skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So this leads to the question: Why there isn't an open-source garbage collector that can be used across different projects?

Surely Python, V8, and Ruby have enough in common, allocation-wise, that the code can be shared? They're all C in the back-end. It's just pointers and more pointers at the lowest level.

It's not about making a toy GC, it's about making a top-rate GC that works and packaging it up as a tool.
Graphene could yield cheaper optical chips
Linode may have "regular" hard drives, but they're fast. I ran a legacy PHP commerce package for a client and it would log gigabytes of data due to deprecation warnings, I wasn't as knowledgeable about downgrading and freezing packages as I am now, but Linode handled it fine. I think they're 10k RPM SAS drives, so they're quite fast.

On the other hand, Linode gives you access to 8x Xen CPUs from the base package. While to get the same out of DigitalOcean you need to pay $160/mo. The pros/cons I see are:

DigitalOcean: SSD, RAM (2x), and therefore price (for low CPU apps)
Linode: CPU, HD space, transfer (2-4x)
These guys join a chorus of academic voices calling for the same. We've seen similar statements from Professors Rogaway and Green in the past few weeks on HN.

I think we need a legal solution, but if the tech community refuses to participate in corrupting the technology, it puts the spooks in a worse position. I'd sign a pledge saying I will never work on any apparatus (software, data centers, anything at all) that are used for mass surveillance. That's pretty easy for me to do though... the money government throws at some companies and people for this work is more tempting than the One Ring.

http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/politics/surveillance.pdf

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announce...

More like this couldn't hurt.
> The trigger might have to be a little different

The "dot-autocompletion" has a pretty good usability in my opinion. You write down the name of the variable, enter a dot and you get a filtered list of methods that "make sense" to call on the receiver (key word: discoverability of the API).

How exactly would one implement the trigger with multimethods? I think this is an important consideration to make from a usability standpoint.
Looks like you've already learned the most important lesson of software engineering: don't reinvent the wheel. Offloading the real work to Google probably is the best way to build this app in most cases, but it makes the headline a little misleading, because you didn't actually write a QR generator, you just wrote a text box that proxies to a web API.
So, would we use Chinese hardware? It probably has backdoors too..

And at least here in Latin America I believe there aren't enough hardware providers to build anything resembling a modern computer.
How Wordpress Used VideoConferencing and IRC to Change the World
Build a cellular carrier with just APIs and integrate it with anything
They will be eventually on http://www.baruco.org/. The conference has only just finished.
I agree completely. Lunch conversations are a wonderful time to break into informal conversations that result in ideas/fixes etc. I have worked at 2 places where (informally) the team chose to have lunch together and I have seen that the discussion invariable boils down to work ideas with better results than 'meetings'. I suspect a large reason as to why this works is eventually everyone lets their guard down and results in better/relaxed thinking.
Why isn't there a Steve Jobs of social networking?
The Age of the Aging Entrepreneur
Is U.S. cancer care “in crisis,” as the Institute of Medicine proclaims?
I live in Manila, and it really can get insufferable at times.
The math in encryption is fine, however the governments have been inserting themselves into every nook and cranny outside of encryption. When they control the communications equipment and they have inserted themselves into the CAs then we're completely helpless.

The only way to win the game is to not play it -- don't rely on CAs and assume HTTPS is plaintext. We may be able to help ourselves but the general populace is helpless.

This is why we appeal to the governments that are attacking us: the general populace cannot protect themselves. We may be able to protect ourselves but we shouldn't be so selfish.
Rather than completely rolling my own, I like to use Sorcery[1] for authorization now. It concentrates on providing the bare minimum that every app absolutely needs, making it much easier to build on top of than Devise, where you're constantly searching around their codebase trying to figure out what they provide and how to override it.

I still don't get why people use these form helper gems. In every single project I've worked on that used them, we've spent more time fighting them in complex cases than we saved in potentially repetitive simple cases.

