skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> that they cannot afford health care, legal protection, education, transportation, it becomes easier to prey on the weak. In effect you are breeding a class society based on money.

If their labor is not worth the minimum wage, they can't afford such things either. Giving them such things has horrendous social effects. (Yes, govts prey on people that they "help".)

We want more people working at low value jobs not so much because that lets them support themselves, but because that's how folks learn to produce value.

Besides, if I'm going to pay someone, is it really better to pay them to watch TV than to carry my groceries?

The best protection of "workers rights" is a worker's ability to work for someone else who better meets said worker's needs and desires.
I'd think that the servers would be primarily Xserves: http://www.apple.com/xserve/
I think I could. 5 years ago Friendster was popular and people were talking about blogs and rss. Facebook and Twitter are just iterations of those same concepts.

Which is my answer to the original question. I think the same concepts will be around 10 years from now but on the question of "will it still be Facebook and Twitter" I think that all depends on how well they deal with the issues that still plague these services (most notably the signal-to-noise ratio on both services)

One way or the other I think the idea of broadcasting information about yourself and having others be able to subscribe to that is here to stay..
Funny you ask, I just deactivated my Facebook account this morning for an unrelated reason (too much junk and drama, too little utility). I don't have much need for Twitter/Digg/Flickr/TechCrunch either. But I log into HN and reddit every single day. Five years ago I commented on Fark/Mefi forums diligently and ten years ago it was IRC and Yahoo chat. I think what it really boils down to is a good, intelligent crowd with decent moderation system. Social sites end up having little of that and a lot of useless banter.
I'm of the mindset that you never lose when the other person resorts to calling you names. If somebody's called out for their bullshit, then they've lost.
At least 100 people:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/25/apple-building-server-farm-se...
It won't change until a whole new generation of IT managers is promoted. I encounter far too many IT employees who are terrified of change and just want to have a job. And, I see almost complete trust in contracting companies and their "solutions". It will take someone who's grown up with better applications and hardware, to come in and say "WTF?" and wipe it all clean.
Full Screen Image Gallery Using jQuery and Flickr
s If she gets creative within a maths lesson she is marked down for not using the prescribed method!

I don't know. The above statement makes me think the problem isn't the schools but the world that comes after. Our schools may be based on "an industrial era" but the reality is so are most jobs. Accountants have to follow strict rules, as do lawyers, doctors, etc...

Given that, and the fact that I still see a problem in how your daughter is treated, I think the answer is not in changing our current schools as much as it is in profiling kids and tailoring a new enviornment for those it doesn't work for. We need a way to determine whose strengths are creative and whose are methodical and then design an education program for the creative while leaving the current one in place for the methodical.
Yes, you can push to a Git repository and hg-git will convert the hg commits you did in the meantime to Git objects and push them upstream. The tool is losslessly bi-directional. Developers using Git or Hg clients can push and pull from a Git server without necessarily knowing what client the other developers are using.
It is not related. I happened to really get going on this project at roughly the same time as the GSOC stuff came out, but the student that was working on that seems to have stopped.
A couple of suggestions.

Stanford University EPGY is a good online program for gifted children, even as young as your daughter. The math program is good; there is even a music program. http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/math/ The advantage of the Stanford courses is that they are designed for teaching advanced topics to youngsters.

In California high schoolers and even gifted elementary school children can take courses at the junior colleges. There are special courses for elementary age children, but those in high school take regular level college level courses. Maybe such programs exist in the UK.

A good outside program can provide the motivation to put up with the rest of the crap. Then all you have to do is convince the authorities to exempt her from advanced arithmetic because she is taking calculus.
Here in The Netherlands, poverty is defined as the lowest x% of income

Wouldn't that mean that, by definition, it is impossible to eradicate poverty?
Adobe claims rtmpdump 'can be used' to infringe
stromdotcode makes a very good point and the numbers make a good case for him.Others have also made the same point with equally convincing data.

