skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So any system that can handle a split brain by crash failing successfully handles the situation?

We seem to disagree about what "availability" means in the context of CAP. Nothing has to crash. All that a serializable system has to do under partition is refuse to respond to at least one possible request. Exactly which requests is algorithm-dependent.

For example, a system with e3PC quorum reads and writes will handle partitions by refusing to allow reads or writes in any minority component. If it writes to all nodes and can read from any node, it will refuse to accept any writes during partition, but all nodes can service read requests consistently. Conversely, if it writes to any node and reads from all, it can always handle write requests, but reads will fail.

Pragmatically, the desire for single-node-failure tolerance leads most CP systems to accept operations only when a majority of nodes are accessible. Systems like Paxos, Viewstamped Replication, ZAB, and Raft provide CP semantics in exactly this way: a partition which divides a 5-node cluster into a 3-node component and a 2-node component will continue to work correctly in the 3-node component, and the 2-node component will refuse requests until the partition is resolved.

Not all systems will shut down a component completely. Most sharded CP databases will run, say, Paxos quorums between groups of three or five replicas, but overlap those replicas around the hash ring. This is the design described by Eric Brewer for Stasis, and is the planned design for Cassandra's CaS and Riak's CP write support. These systems offer serializability over any particular key (or shard, e.g. a single quorum), but not between keys. During failure, some keys will be consistently accessible in one component, and a disjoint set of keys will be accessible in another.

The definitions here are so broad, and doesnt really match my experience, which is namely detecting a fully split brain is difficult for humans to do, harder for systems, and generally causes major problems.

You are correct--designing CP algorithms is difficult. Luckily, you don't have to, because we have several already. You might start with

https://bitbucket.org/cometpeak/ringmaster/src/1e9fc082d1e5/...

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lorenzo/corsi/cs380d/past/03F...

http://pmg.csail.mit.edu/papers/vr-revisited.pdf

https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/1137...
What are they using for the GUI? That has always been a bit of a ruby weakpoint.

Also packaging into executables
> track down the producers of child porn

Nowadays, the vast majority of producers of ‘child porn’ are kids themselves. The combination of webcams, Internet access, and sexual curiosity guarantees that images of underage nudity will only be more prevalent as time goes on.
Numpy and Matplotlib on GAE
It sounds like the author is saying that only people who take the time to fight through the noise of skeuomorphism will understand it (AKA skeuomorphism is jazz?).
Algorithm based on information theory may improve phylogenetic trees
First look at Windows 8.1
Here is a book which is full of them. It is called 'Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex' by Judith Levine.
http://www.amazon.com/Harmful-Minors-Perils-Protecting-Child...
I was kind of hoping the article would provide the answer.
This style of advertising never gets boring no matter how many startups do it.
Lets use Go as an example.

Now that Go 1.0 release exists and is stable. One could write a Go compiler using Go 1.0.

Eventually the compiler will reach a state that it can fully compile Go 1.0.

Now replace the C implementation of Go 1.0 by this new compiler and use it to write Go X.Y using only Go 1.0 features.

When the need to target a new OS or CPU arises, add a new backend that generates code for the desired target system in the Go 1.0 compiler.

Use the cross-compiler to compile itself with the new backend. Copy the binary to the new system, now use the Go 1.0 compiler to compile the Go X.Y version, whatever X and Y are.

You don't need to use multiple versions of the language and by keeping the feature set of base compiler small, it makes it easier to write cross-compilers.
This is not the first service they closed.
RSS was already on its way out -- on a steady decline since 2006. Google Reader peaked in 2011 and was on a decline since then, too. Though I generally stopped using RSS a few years ago, I do think it's the best reader out there. But the perception that RSS and all of the competitors were killed off by Google is, at best, hyperbole.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=googl...
Actually, last laugh goes to them as they make more money and enjoy more success than you ever will. They also have the balls to discontinue a product that they for whatever reason find out is not worth their time. Go home, troll.
Send payouts with Stripe
Zadaqa lets you give to charity and earn discounts without spending a dime
We've just launched an MVP of Zadaqa, a new web platform that lets companies run campaigns. You participate by doing something simple like watching an ad or subscribing to their newsletter, they give to charity. You also earn discounts on stuff you love. We'd love your feedback.
There should be a name for articles whose body adds (virtually) nothing to the title itself. That is not to say that the title is not worthwhile - but you can save yourself the trouble of reading as long as you got the title :)
If you look at the rankings for free (non-iap) apps, those charts are also dominated by games as well.

Fundamentally people like playing games more than using "tech demo" apps.
I feel that BUYING child porn should be illegal, as it incentivises child porn production. No matter if you pay with money or by exchanging other child porn. By that rules, most people who possess child porn act illegally.
All true.

But. In my time as a computer forensics investigator in the UK I never saw a case like this. That's not to say errors were made (don't get me started) but I am very cautious about this particular tale.

