skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well... a nice dropdown in system preferences with something like "Allow any program to use no more than XX processor cores". Plus an editable list of exceptions at the bottom, where you can add serious things like Photoshop, SQL servers, compilers, etc.

I'll be seriously terrified by espn.com when Flash becomes multicore-aware.
I think I'll stick with Assembla. It's the same concept but not as mature. Nothing against it, but it's not really all that unique.
And for another contrary opinion on selling parrot information please visit this link

http://www.goodbirdinc.com/help-Internet_Marketing_Position_...

Business does not need to be deceptive, plagiarize, or unethical to make money. Please consider supporting professionals who have credentials backed by years of experience in their industry, are real people and are honest in how they make a living.
(Just a heads up) Last time I checked, Mosso did not have shell access. As for prgmr, the admin of the service (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lsc) is a regular, friendly, very forthcoming participant on Hacker News who freely admits their website could use some work :D

I'm not a customer or affiliated with prgmr, but I'm definitely going to check them out.
Doesn't this paper basically say:

* Garbage collection is faster than manual frees when you provide processes with so much memory that collection happens so rarely that its cost is lost in the noise, and

* Garbage collection is faster than manual frees when you ignore all the constant factors in both collection and manually freeing, for instance the cost of taking page faults?
Rising Economic Expectations Continue
Most definitely yet. Twitter search has some real potential. It's growing rapidly as a place that people can search for quick reviews of restaurants, movies, etc.
Adam Lambert Whole Lotta Love lyrics by Led Zeppelin
I'm a little disappointed that Twitter has become the next big thing. Does it seem to everyone else that the next big thing has gotten easier and easier for the average programmer to make?

Google made sense as king of the hill, since it solved a relatively hard problem incredibly well. Then came Facebook, which solved a fairly easy problem, but scaled really well. Now Twitter has come along and solved a relatively simple problem, and they probably have the scaling issue figured out finally. Maybe I've just become jaded, but I thought we expected more from the next big thing both in terms of execution and difficulty.
Twitter is not a public utility. People should really be looking into OpenMicroBlogging, and decentralization/federation with systems you set up and control, such as Laconica. This allows you to control the namespace, and downtime becomes your own problem.
This idea seems descriptive of someone with an entity (sometimes "fixed") theory of intelligence. I strongly encourage development of a incremental (sometimes "process", sometimes "growth") theory of intelligence instead. With the right growth-oriented mindset you will certainly not be the same person in ten years.

Read up on Carol Dweck's work. And Abraham Maslow's concept of self-actualization (not technically related to Dweck's work but seems somehow related to this discussion).
By this definition of "shallow drivel", any summary is useless. They are providing an introduction - which is easier to read than the article. I think that's valuable. (BTW: I didn't realize you meant the online article - I thought you meant the actual research paper - my mistake).

The title is potentially misleading when taken out of context - but the text of the article doesn't distort the original article. It fact, it quotes heavily from it. So, possibly the title is disingenuous - but to say the entire article that 37Signals wrote is completely disingenuous is not accurate. At any rate, their title is substring of the linked article's title.

Judging an article by its headline and final line is similar to judging a book by its cover. It's possible to interpret the last line as you have - but only by ignoring the rest of the text. The line is a play on words "plan on improving" as an expression usually means just to decide to improve; but in the context of the article, it also means to have some strategy for improving. It's true that 37Signals advocates just moving in a direction; whereas the linked to article talks about written plans for gathering information. So I can sympathize with your point of view. There is still a lot of common ground between them, and both parties acknowledge the same reality, and the same kind of approach to a solution - but the details of the solutions differ.

For reference, here's the 37Signal article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1707-the-only-plan-is-to-...

