skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Despite the name you can't actually assume DynamoDB is based on the Dynamo paper architecture.
What's this BS premise about them being "1,000 times smarter than us"?

For one, we're not 1000 times smarter than people 2000 years ago. Just more tech savvy and able to play with more abstract / mathematical patterns (which helps with IQ scores). As far as our general thinking, philosophy and emotional intelligence goes we are about as smart as those "ancients". Or even worse. And if there's any doubt that that holds in aggregate, it sure holds in isolated cases. Do you believe the average American is smarter than, say, Euclides or Aristotle? Or Newton, Da Vinci, etc?

Second, what about aliens that are in more or less a similar state as us? They might live 10-20-100 light years away, have a similar level of technology, etc. We might be able to meet them if we or them attempt a mission, or talk to them over radio waves.

And in that case, nothing of all those ("we're insects to them") etc, will hold.
Sorry, by "buildings" I wasn't specifically referring to steel towers. Obviously these aren't merely made of wood.

Whether we're talking about one and two story constructions, or tall towers, I still feel that there must be room for "more, better, faster, cheaper" through technology here. I won't be satisfied until everyone can afford (but not necessarily chooses to purchase) their own mansion-sized living space, cheaply.
Open isn't an on/off switch. Open is a slider.

There are varying degrees to which you should expose your inner workings. Some of it may be intriguing for investors to be comfortable enough to throw money at you knowing you'll turn a profit. Some of it would be enticing for your customers who can see whether you've got your act together.

But this "Open" as a buzzword is something we have to be careful with. Transparency can be good for business, but only within reason. Also, be careful of how much tint you use on those rose colored glasses. It's not that you present the truth; it's how you go about doing it.
Free-for-all: Open-access scientific publishing is gaining ground
That strictly depends on usage. If you are just using it as a commute car, and presuming your daily driving is less than 200 miles, plugging it in overnight is still going to be much less time than stopping for gas.
Great article, Damien. This idea that network partitions are exceedingly rare was the reason why ElasticSearch goes CA vs. the AP many other NoSQL datastores choose.

http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/CAP-theorem-...

Not only are network partitions rare, the most disastrous case where the cluster splits in half is even rarer. Usually, you have a small part of the cluster partition away.

I hope people don't take this as a Dynamo vs. Couch discussion, because the relative importance of partition tolerance is a topic that spans all datastores that give up on ACID.
>You've fallen into a trap: anthropomorphizing aliens. Aliens aren't necessarily anything like us.

Yes, we're talking about aliens that ARE like us here. Not some alien bacteria.

As far as evolution is concerned, it should work pretty much the same in any planet, and produce more or less similar results.
It's a really interesting and complex topic to think about. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to make arguments one way or another, but I'd like to think that two species from different planets could happen upon each other at least by accident, in the same way that I, as a human, encounter an ant on the sidewalk. We're the most advanced on the planet; we may not care to interact with every living being on Earth, but that doesn't mean we won't step on them while moving from point A to B.
Maybe they could change the way they do advertising: the amount of raw storage and the amount of available storage, similarly to the way they do hard drives (raw vs. formatted).
>who feel the same, and who are serious about software engineering, isn't easy!

So what you're saying is that you have a hard time finding people experienced and passionate about your extremely small niche? I'm sure I'd have a hard time finding qualified child neurologists willing to work for < 200k as well.
CoinLab Sues MtGox
We might never meet aliens because we don't even know what we're supposed to search for. Our definition of life is limited to carbon lifeforms, and searches are limited to signals of something that resembles human civilization (e.g., laughably Dyson's spheres). A pretty naive, anthropocentric, reductionist view of the universe if you ask me.

Once you stop seeing living beings as carbon actors in a scenic universe, you realize the existence of amazing life forms everywhere, in all scales, and that the definition of "intelligent lifeform" is an illusion.
> I'm not denying that Dynamo features more consistent availability, but it does so at either cost of temporal consistency or a much larger amount of resources.