For example, there is no way that the computer would not have been subjected to a full analysis, by experts. The CPS simply will not prosecute without this, period.

Any competent analyst would have seen the obvious truth, and the report would have reflected that. The CPS actually is very very cautious in charging for CP cases when there is only a little or dubious evidence - without supporting evidence of the user searching for and downloading material stuff graded level 1 will not make it to court.

I guess some critical process failed (I'm assuming the story is entirely true as told), which I think is horrific, but I don't think it reflects what happens all the time. I guess "Exhibit A" at no point said "I only have images of my grandchildren on there, from holiday", or similar, and the police assumed (totally understandable!) denial mean't the images were dodgy - that's a horrible failing.

What does need to be exposed is how any reasonable claim of CP possession (e.g. by a relative or whatever) will mean an automatic investigation, suspicion, and often seizure of your computers. The number of cases I worked through which were total negatives is depressing (although not a massive percentage, maybe 3-5%, it still feels we could do better).
Cool Job Ad (see html source)
> I want to see main idea of article first, then decide if this text worth my time to read.

Well, usually you put the main idea of a text in its title.
Nobody is challenging Amazon because their Earnings Per Share are...

-0.20. Negative 0.20.

Investors lump AMZN with GOOG and the like but GOOG's EPS is 33.59. TGT? 4.26. Walmart is 5.07.

No other company with a market cap (100+Bn) as large as AMZN is allowed to get away with that. The only one that comes close is Vodafone, with a tiny positive EPS (0.13).

It's important to note that if any other company spent until their EPS was negative, investors would flip.

Amazon is playing with razor thin margins while trying to scale up a platform to end all platoforms that we might someday use for everything without thinking about it. On that day/year/eon dollar bills might as well be printed with Jeff Bezos' face on them.

Amazon won't be using UPS and Fedex trucks on that day. They'll be using Amazon trucks. You'll know that era when you see it, I think.

If you're Walmart or Target its hard to justify it at this point, the stock could take a major dive from such a risk. They're at the "Ask-questions" phase, and the questions are always "What's the profit?" because these are publicly traded companies. Amazon has been playing it risky since the get-go.

Bezos is in for a very long gamble, and that frustrates the hell out of some investors, but its lofty enough to still attract investment dollars while in the "build-first" stage. Hopefully they can pull it off for a few more years before the stock market shifts to "Ask-questions."

So that's why. Amazon is doing something bold that would cause the mother of all stock dives in any other 100+Bn company. They get a free pass because Bezos is convincing and for Amazon its sort-of-always-been-this-way. Walmart/Target/Etc do not have either of those luxuries - the incredible (or believable) visionary and being a company that's still in burn (build) mode.
San Diego, CA. Remote. Klatu Networks (www.klatunetworks.com): A wireless sensor networking startup that focuses in biotech monitoring. We are a small, bootstrapped, profitable start up. We are very selective on our hiring so you will only be working with other great engineers.

The most important requirements is to be passionate about creating software and be able to quickly grasp new technologies. Other requirements include strong knowledge of Javacript, Java, experience with Ruby, SQL, Git. We filled our last position through a previous 'Who is hiring' post with great success and hoping to do it again.

Contact me directly if you are interested, email is in my profile.
Microsoft shows Windows 8.1 in action for first time
Amazon is very good at ignoring shareholders. In their first shareholder letter they basically said, "This is going to be a long hard haul." - http://benhorowitz.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/amzn_sharehol... - That kind of thinking is rare.
Disagree, lots of people hold opinions on things that they haven't really thought much about so those views are likely to be similar simply because by virtue of them consuming similar news sources and echo chambering their views amongst each other.

There aren't really distinct groups of "racist" or "liberal on race" , this is an over simplification. There are in fact many separate and overlapping issues which relate to race and it is possible to have differing opinions on any or all of them.

It is certainly worth re-evaluating your position if you have new information or a good argument to consider, but not simply because category X of people mostly disagree with you.
Data for Nothing, Calls for Free: How FreedomPop Will Offer Free Phone Service
This is an odd announcement considering the last I heard, 37signals would prevent new signups to phased out services, not abandon them entirely [0]. I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I don't really know what goes into such a service.

[0]http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-pa...

...

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I remember Back Pack.

David: We stopped offering to new people. Ta-Da List and Writeboard. The critical thing, I feel like, we did right was to say, “No new people could sign up for this. Everybody who’s still on it, we’re still going to support it.” We’re just going to continue to support it.

Jason C: So what was the thinking there? It doesn’t cost us that much.

David: It doesn’t cost that much to support it. What’s really expensive in running these services is you have to keep scale as your growing. You have to buy new hardware and manage the ops. You have to deal with the bugs that invariably will spill out from launching new features and all that stuff. If you stop launching new features and you stop growing then it becomes a non issue in many ways.