EDIT reading the linked to article (I was relying on their academic paper before), I see what you mean in that they gloss over the details, which I'd summarise with this quote: I document all the assumptions that I'm making. And then I test these assumptions. I plan to test these assumptions at checkpoints. 37Signals is ignoring the details, but keeping the philosophy, which is If I'm likely to be wrong, then how do I plan in such a way that the cost of being wrong is as low as possible? Being extremely agile is a way to do that.

37Signals is not so much distorting the article, as summarizing its basic idea. The full article is linked to for further reading (as you have done).

BTW: I actually disagree with MacMillan's reverse income statement, for startups. Although it's sensible, it would have prevented Xerox from starting (IBM's consultants measured the price and potential market share, and concluded - accurately - that it wasn't worth pursuing given reality as it existed at that time). Of course, IBM was huge corporation even then, and had a different attitude to risk than startups do - and should have.

Anyway, thanks for explaining your point of view, it makes it possible to have an interesting discussion, especially with someone who disagrees with you - often the most fruitful kind.
China: What world recession?
Don't believe anything you read in a div with a horizontal gradient background.

Seriously though, all he's really saying is that people don't change if they're content with where they are. Well, sure, why would they?
Library (all code still runs in the same process) != process (code runs concurrently)
Very nice blog posts about the creation of this step by step:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940

And the download as a Windows screen saver - it's only 116 KB unpacked!

http://code.google.com/p/pixelcity/downloads/list

Source code is also available at the Google Code page.
EBay is saving archeology by killing the antiquities market
http://www.workpost.com

Bought workpost.com in 2003, intending to turn it into some kind of work / labor-related site (a place to find and post work etc.). Years later, we're finally doing something with it.

Even back then, it was not particularly easy to find a good domain name..
Ask HN: Moving to a New City
I'll be graduating college in a few weeks. I'm lucky to have a great job, a great apartment right in the middle of downtown Cambridge, and a few friends who will be spending their summer in the Boston area, so hopefully the transition won't be too hard.

However, I'm still mildly worried about finding things to do, meeting new people, etc. I'm a fairly social person, but I've had the luxury of being around people my own age on a daily basis for most of my life, and now I'll be the youngest guy at my job by a number of years. I'm not saying that I won't be able to hang out with my coworkers, but when most of them have kids it may be hard to connect on a personal level.

So my question to HN is what advice do you guys have on finding a new circle of people, both in the personal and professional sense, especially after moving somewhere new. Also, if you happen to be from Boston I wouldn't object to specific recommendations ;-).

Thanks!
11. Immune to spammers
> There's a big difference between launching a server in <60 seconds (EC2)

Do you achieve that in practice with EC2? I find 3 - 4 minutes is typical and as bad as 10 minutes is not uncommon.
The best thing I ever did to introduce a punctuated change to my equilibrium was get rid of everything I had and go work in another country for a couple of years. Even 2 years after doing that I was irrevocably changed forever, and for the better. It gives you more confidence, more knowledge, more empathy, more skills, more conversation and more friends. Highly recommended.
... and downtime becomes your own problem.

I think I can see what you're getting at here, but this sure doesn't sound like something most people want to get into
I've got a Google Group with old college friends which we've always wanted to be richer, but we don't want to lose the casual members by trying to migrate and change their habits. I think hooking it up to a group posterous account might be the right way to please everyone.

Very cool.
Someone who makes a handsome living through salary but was laid off could very well turn into an entrepreneur through no direct desire of their own.
Guilty - I opened it in a separate tab to read later (and just got home).
How about a special running average: keep the count in one register and the average in the other one. Let's say N is the current count and av the average. The algorithm is in C-style notation:
void addElement( int val ) {
++N;
av = ((N - 1) * av / N) + val / N;
}

I have used a similar trick (with a fixed N) to implement a cheap running average for an image acquisition software and it works quite well, but of course if N is very large val / N becomes negligible.
Chances are during that time your income went up too, and you were no longer someone who really gave a shit about a $20 difference on a piece of gear and were willing instead to pay that $20 or whatever it was to an outfit like newegg to make sure their excellent service continued.
I'm not sure how this differs from Unfuddle.com, except that it's not out of beta yet. Unfuddle is pretty great by the way; I was part of a distributed team of about 20 on a large project last year, and that company used Unfuddle for that and about 40 other projects.