The trouble is that your article outlines problems with pretty much all quorum systems, including multi-Paxos: the setup where there's an elected leader -- elected by first round of Paxos -- which then performs subsequent writes using a single-round-trip second-round.

Incidentally, that is very close to what you've proposed, except you've chosen to not perform quorum reads. That is perfectly fine, but there are also hidden costs -- not only do you need to have a leader election, but you also need synchronization barriers. Before a node can handle writes or serve latest reads, it must also back-fill its transaction up to the last entry (which it does by reading from peers).

So while you are saving on read traffic (online reads only go to the master), you are now decreasing availability (contrary to your stated goal), and increasing system complexity.

You also do hurt performance by requiring all writes and reads to be serialized through a single node: unless you plan to have a leader election whenever the node fails to meet a read SLA (which is going to result a disaster -- I am speaking from personal experience), you will have to accept that you're bottlenecked by a single node. With a Dynamo-style quorum (for either reads or writes), a single straggler will not reduce whole-cluster latency.

The core point of Dynamo is low latency, availability and handling of all kinds of partitions: whether clean partitions (long term single node failures), transient failures (garbage collection pauses, slow disks, network blips, etc...), or even more complex dependent failures.

The reality, of course, is that availability is neither the sole, nor the principal concern of every system. It's perfect fine to trade off availability for other goals -- you just need to be aware of that trade off.

You may want to note evolution of Google's services: BigTable -> MegaStore -> Spanner. Essentially, they've started out with a non-HA system (BigTable), found that every team has began implement HA on their own, and then added quorum-based protocols (Paxos), finally adding an optimization (TrueTime) to reduce read-latency.
Sounds like a crappy example though, as far as examples/thought experiments go.

How is this specific choice of example any good, or makes any sense?
Thanks, without your comment I wouldn't have thought to put this on the top of the possible-guts list for a similar project I've been hoping to get to. I was thinking of a little NAS back-up box going out in the back-yard, buried and protected in some nice groundwater-safe enclosure. For a sort of pseudo-off-site backup.
libgen has many journals and compilations of papers, how is that not exactly what you're talking about?

Also, if the collection was only 95%, 98%, 99%, or 99.5% complete, would you mirror it? Keep in mind that you would also have to purchase/acquire about $500-$1500 of storage space.

Thank you, it helps me gauge WTF is going on.
Not sure what to say about signaling other than handling all the edge cases takes a non-trivial amount of effort and testing (which is true of most things in software).

Chat is only possible peer-to-peer if you don't care about histories. Since losing your history every time you reload a page or close a tab isn't a great experience, it's helpful to have a server in the middle keeping the history, unread counts, etc (which we do support today). Presence will always require a server.

We do run relay and STUN servers in locations around the world. Our STUN server is based on an open source implementation, but it is substantially customized. The relay server is our own.
If you had a (very) successful company exit where you made more than $100M, you would stop reading HN?
What is "xn--p3h" and how do you convert to it?

Another I've seen http://⚡.la
For one, any technological civilisation needs curiosity as it's basis.

Second, curiosity is prevalent all around advanced animals, mammals etc. Seems like an emergent property of evolution, that would be hard to not come out in any evolutionary process.
I like flatt-er UI in general, but I don't like it when it goes so far out of its way that it removes all affordances.

For instance, a button is easily recognizable by its shape. We all know they can be clicked.

Some flat designs have buttons that look absolutely no different than a label. Worse yet, sometimes they don't even have hover effects. When the only way I can find out if something is clickable is by trying to press it, something's seriously wrong. When there are clickable things in my view that I don't realize are clickable until much much later, something's wrong.

Go flat, but leave the affordances alone. There's a difference between throwing everything out that's not needed and throwing everything out.
geek porn FTW
At first glance, I thought MazeWar looks a lot like MIDI-Maze [1].

