skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Was that intended to be a compliment of this project? I had the opposite reaction. I accept that English is often a second language, but this page was off-putting.

Sophia is a modern [should add comma] embeddable key-value database designed for a high [should hyphenate] load environment.

It has a unique architecture that was born as a result of research and rethinking primary alghorithmical [sic, should say "algorithm"] constraints associated with a [sic] getting popular Log-file based data structures, such as LSM-tree [should say "trees"], it's [sic] variations based on Fractional Cascading ideas and a B-Tree. (see architecture) [run-on, meaning unclear]

It is very fast. (see benchmarks)

it [sic] is easy to use. (see documentation)

Implemented as a small C [should probably hyphenate, or just rewrite] written, BSD [should probably hyphenate] licensed library.
If you're so confident, why not short it?
Haha yes, if you can buy a house outright, definitely do that.

Unless, of course, you can land an incredibly low interest rate on your mortgage and have something interesting to do with your capitol, like fund your business.
Investors and builders, please remember that your property's value is sinking. Sinking, sinking under the waves of the rising sea.
How I Started My Own *Profitable* Online School
I think the anecdote where Steve Jobs does something ruthless must have been accidentally edited out.
4% return is conservative. 7% is actually the historical average. So my 4% left plenty of room for bad years.

RETIRING in San Francisco would be a massive mistake. If you are retired why the hell are you living in a uber-expensive city. Location matters less when you don't have a job. Move up to Oregon.

Also if you decide to have children, that is a conscious decision you made to dump your millions down the toilet. I guess some people like kids enough to work an extra 30 years. I sure don't.
I've done customer technical support both in person, over the phone, and via email -- and yes, you get rough customers, rude customers and ridiculous customers. But maybe I just take it better than most, because you can write of the cranks and the fools easily, and you can empathise with everyone else because they have real problems they want to solve.

And telling the customer to "f* off"? Even as a joke, you just don't put it out there... if you ever have to feel like that you make sure it's totally private!
If you're not planning on living there permanently I don't see it as much of an issue. That said I'm used to living in cities where half an acre per person sounds like a huge amount of land.
Several students have said that the member area layout reminds them of Lynda.com (which I had actually never seen prior to building the site). Whatdya think?
wow - it was that bad then? that's my dad's era, but they'd moved to east detroit (sorry, "eastpointe") by then.
yea, i'm sorry, the comments on articles re: detroit end up reading like the side-boob gazette (read huffpo) sensationalist blog articles. i work downtown, have lived downtown, and definitely grew up in metro-detroit. i've also lived in good 'ol sunnyvale, ca, and spent a fair amount of time in beloved sf (more homeless people than i have ever seen.) no doubt detroit isn't fairing well on tourism lists, but fer fuck's-sake, can we end the zombie ruin porn shit?

a lot of people and a lot of history have been here a long time. rebuilding a city takes time.
> the future is user-generated content

as a veteran of the "user-generated" game content industry, i can honestly say 5 years ago, i had that same vision. 5 years of blood, sweat, money and tears later, i can (also honestly) say -- that's not the case. and won't be.

for those of you who've never made (finished and shipped!) a game before, it's an incredibly frustrating experience. you have what would be called an mvp in ycombinator terms inside of a month. "i will crush the rest of this thing out 3 months and ship!" uh... no.

i'm here to tell you that is not the case. the whole "first 90%" vs. the "second 90%" thing is magnified 10-fold in games. it's a really long post for me to explain the myriad of gotchas involved from safely syncing game state between sleep-and-non-sleep-packets-suddenly-flood-in-but-omg-my-clock to btw-you-need-3-times-the-states-in-your-state-machine-oops to why-am-i-getting-3-fps-on-a-faster-device to all-of-the-above-times-multiplayer-exponentially. i plan on writing that post someday, but not now.

anyway.