[1] https://github.com/NoamB/sorcery
Show HN: Replace $30/mt knowledge base with my open source project
You're right that this is less significant if you are hitting an empty queue (triggering a timeout) between each request.

However, even when not comparing (seconds to computer 10000 jobs) benchmarks, you still get benefits from goworker. Since dequeuing, deserialization, and updating stats is faster, the latency between "job insert" and "job started" is lower, which means faster interface updates.

You can also restructure your workers. Instead of running one worker that loops 5,000 times because the Redis overhead is too high, you can have one job queue 5,000 more which can be run on several distributed workers.
Also - your landing page could use some work. It's not that clear what you are offering - the image is not really useful. I'd use a headline like "Who else wants to effortlessly ace their next phone interview?" Then something like "never freeze up again, sign up for a free 30 minute prep interview for developers and get domain specific questions and a detailed review."

On the sign up, let them pay $30 (or whatever) for access to unlimited calls, 100% refund if they don't get a job in 90 days, and have the option to get the call for FREE if they agree to a post interview debrief with you about the service (or even an automated form response).

You can also cross sell resume services, tips and coaching, all sorts of things.
Simple 5-step methodology: http://blog.pmrobot.com/2011/09/5-steps-to-estimate-software...
>Less executable code on the client, more powerful markup. JavaScript was a huge mistake that we will likely have to live with for decades, let's not compound it.

That ship has well and truly sailed. Mozilla and Google both want to make the web into a general purpose app platform, and they have veto power over any proposed standards. Admittedly they both want a slightly different version of the idea (asm.js vs Dart or NaCl), but that gridlock just leaves us investing even more heavily into the current Javascript ecosystem.
Bowery – The Next Generation of Web Development
IIRC, it takes just as much energy to reach L4 (or L5) as to reach the Moon--they're in the same orbit.

If you've got settlers on the Moon, or beyond the Earth-Moon system, L4 is probably a good place to build a commercial and industrial outpost; but, for your only space installation, something lower down is much cheaper.
> Doing blocking operations inside a go is a anti-pattern.

Sorry - could you elaborate please?

In my understanding, in golang it's fine to block a goro with a blocking call, whether that be a blocking syscall (read/write/sleep) or a blocking read from/write to channel (perhaps multiplexed with select).

The scheduler will run other goros on the threadpool until the blocking call finishes. That's the "secret sauce" which allows you to write synchronous code in go without single-thread-per-goro (and requires a runtime to arbitrate the system calls and schedule goros)
Is this supposed to be anti-work from home? If not, what's the optimal balance?
Such a nice site. Hope this gains traction.
That caught me too. Made me think of the discussion regarding singe vs double spaces over the weekend... (this was a case put forward where double spacing would make the end of the sentence less ambiguous).
I'm 34 and I do it. I wouldn't have it any other way. Why even have periods if you aren't going to separate sentences with proper distance.
"may not" is still better or at the worst case the same as "certainly true" ;)
Prototype Angular UIs Without A Backend
Really I have to say it was an emotional decision. I've been a fan of pg and YC for years and now I actually was free to try it and had a team that was inclined to, so I went for it.

Angels are regular people. They are as diverse as any crowd at a mall. I've found that outside of SF they tend to be MUCH more downside conscious. I did waste a lot of time with some angels who turned out to be bad for the ecosystem (willing to toy with entrepreneurs for long periods of time).

The best advice (and I live by it) is anything that isn't a yes is a no. That doesn't mean stop trying but that does mean that you focus your energy on stronger leads first. Nobody actually says no, with very few exceptions. It's hard to understand this until you get a few checks closed and then you'll know what a REAL yes feels like.
Linode is working to upgrade to ssd. https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?t=10406&f=26
Oh. Never been to US myself, thanks for the correction. Is there at least an outlet for your laptop and decent 4G/3G coverage on the whole trip?

(Compare to Russia, where traveling anywhere remote by train means you might be completely lost to the world for a few days.)
There's a lot of land out there. My father in law has acreage in west Texas. You only see people if
A) you drive 30 miles to the nearest town. B) migrants are traversing the land to sneak into the us. Or C) the border patrol enters your land looking for migrants.