Of course, it is a lot more interesting for people to read about the so-called "gold rush" and so the media hype around the app store isn't going to go down. The number of developers (as well as the so-called "idea" guys) who think that their little project will make it big isn't going to go down.
There is a mapping from Git SHAs to Hg SHAs. Technically we could add a command to run an Hg log from a Git SHA since we have a one to one mapping, but it's generally easier to not have to really know what the Git stuff is. You should be able to work in Hg with all your normal workflow, but push and pull from a server with a git+ssh protocol instead of an Hg server. It should be mostly transparent for the Hg user, and a developer using a Git client should not be able to tell that commits authored by an Hg developer was even using Hg. The data stored by both systems are not hugely different.
I hope you are at least putting away a good chunk of change so that you have some cushion if disaster strikes. A mallet to the face is one thing, but what about a progressive disease like cancer?
Aside from getting them into the cloud or CDN business, it might also be useful to have a tangible deployment of Apple's enterprise technology, to keep AAPL in the minds of the executive crowd, now that traditional server vendors are dying out (SGI, Sun, etc.)

Beating a few benchmarks on performance, price or power-consumption is usually a good way to break into, or return to, a market.

Apple also has a rabid user base who will gobble up anything they put out.
Urban Dictionary, May 25: farting gift
The Art of Starting a Project on Time
That makes me smile because he is one of my heros. Saw him speak when I was in high school.
I like looking at the "risk" of buying a new car vs. starting a business. When one buys a new car, they may spend $35,000 and as soon as they drive it off the lot, the value rapidly drops. When you talk to the average salaryman, they never say "buying a car is risky" when in fact, its one of the dumbest financial risks that one can take.

When starting a business, that same $35,000 investment actually has a chance of increasing in value, even if 95% of businesses fail.

Most people who say business is "risky" are just not comfortable with ambiguity. Buying a car is very well-known. Building a product that has never been built before means that you're venturing into the unknown, a very scary proposition for most people.
This is actually genius.
> http://www.macminicolo.net/

That seems like an incredibly inefficient way to use a Mac Mini. Doesn't OSX play well with virtualization?
"Every school Iʼve visited was participating in
the systematic suppression of creative genius" - Gordon MacKenzie
Some people will, some people won't — unless of course either service shuts down due to lack of revenue, in which case nobody will.

The subject of this article is such a strawman's argument though, and a very weird one at that. Who ever claimed that Facebook or Twitter would be around forever?

What will be around forever is the basic human behavior to want to communicate and stay in touch with others.
If she gets creative within a maths lesson she is marked down for not using the prescribed method!

Heh, I still remember being told off for something similar 14ish years ago...
M-x indent-buffer
But Twitter didn't knock off Facebook at all.

My bet is that Facebook doesn't die off, and it's because Facebook captures what really matters for social networking: keeping track of friends. That's why it beat MySpace. Before Facebook, no social network was good. Each one was a bit less shitty than the one before it. Facebook's Feed was what pushed Facebook over the top, and it's powerful enough that Facebook won't lose what it's got. Facebook might waver in popularity, but at its core it's so good that people have no reason to switch, whereas with every other site there was no reason to stay once something better came along.

Among my contacts, the only ones that use Twitter are the publicity hounds. The ones who want to keep in touch use Facebook and Facebook statuses, and because statuses are more interactive than Tweets (comments and likes), that's the sticky part of my communications world.

I don't get the people calling Facebook a fad. Perhaps it's only coming from people that aren't part of the Facebook generation? Looking at it from within, as I'm doing, the difference between this and MySpace/Livejournal/Friendster is enormous.
Random Observations - Part 6
threads like these are why polls like these are bad. I'm serious, this is a reddit thread.
I still find BitBucket more useful since GitHub has no free plan that offers secure transfers.
You're equating a physical reality with a virtual one. The whole of the Internet is about filtration. There's no "real" location that grows worse or that requires effort.

