skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Reasonable people can differ only if their prior information is different.

Disagree entirely.

When evaluating complex choices in a chaotic world, we humans use tons of heuristics. There are a lot of things that aren't quantifiable information, but still allow two rational people to reach different conclusions: models of the universe, weight attached to different speakers, moral stances, worldviews, etc.
Slicehost's included transfer makes a huge difference.

Take the 4GB level:

Slicehost w/1600GB transfer == $250
Mosso w/1600GB transfer (assuming 75% out which is likely an under-estimate) == $470
Mosso w/1600GB transfer (100% in) == $303

So, it depends on how your application will work. Mosso has a lot of bandwidth charges that start to add up.
Our own.

Our company was founded as a CMU spin-off of the Robotics Institute to commercialize the work of one of our founders. See: http://pittpatt.com/about/
Berkeley Researcher Introduces Crowdsourced Air Quality Sensors
There's the age old argument of which system to go for: Passive (my suggestion) or Active (yours).

Probably both have merits but I am inclined to agree yours is the better way :D
Thanks nimbix and dr_strangelove, I'm going to take that out of my backup routine, but being that I don't like to 'remember to do things' - add it to a once every three months routine.
Yes, but the objects themselves are antiques, never antiquarians.

A person can be an antiquarian.

A magazine, auction house, magnifying glass, price guide, etc. can be antiquarian.

Unless you're asserting that the old equipment RELATES TO or DEALS WITH antiques, I don't see what point you're trying to make.
Ask HN:  When does taking risk = stupidity?
How many of you think it's crazy for a non-tech founder who has always won......and recently lost......to take his wife and 3 kids (I'm 36) and move from east coast to silicon valley to network with brilliance and build greatness?

I have never doubted myself before, but I'm no longer in my 20's and single.

Note:I can self-fund up to average size angel round. I have 2 weeks to make a decision.
Lets forget about technology.

Technology is by no means the only work area that's very out of kilter in terms of gender distribution. Technology is just a very well paying and fairly prominent industry, so it's talked about a lot more then say truck driving.

Lets concentrate purely on gender imbalanced groups. Any gathering of humans where the sexes are not proximately 50/50 or 60/40 but 90/10 or even more extreme.

I think we can all agree that this is neither natural nor healthy.

But, once a population goes out of what like that, the imbalance can work to maintain intself. It's an interesting group dynamic, but I've heard male nurses complain much like I've heard female programmers complain.

That's why I think that a 90/10 or worse split is obviously not a good thing, for almost any human endeavor. Some exceptions certainly apply, like monasteries.

And I think a 90/10 or worse split can become self maintaining.

But I'm not sure there's a practical solution for this. No amount of encouragement or gentle prodding will fix this.
Nor would I. But, a porn-filled past is stigmatizing. The same men who paid for a DVD of the young starlet would be unwilling to hire her out of college at age 26 as a marketing assistant. She's tainted, you know! So, it's a nice nest egg if well invested, but one must factor future opportunity loss into his NPV analysis.
I really like the ordering UI +1
How to make the simplest electric motor
Wow, it looks like they even scrubbed this from search.twitter.com...? I didn't look hard, though.
>Our own.

That doesn't help.
If I don't say I'm a Mac person, people say I'm a shill. It's also just the truth --- I don't want to imply I like using Windows (although I like Vista more than I like XP).
I was with the very first testbed registrar in 99. How's that for startup excitement.

Stay Hungry. Keep It Simple.
This analysis makes me a little sad. I want to like mojombo's work (I like Github a lot) but I've just had too many issues with his OSS.
To a certain extent, it doesn't matter that much. This is a problem that affects most universities and most courses. Ultimately I became resigned to focusing on what I wanted from my course, which was to learn some knowledge and skills I found interesting. Also a degree seems to act as a sign that you're capable of getting a degree, and putting up with the bullshit that entails these days. It doesn't say anything about how good a developer you are or will become, or what kind of "Computer Scientist" you are. That's part of the reason why companies have interview processes, because you can only glean so much from a CV.

