skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I'm a non-CS major and am much unlike many of you mathematical whiz kids who make up this board"

Are there any math whiz kids on HN? (other than cperciva)

There are many smart people on HN, but I don't think there are math whiz kids. This is a hacker forum, not a math forum like AoPS. Sometimes we discuss stuff like complexity and algorithms, but most of the time, we rant on Ruby x Python or why kids these days want to build social networks for dogs instead of sending astronauts to Mars, or why big corporations are evil and small startups rock, or why PG is a supreme master and every single essay of his is nothing less than the truth. We are such cool kids we even have our own hacker-ghetto slang... including hideous terms like "ramen-profitable" ;-)

I know a forum where there's even a Fields medalist, and that is on quantitative finance. Whoever says that HN is made of math whiz kids probably knows very little math.
Sure such things can matter, but in this case I think it's more likely that someone pitched the story to NYT and they liked it for whatever reason.
I don't think it was implied at all, especially since he recommended using it at the end. It's implied only if you read the title and nothing more.

What was both implied and directly stated was that a cloud-based architecture is often not the best idea for a lot of people, despite the modern mania for it.
The Search For The Moose - Larry Lessig
He might be out of touch with the gadget side of web applications (can phillg make rounded corners with Processing.js or Raphael.js or Shoooes? I don't think so.) but his server architect credentials are untouchable. The fucker started a social networking site for photographers in 1993. He taught web application development at MIT and the book he coauthored is still used today.

And if you think there is anything "modern" to scaling web applications, you would be wrong. When push comes to shove, everybody reaches out to their Unix system call manpages and pulls out 20+ year old profiling tools. It's the front-end that's sassy ;-)
School's out bucko, I wouldn't stoop that low. :D

This is more or less a metaphysical inquiry into where computer science is headed. Algorithms + data begets design patterns, design patterns + objects begets...
Very simply some problems are impossible to solve in a reasonable amount of time or at all; these problems may looks simple, but their complexity can explode.

For instance chess is relatively easy to program where as go is quite a bit more difficult.
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Here's a very good quote from wikipedia that might make it clearer:

The thesis is widely considered to be a good rule of thumb for real-life problems. Typical input lengths that users and programmers are interested in are between 100 and 1,000,000, approximately. Consider an input length of n=100 and a polynomial algorithm whose running time is n^2. This is a typical running time for a polynomial algorithm. (See the "Objections" section for a discussion of atypical running times.) The number of steps that it will require, for n=100, is 100^2=10000. A typical CPU will be able to do approximately 109 operations per second (this is extremely simplified). So this algorithm will finish on the order of (10000 ÷109) = .00001 seconds. A running time of .00001 seconds is reasonable, and that's why this is called a practical algorithm. The same algorithm with an input length of 1,000,000 will take on the order of 17 minutes, which is also a reasonable time for most (non-real-time) applications.

Meanwhile, an algorithm that runs in exponential time might have a running time of 2^n. The number of operations that it will require, for n=100, is 2^100. It will take (2^100 ÷ 109) ≈ 1.3×1021 seconds, which is (1.3×1021 ÷ 31556926) ≈ 4.1×1013 years. The largest problem this algorithm could solve in a day would have n=46, which seems very small.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobham%27s_thesis
I'm starting to wonder in how many ways I can screw up a 10 question survey. Thanks for the feedback. I had 5 other people proofread the survey and you are the only one to catch that.
The timing seems right. Shouldn't have had that last beer...
Is it possible to do the same thing in PHP? Authenticated users performance is one of the areas Drupal could be improved, and this looks like it could help a lot.
http://artemis.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs460/Spring98/contents.h... is a very good resource on the parent science of algorithmic information theory.

AIT and computational complexity theory arguably underlay all other sciences. They allow us to define randomness (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/georgia.html), pattern, probability (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Algorithmic_probability), inference (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-solomonoff-induction.htm), ignorance, and perhaps one day consciousness.

They allow us to prove, with absolute certainty, whether we are talking to a deity ( http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=56), and to prove that some questions will forever be beyond our grasp.

Even discounting Zuse and Wheeler's "It's from Bits" conception of information and computation as the basis of physics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics), these disciplines promise to help us solve our hardest and most interesting problems by, first of all, telling us whether they are solvable at all, and if so, whether they are solvable before the heat death of the universe. Consider that Goedel, Cohen, and Turing struck down the Continuum Hypothesis from Hilbert's list of open problems, allowing us to abandon a futile line of inquiry and focus on other problems. Current developments in quantum computability theory may similarly strike down vast swathes of sterile ideas, directing us toward questions whose answers are solvable.
Coming from a security background, I think there's something intrinsically wrong with that type of authentication system.