Besides, a per-site filter won't stop offtopic posts from being flagged, or debates from starting. They'll only allow certain people to ignore certain posts, which those people want to do anyway. I for one wouldn't block TechCrunch, and I'm certain many more would keep reading it as well.
Everything substantial that TC reports is also reported elsewhere -- sometimes before TC, sometimes just after TC. It could be salutary for HN if people prefer submitting alternate sources for the same stories (either because of a ban or without one). The bad stories wouldn't get an automatic TC bounce, while the good stories would still rise on their own merits. (The distracting and controversial part of the signal that is 'TC' would be filtered out.)

In so doing, there's a chance we could recreate here the original core of TC -- TC as it was in 2005/06, when it reported like a warm and enthusiastic newswire for all startups... before the pursuit of links and clicks led to all the pot-stirring, soap-opera, friends-and-enemies dross that now dominates TC.
M-x goto-line which I bind to C-x :
Also watches? I'm skeptical on the idea but the math seems to be reasonably close as to justify hope.

Suppose the notebook's lid is 20cm x 30cm, direct sun light is 1000wt/m^2, so we're getting 60 watts of energy per lid. Best solar cell efficiency available today is 20%, with 40% in the works (it takes very long time to make stride though). So, we're looking at 12w today and 24w in the future.

This is not entirely outlandish. Moving parts can be removed and silicon parts can be optimized for smart power management (e.g. sleep some regions of RAM, some parts (cores) of CPU, shutdown some SSD controllers while keeping others etc).

The only big thing left is the screen. Latest 2.2" OLED screen works at 100mw. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/tmdisplay-oled-scree...
So this screen is, (2.2 * 2.54)^2 * sqrt(3)/4 = 13.5 cm^2 and to cover a big 20x30cm screen we need 600/13.5 = 44 such small screens, and they should consume 4.4watts total. So the screen problem is manageable in the long run.

This can be made to work, at least in sunnier climates.

I would probably expect cell phones to get there first, however. the technology is expensive (both OLEDs and solar cells) and ARM&cell phone companies have better expertise in deep power management.
Is A Terminator Scenario Possible?
I have read the paper when it came on LtU a while ago, and the analogy doesn't do the research justice.

You could always persist side-effects until later use. That's what closures allow you to do. However, what the paper introduces is a new kind of "versioned memory"; Think of it as copy-on-write for the process' RAM, where certain procedures can make all the global side-effects they desire and keeping the changes only visible to themselves. Not only that, but it keeps a journal of state-change, so you can track how a particular variable changed over time.

At least that's my understanding of it.
The AA is the closest thing to a generic battery. I often work in remote locations and more of my gear (also including cameras/sound equipment) that runs on AA, the better. A UPS style big battery with outlets is a worthy alternative, but they typically weigh 30 pounds, you have to keep track of more cables, and can attract suspicion from airport security. I'd way rather have a few hundred AAs - yes, I do recycle batteries, and use rechargeables, but in a work environment you just want to be able to grab fully charged ones, fast, even if that means recharging said few hundred after the job ends and you get home.

On a more general level, I like it that they've designed the RAM and CPU slots to allow easy upgrades. At a $200 MSRP, I would certainly get one (or even if they drifted up to $249). The specs are very good for such a small machine and I wish them every success with it.
(defun iwb ()
"indent whole buffer"
(interactive)
(delete-trailing-whitespace)
(indent-region (point-min) (point-max) nil)
(untabify (point-min) (point-max)))
Slashdot discovers Lisp
Worse yet, it made me laugh.
This thread is long-dead, but I wanted to add that -M is already in iostat 9.0, as -m. Yesterday's release of 9.0.3 adds -z (if pressed, I'll admit to supplying a patch): http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/changelog.html
I'd rather a cheap general purpose solar-panel/ crank-handle/ battery combo. Or those bags I've been seeing recently with solar panels worked into the flap. You can't depend on the back of the screen being pointed directly at the sun enough of the time. In hot countries you might well want to get into the shade before sitting down for an hour.
i wasn't attempting to justify either. I was merely remebering the days when VW littered the front page. I sometimes feel the same about TC, as well, but TC does tend to feature interesting startups I'd have otherwise missed. And in my opinion the signal to noise ratio on their rss is too low to justify subscribing
You made it to /. John! :-)

Not fair, you didn't tell me you're going for a world record when you tossed your "little webserver" project so casually in IRC.