So, my advice is to give the guy a hand if you have time, you'll probably find he has skills that compliment your own which could come in useful someday. Also, try to stop caring so much about how your peers are performing, and focus on exploiting the access to people and resources available to you so you can get what you want out of the course. Ultimately there's very little you can do to change the behaviour of people your only mildly acquianted with.
People lie out their ass in interviews. They're also likely to jump ship at any time in the future for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe they just don't like the leftovers you bring to work because it stinks up the office. Who knows. It's called risk, it's real, and if you're an entrepreneur or businessman you better get used to it.

Ask them a few technical questions to make sure they aren't full of it, use your gut and intuition, do a probationary contract period, and hire them after 2 or 3 months if they're good. Some successful managers don't even do the contract period. If you can't successfully judge people at least on a semi-consistent basis, you might want to try finding a business partner who can.

At some point running a business, you have to learn what "risk" and "unknown" really means - it means you have no fucking clue what's going to happen. Plan for outcomes, don't plan on outcomes.
I'd like to see them do a "How RMS gets things done" article. What do you use for email? Emacs. What browser do you use? I don't use a browser. Etc. Etc. Etc.
California is losing money. For example, NewEgg (based in California), faces a pricing disadvantage against Amazon in online sales to California residents, because NewEgg has to collect sales tax. At the margin people choose Amazon -- resulting in lost profits/jobs for NewEgg, and lost sales/income tax revenues for the state. In some cases, this also means shipments have to go an inefficiently long-distance, because of an arbitrary legal distinction. (Though, for the bay area, Amazon's Reno distribution center is closer than Southern California.)

And that's just comparing online retailers; there's no reason Amazon should have such a tax-based price advantage over the bookstore a block from me, driving the local supplier closer to bankruptcy and making it cheaper for me to have a book shipped hundreds of miles rather than walking a few minutes to pick it up myself.

I like low taxes. I like no taxes even better. But taxes that create arbitrary opportunities for gaming/avoidance aren't really in anyone's interest.
Whether you get along with that person or not depends on what's important to you.

There is a great book about body language called What Every Body is Saying by an ex-FBI agent. Excellent read and be forewarned that you'll start seeing other people in a very different light. Heck, it will make you think twice about what and how you say things. On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d... .
I'm not using GM and don't have any plans to.
Luckily I also provided a link, which, should you visit, mentions a paper. It might help.

We also have an entire website describing the technology stack built on top of the basic algorithm that allows it to be extended to entire videos for large scale data processing and large scale reasoning. We explain most of the pieces of the puzzle.

See: http://pittpatt.com/technology/
>"Lets concentrate purely on gender imbalanced groups. Any gathering of humans where the sexes are not proximately 50/50 or 60/40 but 90/10 or even more extreme.

>I think we can all agree that this is neither natural nor healthy."

I agree with your main point, but not this one. There are clear differences in personality distribution between the sexes, either due to biology or culture, that can effect their relative desire to participate in various activities. A few activities will have gender ratio imbalances, and that's not necessarily unnatural or unhealthy. Men have been doing the lion's share of hunting and war since time immemorial.

The problem is that CS doesn't obviously have to be one of those activities. It seems to maintain its gender imbalance more through inertia than necessity, as you said. While other sciences also have gender imbalances, they tend to be much less extreme, and I think it possible that CS can move in that direction.
Honda Changes Its Mind, Will Invest More Into Advanced Hybrids
I think you could make that argument but you'd lose. To an extent not well covered in the trade press, a lot of the pain in Vista --- an epic flop --- was due to tradeoffs Microsoft made for security and against end-user happiness.
I wasn't too interested in the linked blog post, but the title made me think of Resolver.

http://www.resolverhacks.net/resolver.html

http://code.google.com/p/resolver/

I have no experience with it (I'd be interested in comments from those who do), but the premise is intriguing and it appears to be non-vaporware, if still beta. (N.B. It appears to be going in the opposite direction, in some ways, from what the posterous page is proposing.)