And, sure enough on looking it up, MazeWar [2] is cited as inspiration for MIDI-Maze.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_War
I think we all wish Gmail was just more like Gmail. The arguably redesigned email client UX. Compare it to itself!
He was a guest on EconTalk a few months back and it was mentioned that he is now at the University of Texas. Most of the conversation was about Valve's corporate structure, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.htm...
The potency of the Minimizer Maximizer is more likely to be discovered by a curious Maximizer variant. But will it have the wisdom to not to employ it?

But you are falling into a anthroporeligio trap of assuming the Paperclip Maximizer considers potential paperclips in their uncoiled wire form to have comparable moral status as actual paperclips, once the wire reaches the factory floor.
I feel like Santiago, Chile is what the valley would be like if it didn't have zoning. An intense, urban environment with nice neighborhoods and a downtown. A real downtown, with a real nightlife, high quality walking, good public transport, cheap taxis, low taxes, low crime, all without sacrificing fantastic weather.

At the same time, Santiago, while vibrant, requires you speak Spanish, and is not the Valley.
And, it's squatted. Well, it's good to know that there's a whole new world of Unicode domain names out there just waiting to be misused.

I would have loved to see this go to the IAU http://iau.org or similar organization.
How does InnoDB behave without a Primary Key?
Imagine A Flying Pig: How Words Take Shape In The Brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name#T... describes the process behind the Punycode used in internationalized domain names (IDNs).
I seriously don't understand why you're supposed to feel bad about posting 4 pictures of yourself and making a joke photo. It didn't seem that wanky to me, so it's surprising that it was able to inspire this many people to forget about human courtesy and throw childish insults on the interwebs.

I was wondering if maybe these people know you and there's some kind of subtext here or something.
Poll: Did you apply to Hacker School?
Hey, just trying to get a general sample of people who applied to HS - http://www.hackerschool.com

If you vote, could you please let us know your age and programming experience, thus far? Also, if possible, please let us know when you applied (doesn't have to be a specific day, a general ballpark will do).

Thanks a lot

BTW: for me, I'm in my late twenties, with 6 years of experience. I've applied, but I haven't heard back yet.
I applied and have been accepted
I applied and have been rejected
I applied and have been granted an interview
I applied and haven't heard back yet
I didn't apply
Horrible idea.

1. It's more time consuming than you think

2. Doing it for YC funded firms make sense because they have vested interest. This is different than being bombarded with a ton of questions much like a support forum, for which their time is probably better spent on YC as a whole.
I was given the option to go back to the old version..?
I can see the similarity, but the big difference is that you can use these animations on hover responsibly.

Ironically, the page that lists them all cannot achieve that. Perhaps they should have some sample pages with the animated icons used more subtly, to serve as a demo of good design.
Fun stuff. But this reminds me - what's the the state of Unicode URL security? Not my field but curious.

Eg, 2005:
"Here's a demo: it's a Web page that appears to be www.paypal.com but is not PayPal. Everything from the address bar to the hover-over status on the link says www.paypal.com It works by substituting a Unicode character for the second "a" in PayPal. That Unicode character happens to look like an English "a," but it's not an "a." The attack works even under SSL."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/unicode_url_ha...
It sounds silly but the effect of DMT is not like a typical drug. The universal experience of flying through "hyperspace" and feeling some intelligent force attempt to interact with you is a legitimate mystery of brain chemistry.

It exists everywhere in nature including the Acacia tree which is thought to be the "burning bush" from the Bible.
Gruber explained long ago why using these URLs is a bad idea: http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/i_give_up.
I like the corner idea, but I don't really see myself needing to pull it out and carry it with me. It's kind of hard to reach the top corners in my house anyways.
Thanks heaps for this awesome hint! Just registered my copy of "definitive guide" to get an ebook much cheaper!
Holy cow, didn't realize there was a jump seat option:

http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/03/our-tesla-model...
I think this is exploitable in real life too. :)

I'll share my idea, when you share your ideas first ;)
Send me an e-mail, and you should have an e-mail address in your profile.