Jason C: Set it and forget it.

David: Exactly. Set it and forget it. It’s going to be there till… I don’t necessarily want to say the last guy closes the lights or whatever… but there’s no imperative for us to close it down. I think it’s a much more humane way to deal with…

This conversation is in direct reference to Google's decision and management of shutting down Reader
There is a little schadenfreude for me. When they launched, there was a significant air of pompous righteousness from 37S about how poor existing offerings were, and how this was the way things should be.

That, and their marketing materials for the service weren't just "polished phrasings", but actively lied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580
Isn't GE doing it to something extent? They're so diversified and so far away from the light bulb business that they originated from. Also, universal banks have diversified product offerings.

The article poorly assumes that every company has talent and capital to take on the risk of entering new markets all the time. It's easy to say "we should've done this and that" in hindsight of success but there are numerous failures of companies that tried to enter new markets and failed.
For free + the setup time for an alternative solution you wanted to avoid the first place + the migration work.

The second part was going to happen without Breeze in any case. But getting all the data out of Breeze and somwhere else properly is a problem created by Breeze closing down so early.

37signals sell to business customers. For them, having someone blocked for a day to get all that set up somewhere else costs quite a bit of money.

Still, I think 37signals handles that the best they can. There isn't much more to do then to grind your teeth and say sorry to current customers.

But they are causing very real inconvenience for existing customers, so all complaints are valid.
Tie Your Ego to the Product, Not the Process
Not using the arguments of prosecutors. That's the problem.
That article would indeed be a problem, but only if it ignored either Volvo manufacturing deaths or BMW driving deaths

Which is exactly what that article does. I see no reference to the deaths from uranium mining, or the deaths from industrial accidents at coal power plants.

I'm not saying these figures don't exist and certainly not suggesting they suggest nuclear isn't quite so squeaky clean. Other HN commenters have supplied links suggesting uranium mining is much safer.
My original point was that misleading comparisons, like the one mentioned, don't help pro nuclear arguments because they are frankly desperate, sensational and don't hold up to scrutiny.
Use Bayes theorem. Out of all the hard drives owned by private citizens, how many are encrypted (E), and how many contain a significant chunk of random bits (R)?

Let's say you picked a hard drive at random, and noticed a significant chunk of seemingly random bits. Is it encryption, or not? Well, given what you know, the best you can do is assign E÷(E+R) probability for the drive being encrypted.

Now change the problem, where you suspect the owner of the drive may have reasons to encrypt it (suspicion of child porn fits perfectly). Random chunks are now even more suspect.

Personally, I suspect that the vast majority of seemingly random chunks of bits are in fact encrypted data (meaning, E÷(E+R) is quite close to 1). So, while it's not proof, while it's not a signature, while for various reasons it's not something we want courts to use as an argument, it's still damn strong evidence that encryption is going on.
Many people think that religion is a topic that deserves or requires exceptional treatment.

I don't pretend to understand why.
A tiny version of Linux for education
That's simply not true. CP is a massive black market business - operated by sex slave gangs in various parts of the world (e.g. Eastern Europe).

They are sophisticated and wealthy operations, which is why it is next to impossible to make any inroads into catching them.

Hence targeting the consumers (which I agree is like closing the stable door...)
One thing I can't figure out about Feedly is if they're using their own sync service yet or if they are still relying on Google's while they work on building their own.
It would be a bit like eating humble pie for them to recommend Google Groups. They did little hit pieces against Google and Yahoos services, to talk about how Breeze was orders of magnitude better.
That model doesn't really work for apps which are dependent on external servers for multiplayer, etc. as the vendor has on-going costs. Hence revenue needs to be recurring as well.

In practice that means ads, subscriptions or IAP.
Ask HN: I want to build a CRM for non profits.
I want to write the next generation CRM for non-profits.

What features would you like to have?

Should I go ahead and do it?

Ideas on pricing, if any?
That point is debatable, certainly.

I don't like to harp on things that have become politicized too often, but this particular case stands in such stark contrast to bankers who made off with billions, none of whom to my knowledge are spending the rest of their lives in a common prison.

That's why the howls of injustice, to quote another commenter. $35 in ribs, taken by repeat offender, is apparently a greater crime against society than the repeat offense of fleecing the entire society.
I have been using feedly, but it keeps asking me for logging in to google after every session. I wonder what will happen once reader goes down. That and it looks/feels bloated.
Nginx Hotlink Protection
I'm creating a strategy game right now and I'm facing this dilemma. I'd like to get $20 from each customer during game lifetime, but it seems that it would be easier to make it free to play and then charge for something in the game. And it's hard to charge for anything that would not make you advance in the game, otherwise it's cosmetics and you're not charging for the game, but almost the same as asking for a donation.

