skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of what was written here is true of all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, iOS and Android.

- In the beginning, there are few rules and so it's the wild west. Developers see what they can get away with.

- As time goes on, platforms look at what uses of it pose a key threat to their core product (e.g. social graph, twitter client, payment platform, third-party engines, etc.) Those threats will be extinguished. Developers dependent on those key threats will be burned as they get shut down.

- Ad rates when the market is empty will always be cheaper than when the market becomes crowded.

- Competition makes it harder for smaller devs to survive. Remember the days when you could be an indie developer and have a chance at succeeding on iOS? Now all the big guys chart and the small guys don't make squat.

- The part about mobile is true but this is affecting ALL web platforms, not just FB.

Yes, Supercell got a huge investment but they are the exception, not the rule. They are the "Zynga of iOS" if you will (in the context of success/investment). The question is whether we'll see more of these kind of investments. Given that games is a hits-based business, I'm guessing it'll still be pretty rare.
Because FB are privacy disrespecting? That's a good enough reason to leave it for developers and users alike.
Pretty amazing. I would like to see a raw C benchmark to see how far is the JVM from the limits.
> If you're a 10 to 1 ratio, then you need to diversify, and you would discriminate against men the same way you discriminate against accountants. The enlightened individual realizes very quickly that diversity is the goal because it works better.

In a professional work environment, how does gender diversity work better? In over 30 years of programming, dealing with a wide range of types of code and many languages, I've yet to run into a situation where having female-written code would have made any difference.

I can see it making a difference in a non-professional environment where work and social life are heavily intertwined. That's why, for instance, it is important at schools where most students live at the school and the school is where most of their social activity occurs. Things get uncomfortable when you have 15-20% females in an environment where people are both colleagues and boyfriend/girlfriend candidates.

That was the situation at Caltech when I was there. Since then, they have balanced things more, and are now something like 40% female. They did this without discriminating. What they did was work hard on getting qualified females to apply. The actual admission process, though, was kept gender blind.
What about the context of "my page is loading too slowly" or "Facebook is using all of the data in my monthly plan"?

Some users are facing a temporary inconvenience but everyone gets an immediate & long term gain.
I have seen an increase in Facebook platform integration. From small businesses looking to get an advantage over the competition. Its no longer about some social media app. Now its about Mary's Pizza, and how they want to spam the feed of their clients whenever they order. It works.
Programmer, Interrupted
In practice, independent invention happens all the time, and we end up with absurd patent lawsuits as a result.
I'm having a hard time making conclusions based off of this data, except that Python/Ruby/JavaScript are slow, JVM is fast, and the rest are in between... It's odd how Haskell (Yesod) and C (Onion) are both slower than the JVM frameworks. Is it just a maturity issue? I know Yesod is very new relative to some of these JVM frameworks.

Also, minor typo: the link to Erlang from the Environment tab is not the right URL. You probably meant to reference http://www.erlang.org/, not http://www.erlang.com/
Soon we'll have to browse the web like RMS:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979
You could make the same non-sensical argument against insurance companies in the US, or a symmetrical argument about providers torturing patients to run up the bills for more procedures.

Or you could stop trolling.
I've never thought that dystopia meant fictional. Does it have that connotation for everyone?
Sigh. The whole supposed purpose of patents is to encourage disclosure of the invention.
I've personally experienced that, even with extremely minor integration. I wanted for people to "like" my blog posts on my scratch-built blog. There had been an outstanding style issue with their buttons a year before I implemented it. Finally, after my last round of trying to fix it(after having my blog just look subpar for 2 years), I checked the bug. Apparently they "fixed" it, followed by tons of people commenting and say nothing was changed.

So, I switched to twitter "tweet" buttons. Integration took my about 30 minutes. No style issues either. I'm not saying I trust Twitter more, they've had some crap API problems recently as well... but I'm just saying I don't trust Facebook, not for a second.
Just because the startup is a total failure doesn't mean you can't get paid handsomely for it.