Nevertheless, here's to more choices and good competitive pressure for all the developer project infrastructure companies out there.
Improving Usability On A Tight Budget
I appreciate you taking the time to share this with the HN community. Would be great if you could run a few more programs like this in parallel for some additional income.
GM plans 1-for-100 reverse stock split
I would rather click zero times and just read the damn thing.

If you don't like ads, block them. I like well formatted text that doesn't require user intervention every time I go to a new page. That's sort of the entire fucking POINT of web design.
I'm a little disappointed that Twitter has become the next big thing. Does it seem to everyone else that the next big thing has gotten easier and easier for the average programmer to make?

It's not disappointing at all, just because something is easy to code, doesn't necessarily mean it's any less of a valid problem nor does this constitute a worthless business.

Look at say amazon.com - Not entirely difficult to code, in fact, many point-and-click webstore solutions already exist. The fact is, they were in the right place, the right time, the right scale and worked harder than anyone else.

I think you're underestimating the value of working hard - irrespective of problem difficulty. Twitter might have stumbled early due to some bad early choices, but that's business. Even the much hallowed Google makes errors and bad judgement calls.

but I thought we expected more from the next big thing both in terms of execution and difficulty.

You don't think the huge media blitz that Twitter is getting at the moment hasn't been seeded by Twitter themselves? It was a very clever marketing ploy that has been executed well.
Ask what you would get paid for the same work as an in-house employee. Now double that.
Drink booze. But not too much. Sort of like college, but with limits.
This is particularly annoying. What can we do about it? If I don't want to use clickpass (with my gmail account) will my profile disappear? Can I substitute a different way of authenticating?
Damn, couldn't they do something about her cheeks?
Get out of your comfort zone. I assume you're a nerd, so take dance lessons, or get into boating (community boating on the charles), get beyond your comfort zone. You'll meet new people, expand your horizons and change your perspective on things.
take up a hobby. figure out something you've wanted to do for a while and go do it, take a class and stuff. martial arts is the common example i use. puts you in a mixed gender class setting and has the potential to keep you in shape.
It's what you don't want to wake up next to after a night of drinking.
The important word here is : liability.

Once you take the customers money up front you better deliver them the service. If you take 12 months worth of money, you need to be around for 12 months at least. If you stop delivering the service 6 months in, the customer may pursue the unused money.

This is an interesting specific example but the broader message is to concentrate on your cashflow conversion. Bad businesses are ones where you hold a lot of inventory for a long time, either paid up front or using borrowed money, and then try to sell at a profit. Good businesses are ones where you take the cash, then deliver the product. Dell was so successful principally because they built on demand, using the customers money to purchase the parts, and needed little working capital.
Let average-so-far=a, count=c. When you add a new item x, the new average is: a = a + (x-a)/(c+1)
The advice to get out of your comfort zone is good, but for staying solidly within your comfort zone OKCupid is the best (and by that I mean has more attractive people than PlentyofFish) free online dating site for the younger crowd.
Rest in Peace, RSS
i like how RSS is dead because this one guy doesn't open up google reader anymore.

in other news: i've never visited austrailia, so i posit it no longer exists.
It was meant to be horror, not humour, in the spirit of Swift's "A Modest Proposal" to eat Irish babies. Actually, many people took him at face value too, so maybe I'm not doing so bad.

