skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Clustering.

My server was down[0] for a few hours once and so was my XMPP account. After it was back up, I got a small VPS from a friend to act as a backup/fallback/redundancy-whatever. ejabberd offers that out-of-the-box, meaning that I now have two ‘nodes’ hosting my XMPP domains – if one of them goes down, I either don’t notice at all (if I was connected to the other one) or just have to tell Pidgin to reconnect. s2s connections will similarly just reconnect/don’t notice.

I liked Prosody better, though, and the arcane failure modes[1] of ejabberd still annoy me. So if you get that into Prosody (or did, I didn’t check in the last year or so), I will definitely consider switching back.

[0] Apparently Strato thinks you’re being attacked if a large stream of UDP packets from the 26C3 network hits your server. And I was just using my VPN…

[1] I recently moved that VPS and failed to adapt iptables rules on the other host. Instead of telling me that it couldn’t connect (at maximum log verbosity), ejabberd just did nothing/crashed. I can’t exclude an oversight on my part, but the failure to log anything was rather annoying.
Excellent catch, as I've given up on using the mini player and would have gone a long time without seeing the change had it not been pointed out.
I don't think this is a "programme-type" thing. Generally, people are often mean, especially if they can get away with it or they can forget that the other person is also a human being (both of them are very easy to do on the Internet). Women too. It's human behaviour.
> Also, I don't really need games because I'm playing the greatest MMORPG of all time ... being a software developer.

Yeah, and I find that attitude common among lots of software devs. If you spend all your work day and all your free time involved in software development activities, windows is probably not the right environment for that.

I am always surprised at all these "I did x and windows completely fell apart" anecdotes by software developers though. I'm not kind to my home system and it's been more or less rock solid over the last 4 years. Much more so than OS X has been (which hasn't been too shabby mind you).
Gawker, How Dare You
More than one university tried to recruit me before I'd even started high school, based on the results of an SAT test I was asked to take in 6th grade. I didn't go, but mostly because no one offered a full-ride, and my family was poor and couldn't afford to pay tuition and put me up in another state.
That wouldn't necessarily work ... it wouldn't be difficult (at least for a hn user) to script account creation, and maybe even 'browsing around' by accessing random links. It would be even less difficult to farm it out to something like a captcha farm.

Really, one-off accounts seem to be the HN version of anonymous posting. Which suggests to me that it may be more beneficial, perhaps, to simply allow anonymous posting with some caveats (any user can choose to block all anonymous posts, anonymous posters couldn't be upvoted or downvoted, it automatically triggers some kind of alert to the mods to watch the post, and maybe it even costs you karma to use the feature.)

I also keep considering that some kind of API which allows users to choose to block other users might be an effective form of self-policing, but that would also kind of by definition stifle and fragment conversation.
Wait, i'm confused. Author brings up Twitter (of all things..) as an example of a network where you can block people you don't want to deal with.

Okay, but then he then jumps from that to suggesting that HN implement a feature that doesn't let people on another site talk about whatever site they please?

That doesn't even make sense, or am I just missing something here?
There is a rapidly growing class of professional hobbyists - people that throw a lot of money and effort into shooting just for the fun of it. I would not be surprised if this puts somewhat downward pressure on the prices in that industry except in the top tier.
I would agree with the quote, learning a skill while going to college is very challenging. I found University to be great at teaching my how to learn and giving me the fundamentals, but I'm on my own if I want to learn specific skills.
It gets around 4-5 hours. You have to have some HDMI signal or else the Lapdock auto-powers off.
Several people seem to be under the impression that the actually information in books isn't worth very much, and unfortunately, I think we have publishers to blame for that. Books, as they are priced on Amazon for example, are not priced to make the author any profit. They are priced to benefit the publisher. The vast, vast majority of that low price goes towards the publishers ethereal and rarely specified "costs" (plus, they absorb about 80-90% of the profits typically). They can price things at such a low price because they make up for it in volume. Their costs actually go way down as volume goes up. Printing is much cheaper, especially if they're sending a steady stream of work to a particular printer. Editing costs don't scale linearly in most agencies. Support costs definitely don't scale linearly. So they can spread their costs around to several different projects and still make a boatload of money.

Independent authors, who are trying to actually make somewhat of a living off of their works, do not have such luxuries. They are the editing department. They are the typesetting department. They are their support department. They're doing all these things with no benefits of economies of scale whatsoever. So it costs more. This is also why academic presses tend to cost more, too, because they're operating on a much smaller scale.