the prototype flies off your finger tips and then the next 2 and a half years (please see the common thread of 3 years to make a game, from the movie indie gamer [highly recommended!] to that recent atomic brawl post) working through obscure bugs and corner cases because games have more complex interactions than non-games and gamers don't have a clue how to follow the damn happy path when they play.

so, yes. i said 1 month of fun, fast iterative prototype and 2 years of awful, in-the-weeds debugging where your strength of will to finish is tested daily. (insert rovio making 51 games before angry birds here) finishing a good game is goddamnhard. finishing a shitty game is a snap -- just ship your prototype!

what we found was that anyone who has the strength and perseverance to actually build and (more importantly) finish a game was already working in the game industry -- mostly because they possess a proven will to finish.

i guess what's i'm saying is lots of people can snap together sweet, use-with-care prototypes ugc-style. almost nobody -- and i really, really mean almost nobody, like 0.0001% of "i want to make a game" developers -- can actually finish and launch a game regardless of scope.

mind you -- i don't view indie games as ugc. if you ship (SHIP, not start) an indie game, you have what it takes to work in the non-indie game world. you just choose not to.

if you don't believe me, i challenge you to prove me wrong and just make a simple game this weekend and let your friends play it where you can watch, but not talk or help them at all. it will take approximately 12 seconds of them touching your game before you're completely "wtf -- how did that happen?!?!?" screwed.

m3mnoch.
Apostasy needs to be punished, that's 21st century thinking right there.
And actually... this is pretty poor form from the customer support... poor technical understanding to not delete the trailing email forwards if nothing else!
I agree that his definition of "king" is pushing it, but it's equally silly to ignore the possibility of retiring in any of the cities in the US that are cheaper than San Francisco, i.e., in any of the cities in the US that are not San Francisco and NYC. Honestly, in a middle-of-the-road city like Houston and with full ownership of a car and home, $25k net per year would actually give you a pretty comfortable life--remember that you wouldn't have to save any of that for retirement, because you're already retired. The main hitch is health insurance and/or kids.

Also, Firecalc is a good tool for running withdrawal strategies over historical data: http://www.firecalc.com/

It gave very positive results for withdrawing $25k/year on a $1M portfolio for a total of 60 years. Obviously, though, there is no 60 year period starting in 1999 for which the data is fully known, so it has its limits and can be prone to overfitting. It does take inflation into account, by the way (by increasing your withdrawal correspondingly each year).
I agree, but it is potentially useful to that demographic.

If we made this two or three standard deviations more exclusive, the financial advice could be: Be born wealthy. Don't borrow against your trust fund.
Establishing a truly secure connection with the server.
The idea is to establish a truly secure connection between iOS app and an XMPP server to prevent any kind of spoofing, sniffing, man-in-the-middle, replay and other attacks.

After several days of research I end up with the following solution. Please let me know, if it is really secure or I missed something.

Establishing secure connection with XMPP server:

Network connection can be only established with one specific XMPP server, hardcoded in the app.
Connection can only be established, if server SSL certificate is valid.
SSL pinning is used in order to prevent MITM attacks in case root CA are compromised.
No plain connections to XMPP server, only SSL/TLS.

OTR Encryption:

Any conversation should be forced with OTR encryption (http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/) version 3. Authenticated Key Exchange is required in every conversation.
OTR v.3 is using SIGMA encryption protocol, which gives 100% protection agains MITM attack. Right?

TOR network usage:

Even if both OTR and SSL are hacked, client is always connecting to the server over TOR network to mask its original IP address.

Would you add anything else to make this configuration rock solid secure?
Yea, I thought this sounded like something that was on HN a long time ago. Then again whenever there is a story with Linus + f-bomb it is bound to be interesting.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4132025
"4% return is conservative. 7% is actually the historical average. So my 4% left plenty of room for bad years."

It's only "conservative" if you don't understand variance.

The risk isn't in the value of the average. The risk is in the variation around that average. Like I said: if you invested 66% of your net income in the stock market in 1999, you'd be a long way from retirement today.