Most people would like to play for free. This model enables you to attract more users, which means a larger pool of potential customers. For example, would you pay $20 for my game (see link at the end), or would you rather play for free and then pay $1-$2 a month for some stuff that advances your gameplay?

BTW, in case you're interested the game should be out in a month. See gos.bigosaur.com/cards.html for more info.
I'm not sure that Amazon is an outlier, but rather that as you say, other companies fear they would get raided if they tried to reinvest all their profits (what most companies probably ought to do a lot more of IMO) instead of issuing them as dividends and/or taking the money off-shore.

Given that Jeff Bezos cut his teeth at D.E. Shaw, I'll bet he went into this with his eyes wide open as opposed to the usual lucky and wet behind the ears ivy-league hipster willing to sign away 90+% of his/her idea's net worth from the get-go just to get a shot to pursue it.

Jeff Bezos was the right guy in the right place at the right time. That doesn't mean Amazon can't be taken out, it just means that someone needs to enter the space with a background capable of competing with him rather than creating another pets.com.
Fitbit for Dogs
Why would any company want to be like Amazon!? They steal and do not protect the sellers. You can file an A-Z claim on anything that didn't have signature required and get your money back. Call their support and they cannot help you in any way. They buy there products from 3rd party sellers at net-60 terms and then return the merchandise that didn't sell back to you at your expense. They steal money from 3rd party merchants, when a buyer makes a claim they take directly from the seller instead of investigating the issue. What company would still be in business if they did all of this?
and now I know the name for it, awesome!
Can it remove Buzz Feed from the internet too? Please?!
The state of some travel startups and why some are missing the pain point
Alternatively - if you see client would likely need more of your help - maintain good connection without negative sparkles, but for any further gigs request 100% of your fee upfront.
I did it a few times with unruly clients.
When I receive 100% check - i deposit it but do not use money whatsoever until project is fully implemented to keep myself disciplined too :)
Not for nothing, but she was supposedly gestating a child that was immaculately conceived, thus no sex was had... thus, not really related to sexual contact with minors.

That's what a Christian would say, anyway.
Non profit = no pricing :)
I'm Catholic and this was never brought to my attention.

There were a lot of things which were left out which I sought out answers to later in life - like how Jesus spent the majority of his life in the Middle East, but is represented as about Anglo-Saxon as you can be. Or what was he doing between 12-30 when he suddenly reappeared and was baptized by John and starts his ministry?

Again, I was never informed of these things, and to be honest, I really didn't care. These "discrepancies didn't make me a better Catholic, nor did they make me want to renounce my religion had I known them.
Police admit they're 'stumped' by mystery car thefts
This story is more about bad taste than Silicon Valley excess. Tens of thousands of individuals in this world have the means to pull off what Parker did.
Philly Building Collapses, People Trapped
On eve of launch, Wikipad gaming tablet is delayed indefinitely
Maybe there was so few people who joined Breezer, and it's such a new service, that it doesn't make sense to have the product running for years if they made their mind already about not wanting to keep investing in it.
Thanks for your feedback. Definitely on our roadmap.
How ASIC's attempt to block one website took down 250,000
Well, SuSE is german. And germans have an interesting case of NIH. For example, they invent scripting languages for their syslog deamons:

http://www.rainerscript.com/
Why is it apparently considered hip nowadays to style a few simple paragraphs in font-size 5000%? If you're non-blind this is useless at best, and if you zoom by default, it's unusably large.

Annoying.
You know the UK doesn't have a constitution in the same sense as the USA? During the recent undeclared civil war in the UK (Northern Ireland), there were many suspensions of civil rights.
The Marketplace Fairness Act will bankrupt small businesses
This comment is spot on.

However, my next question is: What can we do to make more companies be like Amazon?

Not every business needs to operate on razor thin margins, but I'd love to see more big companies playing the long game and continuously innovating. Wall Street invests in returns, not innovation. What can be done to help reset that balance a bit?
Ask HN: Best pragmatic resource to learn TCP/HTTP?
I'm trying to expand my knowledge about TCP and HTTP and want to further dig in. There are plenty of documentations out there but most of them contains lots of details and lots of them doesn't explain that much.

I've found this for HTTP: http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/http/

This seems really good that explains HTTP in detail.

Which is the best resource or book to learn TCP/HTTP?
I love the StackExchange Data Explorer. Even better is that the code is open source: https://code.google.com/p/stack-exchange-data-explorer/

Some really nice nuggets of code gems in there for people that want to learn ASP.NET MVC.
A bit on the creepy side for someone on the other side of 20 to date

For some people, perhaps. Individuals differ, I've met a few 16yo girls who were very much adult, as far as their intellect, personality and temperament were concerned, and I have a very hard time trying to picture a relationship with someone more mature than an average 20yo male as "creepy".
I would assume that they will be continuing with Qt, Gtk and the web frontend.