I can appreciate the desire for a physical book. I, too, prefer dead trees. Some of my own readers prefer it too (and for some reason think for $12 [or less], they'll get it), but in reality you have to realize that in paying $39 or $69 for that PDF, you're paying for a lot more hours of work from one person, costs that aren't spread across an entire business like a publisher, and that money is going directly to the author who is providing the product, which means it's probably (not always) going to be of a higher quality and a better purchasing experience (i.e., you could likely e-mail Nathan with a question and get a reasonable response).

Also, the scale of marketing for an independent author is much smaller. It's simply impossible to negotiate with the bigger players for shelf space, and it's not profitable to invest in tons of streams of marketing typically. So, you're left to target the niches you're writing for the best you can and hope it works out in your favor. I've had fabulous successes ($50k+++) and horrible flops (< $1,000 for a lot of work). A lot of that is because it's difficult to saturate the general market and get them interested in your work. Very rarely will someone come over your book and say "Oh hey I've heard about Rails [or whatever]. I'll buy that." because most people aren't browsing the Internet using Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky." So for most indie authors who aren't selling like Nathan, the higher price is needed to justify the investment of effort into the book.

So, that wall of text is to say: please think about the person behind the book and the effort they're putting into it when you look at the price tag. Obviously, they want to make money. They're not pricing it to give it away. But likewise, they're also [probably] trying to feed a family and keep writing more books.
>Communities like this are like water: it changes constantly sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. The only thing to be happy about is whether or not it's thriving.

I agree but wouldn't it be nice if we could keep it changing for the better?

EDIT: Sorry if I wasn't clear, some really good ideas have been presented here, I only posted the first couple ideas that came to mind, expecting all the other really smart people here to come up with better ideas once I got the ball rolling - and they have!
We have as much right to defend the behavior as you have to attack it. It's an arbitrary questions of norms and of tolerance to criticism. In modern society it seems that we're so isolated and insecure in ourselves that we can't handle criticism and meanness.

That everyone must be over socialized to be overly concerned about what everyone else thinks and not be concerned about the objectivity of what we're trying to achieve. In political questions this is overly dangerous.

A healthy level of tolerance of criticism is necessary for any sort of critical culture. Without it disasters like the nuclear disaster in Japan occur. Where everyone is trying to be so polite and get along that obvious problems go unsolved because criticism is not brought to bear on the right people at the right time.

Yes there are limits to what is acceptable and not overdoing it. But then there is also a need for tolerance of criticism to an extent and perhaps if there is enough confidence a rebuttal to criticism.
> and b) the Wiggin kids had to have accounts created for them by their parents, who could presumably vouch for them, and would be tied to a real identity. But later..they have totally self-funded anonymous accounts, which doesn't make sense in light of point b.

Blinded commitments. Could require verifiable yet anonymous endorsements from X existing users to 'level up' to an anonymous account; only the endorsers know who the account is for, yet all can verify that X users in good standing vouched for the anonymous account.
I'm surprised Internap hasn't been mentioned, they're quite large, have a great network and support.

Other worthy mentions include Rackspace, SoftLayer, Leaseweb, Peer1 and SecuredServers (aka PhoenixNAP) all of which are large companies by hosting provider standards.

Also, in Canada there are iWeb and Netelligent who have great networks.

Based on personal experience with all of the above, Internap, Rackspace and Netelligent have given us the best value and overall experience.
Flickr looks pretty good now. I think charging more for power users will work out pretty well for Flickr. So I hope Tumblr will be similar.
... but if it does all three, put a ring on it!
I am still not getting how you think it is somehow "pathetic".
You need to do a better job pre-filtering candidates. You are not doing your company a service by letting down a bunch of people over and over.

I have a rule: Code samples or OSS contributions or it is an auto "no-interview". Even for first year co-op students. From the code it self you can usually judge competence. If the code samples pass most of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell then I bring 'em in for an interview. I have yet to meet someone that doesn't know what the difference between a GET and a POST. For me a bad interview is if someone doesn't know what types of things are found in the headers, or doesn't understand the basics of oAuth.

Before people come in here and start up with the "you are not mid-thirties with kids" BS, no I'm not. But I know plenty of people that are, and it isn't too hard to get 200 lines of code to someones inbox.
Discounts are good. I offer everyone who purchases the first day a discount.

The packages format does seem to work. Though I'd be interested in better ways to design it.

AS for testing, put up a landing page first and ask for email addresses. If you can't get 200-300 (at least) don't write the book.
On a side note: the question they feature in the article, holy crap is tuition getting beyond ridiculous in the US. I thought Canada was getting more than high enough
Tumblr Will Operate Independently: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer
I.e. Hangout uses a different server than Google Talk (not just a different client), right?
EDIT: In the spirit of being less negative, I'm deleting my original comment. I still contend that Mauro was in the wrong, and refused to acknowledge or fix his mistake, but will agree that Linus probably could have handled it better.
Memcached actually turns 10 tomorrow - Wed 22nd.

