skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is something we looked at for a while when starting out, and even posted on HN to ask about (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203864). In the end, we chose Flex because it seemed like we could get good enough performance while enjoying the benefits of quicker development. We mostly use pure AS3, but we saved some time with a few components. Hopefully someday we can strip those out and cut the Flex framework overhead.

But yes, Flash player has an unpredictably crappy internal clock and performance varies significantly based on the browser and OS, so synchronizing the notes with the music has been a challenge. For the most part, I think we've done a fairly good job compared to the existing players. We scale intense tasks dynamically in game but there is definitely room to improve (custom a/v delay, controller delay, really-crappy-performance mode, etc).
Most successful people don't know how they got to be successful. They'll attribute it to whatever they think got them there.

Luck is being prepared for an opportunity

Those who are not prepared, are unlucky. They let life push them in whatever random direction life pushes them in.

http://sithsigma.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/luck-is-being-prep...
For that you have to come to our apartment in Berlin for our startup dinners. We've done about 5 of them (one being a Berlin news.yc meetup) and they all feature enchiladas or fajitas.

Sure, Berlin's a bit out of the way from Italy, but some things in life simply take priority.
The fact that this was upvoted now also shows us the fickle nature of HN/similar sites.
A great example of a startup iterating quickly and moving into relevant spaces. I imagine the cost to analyze available twitter names was minimal, and will provide considerable value to the "twitter brand" types.

Overall brilliant feature. Just wish they were a bit more active in responding.
Many U.S. citizen know that it's not worthwhile to get a Ph.D. and in some instances, a Master's degree. See Philip Greenspun's "Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists" at
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/
"This is a problem to say the least."

Can you state more clearly where you think the problem is? Or is it simply that you don't find this arrangement preferable?
What's so silly about The End of History? Although the title is somewhat hyperbolic, I agree.
So, in other words, it doesn't fit into preexisting languages idiomatically. You want to introduce new idioms into Closure to make it integrate better with the JVM.

That's fine, but it also means that if you want to do a direct port of, say, Ruby or Python or Erlang, you'll have several rather large warts compared to new languages designed to run on the JVM and use the Java class libraries.
A long, rambling cold-war type of article with all the boogeymen you'd expect: Russia, China, and other nations.

And of course, it's a bit strange that critical resources are accessible from outside their internal networks, but I suppose there is a set of rather compelling reasons for it.

I'd be surprised if all the nations with sufficient resources didn't have similar access networks setup. That includes the US. It's a distracting waste of time and resources for all involved - billions of dollars and plenty of scare.
One of the great accomplishments of mathematics in the 20th century was to establish that the self-referential paradox ("This sentence is a lie") was not merely a clever word game or unimportant paradox to be waved away as irrelevant, but a deep and profound true paradox with implications that challenged mathematics to the core and changed it forever. Merely reading a bit about Godel's proof isn't enough; you need to read enough history to realize that what was amazing about Godel's proof isn't what it proved, but instead the fact that it was a proof. Mathematicians and even "normal people" have of course known about the paradox for millennia. What Godel did was truly, finally make it inescapable. You can not have a nontrivial consistent theory while still waving away the self-referential paradox.

I wish this style of proof would penetrate through to postmodern philosophers. If everything that one person chooses to believe is true for them, and that person chooses to believe that there is an objective truth that precludes this statement, then you have a problem. This is not wordplay or an irrelevant point, any more than Godel's proof was. Either there are false statements about morality, or your claim that everything is subjectively true is also false. It's not a trivial point.

And I find that in practice, what gives is that postmodernists do in fact believe in absolute morality and it's all just a game to fool themselves and you into thinking otherwise. I see no reason to play that game any more, especially as I think most people would be repulsed if they took the time to work through what postmodern morality really is, instead of what it claims to be.

(This doesn't mean that we automatically know what the objective morality is, or whether there is one or many. It simply means that true subjective morality is fatally and irretrievably flawed. I say "true" because the moment you introduce an absolute, it is no longer subjective. Any absolute will do. Moralities can be quite complicated and nuanced, like utilitarianism, even as a utilitarianist must inevitably take their utility measurement as an absolute axiom. There isn't much "absolute" there, but it is non-zero.)

