skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Didn't know what was being discussed here re: readability until I realized, oh, site must have a default white background.

On Linux the xcalib package is an absolute godsend, white backgrounds are like being yelled at to these eyes.

Windoze has a similar screen inversion application, but cannot remember what it is right now.
modified for touch events
This is really about the lack of good shared hacker/working spaces. The nearest one is miles from where I live, not convenient to get to via public transportation and expensive. Meanwhile, Starbucks is a short walk down the street for $1.50 per cup of drip coffee. The demand is there, but the supply isn't. Starbucks fills that niche.
Intelligent Networked LED Controller
I'm having a hard time telling how much content is behind the paywall. I know I've seen SitePoint books around, but I've never bought one. Can anyone chime in with an opinion about the material available on this site?
I think it's an oversimplification to say that Mr. Sherman "did not understand margin". The concept is so fundamental that you can explain it to first-graders as soon as they're introduced to a number line.

Sure, he understood it. Did he respect it as the prime directive? It seems not. But, plenty of companies would take the same approach and write down the losses to the cost of customer acquisition--pure marketing--with the idea being to recoup later.

That drive, BTW, is a side effect of high-pressure SV culture. Rather than build more methodically with an emphasis on creating rabidly loyal fans who are willing to pay a higher price for service, customer experience, etc, the goal was to grow revenue and customer base as quickly as possible by any means. In this case, it meant deep discounting.

So, instead of a simple misunderstanding of margin, the problem here seems to be more that this pressure caused him to embark on a strategy ill-suited to his product. Once he'd trained his customers to expect discounts so deep that he couldn't possibly profit, there was no turning back. It seems, instead, that the Zappos model would have been more suited to his offering.

But the relentless pressure for growth combined with the belief that he had access to more capital seems most responsible for his approach. I think it's possible that many rational people would have been lulled into making the same mistake, even with a clear understanding of margin. To say that he didn't understand that you have to sell a product for more than it costs to profit is nearly insulting.
I do expect my service provider to filter packets for me. Not for any freedom-loving perspective, but for very practical ones:

My phone is battery powered. My cell phone link uses a lot of power when active compared to when inactive. I don't want some random ass killing my battery life by packet spamming me.

My cell phone provider charges me for data. Would that include random UDP packets spammed at my device?

The abuse potential is high enough that it concerns me. Having some sort of firewalling on the provider side seems straight up useful.
Thanks, I had no clue the title was intended to be riffing on anything at all.
You could use the Ubuntu apt repository[0] managed by nginx. I've been using that repository for years, always worked great. New releases get pushed (almost?) instantly.

[0]: http://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html#distributions
They could place any restrictions on it they want if they keep both keys secret. They could also just keep all the bitcoins in the same wallet, and keep track of how much each account owns.
Yeah, ignore my numbers and I agree that scale-up should be considered and it's worthwhile to read a paper where somebody reality-checks the conventional wisdom.

> I see systems that support 1.5 TB of RAM now... do you really expect your dataset to grow beyond that?

According to Figure 1, about 20% of their jobs are already beyond that. If you spend your entire hardware budget on a single server and all your analytic processing jobs end up being coded with the (gasp) single threaded assumption, what are you going to do next?

Most of us have been there before because it's where you end up by accident ("Do you think if we max out the RAM on the database server it will return to acceptable performance?") This is why people love parallel map-reduce based systems.
Heard at an event last night that for one company, the legal cost to include UPS as a strategic investor actually exceeded the amount they invested but the company chose to do so in order to access UPS data.
Was Amazon running at a loss at the gross margin level or the profit level?

Losing money at the profit level is fine, since that includes things like buying warehouses or developing technology.

Losing money at the gross margin level means you aren't even being paid for the goods you ship out, let alone the money you spend in infrastructure.
Researchers Discover New Structure Inside Nanowires
I use an extension called 'change colours' in Chrome. It lets me set different background and text colours, and it allows me to change the link colours, and it allows me to change the font and font size.
It seems like in 2010 it would have been easy to get funding for an e-commerce site because investors all wanted a zappos, rue-la-la, net-a-porter, gilt, etc in their portfolio.
My understanding is that was exactly the major misunderstanding. Plum District and similar were being used on most sales, so pretty much everything was always 50% off.

It wasn't just first time customers who were getting those deals, so it's not really an acquisition cost.
Before the other VC's are in that awkward position this would have to reach some kind of critical mass or tipping point.

Not only that but different sellers, vendors, sides of business transactions, typically offer different terms, features, benefits.

The standard procedure when someone brings up something someone else is willing to do, is to bring up your strong points and why that particular feature shouldn't matter that much as a differentiator. And the truth is how much does this really matter vs. the benefits of the particular VC firm?
Looking at the general reaction around HN to Swartz before and after his death, I find it very hard to ascribe his recent idolization to anything but his suicide.