I consider memcached to be one of the most important programs of recent time, it has been a core component for almost every large scale website you can think of. Ubiquity isn't always synonymous with quality, but in this case it clearly is.

Its incredibly powerful and very easy to deploy. A great piece of work, one that has saved my sanity many times, and congratulations to all involved.
Fred Wilson: Yahoo Will Put Tumblr on Same Level as Facebook, Twitter
Plus shipping costs. That print on demand price sounds good, where did you find it?
How embeds make tumblr so addictive
>> If your heart is not in it 100%, "don't bother" is good advice.

Very true. I would bet that many budding wedding photographers will realize that they're in over their heads the first time they deal with a bridezilla, mob or mog (mother of bride/groom) on the day of the shoot.

Being a pro photographer requires you to be really good with people, especially the bad ones. It's not just enough to be good with a camera.
They more likely meant the Arduino-specific term "sketch", which has been co-opted to mean things unrelated to both the language and the art form.
Avoidance by companies like Apple also unfairly shifts the tax burden to individuals and small businesses...

Apple's stance, and many other companies', is that it's unfair for the significant tax burden be place on companies with international operations.

As a shareholder, it's in your best interest that Apple finds other ways to smartly utilize available their financial resources.
It is really nothing against you. The distaste is from previous black hats using these lists for SEO purposes/link bait. Easy to get backlinks, easy to put a link at the bottom with a DOFOLLOW that is completely off topic (hello infographics), etc. I had already upvoted, because I do not completely discredit the value of lists. I was just replying to the commenter above.
>> If you talked to your spouse like that it would be called abuse.

And if you hit your spouse like boxers do in the ring then that would be abuse too. It's almost as if there are different rules for different situations.

(No, I'm not saying that kernel development is like boxing)
I left Google Talk and switched to another XMPP server a while ago, but a big percentage of my contacts use Google Talk. If Google wants to force all Google Talk users to switch to Hangout - it's really crooked, since all those contacts will be inaccessible.
Why does HN even allow blog posts. If it isn't showing off new tech or code why is it here?
What you say about rent control is true - if there are not restrictions on building new housing. This is almost never true.
That's nothing. Check these comments, anywhere else you would get summarily fired for emails like this.

http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supp...

"Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead.

If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's your issue..."

What if that email was to a female kernel dev? What if a whizkid reads the kernel dev mailing list and goes asks their parents what deepthroating means?
Why Doesn't Apple Open More Stores?
> Your reason seems to be that the things you need Linux to do it just doesn't do as easily or as intuitively (for you) as OS X or Windows.

I'm actually fine with things being different on different platforms. I haven't even bothered to spin up a Windows "safety" VM on my work machine. I think the differences are better appreciated that way. There's plenty of things in OS X that I wish were in Windows.

What I'm troubled with are the things I can't do (Wine may be bridging that gap better and better these days but still) but want to.
For some reason the name always makes me think of 'toilet duck' toiler cleaner.

The name alone puts me off to a large degree, although the way it seems to go out its way to say "we're not google" puts me off too. Overall I just don't like the way they advertise, I don't feel like it should be appealing to the sort of person I am.
Can mushrooms help us get rid of Styrofoam?
This is not a rant. Also I think it is informative. Sometimes the public needs education - after all there was the situation with gaming PCs in the early 2000s - you had to explain to the people while if they want quality you cannot drop before a certain threshold.
This is a pretty fun little site. I have a few unsolicited suggestions, of course. ;)

* My first thought was "work history? OK, where's your resume?" On second viewing it may be one of those mystery-meat icons, but I don't know what several of them mean, and their hover states don't help. I may not be part of your target audience, but I do hire people, so perhaps I am after all; perhaps small captions below the icons would be a good idea.

* This begs for Easter eggs! I'm not seeing any in the source.

* Tab completion!

Mostly-inane commentary aside, I like it. Well done!
You're probably right. I try to surround myself with other people who are passionate about what they do and are trying to become better developers.

Even if someone didn't have technical experience, banging out code at a small company could be the starting point, for someone who is driven, to develop their skills and attain that six figure position.
Celery (YC S12) Lets Sellers Accept Pre-Orders, Charge When Ready
> This is simply a problem of aggregating tens of thousands of content consumers in one spot and trying to have a single conversation.

If I may offer a counter point. One of the complaints about users on HN is how they treat Show HNs. The worst thing is arguably working on something and getting totally ignored. The second worst thing is probably getting verbal abuse for your project, from people you respect, no less.