That said, reading the original article, I'm not sure that David Brooks would necessarily disagree with what I just wrote. I'm not sure he's advocating total relativism so much as observing that whatever concretes may exists seem to bear no particular relationship to the concretes that are claimed by anybody, religious (or aggressively non-religious), philosophical, or otherwise. I think there's a difference between merely observing and making claims about what should be true, and this op-ed strikes me more as an observation. So I guess I'm responding more to your comment than the article.
That's interesting. I routinely switch from a 17 inch laptop screen and a 30 inch monitor screen, and don't change the font.
It should be pointed out that postmodern subjective ethics is not the simple opposite of objective reality. While postmodern subjective morality has fundamental contradictions (as I outline in my other post here), that doesn't prove the existence of an objective morality. It merely shows that for any given thing that may be worth calling a "morality" there will be an objective component. If there is "an" objective morality, it will have to come from some other source.
'Sexting' Hysteria Falsely Brands Educator as Child Pornographer
The article by Niall Kennedy (a couple of links in) on facebook's new storage system, Haystack, and its implementation was pretty interesting.

http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/04/facebook-haystack.h...
How much of the cost of a plant in the US is defending against absolutely inevitable litigation, in a process designed to be used by environmentalists against anything they don't like?

The Price Anderson Act (and similar later laws) limit the maximum liability of nuclear plant operators. If nuclear power really is as safe as any other kind, then Congress should repeal those limits.
When you're selling high-end handbags the distinction between $895 and $1,100 is not really the first thing on the mind of the client.
Followup on the $18000 StockArt.com story
I want 1.5 Oz
One thing I didn't understand before playing with Mosso Cloud Servers, is that a "cloud server" is basically a VPS that prices bandwidth incrementally and allows fractional billing cycles. If you shut down your Mosso cloud server, you are still getting billed at the same per hour rate as when it is running. You have to delete your server configuration before the billing stops.
Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter
i don't use twitter, despite the multiple invitations from friends...at least not yet

nonetheless, as soon as i saw this, i knew i had to register my startup's name on twitter. thanks so much
http://news.ycombinator.com/apply

Receive $10K before you launch.
I have tried the lids. My cat is so fussy that it just will not eat it once it has been in the fridge.

I'm very serious about the 1.5 Oz cans - I'd be a customer immediately.
I'm just pointing out that you don't want to run your db on non-redundant disk. Really, I think in-ram, redundant databases like MySQL cluster are more suited to the 'cloud' - especially as you can get cheap ram.

Just looking at the bonnie results, ebs wasn't that far off everything else in terms of sequential access.
I use 3oz cans, feed my cat 1/2 can at a time, and still have quite a bit left over.
A coordinated raid of multiple sites inside of the US wouldn't be that hard. A coordinated raid spanning multiple countries would be hard enough that you'd have to suspected of Really, Really, Bad Things for it to come off.
How do they get the PINs?

Also, you would think these organizations would have enough money to produce something less sketchy. Was it attached with masking tape?
I remember meeting you at startup school. Congrats on profitability :-)

I'm working on http://stylous.com/. Making sales but not profitable yet ...
This is ideally a great product, if you can solve three practical problems.

1. Nutritional needs depend on age, time, body, activities, etc.

2. The desire for tasty food often greatly out-weights the desire for nutritional food.

3. Evolutionarily, we were designed to want more than what we need.
The interviewers talks too much. I'm listening to it right now and it's really frustrating. In the first 8 minutes Timothy talks for maybe 2 minutes total.
The part about the medical malpractice lawsuits makes the article worth the read, but wtf is up with his opening anecdotes?

I was instantly furious. I pulled out fast to chase the other car, leaning on my horn and flashing my lights. Finally, the car stopped and I pulled up right behind him, still honking. We both got out of our cars.

Really? Because you almost pulled out in front of the guy? Why is he the one apologizing to you, again?

A friend of mine, Paul Rosenfield, was skiing with his six-year-old son Yonah when Yonah fell. It was not a terrible fall, but the binding didn't release and Yonah broke his leg. After an emotionally wrenching day spent in the emergency room tending to his child, Paul went to the shop to return the skis and speak with the owner.

Your kid breaks his leg skiing, just like a trillion other kids every winter, and you march up to the guy asking for what sounds like evidence you can take to court, wtf do you think his reaction is going to be? That he's going fall all over himself to admit that he screwed up when he probably doesn't remember your kid and probably honestly thinks he did nothing wrong? Like he hasn't seen a million assholes just like you who do want more than an apology?
Important clarification for many people reading this discussion: the sticker price of a Japanese apartment is not anywhere close to the amount of money it requires to actually move into it. I pay 45,000 yen (approximately $450) a month for my apartment in central Japan. Its quite spacious and very much in the stix. However, three days before movein I had to wire my landlord approximately $2,000.

2 months security deposit (nota bene: as a matter of course, this is not returned in this country),
1 month rent,
1 month finder fee,
various insurance, etc, etc

That includes NO key money.

"Key money" (礼金) is a fun little idiosyncracy of Japanese real estate that says your landlord is sort of your buddy in a new town so you should give them a little gift to ensure their good favor. This gift can range from 1 to 3+ months rent, in cash, delivered prior to move-in. You will never see it again. The social justification for the tradition is long since dead (I've never even met my landlord, just the apartment referral service that handled everything) but, like all societal traditions that result in someone making money, it is shockingly durable.