He was certainly deserving of praise, but his post-suicide lionization (and subsequent Carmen Ortiz bashing) does send some icky messages regarding suicide and its effect on one's legacy.
I wander if they are paying the $25k from management fees or from the fund.

The justification for why VCs don't pay their lawyer bill has always been that they don't want to take the money from their management fees, if Spark has figured out how to take it from their fund and their LPs are okay with that that is good.

If not then they are footing $25k from their pocket. But I guess if they only do 10 deals a year their max liability is $250k which isn't bad for a $450m fund.
Here's the rule: Buy a drink when you walk in. Then don't worry about it as long as tables are free. Because you're not displacing any customers. Once you glance around and notice the place is getting kinda crowded, walk up and buy another drink if yours is empty. That way you're not costing them any business.
Once my coffee is cold/gone, I bail (or order another). Usually a little under an hour
Is there a description available of the algorithm used to generate the 'cluster diagrams'?

Really nice work.
This makes a lot of sense to me as a guard against being a complete jerk, but I tend to think that even then you should probably be buying something periodically.

Particularly if you work in a coffee shop because it's what you prefer, you should be paying a 'fair' rate for it, which I really don't think can possibly be less than $5/hr or so.
Startups are slowly but surely getting more power/respect when fundraising. This is excellent, and hopefully the "heavy-handed VC oppressor" will go away for good some day...
Would that imply that, strategically, other investors might wish to avoid co-investing with Spark to punish their defection?
this. If I give you $8 and ask you to pay me $2 for expenses, or I give you $6 you don't much care. This would only apply to entrepreneurs who don't know that term sheets are less attorney fees.
That's just an old page

http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/publications.html
$('input[type="checkbox"]').each(function() {
$(this).attr('checked', 'checked');
});
I don't get is, how is this surprising?

When affirmative action is letting more people from some group in than they normally would, then isn't it kind of obvious that other groups will take the hit?

It's not some magical force... when A + B is to be constant (total capacity), then increasing B decreases A.
There are two groups that benefit, portfolio companies and the VCs' LPs. The former get to keep more of the money that's invested, and the latter are no longer being charged for expenses in addition to the management fees they pay.

In practice, the startups' own legal expenses will probably also be lower. In the bad old days, lawyers on both sides would engage in a leisurely and expensive back and forth, knowing they'd both get paid out of the amount invested. But if the VCs have to pay their lawyers out of their own management fees, they'll instruct them to make the negotiations fast and simple, which will in turn decrease the billable hours on the startup's side as well.
What can Mathematica bring to the DataFrame concept that hasn't been done before?

Also: why Go instead of a JVM lang that can interop directly with Mathematica via JLink?

Finally: Will Mathematica directly support doing the full stack of this kind of work, including the egress?
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't the nginx directive `valid_referers` (http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRefererModule#valid_referers) prevent hot-linking?
Congrats on quitting the job! Now... down to the real work!

Find your customers first. If you know who they are, then you've got a chance to validate the idea. If you don't, then you can't.
Number called, no answer, anonymous voicemail recording. Message left, fingers crossed... star wished upon. Ironic that I may need to resort to snail mail.
No.

You are stating your opinion based on disregarding the facts at hand because they don't align with your worldview, this is exactly how an intelligent person can end up not understanding something basic.

The individual who actually went over the financials in detail, and who actually knew Sherman, and who actually spoke to Sherman about the financial situation at the time is putting his reputation on the statement that Sherman did not understand margin.

He might be right, or he may be wrong, but he has a lot more backing to his opinion than you do.
> These things make it hard to take an article like this seriously.

Took you that long? I didn't managed to get past "Forbes" in the URL to stop taking the article seriously. I would be astounded if someone could point me to a Forbes article on technology that isn't pure bottom-of-the-barrel, sub-journalistic trash.
"Doesn't paying the legal bills for the other party create some conflicts of interest or other weirdnesses for the lawyers?"

This happens quite frequently in insurance defense situations. Say a Physician is hit with malpractice and the insurance company is paying all legal costs. (Or even auto insurance as maybe a better example).

The important thing to remember, is that you are the client ("the insured") and even though the person paying the bills will attempt to get you to use an attorney that they have already worked out rates with it is within your right (going along the lines of the point you raised) to get another attorney, within reason, price etc. (The price doesn't have to necessarily be the same either.)
Then your opinion of Forbes is what's out of whack.
Yes. Chrome 27, OS X. I spent a couple of seconds wondering if it was some typographical quirk inserted on purpose by someone.
Shameless plug: I wrote a short post on this exact subject two days ago[1]!