----

Separately, I'm reminded of a recent page I encountered where someone describes (including how-to steps) using SQLite as a backend for Excel, for handling large datasets that benefit from the Excel interface (without getting into the whole Access thing/disputes).

Googling, it looks like the below is the page. I haven't read through it, yet, but I'd made a mental note to do so sometime. I'll still mention it in case it intrigues anyone else as it did me.

http://blog.gobansaor.com/2009/03/14/sqlite-as-the-mp3-of-da...
Was going to post a response to this, but you nailed it.

Anecdotally, we moved off postgres because we could not hire (full time, contact, or consult) anyone who would be considered an expert at postgres replication, and the cost/benefit of switching off compared to growing such an expert favored switching off.

Postgres is my go-to database where a regular backup, rather than warm/live replica, meets availability needs.
They don't mention that Comcast charges more for broadband if you don't have cable service. You can opt for BASIC1 cable and pay less overall than if you had no cable service at all.

Besides that, using OTA only works well if you a) have a good line of site to the broadcasting tower (trees create multipath signals, which give you ghosts) b) aren't too far away (25+ miles) c) don't mind storms interrupting your TV shows and d) can find some way to snake coaxial cable into your house since e) you'll want a good outdoor antenna (Channel Master makes great ones), not some bunny ears.

The nice thing about having BASIC1 is that you can pull the HD channels off your cable connection without paying any additional fees. Often, the bit rate isn't as good as OTA but it's a more dependable signal.
Old-School Twitter
If there's one question that tells you where someone's heart is, it'll be one they ask, not you.
I don't think we can argue that it isn't natural. Before the last century or two it was rather natural, among other species it is quite common for genders to have specialized roles as well, and there are certain roles which will always be imbalanced (childbearing, for one).

As I understand it, in the end the objection to gender imbalance is that it constitutes an unfairness to either the minority (executives, programmer) or majority (nurses + school teaching during the period their wage/benefits were still severely depressed by gender imbalance).

I don't think we can argue that unfairness is a threat to the system or to groups, it is universal. Rather, I think we just prefer not to realize it's there.
Well, for me it works anyway. That's who I built it for.
In order to be competitive in technology, you must be good at distinguishing issues from details.

In this case, gender is a detail, not an issue. Anyone overly concerned with it is missing what really matters.
Not sure if I'm just missing this part of their pricing pages, but if your site starts needing more resources than what you planned on, does it automatically and gracefully bump up the appropriate numbers on the pricing plan and bill you accordingly?
Lawyer Fees for New Webstartup
I am starting a UK webstartup with three directors: myself, my current business partner and a hacker (share is 40:40:20). At the moment we are getting quotes for the legal documents required for the limited company and it seems we can't get anything for less than £2000+VAT.

I wondered if anyone had any advice on this.

I'm not sure if we need to be looking for quality and sacrifice cash, or vice-versa. Or indeed if there is any cheaper way of preparing the documents we need.

Thanks!
force that status upon unwilling or unknowing companies that aren't anywhere near its jurisdiction

Does Amazon really fall into that category? It has more than one subsidiary based in California, with "an Amazon.com company" on their websites. (A9 and Alexa are two.)

It's odd that California even has to resort to the 'affiliates count as operations' trick, until you consider the game-theoretic aspects -- Amazon has a credible threat of withdrawing its subsidiaries to avoid the tax, but perhaps not dismantling its affiliates' program.

Really, this needs a national solution -- perhaps a standard sales tax that applies when a sale straddles exactly two states, with the revenue split 50/50 between source and destination. Otherwise distant online retailers like Amazon have an unfair advantage over nearby terrestrial retailers (like my bookstore down the street) or same-state online retailers (like NewEgg).
EY doesn't support Passenger for their big clients yet. So all the big Rails sites through EY use nginx + mongrels.

However, EY does use monit.
Questions and free advice:

What does "recently lost" mean? Be sure you aren't doing this based soley on emotion.

What's an average size round to you?