Just ask.
And what if don't, which is the common case?

Have you written your living will yet?
The key is that you don't need to plan for anything.

Financially and performance wise you're probably better off on dedicated hardware with some over-provisioning but first you need to know how many machines you're going to need.
Ask HN: how many hours a day you actually program?
NOTE: I would've created a poll but I don't have enough karma.

I'm curious to know how many hours do you actually code? I have some ideas, but it would be interesting to actually hear from you.

In a regular day, how many hours a day you actually code? Also, what is your position? e.g. Software Engineer, Sr Software Engineer, Programmer, Manager, etc.

My case: Sr Software Engineer, ~3 hours on a regular day (I would say between 2.5 and 3.5), 4 hours in a good day. It is very, very rare that I code +4 hours a day.

Also note that I'm not counting the time I spend coding on personal projects, just strictly work.
By selecting the right candidates for the right traits (traits previously unquantifiable and untenable before Big Data techniques) these companies might eventually, in the long term, build better workers. For example, if the selection criteria for a career as a developer favours people capable of getting a Computer Science degree, then more people who want to be developers will get CS degrees. But in reality, getting a CS degree does not always equal good developer. Assume there are some people without CS degrees, but with the skills and behaviours and personality more suited to developer work. These people would be better hires. Selecting for those criteria would not only allow your company to hire better developers, but would (like selection for CS degrees) encourage emerging professionals to develop the desirable traits and skills defined by the selection criteria. (In some weird social darwinist way, that I myself am not entirely convinced of.)
On Target Shooting Drills
If you're into IPSC/IPDA or just plain fun shooting and you want to improve your shooting speed and accuracy. Have a look at this article.

Not only is this drill simple, but you can apply its concept into other shooting speed drills that you come up with.
This drill is for Newbie to Advance, matter of fact the concept is used to regulate the control of your speed & accuracy.
Some Java frameworks are not doing that well on all tests. So it is not a fair generalization. As for PHP vs Java , it is not really the point of the discussion , since raw php is doing very well.
Gimp has a plugin for WebP support

http://registry.gimp.org/node/25874

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1809284

Apparently Photoshop does too: https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/forum/?fromgroup...
"How can you tell someone isn't on Facebook? Don't worry -- they'll tell you."

I read this a while back on a HN thread and it resonates more and more by the day -- there are a number of dedicated haters such that such things don't suprise me...it may need a bit rough on the edges but some take it a bit extreme
This 28 Year Old Woman Co-Founded One Of The Most Successful YouTube Networks
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Are-Customers-Yachts-Investment/...
Great to see you guys promoting being more transparent!
I'd say you can and should blame HTC Sense, in the absence of current experience with Android. I have a Sensation as well, and also a G1, Nexus One, and of late a Galaxy Nexus. I also use a Motorola Defy and Optimus G with stock Android and a Nexus 7 tablet with the same (though different versions). The only devices I've ever had consistent problems with are those with carrier crapware (there was another before the Sensation but I can't recall what it was at the moment).
sorry, we are talking about carrier locked phones and custom samsung images.

Nexus devices do not fit the bill.
Yeah! I am in the nasty habit of highlighting parts of the text which I'm reading, and it keeps showing me the share widget - very frustrating. I couldn't figure out why the share widget contains "Evernote and Email" options. Sounds like the author got hold of a template, and hasn't changed it since.
Faye will gladly run on Heroku with a foreman process, but I think Pusher is a tough choice to beat to get you up and running quickly. Sync does indeed support Rails 4. In fact, the demo app in the screencast is a Rails 4 app :)
Blood transfusion from young people is another one. It works.
Dawn Of The Digilante
"QALY": Quality-Adjusted Life Year

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

"Under certain methods, such as the EQ-5D, QALY can be negative number."
Cool idea. I'm a diehard Washington Wizards fan (sad, I know) and tend to unfollow a lot of players in favor of reports/beat writers/bloggers. The tweets are just more substantive for basketball junkies. A couple of random thoughts:

1) Remove the directed tweets -- i.e. "@user blah blah blah"

2) Beat writers/bloggers act as a filter and tend to retweet interesting player tweets anyway

3) It'd be awesome to see a real-time, in-game twitter dashboard like how you're displaying things now, but with those bloggers/reporters. It can be hard to keep track of it all on a single-line twitter feed... maybe a tweet that gets a lot of "action" somehow (retweets, replies, not sure how you'd measure it) could be displayed more prominently.
Tumblr launches first-ever mobile ads in its iOS and Android apps
You may have followed my advocacy for open allocation: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/tech-companie...

When a tech startup runs well, it's constrained open allocation. People can't just go off and "do whatever" but if the work is important to the business, anyone gets to step up and do it. There's no fighting over "headcount" or jockeying for plum projects. There is the work that needs to be done and as long as (a) people work on things that are relevant to the business, (b) people take enough of an ownership mentality to do the difficult or unpleasant stuff that's comes along with the good, they remain in good standing.

Once you have closed allocation, you're definitely not a startup.
More debate over 20 data points with no explanatory power one way or the other (as Yglesias pointed out). This is not uncommon in macro. Another recent case also centered on work by R&R

http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/simple-proof-th...

(one of a host of commentary pieces on both sides... but essentially none in the middle)
The size of OSS communities and its impact on activity, licensing, and hosting
One columnist I read said something like "it will be interesting to see what historians make of the fact that a global economic policy was driven in part by an error in an Excel spreadsheet".
Age cutoffs were not mentioned in parent post.

It doesn't matter who pays, the question still exists. Where to spend finite resources?
It seems that the correct wording is 'Thought' not 'Think'. Time changes.
Looks neat, but I am curious why you would pick such an overused name for the project. Perhaps call it PartialSync, or something you could google?
British devs seek local game talent for Backspace festival
mostly because i never used a carrier locked in device.

but i just took a quick look on my wife's noteII, and the only thing i could do was to 'hide' the app from the drawer.

there were no "disable" option.
I think this kerfuffle does point at something that would be nice to have ratified in the HTML spec somewhere: the idea that content exists in different qualities and formats, and that when the user requests to download the content, she's presented with the different options possible. Content negotiation still only has one chosen format come down the pipe; a decision that the user probably hasn't made.

Right now, we're stuck with everybody doing something different in the page design to do something that's pretty important and fairly intrinsic to much of what happens on the web. And so users just default to the thing they know works everywhere, which is Save As... It's not surprising some of them are upset.

The only issue I can see with this is that there are security concerns with being able to override what is actually downloaded when Save As is used.
Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment.

However, as someone with medical training, this experience prompted me to introspect more than anything I ever saw before. This is not just about my own private failures in the face of disaster, it has also re-kindled my conviction that a lot of things are deeply wrong with medicine as it is practiced today. Many of these things are fixable in the short term, but won't be because of clinical culture. What's worse, many other things are only fixable long-term if we as a civilization can manage commit to a certain kind of research even if it's not justifiable by (short term) profits. I've become very pessimistic about this.
Am I the only one who was really disappointed that there isn't actually an FBI API?
History of the World Series of Poker Part 1: How It All Began
Why developers are leaving blogs and websites that throw up popup windows like it's 1997:

Because it's incredibly irritating;

Because it interrupts you when you've just started to read;

Because the popup-tastic 90's are a time nobody wants to relive;

Because (in this case), closing the popup actually seemed to reset the scroll location too;

Because it can totally FU browsing on mobile; (but who cares about mobile anyway? We're supporting people from 1997 maaan!)

Because it's obnoxious.

I decided a few weeks ago that I would no longer read any sites, articles or blogs that do this. I am Jack's bounce rate.
Even if you aren't going to commit suicide right now or in the near future, try to get professional help as soon as possible. Suicidal urges is very alarming sign.