I also describe how to display the '{{' and '}}' strings in Jinja2, which is comically non-trivial :D

[1]: http://www.verdantrefuge.com/writing/2013/angularjs-custom-s...
I agree, the freelance working space market must be extremely ripe right now, I wonder why supply has been so slow to increase? It should be obvious that the demand is very high just by visiting most wifi cafes, looking around, and seeing all of the freelancers and office-refugees.
http://hypem.com/
that was my guess as well.
Inflation killed the Zimbabwe currency because delusion caused it to become worthless not because of availability or velocity issues that people are worried about in Bitcoin. These are two separate issues that people always seem to talk past each other on the subject of Bitcoin deflation. Splitting a Bitcoin into smaller units allows for unrestricted availability and velocity. Anyone can always buy and sell at market rates to complete a transaction. Inflation or Deflation of the currency has no effect on its availability. So why is it bad if it is deflationary?
My gauge is:

- If I'm there at meal time, I order a meal (8-12-18-22h).
- If I stick around in between meal time, I buy a higher-end coffee (>4$) in between.

For every purchase, give max(15%, 1$) in tip.
meta: in the interests of continuing intelligent discussion on HN, please just say what you mean instead of "this". It's an infection that's been spreading for at least a few months here.
This is a misunderstanding of how traditional mortgage payments and interest are calculated.

A mortgage payment includes a fixed amount of "principal + interest". The interest portion is calculated each month based on the outstanding principal.

Every dollar of principal you pay early reduces the amount of interest you pay in every payment thereafter.

You are correct that you still have to pay the same monthly payment, but it is knocking off the immediate next payment (which is high interest, low principal), rather than knocking off the last payment (which is high principal, low interest).

Paying additional principal near the beginning of a mortgage thus makes a lot of sense (it eliminates interest on that amount for the next 360 months).
Could also be that the tea leaves (or winds) were reading (blowing) in this direction anyway and they decided to draw first blood in order to make the biggest splash.
It still reads like Apple didn't want him anymore, because if really was all those things the article said and actually contributed to the organization in a substantial way, they wouldn't have just let him fall through the cracks. It feels like something is being left out.
Among other things, the "revenue" number seems totally bogus.

Reminds me of a tactic used by Skillshare. I sent them some feedback saying the class I'd just taken was terrible. They didn't offer me a refund (I hadn't asked for one), but they did give me a "scholarship" for the course amount - $20 back to PayPal, operationally identical to a refund. This way, they get to book "my" $20 as "revenue," and the "scholarship" as a "marketing expense."
Definitely. Even when coworking spaces exist they're typically pretty expensive for what you get--which is usually just a desk, fast internet, and maybe free coffee. Bring the price down a little, or offer daily passes for $10-$20 (even that's pretty high considering you're competing with a $3 latte all-day-pass at Starbucks).

Alternatively I always suggest to people that they work at their local library. The Chicago suburbs for example have a superb library system, and nowadays you can even bring in closed drinks at some of them. Internet is fast, it's quiet by definition, and there's usually a fine amount of human activity around to keep you from feeling like you're alone in an office building.
I get so tired of seeing this sloppy thinking. Discrimination isn't bad. Its an essential part of clear judgement. Prejudicial discrimination is bad because its piss-poor discrimination. Of course universities are discriminating against a wide variety of people; they can't accept everyone. The question is whether its prejudicial, as in they've pre-judged these people because of a group they belong to before they've looked at them as an individual.
Sure, no doubt in many cases the interest savings would be worth it. The real benefit of looking at the timing of savings is apparent when comparing multiple loans with different contract terms, and trying to figure out which you should be paying off quickly. All else being equal, two fixed-payment loans - one with 120 months remaining and the other with 360 months remaining - each have different "savings profiles". That is, they have different points in the future when the savings are actually going to recognized as well as different interest savings amounts. It can get kinda difficult trying to figure out if saving $1000 in 10 years is better than saving $1500 in 30 years, for example.
Having just recovered from a 72+ hour outage (about a dozen Hyper-V based hosts on our hosting provider) caused by a single (large) machine attached to a single (large) storage appliance, I think I'll pass on this idea of just scaling up instead of scaling horizontally.

edit: "pass on" (thanks, marshray)
The finance/banking industry has this. Investment bankers are usually required to take 2 consecutive weeks off every year. The reasoning behind it is, it is much harder to cover up fraud if you are forced to be away from the office for two entire weeks, because they can audit your books while you're gone.
Open offices create a 66% drop in productivity
Chris Lea has a PPA for nginx-devel with SPDY enabled: https://launchpad.net/~chris-lea/+archive/nginx-devel
Fisker’s epic electric car failure
SPAWAR Pacific began their IPv6 transition pilot in 2003. You can read some of the lessons learned here [0].