There are other reasons I could name why a pay-by-the-day option is preferable to a traditional rented apartment (lack of a guarantor, lack of verifiable employment, etc) for folks in desperate situations, but I won't bore you too much. Suffice it to say that I'm glad I'm not in that situation but I understand why someone in it would choose to be "virtually" homeless.
Depends on what the win/lose ratio is.

If they only lost on 25% of the 2001 suits (or just lost smaller amounts in general), compared to 95% of the 2007 ones - then they would come out behind.
Probably still a big saving.
Much better list. But isn't it missing Arab foreigner/immigrants/refugees category? Including 2nd or 3rd generation residents? 4.5?

Also, is a list the best way of describing it. #3 & #2 (to an extent) are often a lot poorer then #4. I assume you are referring to rights rather then financial position.
I Can't Make You Love Me Lyrics by Bonnie Raitt
Even when you have market share, it's not clear if your assumptions are validated as it is difficult to isolate variables in the real world.

For example, is Microsoft or MySpace dominant because of their UI or despite their UI? Because of their development practices or despite them? Or was their principle asset that of being a first mover? How does one separate those variables?
Actually, no, it can't, unless you code all your business rules into the db as well. The advantage the objects have is that they're also the application and all the rules are there and checkable.
Video tour of Google's data centers & their energy/water/space efficiency know-how
Google AppEngine Java Support Launches
this happens in every market, it's called insider trading and to expect google to be immune is naive. it's a risk and/or cost of doing business.
> If everything that one person chooses to believe is true for them, and that person chooses to believe that there is an objective truth that precludes this statement, then you have a problem.

I can't parse this sentence at all -- mostly, I think, because "true for them" doesn't seem to mean anything. Can you clarify? Also, what's the problem you're talking about?
The reason I say "as if it had been printed" is because converting things to "kindle format" sucks and tends to not work correctly unless it is just plain text. My printer never has this problem. Also it seems like this would reduce the complexity of the device and with that hopefully the price.
Furthermore, searching will only work if you have only text which is one of the problems...
You're definitely right about needing page numbers though.
Information Retrieval papers you need to read
I can see why one would be interested in the price of something they like, but do you particularly care about the price of items which you do not like? After all, these are fashion items not bushels of wheat.

If you like most of the items, I can see how it would be convenient to always show the price. But if you only like a small % and can easily access their price via a mouse over, then showing the prices by default costs you visual clutter with little benefit.
"The FBI has a duty to ensure that its overwhelming powers are wielded only by those competent to do so, in the same way that it has a duty to ensure that anyone it issues with a firearm is sufficiently trained in its use. There is no room for such wild discrepancies in competence when the agency in question has such power to ruin lives."

Well said! You are absolutely correct.
I'm thinking about the times when I've been involved in a software deployment gone awry. In highly-politicized companies, everyone points their fingers at some other person/group. "If they had configured the database properly...." Nobody's taking even partial blame, so forget about apologies. In most cases, everybody's at fault in some way, so everybody ought to be taking blame for something. However, if one group does the "right" thing and admits a failure, the other groups seize the opportunity to exonerate themselves at the honest group's expense. So, nobody wants to be the first to flinch. How can cultures change so that the self-aware are rewarded for honesty and those in convenient denial are punished?
I remember reading about a proposal for a kind of "good samaritan" type law that would prevent people from being made liable through giving an apology. (I think this was specifically for medical malpractice.) It seems like a good idea.

I think some of this problem comes about because of ambiguity in the english language that prevents us from expressing ourselves properly. Saying sorry can mean both that you feel regret but it also can mean that you accept responsibility, and which is which is ambiguous. It's a shame that one can't apologize sincerely and then argue in court that your apology was the former and not the latter - but it seems you can't.

If we just had a better way of saying this kind of thing then I think a lot of the problem would go away.
The problem, is that my preference is now morality.
These events remind me of Operation Sundevil and the raid on Steve Jackson Games, described in Bruce Sterling's book "The Hacker Crackdown".
In their defense, these tips are useful.
When it comes to romantic decision-making, neuroscientists say the rational part of our brain gets dumped.

Yes. The blood flows out of the head and into other parts.
Perhaps you could convince AT&T to host your servers right next to the Echelon equipment.
Hmm I'd like to see JRuby running on app engine. Who else would?
When I scan the headlines on HN, I usually pay little attention to the links I've already clicked on. I'm sure many others do the same. Guess that's a good lesson: create a blog post or a separate page, e.g. www.domainpigeon.com/twitter, when announcing a new feature.
Yes, this happens in many industries, but what he's saying is that Google probably doesn't take the same precautions that other industries do/are forced to.
"First, put the fingers of one hand on your throat when you speak. If you can feel your vocal cords vibrating, then you are definitely a throat speaker."