Edward Glaeser's The Triumph of the City covers the same ground in a more academic tone and is available in the UK.
https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2012/01/19/ymmv-201...

Do your homework. Know yourself, know your substance, know your source - then pay attention to your [mind]set and setting.
If keyboard shortcuts are enabled ? will give list of all shortcuts :)
First 'Ender's Game' Footage Released Online (Video)
"By itself the traditional media doesn't report on these kinds of stories because they are afraid of being called racist."

His racist obsessions (Sherrod comes to mind) are why people didn't take his "original reporting" seriously.
It doesn't work for my employer's application.

May be the lots and lots of SPs are too much for MariaDB, but no, it is not a 100% replacement drop in.

I have tried.
As a 23 year old working in tech, I can say that much of my graduating class had no immediate plans to start a career and even more had no desire to relocate to a place that jobs were more plentiful. How do we fix this? We stop telling everyone that they are gifted and things will work out from an early age. We get far more out of constructive feedback as to why our project wasn't the best or why we lost than being told we're great in the face of defeat, getting a trophy, and going home with no fuel to better ourselves.
EURid doesn’t allow mixing scripts:

> Why can’t I mix scripts in my IDN?

> .eu IDN domain names can consist of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters used in any of the official languages of the European Union. Many homoglyphs contain characters from different scripts. A .eu IDN domain name can consist of characters based on one of the three scripts. Therefore, many domain names that would otherwise be confusingly similar are prevented from being registered.

http://www.eurid.eu/en/faq

I assume other registrars have similar restrictions.
You could compare the Chicago, New York, and San Francisco Metro Statistical Areas, though, right?
There's no known physical risks to using DMT. It is naturally produced by your body in small amounts.

The risk is integrating the experience of traveling to another "dimension" and then coming back to reality. If you aren't psychologically fit, you shouldn't try it. But mostly it will feel like a dream. Hard to believe it happened and impossible to explain.
Actually, wealth follows an exponential distribution for the lower 95% of individuals (by wealth) [1]. However, yes, it does follow a power law for the 5% richest.

[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0103544
Pro, Mass Git Repository Management
Wouldn't it be better if it would just say "mock your HTTP responses to test your HTTP client", or "to test your HTTP client code"?

The service makes a lot of sense otherwise.
This is an old argument I've had for years: the address bar should show unicode characters in a distinctive manner, such as with a different background color. A bright red background would draw the eye.
I think you're missing the point. The cost of construction is already comparatively cheap. The problem is that construction to meet market demand is forbidden by zoning regulations.
Wow, that's pretty funny that your chemistry teacher would go so far as to violate the Geneva convention for the sake of a prank.
see:

http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/idn-in-g...
Were I'm from NO building is made of wood period.

I don't get why Americans pay top dollars for "houses" made of wood, plastic, etc, and with crappy construction (I've lived in several all around the US).

I'd take EU-style bricks, concrete, stones, etc any day of the week.
Ctrl + Enter is much more efficient for me.
Don't let your child use Vine says Santa Monica High School to Parents
Everpix.com adds WebP support (easy dynamic setting in preferences)
It's not such a low price for 128GB RAM considering you can buy cheap 1U server with Intel C602 chipset and get up to 768 GB RAM.
In the 1991 multiplayer AD&D RPG on AOL, Neverwinter Nights, you used to be able to buy packs of +1 arrows in a far off town in the game called Red Larch, split the arrows up, sell them at the shop, and make more money than they cost.

You could basically make as much money as your character could hold. If you then traveled to a jeweler or the vaults you could stash the money, convert it to lighter gems, and do it again. Not many people knew this and you could generally trade for most items that came as treasure with these gems. So you could buy +3 plate mail or whatever. Usually obtained from hours of work killing drocoliches or whatever.