I like to use 1Password: a different, complicated, virtually uncrackable password on every site I use.
Your critique of the organizer was very useful. We're looking into improvements for the next iteration. Also, we've added this tutorial: http://www.webnotes.net/tutorial/tutorial.aspx. We hope you find it useful.
Utilize Tech Conferences for Launching Startups?
Anybody have any experience with launching an application in or at the same time as a tech conference? Which ones have you done or are planning? How are you getting in there and into the PR?
Note that this is pretty much only measuring thread overhead rather than thread workload throughput. So on an SMP system you'd still have the same problems with blocking I/O and only using one CPU that are part and parcel with green threads. In practice that means for something like a map-reduce pattern on a multi-core system, Ruby 1.9's native threads would win by a significant margin.

Edit: Remembered based on ice799's comment below that in 1.9 the threads still won't be allowed to operate in parallel, which neuters most of the aforementioned benefits to using native threads.
I used the predecessor to delicious, alone, from 2001-2003. Then delicious took another two years, 2003-2005 to get to tens of thousands of users. So it took a really long time.

Firefox extensions and RSS helped a huge amount. And it was close to one of the first user data sites that had an API (before Flickr, I think...)
Usually the point where you could get into trouble would look more like: book.author.name in the given example.
so far i like everything about it. key points (1) found all the info about the service i was looking for real fast, and my patience level is low for the review my site stuff (2) fast and simple registration (3) encouraged me to try it out since i didnt even have to pay (4) the privacy policy was easy to find and understand [first question was if you were watching my browsing beyond what i want to highlight] and you don't -- i'm going to use this app for a bit and see how it goes.

i also like how clear you made the advantages of the app, the testimonials, and just the overall how much information i get easily.

great job.
I think you underestimate his ego.

You're right. Painfully right.

"Eric realizes that if he’d had a bit more courage and self-discipline, and moved from mathematics into physics rather than programming, he would have been rather likely to have invented decoherence theory himself and become a physicist renowned for kicking the props out from under the Copenhagen Interpretation."

From the followup:

"I just turned 51. That means, in order to believe that I could do really strong and original physics work now, I’d have to start with a justified belief that I’m as talented as Hawking or Einstein. This is almost certainly not the case. I would say “certainly”, except that my general track record of creativity and insight is far enough off the mean to raise just the tiniest smidgen of realistic doubt about this. And I was, after all, ahead of the physics literature on something conceptually important at least once - even a lot of physicists never manage that."

One reads such words, and what can one say but... "esr."
"Using Rails doesn't prove your smarts" was more clearly stated.
The latest theory has moved far from Atkins in the high-fat/paleo diet community.

Wheat (including whole wheat), sugar (which is half fructose), high fructose and Omega 6-PUFA rich processed oils are in the devil's stew.

Rice, oats, corn, potatoes -- starchy root vegetables -- seem to be fine. But that's only if you don't already have chronically elevated glucose.
From the article: "Regardless of the outcome of a meeting, I view it as a success if I learn one thing."

This is a phrase I've heard more than once from individuals who lack the humility to appreciate that the meeting is also a success if they teach just one thing.
"Many libraries are still not compatible with 1.9"

It's not likely they will remain so for very long
Ask HN:  best time to submit a story?
When does readership generally peak on a daily and weekly basis?
Simply knowing particular languages has been pointed out on sites not too far away from here as a sign of a Good Programmer. This counts as evidence to the contrary. But not absolute evedence, I guess we all still have to think for ourselves.
Imageless loading spinners (use FF 3.5b4 to view)
The majority of people are much, much more interested in clothes than websites. Do you think fashionistas and clothing obsessives are a bunch of pretentious wankers? Well, that's how the general public feels about online designers. Very few people think, or care, about user interfaces, but everyone has the experience of wearing clothes, so such information seems vastly more relevant.
Google and Twitter Just Makes Sense
uh when they launch an entire store to allow publishers to make REAL money selling their documents.

adding adsense to a page is not rockscience. this can be done in an afternoon

adding an self-publishing/payment system IS leaps and bounds greater than 'doccash'
fascinating - thanks.

I think in 5 years time delicious & flickr will probably be the two webapps i still use.
I agree with Zarathu. Most people aren't responsible with their passwords, and OpenID solves those problems. But the people who are using OpenID right now are probably the same people who would be better off managing their own passwords.
I think that the lawyers who wrote the article would have benefited from consulting with a couple of qualified internet engineers.

Having said that, the piece was written by lawyers, so it isn't surprising they see primarily a legal solution to the problems newspapers are facing. When all you have is a hammer...
I agree some tools never go away, but I hope you're not literally saying that no advances have been made in scaling techniques in the past decade or so.