I guess tis the season for beating nginx in Lisp ;-)
But this assumes you're letting this thing sit in direct sunlight for hours at a time...who does that? I really doubt that cell phones or laptops will ever be solar powered, at least as their primary power source, because if they're not in use, they sit in a bag or a pocket.
Many things in South Korea aren't available to foreigners. If you're a foreigner, you're limited to the kinds of phone you can buy and can't even use wifi at Starbucks because it's only for Koreans.
I love Python and CSS as much as the next person, but I always thought Sass was an overengineered solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Expert CSS coders will always get better results.
That makes me want to facepalm a bit. Do you work with open source software?

Yes, but for ego boost and/or personal bugfix reasons.
With the RAM prices Apple charges, that could be a pretty small server farm... On a more serious note, that should be a massive facility. On the order of 500,000 square feet.
I'm not sure if it's quite that bad. It's true that we can't all be above average at everything, but nearly all of us can far surpass the average at something.

Someone with sub-par mathematical abilities could still be a stellar visual artist or visa-versa.
Yeah ok, CouchDB includes a web server :/ why is that a good thing?

It's not just a good thing, it's a central element of the design. CouchDB is just a ReST based service and ReST servers mediate access to web resources.
And internet speed isn't faster than in the US, they talk about 100mbs speed but that's just the speed of connecting to the network; internet speed is 10mbs max.
While they're spending a billion dollars, I wouldn't be surprised if they developed some custom hardware.
The author does not seem to mention the value of cash flow. Structured correctly, the business can be only ramen-profitable, but the cash flow can enable many other gains (equipment, transport, facilities, etc.).

My wife and I have financed a very nice life for the last 20 years on the back of a service company that makes a product every once in awhile (when I want the extra challenges).
It's been awhile since I've actually read any discussions on slashdot, but it seems like the default presumption of bad faith that ruined so much of the conversation when I did hasn't gone anywhere. This is an unfortunate phenomenon that seems to dominate much of online culture.
You're right, that's why I'm sceptical. I think it may work as a last resort (e.g. I forgot my power adapter at home), when camping/traveling or in poor countries with no electricity grid. The problem is with such marginal and cost-sensitive usage scenarios who will be compelled to develop it in the first place? In poor countries they use simple dynamo machines to power the cell phones afaik.

I think realisticaly there is a point for a special traveler's cellphone - take one with you when going hiking and know that you will be able to call help no matter what happens. That sort of thing.
A place doesn't have to be physical to be a community.
How come all the promotional pictures of this exclude the external storage you have to add for this to actually provide meaningful sharing?
I think a little larger device with room for a 2.5" drive would be more useful.
Hey, take a look at this!

http://www.voltaicsystems.com/bag_generator.shtml

15w solar laptop briefcase.
The fact that this article was written at all is just more proof that the iPhone app store is totally successful. Just ask yourself: Where are all the "The Incredible Android App Store Hype" articles?
Starting a service business need not be risky, but starting a startup seems to be quite risky. From what I've seen so far, the standard urban statistic about the 10% success rate is not hard to believe.
Well, yes, that's definitely an issue. But some people, you know, they're just hopeless and they wouldn't do anything productive anyway. May as well have them watching television, at least they won't go crazy with resentment after being forced to be a freaking greeter for 5 years.

And not all people will be like that. If just 1 in 5 people get bored, start studying, turn their life around and start pulling $120k, their tax pays for the other 4, plus the GDP per capita of the five quadruples.