I guess if everybody had been doing it, the in game money would have been worthless, though.
Pretty off-topic, isn't it? But at some point, everyone's going to be recording everything all the time from their forehead cams, and we'll all be able to watch the very best and very worst of humanity--all the time.
Arsenal Transfer News: To Buy or Not to Buy
First off, it's 8.5GB of usable space of the 15.4GB of total space on the phone once we convert it from 'marketing' sizes to real sizes. So, there is 6.9GB of stuff taking up space on the phone out of the box.

Second, 8.5GB of space is just fine for most uses, at least according to Google. They sell a Nexus 4 8GB with only 5.5GB of space free on it.

Third, and this is the key point here, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a handy microSD port so you can add all kinds of memory to it. Memory that is a lot less expensive than going up a size. You can get a 64GB class 10 microSD card for under $60, just a bit more than going from an 8GB Nexus 4 to a 16GB Nexus 4.

The one sad point is that Google is making it harder to utilize the microSD, harder to move apps to the SD card (unless you run CyanogenMOD like I do), impossible to store your music/video on the card (movies you rent/buy from Google can't be saved to microSD, in a vain attempt at preventing piracy), etc.
On a related note: did Google hire some broken UX person with an immense fetish for annoying popups and interruptions? It seems that almost every product has some sort of "oh, let me intrude into your day and tell you about some annoying UX misfeature that you have to stop everything you are doing and look at right now"-popup nowadays.

Of course, since I have 3-4 Google accounts (work, personal, hobby projects etc) I get each and every one of these popups at least 3-4 times.

Whatever clown is responsible for this at Google: stop it. Fucking stop it right now. And if you work for Google and you read this and you have something to do with UX, please quote me in the next meeting you go to and be sure to include the word "clown" and the word "fuck". If that doesn't help I have a 4 by 6 foot poster of my ugly mug looking disapprovingly down on you mailed to you. I can mail that to 1600 amphitheatre parkway mountain view ca 94043 and whenever someone gets the urge to make a popup: point to the poster and shout "BJØRN SAYS NO POPUPS!" until their ears bleed.
For the 5 people that might want it?
I can understand that distinction, although I'd argue that pasting the guideline without comment to another user in the context of this particular issue implied that your stance was that this issue was one where the guideline applied. You might argue that his or her question was general but I think it's clear from the context that he or she was asking: "what channel should I use when something _like this_ happens?"

Anyway, not a big deal and no hostility intended - have a good weekend.
Peer-to-peer bitcoin transactions using nash equilbrium
The HTC One is only available at the 32GB and 64GB sizes. They skipped the 16GB size.
It is probably worth noting the latest version of the IDN protocol (RFC 5891) makes this URL illegal. It will only work with implementations that use the earlier deprecated version (RFC 3490).
He didn't make that up; he just summarized it. The elements of fraud are (a) a false statement, (b) intentionally made, of (c) a material fact that (d) someone reasonably relied on and (e) was injured (usually, financially) by.

In other words, "tricking people for profit" is fraud. The Internet did not obsolete the crime of fraud.
> "I could probably destroy that company if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to do so. If they succeed, it makes me rich. (I don't have equity, but I have dirt.)"

This is not the right move long term. If they've wronged you move on, maybe blow the whistle if its complete BS. Resorting to extortion is not going to make you any friends who take pride in their ethics and who therefore won't screw you over in the long term.
The story behind the QWERTY Keyboard design
It's alien enough that people won't try to anthropomorphize the Paperclip Maximizer. That's not an easy thing for an example to accomplish. And it was originally conceived for talking about artificial intelligence, which makes it a bit less outlandish.
Tender moments like homeless people on crutches freezing in the street, unattended toddles left to play in truck traffic, and dozens of little old ladies, absolutely terrified to cross the streets because it's so insanely dangerous.