Almost a decade ago I worked on a large scale site that ran on PHP3, MySQL 2 (before it had replication), and depended on a hardware load balancer. Today, between RoR, Memcached, Amazon AWS, etc. etc. I can build and scale out an app 10x faster and cheaper than I would've been able to a decade ago. (Hey, isn't this the fundamental rationale behind YC?)

Even ignoring new software, the availability of cheap memory and gigabet networking alone inform different architecture decisions than 1993.
Koodos on the product. I am curious, what tool/utility did u use to create the demo clip?

Best of Luck ! :)
> Whoever says that HN is made of math whiz kids probably knows very little math.

To generalize that: the term "whiz kid" is only used when you know so little about something that you believe it to be a black.
Maybe the OP wanted the opinions of savvy , knowledgeable users of python web frameworks as well.
You're right. It's pretty ironic. But it's my personal site, and I have treated it more as a playground than anything serious. I felt that I was allowed to neglect it.

However, in light of the attention I have received today, I'll be spending a lot more time perfecting it in the future.
Weird. I had almost the exact same experience with my chemistry teacher too.
Unusable for me on Linux/firefox too.
Webnotes Pro: PDF Annotation - Up to 500 MB (about 2,500 PDFs)

The typical .pdf I encounter is a lot larger than 200k. What else...ah, the pins on sticky notes caused instant cognitive dissonance. As did the pins on highlighting...maybe just lose the damn pins.

I like it. I don't see myself paying for it. But I would encourage others to use it.
If I could only say 'O' like Mr. Whitefield
Looks broken to me as well. I went to Settings->Linked Accounts->Open ID and tried both my website (which has a openid link in it) and the direct url of my openid and it rejects them both. They DO work, I use them all the time with this site and others.

ETA - yep, I'm using phpMyID as well.
HAProxy certainly supports SSL.
I would guess 80% of software developers would be better off spending their time
* learning business
* improving their communication skills
* talking with their customers
I don't think it's reached the point where it should be the only authentication system offered by any service.

I think it's still very confusing to the average joe, but if you stressed something like "login with your google account", with an easy button to use the Google OpenID provider to authenticate, it might make it easier for the average joe to understand. Something similar to http://www.postrank.com/login would probably be effective with most average users, IMO.
Open letter from Craigslist to the Attorney General of South Carolina
Has nobody tried Wesabe? They seem to be very much up front about what kind of information they aggregate and for what. Also, they don't take payments to recommend particular services. I like them, but don't use this kind of website extensively because my local bank operates in the middle ages.
It is barely readable in chrome. Everything is extremely aliased and there are some artifacts.
OpenID support has ruined Facebook. Please join my group 1,000,000+ strong against OpenID.

/joke
The founders could put up their stock as a guarantee against it.

(edit) That's risky an self-limiting, on second thought. The investors would never agree to the same, and it would not apply in the case of a sale of the company.
Does anyone have hard numbers on this one? "impressive capacity" fuels the imagination but I'm not sure my laptop will run on that.
This post spoke poorly about two concepts:
* query optimization
* robust hosting
Both of which are generic and have nothing to do with Ruby on Rails in particular.
Copying Lines, not killing
Thanks for the complements. Unfortunately, I don't know what tool/utility we used for the screencast. I do enjoy Jing though.
The output looks really nice, but the implementation is not so great. Turn it into a service that outputs these in png format on the fly.
Same result; apparently phpMyID isn't supported. :P
I think he only reason it's still in there at the end is just so the site doesn't have to be rewritten. He's just changing the hardware to something beefier instead of optimizing it.

It's sad that rails, by default though it may not be the case anymore, makes n+c requests to the database when you load a page that lists n objects. It can be fixed in one line of code per page.
With programming pop culture being so large today, why aren't the greybeards (and/or their ideas) a larger part of it?

I would love to be reading more oldschool stuff on sites like this, but "ruby + cloud" style stuff is news.

And for me, at least to some degree, what I read is what I use.
currently have 3 screens, and i thought about adding a 30" (for the continous document, then vertical stack two of the 22" screens next to it), but at the moment i have to turn my head to see the left monitor. i mostly work on the two right monitors, and use the left for ongoing IM conversations/etc. Beyond this, minimizing windows and just having many open seems just as productive as having to look around physically (instead of using switcher). anything im missing?
>the relative size of their potential punishment is larger then the rest of the people walking around outside.