Yes, I feel that HN has seemed a bit more like reddit over the past week
or so.
When you say bid for projects, how do you get that opportunity? I simply don't know where the people looking for consultants are looking. The guys I know doing freelance work are established in their niches and are the known go-to guy, but how do you start out without a reputation bidding for work?
I found this really ironic because I actually came across this article in my RSS reader. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
Little Sensor on Nokia N86 Kickstand
it said that they are going to deal with her cheeks once her nerves and muscles grow in better. It'll be most telling a year or two from now once it all settles down and they can fix some of the drooping problems. I hope to see a followup someday - it'd be super amazing to see the difference.
This makes no sense. Why would I use twitter to look for reviews on restaurants instead of Yelp? Why would I use Twitter for movie reviews over metacritic or rotten tomatoes? Hell, if I'm going to use search to look for reviews on something, why wouldn't I just use Google?
I discovered his material at a very young age as well and found it absolutely fascinating. I learned an awful lot thanks to his writing...

Is there anywhere we could properly express thanks/condolences to the family? (If not... Is that a YC startup?) :)
Sites like getafreelancer.com, scriptlance.com, rentacoder.com, there are a bunch of them. And yes without a reputation you won't win any bids, thats why I mentioned using $500 or so bucks to make some fake accounts to build the initial reputation. Probably a good idea to just start out with one site, then when you start making some money, do the same thing for other sites
Immune? Who do you think half of their users are?
I'd be a little concerned about the potential for spam/abuse if I were them...
well, not for individuals. But as far as organizations/agencies, relying on twitter as a utility is ludicrous.
As someone who has changed jobs twice in the last year, here's my tip: There're few reasons to worry.

One thing that'll happen eventually is talk about work. And any talk is good to open new paths of conversation. Someone complaining about the boss? Tell a personal history, filled with baits.

- Oh, I was working in city XXX when I was XXX years old, and got late because of XXX and my car XXX, and this really cool girl with XXX qualities saw me entering the building, and she said XXX but...

And these XXX will say something about your personality, and it's a hook to let the other person say something, family close to XXX, when their car also XXX, and how they like girls with XXX, and how Alice from accounting has these qualities, and Bob from Legal tried once to ask her out, etc...

I don't want to teach you how to socialize, but on a new job you might want to speed up the process.

Also, remember that old people with kids once were your age too. And you're going to be who they are, sometime in the future.

I have a boss, 40-something, with 2 kids. You would not believe the stories that he tell me about his past. He has 3 scars from knife fights, a part of his head where hair doesn't grow because someone hit him with a bat when he was with two girls in a bar, and so many others... now he's a PMI/ITIL/Scrum certified type of person, but also a god-like in Linux administration, who actually plugged the first server into the wall socket for the most successfull brazilian internet company (UOL), and I don't have any doubts he would sacrifice his life to give his children a confortable life.

Anyway, good luck, and try to have fun.
I'm in love. May I have permission to marry your daughter?

[I just realized we don't do humor here. Mod me down :(]
What's the point of this article? It's as if the author wrote it just because he had to write something, much like how the talkative guy talks about the most useless things just for the sake of talking.
False. I freelanced for almost two years and roughly 50% of my gigs were fixed price and I usually ended up making > $100/hr when it was all said and done. Here are the keys:

- have a solid spec
- build up a library of code you can reuse
- carefully evaluate the reasonableness of the client
(1) I attempted to sign-up

(2) Was met with some obscure error and a failure to authenticate my card

(3) Clicked on "feedback" to report the issue with GetSatisfaction (which is awful, by the way)

(4) GS Double posted my issue

(5) I clicked "Delete" on GS to remove the duplicate...

(6) ...which didn't work in the browser I was using

(7) Finally deleted it in Camino.

So much fail :(
Yes, this was a bug. Should be fixed now.
I've generally charged $50 for my "still learning" rate. I need to raise it to $75 soon I think.

On a related note, I started networking lately - going to user group meetings and the like - with a lot of success in regards to my freelancing. I hit groups for topics I am interested in and with good crossover in the fields I know well.
Google TV Ads
Is this site legit?