I would say we have a way to go before we fill the earth with people. Now, water, food, energy, and providing a certain quality of life will hit a wall much sooner than that.
I admit I'm kinda waiting for someone to say: "We're exactly like GMail/Dropbox/whatever but we take security seriously and we're outside US jurisdiction. Click this button and we'll migrate your data for you."

I guess I just don't value my boring private data enough to put much work into this right now. But if I ever need a new cloud service, being outside the US will definitely count as a big plus.
If you're courteous and succinct most alumni will treat you in kind. Except for jnovek who is to be avoided at all costs.
The Lifestyle Business Challenge - Month 1
http://www.itwiz.co.uk/search/index.php

Just type "QR" then a space and whatever you want QR'd

Loads of other services too

Integrates with your browser's search bar too with
http://www.itwiz.co.uk/search/index.php?search=%s
A nice log graph would be better than the linear ones IMO, especially when the scale stretches a lot (like in the Database Insert tab)
Instant Extended API in chrome://flags
How I failed
This might be good reference material:
http://www.girafferesume.com/giraffe-mock-interview.php
Smalltalk wasn't designed to support it, it's decades older than the concept of automated refactoring. It is much easier to do in static languages, and doing so in dynamic languages requires code analysis at runtime. As it's always runtime in Smalltalk this fits naturally, it wouldn't be so in Ruby or Python where you're working on text files rather than a runtime.
For further comparison, Google has in the region of 50,000 permanent employees globally.

http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
Freelance Cash Flow: Tips for a Happier Freelancing, Part 1
Apparently this is a dupe, not detected because the previous submission had a bunch of FB tracking junk tacked to the end of the url: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391701
5 reasons why MySQL replication lag is flapping between 0 and XXXXX
I highly doubt that's an issue you'll ever run into on a blog.
I am really interested in this too, however I could not find any indication of it in "man 5 resolver" :(

You can do this with dnsmasq by using the --server option where you can pass individual upstream servers for different domains (in addition to the default ones read from /etc/resolv.conf):

--server=/google.com/1.2.3.4 --server=/www.google.com/2.3.4.5 will send queries for *.google.com to 1.2.3.4, except *www.google.com, which will go to 2.3.4.5
Creating a reusable Settings component for iOS
I'm not accepting a job but rather a lifestyle.

It's called over-engineered culture fit. You've failed the culture fit portion of your hiring interview. Please find your own way out.

Remember (like, eight years ago) when you could get a job by doing good work and tolerating coworkers for a few hours a day? Now jobs mean you have to do good work, buy in to the koolaid, love your coworkers, and spend time with them before and after work too (or else you're not a "team player" or you're not "fitting in here"). You should definitely not hire people you can't stand, but there's a continuum between "this person has an abhorrent personality" to "no mad skillz pongpinging? NO HIRE!"

The startup tech industry is freezing out the leave-me-alone-i'm-working computer person archetype in favor of cheerleader/frat/bro/übersocial/drinkydrinky people. Who are you leaving behind?
Another important lesson: be careful in trusting your main functionality to a third party, as Google has already announced the infographics portion (including the QR code generator) has been deprecated, see: https://developers.google.com/chart/infographics/
how can people still deny that we went to the moon when that thing has been sitting there since? Id think that those people who think that there was no moon landing would have done a fair amount of research about it, and would have learned of the existence of this man made thing there.
Which is funny since visiting many UK government sites now involves sending information about your use of the site to a non-EU corporation outside the EU after they let some young hip web devs loose on it and they stuck Google Analytics everywhere.