The articla does not compare the prisoners to "the rest of the people" but to other prisoners in this program. And within this group, they are "deterred by longer sentences".
Maybe it was one of the brain teaser questions....
I could understand an argument that knowledge of certain languages is correlated with being a Good Programmer.

This guy seems to have heard about the cool tools of the day, jumped in, and failed mostly due to a lack of experience.

One great lesson of experience is that there is often a simple solution to complex problems.
Great idea, superb execution.
This uses JavaScript, not CSS.

CSS on the other hand, does have a built-in way to do gradients (CSS3+):

*-colors: #color1 #color2 #color3 #color4 ect

For example, this demo makes use of border-colors gradients and border-radius: http://code.eligrey.com/css3/border-colors/styled.html (Only shows gradient in browsers that support CSS3 like FF3 & Safari 3)
This is similar to crash dieting or excercise binges - people don't bother to fit eating or excercising into their regular habits so they do "crashes" to try and feel better.

But everything he said resonated with me.
Djng - a Django powered microframework
How do you log in if you are away from your mac though? Is there a web interface to 1Password?
I was taught something similar by one of my mentors. Always bring something to the table in any discussion (or more broadly, relationship). No one likes to be sucked dry.
Exit Strategies Videos for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors
Really I'd say the earliest machine "algorithms" was the operation of the abacus (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_use_an_abacus), such that moving certain beads around gave you certain numbers - this can be viewed as a rough input/output calculating system. This originated in China I believe thousands of years ago. All an algorithm really is is a sequence of steps to go from an input to an output - a finite, discrete, numerical sequence of steps. A trivial example would be:

Input X, Output 0

Algorithm:

while x is not equal to 0, subtract 1 from x

When x equals 0, return x.

This is a finite series of step to go from input (x) to output (0). I just subtract 1 from x over and over until I have 0.

No matter how complex algorithms can get they are basically the same thing, at least in sequential programming - I don't know too much about other more recent stuff to be honest - but traditional programming is just taking an input, applying a set of operations on the input, one at a time, until the set of operations is completed and you have an output. An algorithm is just a "recipe" or a set of operations. A recipe is a series of steps to be done to food to make a meal. Similarly an algorithm is a series of steps to be done to an input to make an output. Most languages are basically like this in programming: FORTRAN, C, ASSEMBLY are all basically this same idea of sequential, finite operations on inputs.
sudo apt-get install nano

It's either going to be that or

sudo yum install nano

Depending on which linux OS you're using. But it may already be installed.
Also contrary to popular opinion, an img tag with an appropriate alt attribute is very accessible (in any browser but IE, it's even resizable.)
Server performance hacks age the best out of all the performance optimization techniques I can think of. The same socket descriptor multiplexing tricks that were used to make news servers pump gigabytes of alt.binaries.* a day, in that age of "megabit networking", can be used today to push html and a few pngs very comfortably. Why? because network capacity, memory size and processor speed are growing orders of magnitude faster than network service consumers are being created, making the old network performance hacks far more powerful today (solely focusing on human users here, though even software "users" can be tolerated with more intelligent "push" architectures allowing the server to deliver content to its subscribers at its earliest convenient time.)

Also, changes in kernel architectures and the addition of fast and faster system calls only makes it better, but not different.

Unix (mostly BSD) ftp servers were at some point in the not-so-distant history the only places to get software; Simtel.net run on ONE server with no load balancing. Email? anon.benet.fi scaled really well. Not to long ago, single Unix servers were household names and their admins and systems hackers were Gods.
MapReduce Tips
I personally think that IP protection paranoia with (for example) NDAs is overrated. Ideas are hard to protect because they're generally easy to come up with.

(I'm talking about web products here, scenarios will differ if you're doing something else).

Executing on an idea, however, gives you other things. Code (which can easily be protected with a license and NDAs), a brand (which is protected via trademark), a userbase (which is fickle, but you can work on making them happy and keeping them), a partner network (make it worth their while and they won't go anywhere), etc.

This gives you a Product.

Products are usually easy to clone (creating something that has the appearance of being technically equivalent), but hard to execute on (or in other words - turn it into a Product in itself).

Stop worrying about the source code leaking. Just assume that it has been leaked already. Unless you're sitting in a basement doing everything yourself, other people will have access to this code. If you out-source development to a third-party, the code has already been leaked.

What you should instead be worrying about is the security of your codebase. As you're obviously outsourcing, you should have a competent developer managing the outsourcing process and auditing the code for security flaws.

Bottom line : don't bother protecting the idea, use boilerplate NDAs and licenses for the code and its development and have strict auditing procedures for outsourced code development.

If you're starting up, IP really is the least of your concerns. Just assume everybody out there has illegal access to your source code, plan appropriately and stop worrying about it.