What do you bring to the table as a non-tech?

Is there a business you want to build, or are you looking for pitches?

It's stupid if your wife and family aren't into this. Risk money, not family.
In any topic that arouses people's passions, I find that if I want to say something nice about hated group X, then if I don't identify myself as a non-X, then people dismiss what I say as another one of those "damn X-ers".

It's irrational, yes. But that's human nature for you.

What's surprising, and perhaps sad, is that operating systems have aroused people's passions so intensely that it has become one of those volatile topics, like the canonical religion and politics, that one must treat very carefully, and certainly not bring up at dinner.
Right, the polygon makes sense, but I agree with wallflower - it's not very aesthetically pleasing. I think a good designer could come up with something that is both functional and nicer to look at.
I agree. The key is to move forward. The way I see it is that it's a journey, and no matter how long it takes, as long as I put at least one foot forward a day, no matter how small a step, it takes me closer to the destination. I might not get there for a while, but if I stop moving forward, I'm never going to get there.
How Facebook May Become More Like MySpace
The language (interpreter ? VM? ) leaks memory?

AFAIK the interpreter has no intrinsic leaks, but many ruby applications keep objects referenced beyond their intended life, preventing GC.

Edit: You extended your edit after I started responding :->

perhaps by holding onto objects and not letting the GC collect them

Yup, that's my understanding.
I HATE HATE HATE Comcast.
To me it wasn't the "Mac person" comment that convinced me of the point. Just the thoughtfulness that was apparent in the post. There was mention of facts, and it obviously wasn't a rant.

Kneejerk "Microsoft rules" or the opposite should be downvoted, even if followed by "I'm a Mac person". I'd like to think that's what would happen as well.
Yay, thank you for the rational discussion :)

The question I would ask you, dave, is why aren't you motivated? Why is motivation something that has to be done to you? Why don't you wake up jazzed to do your startup thing, at least a couple days a week?

I had a real awakening when I started to take the guilt load off myself, and started viewing all my actions (or inaction) not as indicative of my worth as a person, but simply choices, which had logical consequences, which I had to either accept or change. Consequences doesn't seem like a neutral term, but I do look at them fairly neutrally, not as punishments for being dillatory.

Not judging yourself is really hard -- from childhood on up we are told "No!" all the time, guided mainly by negative feedback or the carrot (which is attached to the stick), and it is insinuated that our being "lazy" or "unproductive" or "not fulfilling our promise" or "not being where we ought to be by now" is not just a choice, but a sin.

But boy does it feel better when you can achieve a more objective look at the situation.

I surely don't hyperventilate (literally, or psychically) over decisions or screw-ups any more.

When the mood strikes, I blog about these topics here:

http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/08/letting-go-of-unfinis...

http://www.justfuckingship.com/2008/11/youre-a-terrible-mana...
What is the problem with DPI? It slows down torrent downloads, which are already slow, but speeds up more synchronous activity like web browsing and chatting. Don't we all want that?
and the moon on a stick too please
The more users they have, the faster they run out of funding. Poor twitter.
s3sync (s3sync.net) and s3cmd (s3tools.org) both let you copy files recursively from s3, so you could use those in a cron job to make a backup on a non-s3 server.
I think God is useful for "prototyping" an app environment. It's got a nice DSL and b/c it's ruby, it's turing complete. It's great for stage servers where flexibility and productivity are more important than a couple nines of uptime.

Monit's config is fairly straight forward, but the monit daemon can be quirky and unpredictable at times, and I usually have to hack out a bash script b/c monit is pretty limited on what it can actually do.

So I start with God, then translate that into Monit + scripts when I get to production.
Will this be a net positive or negative for society? Stalking-type use becomes possible, but maybe people behave better if they feel less anonymous.
What Facebook vote?
"AFAIK the interpreter has no intrinsic leaks, "

ok if what you say is true then Brad's blog post is just wrong isn't it?. Either he is right or you are.

Holding onto objects sounds like something user code does so "ruby leaks" is (or should be) not correct usage I think.