[0]:http://fcw.com/articles/2010/08/17/navy-shares-ipv6-lessons....
A "missed email?" Really? I fail to see how someone so "exceptional" would be let go from a missed email. I get HR deadlines and such, but is this Apple being Apple or was he simply not valuable enough to make an exception?
Would it be possible to create a space with a similarly casual and welcoming environment and charge hourly drop-in rates? Perhaps for a more broad audience than a typical co-working or hacker space. Something street-level perhaps that could attract walk-ins. What could it offer that a coffee shop can't?
> “Harvard College welcomes talented students from all backgrounds, including Asian-Americans… The admissions committee does not use quotas of any kind.”

Yes, because using quotas would be illegal.

But I don't understand how "does not use quotas" translates into equal treatment.

Wasn't the whole point of the UC v. Bakke case to say that quotas are illegal, but race is still a legitimate factor to consider in admission? This sentence means nothing.
I wouldn't mind so much if there was a reward structure in place. GS made like 30 million dollars in gross profit. Okay, so if I give Zach 10k of my money and he makes 10x on his investment, why am I not going to get 100k from him? Oh right, because its kickstarter. It exists under the guise of this "help us kick this project to life" but for Zach this is just a "get money, and dont give investors who made it happen anything back other than tchotchkes."

Kickstarter's reputation could be hurt if it just becomes a way for the well off to connect with investor rubes who are being ripped off and don't realize it.
Hogging an entire table with books and a backpack and notes all over is a pet peeve of mine. Especially a larger table that could fit four people being taken up by one person.

Depending on what part of the country you are in, people will share a single small table. I've been places where every open seat is taken and people are sharing, and I've been to places where a person will become confrontational if you ask to share their table - even if it's a four person table!

Another complaint (if I'm allowed to complain about 'free' wifi) is that a lot of places have a slow connection, many AT&T locations seem to be limited to T1 speeds, and the router has bad QoS or bandwidth sharing. So 'that guy' who's streaming YouTube all morning, or updating Windows, or downloading 30 apps from the App store is just ruining the connection for everyone else. Once I tried running 'bundle install' and after 45 minutes, just gave up and went home.
On the dangers of misleading infographics and the virality of social networks 
My response to a misleading infographic on the danger of Media Consolidation spreading like wildfire on the internet
I guess this would count as an expense for someone's company account, so.. why not.
Very nice looking graphs, but running "Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook" for my own profile comes with a rather nerve-wracking warning:

Wolfram Connection would like to access your public profile, friend list, email address, custom friends lists, News Feed, relationships, birthday, status updates, checkins, education history, hometown, current city, photos, religious and political views, videos, likes and your friends' relationships, birthdays, education histories, hometowns, current cities, photos, religious and political views and videos.
The difference is that someone can easily find a print button on a screen version, but not the reverse.
If that is the case, then why do Asians underperformed compared to Whites? If affirmative action is meant to help underrepresented groups, shouldn't the overrepresented group be the one "taking the hit"?
Evntlive to stream Bon jovi concert
Interactive simulation of presidential decision-making process
Show HN: use virtual cloud displays to monitor your competition
There is already HadoopLink. LibraryLink allows you to write C or C++ that gets dynamically linked into the kernel at runtime (no restart required), which gives you freedom to create your own threads and do your own thing [and crash the kernel]. A lot of kernel development happens that way now.

You can even synthesize C code from Mathematica (there is a symbolic subset of C in it already) and have Mathematica run the appropriate build process for you, so things can get pretty interesting with that alone.

Out-of-core processing of large datasets is already on the roadmap for Mathematica 10. We plan to have a domain-specific language to describe and work with external [or in-memory] datasets in an efficient way, translating as appropriate to the native database query languages. Our 'native' format will be HDF5.

Ultimately, though, I think we'll rely on code generation to compile Mathematica to LLVM or transpile it to Go, so that we can distribute chunks of computation out to a cluster using M as command-and-control.

The idea would be that you can create and test large processing pipelines from inside Mathematica and then distribute them across a cluster in an ad-hoc way, then visualize the progress, track errors, and analyze the results. Notebooks are really good for that kind of lightweight UI.

This isn't a new idea, but in a language as dynamic as Mathematica, I think it could be especially powerful. Of course, it is also tricky because type inference would be a big part of making this idea possible in a dynamically typed, symbolic language like Mathematica. But not impossible, I don't think. And functional languages already have demonstrated advantages in this type of situation -- take stream fusion in Haskell.
> it's quiet by definition

The library is too quiet for some. Some background noise helps.
That would be true if this were morally neutral. But when you're fixing an abuse that's justified by all participants as being standard practice, the right metaphor is not critical mass but a crack in dam.
"At 100 GB, scale-up still provides the best performance/$, but the 16-node cluster is close at 88% of the performance/$ of scale-up."

If these message-passing graph algorithms are representative of a "bad fit" to the parallel map-reduce model, I'd say a 12% penalty is not a bad price to pay at all in return for all the benefits of the parallel cluster in other cases.
The novel thing is that non-white students are being negatively affected.