Remember, your problems are temporary, your pain is temporary. It shall pass.

For more practical advice, I will quote myself from another recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575144

"There are great books by David Burns: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" and "When Panic Attacks". Both are available at amazon kindle: http://amzn.com/0380810336 and http://amzn.com/076792083X The "Feeling Good" book is focused primarily on depression issues and "When Panic Attacs" (as its name suggest) on various anxiety disorder. I suggest to read them both. They are really helpful, but not just because of their content(which is good), but because they present of number techniques from Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, which you can apply on yourself. But please note that reading the book and using these methodics is order of magnitude more effective than just reading the book and internalizing its contents."

I advice you to get these books(if you don't have kindle devices - don't worry - they have cloud reader so you can read them in your browser), and read them. They are not a replacement for professional treatment in cases like yours, but they may help, and they are easily obtainable.
More info re: formatting:

http://calvinandhobbes.wikia.com/wiki/Sunday_comics
All of the offers I get from VC backed startups are always ridiculous. They seem to believe that I have to take an economic cut just to help them make it. These days, I talk about compensation first, and then about the project itself. No need to waste a week talking and getting to know the team if they can't pay me a reasonable amount.
Google Glass Looks To Be A Fascinating But Slightly Limited Platform
Except that nothing says that you need deep class hierarchies. In fact, i think heavy use of classes and class hierarchies is an anti-pattern in PHP because of its procedural per-request model.

Typically php frameworks follow a java-style model of unserializing data into objects, loading the corresponding class files on-demand, calling API's on the objects, and then reserializing. It is _much_ faster if you treat the data as a stream, cutting it up and transforming it as it passes through your code, without ever building up an object representation, and not doing any more deserialization than a simple json_decode (which is really fast). This is in fact the original PHP model, transforming a stream of annotated HTML.
Why 32 bit computers? There are a lot of them out there.

A 32 bit computer is more than enough to run many kinds of embedded or consumer electronic type of equipment. How many decades were little 8 bit or 16 bit microcontrollers of the 1970s still in use inside equipment? I'm not trying to say that "640 K ought to be enough for anyone", just that it's nice to be able to make native code targeted at only what is considered "standard server/desktop" today.

Can't really comment on the thread capacity issue, but having a systems oriented language also target slightly obsolete hardware, such as an Intel Atom, maybe, is a good thing.
Parent comment was explicitly referencing a Nexus device...
> This guy wasted a lot of time trying to guess what they had done.

According to the article, many people wasted a lot of time attempting to recreate their results. Further, the paper is highly-cited and it probably shaped, directly or indirectly, opinions, further research directions, and possibly even policy.

We are focusing on the Excel error, which was likely a mistake. I'm really struggling though to justify their choice of weighting/averaging. It's confounding that two highly regarded and experienced academics would choose something so particularly bad. It absolutely should have been noted in the text.
Ask A Banker: What's It Like?
If Canonical doesn't turn evil too. Some of their actions give me pause. Oh but man I want Ubuntu phone to be good.
The Designer-Developer spectrum
Same problem for me. I put up a small web app that used their API. The only thing it did on my side was grab the Facebook user ID of the person. It broke, then broke again, and then again. Eventually I gave up and ripped the Facebook component of the app out and had people go straight to my web page.
Do use pandoc to convert from markdown to pdf directly? Or some other tool.
Taxes are not automatically passed long to buyers, even though buyers always pay them. If the seller's profit is reduced, then part of the tax is effectively being paid by the seller. I know this is slightly counter-intuitive, but it makes sense in terms of price theory. Elasticity of demand is what determines who pays the tax - the more inelastic the demand, the more the tax burden falls on the buyer.