Technically there is some kind of agreement about data security, but it's absolutely worthless. If the NSA comes knocking on Google's door and asks for complete information about UK citizens interaction with the UK government web presence then Google is going to cough up everything. What choice do they have? Larry Page isn't going to martyr himself over what would be a totally legal NSA request.
Couldn't help reading 'ok glass we're going to memorize these formulas'.
Ahh, the future.
IOS is now a fragmented platform.
Thanks, that helped. They should be more clear on their website about that, I know Clojure a bit and some of the things about state, time and identity, and I still didn't get it.
I found the "If everyone lived as densely as..." hard to parse. A better way to say it is: "To give everyone as much space as the average Alaskan has, we'd need 108 Earths."
It'd be interesting to see how many miles of roads would need paved, power and water lines run, and houses would need built if you took everyone from Manilla and spread them across Wyoming.
Very interesting but I feel like the data would be more useful if categorized by city rather than country. America, for example, is shown as being very sparse, but in reality the major urban centers are dense while the rest of the country is sparse.
These five people are the future of Linux
Oh random point of advice. The best advice I could actually give is that there is a frame of mind that is associated with Y Combinator. If you can get into that frame of mind, you'll be much more likely to gain acceptance.

The best way to get into that frame of mind is to consume as much information written by YC partners as you possibly can.

It's this strange blend of intellectual honesty and curiosity. Interesting thoughts are valued highly. It's a bit hard to explain but if you go read an article written by PG or Sam Altman and then go read your average startup-targeted article you'll be able to see the difference.
LIVE: Attempt to pull the Costa Concordia upright
I was extremely impressed by the way producers milk their manufactured stars...

One Direction's latest tour has a ridiculous number of shows (130? over a hundred for sure), and I've heard the boys themselves don't make all that much per individual show (multiplied by a few hundred shows it definitely adds up, but nowhere near what the producers make!).

The producers/labels take the lion's share - OTOH they definitely are the ones that "created" the boys' fame, so it might be fair.
Google Query Data Disappearing at an Unprecedented Rate
Reducing money transfer fees from 9% to 0.5% to save US$85 Million daily
We are an international team based in France that is redesigning the money transfer experience.

Aim to use crowd-funding, optimization algorithms and P2P foreign exchange to reduce fees from 9%-0.5%. Everyday US$ 90 Million is lost to banks and intermediaries in fees. We can help reduce it by US$85 Million.

Service for society is at the core of our mission.

We would like to have your advice and comments.

We are looking for people who believe in our vision and mission. On the look-out for a CTO developer.

www.trustfer.co
Why I Lose $1,671,120 A Year For My Brand
Somewhat boring to watch (expected to take 12 hours total), but definitely a feat of engineering.
In my side-project, which is my first foray into Rails, I use a Resque background worker to do processing and it takes a significant amount of time. As I've heard more about Go, I've wondered how I could use it to speed up this background process. Here is my answer! Thank you very much, I'm looking forward to trying this out as it fits my needs exactly.
Focusing on Focus: Why We Sold AppMakr
This is totally flawed. Canada is given as an example presumably based on the population density across the entire country, completely disregarding that a lot of it is virtually uninhabitable tundra. Russia, Alaska, and Iceland have the same factors involved.

It would be better to base it on actually inhabited areas in any country, using the representative population density for a given urban area.
Create a new steam account for every game you buy, have each account share it's library with all of your friends.
The typical moon-conspiracy-theorist doesn't claim that nothing man-made has reached the moon, only that humans haven't been there. Unmanned probes or laser reflectors don't present a problem to their world view.
Box Notes vs Microsoft Office
I had no idea that they were sitting on such a large stash of bitcoins (from the article, 250K). This leads me to believe that they have been trading on their own exchange to keep the USD / BTC price depressed.

For example, if the "market" decided that there was a 50% chance Mt. Gox was never going to solve their banking problems and allow unlimited fiat withdrawals, then you would expect there to be a 100% price premium for BTC on Mt. Gox. However, that would send a VERY scary message in terms of their viability, which would quickly become a self fulfilling prophecy, so Gox could sell some of their stash to keep the price premium to say, 10%. If they tried to push it all the way down to a 0% premium, though, they would quickly run through all their BTC.