For potential beta testers: It might be a good idea to hold off on registering until we hear back from Chunkhost on the status of their service.
I always do a fixed rate for my work and go out of my way to help customers, sometimes years later, with simple problems for free.

Guess who they call when they have another job? Me. Guess how much more they're willing to pay than new clients? A lot more.

Customer service being a first priority is not just a marketing phrase - it really does make a huge difference.

That being said, it is very important to define a clear scope, explain how much extra certain pieces would cost if they go out of scope, etc. Most clients are very receptive to changes in the quote - note the use of the word QUOTE - when the scope changes and you explain why it will cost more.
Depends which 10 years, but in general what you'll be in 10 years is the same, but more so.
Unless I'm mistaken in recognizing the name, welcome aboard ;-)
Little disconcerting that they plaster 'you will not be billed' all over and then you see a charge on your card from them. It's only $1.10, and obviously just a verification charge, but still a bit frustrating.

Also, the billing screen on their site says:

Your next monthly bill will be charged on June 4, 2009 for $10.00

You will be rebilled using your Visa ending in XXXX

Other info: The out of band they give you is AjaxTerm. DNS control is pretty basic. Aside from that you get reboot and delete functions.
What if nobody buys Twitter, and it continues to be a huge mystery to self-styled analyst types, and it continues to be of use to people who have figured out to make use of it?
Ask YC: Recommendations for a good VPS/Cloud Host benchmarking tool?
I am planning on hosting a variety of applications (Several Open Source business apps) on a VPS or Cloud Hosting provider, and I am wanting to benchmark several providers to see how they stack up, so I'm looking for a relatively quick to install Linux app that can run benchmarks over a period of time and give me results in a fairly usable form. Any suggestions? Also, any recommendations for how I should setup the test would be helpful!
This article is annoying, but I agree with the title - RSS never really lived up to its potential. Actually, scratch that - RSS was never the right tool anyway. Neither is twitter, for that matter. And Atom is cool but it's a solution looking for a problem.

What we need is real pub/sub for the internet. XMPP is a kind-of OK first stab but old, ugly and overly complex, AMQP is lovely locally but not really suited for consumers. I get the feeling we haven't cracked this particular nut yet.

And as for Twitter being a replacement for RSS - are you kidding? Is this guy really suggesting that every single RSS source in the world publish their entire feed to Twitter? That would actually be kind of funny, come to think of it. Hardly a solution, though.
It seems like the author is being satirical, but there are people that really do think this way.
I went thru the slides, it not only helps budding django developer, also useful to anyone creating any webapp - any framework.
fravia, ORC+, +HCU I guess that was my awakening in critical thinking. forever grateful...
11. An RSS replacement http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595186

12. A potential Apple acquisition http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=594847
When Chairman Rudd implements the great firewall of Australia - then perhaps we shall truly disappear (from online communities at least).

RSS, Email, Phone calls and blogs all aren't going away any time soon. Hopefully in another 5 years or so the stake will be buried completely in the heart of the fax machine - but just because one guys has been distracted by the "oooohh.. shiny" of Twitter - does not the death of RSS make.
I understand if someone makes a fake de-novo, and passes it off as antique - that can really mess up knowledge of the past.

But what is the difference between a replica of an item made today, and an item made in the past, if both are made by exactly the same methods?

They are identical - both were made by humans, both are made of the same thing, and by the same method, just one had some time go by. Why does that matter?
You know how fortune cookie fortunes are better if you add "in bed" to the end of them? New rule: add "for me" to every blog post title.
I assume you're young, and if you're a "professional" RE, well that's not exactly what fravia was about.

these people was reversing "the reality" before reversing could be considered a profession at all, from 9 to 18? 401K?

best regards
Some people may like the "firehose" method of getting their news through Twitter, but I still prefer the asynchrony of RSS readers for everything except perhaps breaking news.
Haha, should've seen that one coming a mile away. Looking forward to working with you Owen :-P