Let's take an example, albeit a simplified one. Suppose gasoline costs $5/gallon including a 25% tax on a retail value of $4 ($1), and that the profit of the gasoline manufacturers is also $1 (we're assuming vertical markets and perfect competition as well as round numbers, for simplicity). Consumers need gas to go to work and run errands, so although higher gas prices might result in some fewer road trips and pleasure excursions, overall gas consumption won't change too much in response to price swings. Now, the government decides to increase the tax to 50%, so the price at the pump goes up to $6. Consumers will grumble but they'll still need to buy gas, so they pay 20% more but the sellers still make $1/gallon profit as before. Why? because it's hard to substitute away from gasoline or change your usage patterns overnight, so if you need to go from A to B in your car you're just going to have to buy the more expensive gas. Shit.

Now contrast the market for gourmet cupcakes, which have lately been in fashion. Let's assume a cupcake also costs $5, and yields $1 in tax revenue (25% on $4). Because baking cupcakes is a bit more labor-intensive than gasoline production, let's say the baker's profit is $2 (which is not so far from the truth, and which helps to explain why there are so many gourmet cupcake companies lately). Now suppose Mayor Bloomberg disapproves of cupcakes because they have too much sugar and raises the tax on them to 50% ($1 -> $2), so now they cost $6. Well, $6 is a lot for a cupcake and there are many other delicious things you could eat for that price, so a lot of people switch and start eating other tasty snacks. Cupcake makers are going broke! All they can do is cut their prices. Suppose they cut their profits from $2 per cake to $1.50; now a cupcake retails for $3.50 + 50% tax, for a total of $5.25. Sales are not quite as good as when cupcakes cost 'only' $5, but a lot of consumers come back to snacking on cupcakes - let's say 2/3 of them. Some smaller cupcake bakeries go out of business, the larger/smarter ones increase their market share.

In this case, government revenue goes up by 50% (75c increase per cake * 2/3 as many customers), but the burden of that falls 1/3 on consumers (cost goes from $5 to $5.25) and 2/3 on bakers (profit falls from $2 to $1.50). What's different from buying gas is that cupcakes are strictly optional: there's a desire to consume them but no actual need, and if the price changes there are lots of other things to eat instead. Thus demand for cupcakes is extremely elastic and can expand or shrink in response to price.
Can someone in the know elaborate on the current state of US patent law here? And what exactly TokuDB / the universities hold a patent on?

Curious outsider here, and understand that all IANAL caveats apply.
NREL maps show the huge geothermal power potential of the U.S.
Simple UI Techniques for Mobile Navigation
Thanks pilgrim689. I'll get that fixed up.
Assuming that the order in which tasks should be done doesn't change after they enter the system, there is no reason you can't use a message queueing system here. Obviously, you need software components that act as proxies for each user, but you need that in any worflow system.

Probably the best thing to do is to see if you can draw up a flow diagram that shows where messages need to flow to accomplish what you want. But it sounds like using a message queueing system as the main internal mechanism for communication.
Thanks for that explanation. I was wondering where my future was heading.
Building a Google Maps Application with Updating Markers
Ask HN: Estimating hosting costs
All,

Does anyone have experience or tips on how to estimate hosting, bandwidth, etc. costs for a web-based business model?

I'm working up a back-of-the-napkin business plan and would like to be able to throw something at the hosting costs column. The margins are somewhat tight at it is, and I know how these sorts of costs, specifically, can completely up end profitability.

I'm figuring about 15-30 MB of images per user, plus whatever it costs to receive those images one at a time (RESTful interface), then batch process them once a month (cron job + sending them off to some other RESTful interface).

Then, of course, there'd be some billing logic in there, maybe Stripe.

I'm thinking this would involve something like AWS, plus, I don't know, dreamhost, perhaps?

Sorry, I know this is vague (and that's part of the problem), but I've never estimated something like this before.

I'd really appreciate any help or suggestions.

Thanks!
Previous submission with more than 100 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4729068
Online Learning and Higher Ed
VSRE: Very Short Reply Expected