It can and does happen. I know a guy who was an unemployed bum for a few years, then got bored, spent 2 years teaching himself computer animation, then got a job at a major animation studio (two of their productions playing in cinemas now). He probably "paid back" that measly trickle of benefit payments in 1 year.

I pretty much support an untested basic payment for all low income earners, actually, because of that and other experiences. Just gives people a base, a safety net. They might want to do nothing but watch TV, but they might want to do something good, too. Just gives people the support they need. And because of human nature, and general societal pressure to succeed, people do step up, eventually.

(edited to remove potentially identifying personal information)
Some of the R authors (including Ross Ihaka, one of the R founders) had a similar project, but the home page seems half deserted (the mailman link leads to a 404), and, looking at the waaayback machine, it didn't get a lot of traction (~20 messages on the ML at it's peak in may 2006).

It looks like this project has a sounder base, though. Omeaga was supposed to be it's own language, and it's pretty hard to design one properly. Clojure + Parallel Clot sounds like a clean and powerful backend for this kind of platform.

And Clojure-the-language is a good fit too. Incanter's use of the Clojure syntax for matrices "literals" is very clever IMO.

I think there might be traction towards this, from both the statistical and the scientific computing communities.

The R architecture is dated. Matlab is expensive, parallel code requires a custom toolbox, with a per core licensing scheme (and the language is clunky).

The main competitor for this project would be the Python-based Sage and NumPy, but I think that the JVM backend of Incanter makes it a better tool for this job.
Ruby Currying
SourceForge has removed the homepage of the program, but Yahoo still has a cached copy[1].

From the page: "A small dumper for media content streamed over the RTMP protocol. Supplying an rtmp url will result in a dumped flv file, which can be played/transcoded using ffmpeg/mplayer, etc. Download scripts for BBC's iPlayer and hulu.com streams are included."

It seems like they chose to describe it as an infringement tool that can be used for other things (debugging?) as well.

[1] http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=rtmpdump&...
Luddism, Transhumanism & Evolution
Clerks: inspirational startup from a totally different industry
Microsoft arms half-wit developers with PHP handgun
A platform to run plug and and play web apps for Mac users. The salesforce of consumer apps.

EDIT: They are definitely not going to invest 1B to earn 46 million over 10 years. 46M will not even cover executive compensation for the same period.
Frankly, no 37signals or Steve Jobs will ever inspire me as much as Clerks and the story behind it. And I want it to share it with you, people :)
ML dialects allow you to configure the "-fix" of your operator and its precedence. But then, we're not Sufi mystical clerics writing algebra to discover the secrets of God on expensive parchment; it's time to let space-saving algebraic infix operators behind people ;-)
InDesign Tutorials 
InDesign has a special place in my heart as the number 1 layout program for graphic design. Take a look at some of the wonderful InDesign tutorials inside.
Unless the data format is written in a language...
I know this isn't very Ruby or rails specific, but if you are doing big changes to your db on big datasets and you don't use transactions, you deserve whatever comes your way.

Realize you've fucked up? A quick ROLLBACK TRANSACTION and you are safely back where you started. This is so freaking simple, I can't believe people aren't using it.
he also has great skills on Public Relations, doesn't he?
Something like them, yes -- with much of the same functionality within some larger superset, and perhaps even a direct line-of-descendence from Twitter/Facebook to whatever I'm using in 2019.

I was using features similar to the profile-page/friend-messaging/doing-field cores of Facebook and Twitter in 1999, so why not 2019 too? But in 1999 the profile-page was generic web-hosting; the communication via email/IM/chat; the doing-fields only in IM and chat.

There are things which make the current incarnations special and new:

- the convenience and trust/privacy controls provided by the explicit social-graph

- the importance of reverse-chronological logs/blogs/feeds

- the public visibility of Twitter

- most especially: the mass-adoption

But their core features are far older than 10 years, and the future of related functionality will extend many decades forward.
He didn't benchmark it against nginx. Per the linked presentation, all he actually benchmarked it against was mongrel and lighty w/fastcgi for php.