This is utter gibberish. Your vocal cords vibrate when you articulate voiced consonants and vowels. It doesn't matter what language or dialect you speak, it's a fundamental element of all human speech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_consonant
The guy who wrote the article should apologize for how he responded.
A coworker and I were implementing a DropBox style file storage/sharing site. We worked towards a pilot but in the end our momentum fell out, with him in grad school, me with a family, and both of us working full time, it was too much to keep going. He's finishing up his degree now and I'm working on a new project, which I currently have my family and friends testing out for me.
that would be very cool.
Start-Up Gets Course in Survival
Anon84, you have been churning out some good links lately. What is it? hack mode? beautiful isn't it? :-)

[sorry, had to make a private remark publicly, to someone I don't know because HN doesn't have messaging. just had to acknowledge that Anon84, and others like him, has been keeping the place more "hackish" and less TechCrunch-fluff.]
Well, I saw it before, and it took a several minutes then, maybe 5 or 15, I don't really remember. Then you have to consider that companies like D.E. Shaw end up hiring people who would end up giggling at how long somebody slow like me would take to solve the problem.
Voted up, because I am actually planning to pay for a giganews feed, now that Time Warner killed there usenet servers.
I've known about InfraGard, and I've met InfraGard people from the Cincinnati area, but my understanding was that it focused on "how to get/guard against the bad guys." What I'm talking about is more along the lines of, "how to make sure you don't trample innocents."

If the police need to detain someone with special medical needs, I hope that they get medical advice on how to ensure no harm is done. If the police need to do a raid in a community where the majority culture is different and no one speaks English, I should hope that they get a hold of the specialized expertise to negotiate that gracefully. A raid at a datacenter used by parties other than the suspect is another situation requiring specialized knowledge.

So there are lots of FBI agents savvy enough to get advice. I think the problem involves the ones who don't know enough to know the full extent of their own ignorance.

Also, regulations are in order. If the authorities have the power to bring down someone's business on an "OOOPS," doesn't this leave a loophole begging to be exploited?
Apologies, empathy, fanatical dedication, and accurate responses which resolve problems are more important than getting to someone within 5 minutes. They're also much easier to actually put into practice for most small businesses.

If you establish and cultivate a perception that you'll be on top of all issues within 5 minutes, then you better enjoy that beeper you just bought yourself, because you're going to be hearing it a lot.

Adjust as appropriate for conditions in your business/industry. (If people can die, spring for the beeper.)
The person you replied to mentioned it, not the article. I'm not making any claims either way.
Been there, done that.

Apply, I mean. :)
Based on that research, I guess my next startup will end all home work and help people "be there" (wherever their friends are hanging out) instead of working.
Insider trading? You mean that defined crime with the lock-you-away-in-federal prison penalties routinely imposed? Investigated by a dedicated government agency? Which I got an email about four days ago? From the corporate division whose job it is to sniff out and eliminate insider trading? By, for example, emailing every engineer 4th class to remind them that earnings announcements are coming out this week and that all trades of company stock within 4 days of the announcement are to be made only with signed authorization and that infringement of the rule is grounds for immediate termination regardless of whether I have actual insider information or not? That insider trading?

This resembles what you think goes on inside Google? In what way, pray tell?
What happened at Facebook December 2008?
Summary: Apologizing is free and it makes things better. Why not?

I got the same basic message from How to Win Friends and Influence People -- being nice/smiling/etc. is free, you just have to remember to do it and counteract any natural grumpiness.
I think Buffalo produced something like this called the "yellow box" or something.

It is getting easier and easier for a low-capital business to produce something like this. If you are interested in looking at this commercially send me an email at rgristroph@gmail.com, I have been researching various low power linux computers and etc.
dupe/blogspam: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=551938
Are you single? My name is Markus and I created Plentyoffish.com...
There's a market for keywords, and these employees (we are, I guess, assuming for this discussion) have insider information on those. Like you said, it's worth millions, and like stock trading, it's basically a zero-sum game, so if you become a big winner by cheating, there are people losing unfairly.

Just because it doesn't have the kind of rules around it that you describe doesn't mean it's not analogous. In fact, I thought that analogy and the galling lack of such oversight was your original point.
Wonder what kind of CTR/conversion this ad is bringing!

It certainly grabbed my attention, though I'm not sure how much of it was because of seeing a name I recognized(Markus/Plentyoffish).
Twitter Traffic Explodes
The problem is trust. People won't know for sure that's what they are getting. It's a similar problem with online fresh grocery shopping.

I have a few friends in robotics who periodically pitch this idea around.
http://www.cineflashplayer.com/

Click on the products part to see that they sell through kiosks.
I'm having trouble getting the page to load, and google doesnt have a cached copy yet.

Is it working for anyone else?
The Art of Commercialization
If you are not in real time, you're dead.