formalized. You boss could still override your decisions but at least it is clear that you are executing your job properly.
The point is at some point they could pull the plug. I still play older version of SimCity to this day.
Yes, this seems smaller than previous large bitcoin thefts by an order of magnitude or two.
Async APNS for python tornado web (Apple Push Notification Server)
I think that has to be the most amazing customer service interaction I have ever seen. I hope EA's payment processor hits them hard over all those charge backs.
Python Class Methods and self
There's a library called "unsafe" explicitely for this. I think it's reasonable to expect people to generally not use it, though.

http://golang.org/pkg/unsafe/
Clearly as demonstrated by this mess. What is your point exactly? They are doing it wrong, however they are doing it. OP suggested they use AWS (which alone as stated doesn't solve the problem). Then first commenter said they are using AWS.

I simply quiped ~ "more like misusing". Where in there is something wrong? Unless 30+ minute wait times is good design?
A. Plenty of people are suggesting precisely that.

B. I was responding to the parent comment about empirically verified dog's-sixth-sense phenomena, and what I think about those.
It's not a straw man, 'Better friends lists' is one of the sections in the original article.
Just in case anyone doesn't get it, it's a reference to the cover for Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach:"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GEBcover.jpg
We have plenty of simulation games that run client side. My ipad is faster than the PCs that ran SimCity 3000. They made a poor decision to move this to the cloud as a hack proof drm attempt and they are facing the consequences now.
Nectar That Gives Bees a Buzz Lures Them Back for More
Russia finds 'new bacteria' in Antarctic lake
shopt -s histverify

to show the expanded command before executing it. Then just enter. I never get these right the first time.
BlackBerry 10 Desperately Needs Those Killer Apps
Loved this- and it is right in line with the skier- I am reminded of a Pearl Jam lyric- "if he only knew now what he knew then."
Why is Path so Popular in Indonesia?
You're suggesting I change my advice to say "Hey guys, people cheat, you shouldn't." Either that, or you're suggesting I should have simply said "Hey guys, this game isn't going to be big, so just make another game."

Gaming app stores isn't morally bankrupt, it's about circumventing an arbitrary set of rules set out by Apple or Google. It's not breaking the law, it's not raping and pillaging. It's capitalism. The other games in the app store that have this gameplay are dialing home, selling ads, etc...

Yes, you can make a good living making awesome games and selling them in the app store. If yer a game dev, you should know that just expecting every game dev to make an awesome game is ludicrous. Gameplay design is about iteration, refinement, testing, and iteration, refinement and testing. Just like software dev. It's really tough to get right, too, because gameplay doesn't "compile" in the same sense as regular logic. You have to test subjective "fun" levels. Making an awesomely fun game with a unique gameplay hook is the hardest possible thing to do in making a game.

So what is an indie dev to do? Monetize the lesser games to fund the big, awesome ones. Is gaming the app store any more scummy than downloading a user's phone book? Tracking their phone call regions? Reading their cookies?
Your Mobile App Is Not Taking Off? Blame The Platform Owners
They don't need help, they already got your money.
Balrogs have wings too, right?

;)
I read the article. 3 times in the end.

I now realise quite a lot of it was meant to be sarcastic from your other comments. Which clarifies a lot of your points. I'm a brit and employ the humour myself a lot. But it really doesn't work online or in texts or in emails. Really doesn't work.

I'm sure your story works well in the pub because you're there to embellish, explain and make obvious which bits are jokes and which aren't. Online, it's a real mess, it's actually two stories and it's very confusing.

Story 1 - We started with a HTTP API and the end of the story is we ended up connecting directly to the DB. No explanation why the initial decision was made, seems to make no sense. This initial decision and final revelation is actually totally moot to story 2.

Story 2 - To try and 'fix' performance problems with the opening of story 1, you went down a rabbit hole of fixing the problem in front of you. This led to hilarious craziness. Understandable and I think this was actually supposed to be the main thrust of the story, but your opening was about a completely different story.

You also veer off those two stories a lot, constantly digressing into minor plots without any good reason. So not only did I read 'so, there's this tortoise and there's a hare, detail, detail, detail, and so it turned out, the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes!', but I'm also wondering where all the minor plot points are taking me, which is pretty much nowhere. They were clarifications that don't clarify at all, they just distract.
Is Facebook actually featuring Twitter's Vine on their New Feed video? http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s

Also, I like it better, more content / less chrome.