Since the price premium has been stable at almost exactly 10% for months, that suggests SOMEONE is manipulating it, probably to keep it low. Does anyone care to look in the blockchain and do the deobfuscation to see if my theory is correct?
Remember Heroes Will Help You Commemorate Loved Ones
The Manhattan / New Zealand comparison is interesting to me, having lived and worked in and around NYC all my life. New Zealand is not that much bigger than the US Eastern Seaboard metro area, which extends from Washington DC to Boston. If you extend that a bit further, from Virginia Beach VA to Portland ME, and extended it inland about as wide as New Jersey for the whole stretch, that's a pretty good match.

A NYC-density city that large would be interesting. It would need rapid mass transit throughout with high-speed lines connecting with local hubs. That would be doable if you're rebuilding the entire area. (Amtrak hasn't been able to build high speed rail because they're stuck using the existing railways which aren't straight enough.) Presumably a lot of traffic could be reduced by replacing all of the highways with mass transit, which would be feasible if the whole area was that densely populated. Again, it hasn't been done now because all public transit around the big cities is designed to get you into and out of the cities; if your destination is anyplace else you have to drive yourself. It's much better within NYC where public transit goes everywhere.

NYC, dense as it is, still has lots of open parkland. I think it would be quite livable even at the scale we're talking about. Of course people would still need to be able to get out of the city for a break; I imagine the whole western edge of the giant city would be public nature reserves with plenty of mass-transit access.

Of course not everyone would live within the city; there would need to be farms and farmers to feed everyone. Most of the US and southern portions of Canada would be farmland (much as it is today, in fact) and there would be plantations scattered around the rest of the world too wherever the weather is suited to various crops. Much of the world would still be left to nature, I think. If we're at the point technologically and socially where we can move nearly everyone into a megacity, we should also be able to create very high efficiency hydroponic farms that could produce many crops much more densely than a standard farm can. Large areas would only be needed for animals and crops that can't be grown hydroponically.

We'd need power too... lots of it. Keeping everyone in a relatively small area would help, but I'll bet the average power usage per-person across the globe is less than the average usage per New Yorker today, and in the megacity everyone would be moved to the New Yorker level. Maybe all of the unfarmable areas in Canada can be filled up with Nuclear powerplants.
This could be the best ad for the gold iPhone 5S
Three minor additions to what should become a HN FAQ every time there's a vaguely FPGA/ASIC article:

This is hardly official and not a perfect analogy but github is to software devs as opencores.org is to FPGA devs. Thats why when you go to github and search for Verilog and only get 259 hits for stuff written in Verilog you're going to the wrong place.

The other FAQ is verilog looks like C because C looks like the incredibly orthogonal PDP-11 addressing modes chart. So pretty much if you can imagine it as an addressing mode, the PDP-11 could do it, so thats explains the weird compatibility between something that looks like C and something that can define the hardware of a CPU. Its not a perfect analogy but it kind of describes why the HDL look very C like rather than Ruby like, for example. If you could build it out of basic logic gates in 1970 using TTL chips, its probably supported by the old PDP-11 and therefore in C.

Finally you need a FAQ for old timers that home-scale FPGA / CPLD stuff has collapsed in price over the last decade or two. Yes, in 1990 you needed four figures to do anything so no one did anything at home. Now you need at minimum a $50 board and a (multi-gig) free download. Its maybe 3dB more expensive than fooling around with arduino stuff. The small scale stuff doesn't scale well to larger stuff; I think its "weird" when a simple gray code decoder or quadrature decoder takes a minute to synth, so yes doing a complete CPU does take a long time to synth even on fairly high end hardware. Back to the old days of batch computing, sorta.
I think your parent is arguing that, despite TaskCompletionSource exists, some people still don't use it much and resort to callbacks (presumably because they have not learned about it).

As in “adding TaskCompletionSource to the framework didn't help some folks adjusting to Task style, and they keep using callbacks”.
After going through the documentation and your home page, I still have no idea what this product is actually about.