I use python I don't use Ruby, but "Python leaks", as a claim, is different from "my program written in python leaks memory".

the blog post seems to imply it is Ruby's fault. At least it reads that way ("Ruby leaks") hence my confusion. Thanks for the clarification

EDIT: I stand corrected. It seems like Tom is right and the ruby interpreter leaks memory! Incredible!
What Will Oracle Keep?
In its acquisition of Sun, Oracle gains a lot of new market-facing assets. Which ones will it keep, which ones will it get rid of?
Cool! Thanks for the info! I love Postgres buy haven't done a lot of replication with it yet. I'll checkout SkyTools. Thanks again.
Exactly, What the OP is looking for is some sort of "litmus test" to apply to candidates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_(politics)

There exists no single question that is usable to filter good from bad candidates. Interviews are littered with nonsense like "what is your greatest weakness" because some idiot thought that to be some useful litmus test.
EY is now offering Phusion Passenger for Nginx to their clients.
Why I Will Not Be Working at White Oak Technologies Inc.:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/08/08...
Just for the record, the correct spelling of my name is "Tom Preston-Werner." If you're going to attack me, please take a moment to spell my name right. Thanks!
Google Code now supports Mercurial
Sports is a great reason to ditch the television. It is astonishing that we still waste 6 minutes of a 30 minute local news broadcast on the stuff...
What I'm most impressed with isn't Woz's obvious technical birlliance, it's how he's just a decent human being. He presented his ideas to HP before leaving, rather than letting lawyers sort it out if need be. He sold stock to employees, rather than to a single wealthy investor. How he just wanted to be known for designing something great rather than just grab money. Every public appearance I've seen with him has confirmed that.
May I ask which other projects you've had problems with?
It depends, I would pick Mosso to use as a staging or dev server, or to serve up a personal blog.

If I was doing a site that got more traffic I would use a Slice instead.
I used to have a Koh-I-Noor brass barrel Rapidomatic 0.5 mm mechanical pencil that was the best thing I'd ever written with. Foolishly, I took it to a training class one time and lost it. I've never been able to google or eBay a replacement. (There is still a Rapidomatic line, but it is plastic barreled, without the stability and heft that made the brass barreled model so exceptional.

The closest I've found is the Rotring 600 line, which was still carried by Levenger. Also metal, and with a decently decisive action, but neither as precise nor as well weighted as the Koh-I-Noor. Checking now, it appears Levenger no longer offers it.

The Koh-I-Noor loss has been a bitter blow. The weight of the brass provided just enough pressure to allow the pencil lead to glide very smoothly over paper with minimal downward pressure. And the weight was just enough to dampen slight tremors without making writing an effort -- in fact, it was less effort as I didn't have to work as hard to suppress the tremors and minor motions or stutters against an uneven paper surface.

As for the "hacking" aspect: Pencil/pen and paper is still one to the best interfaces I've found for prototyping and for freestyle association. In addition to its freeform nature, I find writing is enough slower than typing that it causes me, in slowing down, to really think things through. I may generate less raw output, but it tends to be of higher quality. That extra bit of delay often allows my mind to go further on a point and to gain insight I otherwise might not achieve.

There is also something kinesthetic about pencil/pen and paper that resonates with my personality. Working in the medium itself begins to generate a positive feedback loop.
People who make amazing technical products, but fail to present them as well as they could, are often disappointed by the outcome.
This is a wife problem, not a technical problem that HN can help you resolve. Does your wife approve? Really approve? Really?
Aggressive Learning
Adeo Ressi: If Common Stock Is Worthless, What Does That Mean for Entrepreneurship?
"Are you the Doctor?"
SecondMarket sets up online marketplace for private stock sales
Is talking about women in technology the problem, or is talking about women in technology without following through and doing something useful the problem?
I particularly like their DAG grapher: http://code.google.com/p/erratic/source/list

Something about the curved corners leaves me really pleased with how it looks.
Are Facebook and Twitter destined for the same fate?