The Follow news feed filter was much needed.
By the letter of the law, the arrangement is copyrightable, though the information itself is not, in the same way that the arrangement of a phone book is copyrightable even though the phone numbers are not. Yes, it is ridiculous.
So the chief difference there is price and the WiFi interaction between the bulbs?
Is everything else the same between the two products, then? Or does LIFX offer any additional advantage?
As far as I know, it can only create a pointer of type A that actually points to a value of type B, not reference unallocated/deallocated memory. Nullable<T> could do that too if the language allowed it.
"Google promises they will let users browse a map, check their mail, record a video directly from the headset, without lifting a finger"

WHO cares about this? You do these things at home and at work. Just like smartphones, who needs to do these things on the fly? Answer: nobody!
IIRC with DIIIs error 37, it was just the authentication servers so once you actually got past them and into the game the game-play servers were mostly ok (albeit laggy)

With SC5 its the actual game play servers that seem to be full, and also fairly buggy (saved game corruption, unable to create regions/cities or join, losing hours of work)
Ask HN: Alternatives to Adsense?
I run a site with 5M pageviews/mo which just got banned by Adsense for a single user-uploaded photo of a topless woman. Anyone have experience with other ad networks, preferably ones that are quick to get up and running?
I assume the poster is referring to the effect of affirmative action for under-represented minorities which can be viewed as effectively taking away spots from over-represented minorities. Of course it also takes spots away from the majority group.

Or alternatively perhaps the poster refers to latent preference for 'blue blood'-connected individuals and networks?
Because it's not always the case of just one minor patch. You have to figure that a lot of these games have fairly complicated backend architectures. You could be talking multiple different services, all with different configuration requirements.

There's a big difference between designing a server so the public can running it, and designing a server for internal use only.
When you say tangential, I assume you mean orthogonal?
What was wrong with Starcraft 2?
What's your specific criticism of Objectivism? I'm genuinely curious.
Michael kors outlet store
Tim Harford: Can an app make us behave better?
It is different, however, to say "we want more of minority X at the expense of the majoity" than to say 'the maximum number of minority X is Y"
Or you could just tell me.
I haven't delved into the Windows drivers but clearly they're doing something that the Ubuntu ones aren't for this issue to exist. I just noticed it's happening after a "cold boot" of the amBX. I'm just calling it an initialization issue because that's what it seems to me. Just wanted to clear that up first just in case the way I was using "initialization" wasn't clear.

I'm using a combination of boblight, ruby-usb and combustd to get it to work. This isn't my blog but I used this as a guideline to get everything up and running:

http://slickeel.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/philips-ambx-starte...

The tricky thing was realizing I had to have it "initialize" in Windows before this would work.
I think you've got your timeline confused.

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

> Wolfram Alpha was announced in March 2009 and subsequently released on May 15, 2009.[1]

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2111106/Rock-the-Vote-A...

> Rise of Google Sets

> Originally launched in 2002, Google Sets was truly an innovation in the keyword research tool landscape.
Note that QR codes cannot be read in mirror image, so only
3 of the 6 possible cube orientations cast a readable
shadow.

Well, now I can't stop thinking about QR code rotations. How big is the subset of QR codes that are valid in more than one orientation? (some combination of rotated, flipped, or mirrored). Treating the marks for position/alignment/etc as a separate layer and flip/rotate/mirror the rest of the code.

What about the different sizes of code? Can it only be done with, say Version 4 and not Version 3 codes?
Build Better Audiences with Fanatical
This sums it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLYLmsEBGug
Inventing the Future of Second Screen
You're typically talking:

* Matchmaking

* Authentication

* Stats

* Chat

Things have come a long way since Battle.NET, you're really not going to find that backend servers for any modern game are a simple thing.

Hell, any game that makes use of GFWL is going to be heavily dependent on the GFWL SDK. You can't release that, as it's under a fairly strick NDA. The same with any SteamWorks game.
I have had a mixed bag with LEB deals. Forced me to figure out how to run my apps Ina distributed fashion, which was fun. Currently with ThrustVPS where I pay $8/month. They have been solid for about two years now. BuyVM also seems to have great reputation on LEB.
> You can't just copy over a folder (or file) and call it a day ...

Yes, yes you can.
I didn't try to invalidate your words :), just sharing my experience. I was also more Russian-looking, especially at a younger age.

Perhaps I was just caught in a bad moment (just after the collapse of the USSR, on the wave of "independence" of Armenia). Or perhaps it's my first name, which is totally Russian (my last name is Armenian and not even Russified like yours - I suppose it's kind of a curious juxtaposition of the 2). I was constantly fighting other kids in the street and had to go to the only Russian elementary school in Yerevan, otherwise my school life would probably be miserable. When I lived in Moscow afterwards, I was just going to the local school with the Russian kids. This is not to say Russians are as a rule extremely welcoming to immigrants, but in my case I had a much better time there.

As far as the good old days, of which I don't remember much - I'm guessing Russians always had a bit of a superiority complex, being a "metropoly" within the USSR, but generally things were kept more in check than now, given the state's declared internationalist policy. Both my parents are half-and-half, which was very common in Armenia - so it must have been not so bad on an everyday level.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I interpreted "selling point" as "you pay extra for this."
There's a shortage of cheap talent.