When this happened to me (being ignored that is), I decided to try another community for feedback. It was 4chan/g. Now 4chan has the reputation of being somewhat of a sewer, but my experience was as different as night and day. People were interested, and above all: friendly and constructive.

So why am I not hanging out in /g then? I believe that HN has a higher ratio of users who are "my kind of people", commenters who I feel I have a connection with. But as it is, this comes at a price, because HN can be a less civil place. I don't this is written in stone, however, we can and should work on improving this dynamic.
I contributed to a project which is doing something similar. It's a bit better because it has a low power transmitter for communication between units.

http://pinocc.io/
How exactly are you "cut out of the entire process"? It's your job to create a leasing agreement that maximizes your ROI. If you want to make money off Airbnb, then add a clause in your leases saying you get a cut of the profits.
Whew! I was just about to hit that 'buy' button the other day.
> Honestly I feel like the only option is to just stop accepting new members at a certain point

Huh? So what's the cut off date then? I noticed your account was only created 86 days ago.

Making a forum an invite-only clubhouse doesn't improve discussion.
I would love to pay $29 for the content in this book. No problem whatsoever, I even have the money.

But I expect a book for that sort of money. I'll gladly pay shipping costs on top of that price. On demand printing costs $4 per copy, I just checked.

In fact, if there was just a $29 option without all the other options, I might actually have bought just a PDF. But his copy actually tries to make me feel bad for just wanting the book and none of the other stuff. Perhaps that is really what rubbed me the wrong way the most. The further down that page I was scrolling, the farther away I was getting from a decision to buy.

Maybe I'm just weird.

(and yes, I get it, I'm a self-publisher author too, lots of time, low prices, tiny profit margins ... but 30 bucks is still a lot for a PDF)
In the same vain, why do we have random blog posts on hn. If you wanna blog, take it to a blog. If you wanna show off some tech or code, bring it to hn.

EDIT: I'm not just talking about this specific post, I don't really care when linus yells at somebody in a mailing list etc. If it's some opinion piece or fluff piece I just don't really get why it's here.
First off, most of your guys on here know me now and my background with Google not being a good one, so I don't have a bias opinion.

I think at least the devs at Google DO care and they take pride in their work (like every damn dev should). The problem that happens when your company (Google) services so many is that your voice isn't heard against the noise...(I think weev felt this with ATT).

I didn't get a chance to read the comments on the Mayer article (feel free someone to reply a HN link), but if you were getting personally attacked, that's immature of whoever trolled you. HOWEVER.....You can't generalize your experience with Semantics and assume that Mayer will be the same way. I think Mayer is doing a great job, and given her position at Yahoo will lead it the right way. (Still waiting for Yahoo to redesign that ugly homepage though, wasn't she credited for Google's simplistic search homepage?).

Side Note: I thought I read somewhere that Google's chief PR (the decider) went to work for the Obama Admin?
Re "seemed to ignore" -- I read every comment in that thread as of this morning.
This Entrepreneur Raised $300,000 By Wearing Dad’s Wool Shirt For 100 Days
Scripting in Python to brute force a quiz
If you really want to beat Java language stagnation on Android, I would suggest Kotlin. You can create a Kotlin-based Android project with zero effort using IntelliJ (and, presumably, the new Android Studio).

http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/
Nathan, you're really coming out with some great posts. Please continue.

I saw another great post on this topic on the VWO blog recently which suggests reversing your pricing table to show the most expensive test first as an A/B test idea, and relates it to the "primacy effect":

http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/pricing...

I'm testing it now (no conclusive results yet), but I think it makes a lot of sense. I would love to see an A/B test of this on The App Design Handbook's sales page.
Robot Octopus Shows Off New Sculls
1) HN is about more than code and tech.

2a) HN wants people to link to the original source article. So, in theory, blogs would not get posted.

2b) HN asks people not to editorialise when submitting links. Thus, if you want to include some text about an article you're submitting you're supposed to make a blog post, with a link to the article in the blog, and then post to HN the link to your blog post.

At least, that's how I understand it. It feels sub-optimal.
Harsh is what I'm looking for ! Thank you !

I have looking for a UX team member, meanwhile could recommend a site/tutorial/book to help me learn the basics?
> At that point what can you do?

Verbally abuse him, obviously.
> I agree but wouldn't it be nice if we could keep it changing for the better?

Locking a forum down doesn't change anything. It seems like you're just wanting to censor dissent.
$500 for five hours with a professional photographer seems very really reasonable to me, far from overpriced.
I think I've posted this here before, but there is some evidence that eliminating anonymity does not improve civility: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-...

Anonymity or pseudonymity do, however, have benefits that should be considered before eliminating them. Whistleblowers and employees of companies being discussed are the two that come to mind immediately.