And if you're tempted to keep arguing this point, you might want to take a moment to consider how I know this. (Hint: the reality of a great many investors trumps your theories of how the stock market works.)
Some people seem to like pushing descriptivism too far. "Somebody said it, therefore it's correct."
You should always compare your rates of return on different types of investments. The advice about index funds is (to my knowledge) primarily rooted in the fact that index funds typically outperform mutual funds, with lower management fees to boot. Not a claim that index funds are the strongest investment.

Also worth noting- can rental properties ever be included in blanket investing advice? Investing directly in property requires either a group of investors or considerable capitol- both, really. Stocks and such are popular in sweeping advice because anybody with two nickels to rub together can acquire stocks.
Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff.

I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dramatic change in culture (particularly office culture).
>they're going to be more consistent than what you get pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.

There are data that suggest otherwise: Walmart, not FEMA was the best at doling out aid during Katrina; on the other side of the political spectrum, the same could be arguably be said for OWS during Sandy. On the other hand, if you're going to argue that the government is consistently bad at doling out aid, you may be right, but I don't know how good the government is at providing welfare or social services. I presume it's not exceptionally good, or else private food banks, homeless shelters, and charities wouldn't have to exist.
Surely you're joking, right? For one, Ubuntu has a desktop and server version along with a LTS version and the repos are totally different. The filesystem layout is little different between the two. I'm sure there's more like init differences, differences in installation and configuration, kernels, and stuff in /etc, but I haven't used Ubuntu in quite some time.
See, this is a very important topic for me because as a child, I'd sit there and watch the dice and look for patterns and try to get the number I wanted by some kind of luck and timing, heh.
> The future isn't physical disks that you lose.

No, it's a Netflix subscription, so when they drop your kids' favourite shows you have fun explaining corporate politics as the reason they can't watch Bob the Builder any more.

> Linux versions of most games, isn't some far away dream, it's here.

Very little of my Steam library is available with Linux versions. Almost none, in fact. This would be the norm for most people, unless you're limiting yourself to games that run on Linux in the first place.
Want To Buy A Private Island? Here Are 9 Things You Need To Remember
Let's try with some numbers. First, let's invest $1000 post-tax, for a number of years, where we end up doubling (getting 200%) return on investment after a number of years.. Assume tax is 25%. So you are investing $750. Your return on investment is $1500, but that get's taxed at 25%, so you actually are getting $1125. Add that to your original $750 investment, and you have a total of $1875.

Now let's do this pre-tax money (401k). $1000 invested, with 200% return, gives you $2000 profit, or $3000 with the initial investment. Now take 25% tax out of that 3000, you end up with $2250 at the end. So you get a total of $375 advantage with the 401k route.

Oh, and during retirement, you will most likely live on a reduced gross income (you aren't paying FICA, your house is paid for already, and you also [might] get social security income). Which means, with our graduated tax system, your overall tax rate is less then, for an even better tax savings (you only pay taxes on the amount of 401k that you withdraw each year).
Not common place before 2008? A lot of anti materialism propaganda started way before that: AdBusters, Culture Jam and lots of other films that were even main stream.
I have consistently outperformed the market since 2007, when I started investing (I refer to the market as the DOW).

Just because the average salary in the United States is $57,000 (random-ish number) does not mean that's what I have to settle for because it's the average. If I put in the time, work smart, work hard, and keep learning, then the expectation is that I can beat the average income. Likewise, I can beat the average market by putting in more time, more effort, more learning, than the average investor.

I tried forex for 2 years, and did poorly, so I stopped, and learned my lesson.

I bet on Ford at 1.60. I bet on Tesla at 16, and 24. (not heavily mind you, just 2.5% of my portfolio). I research the companies, the management. I not only go to the annual report, but I also read books by the founders, read about their manufacturing (are they using lean like Toyota or lean like GE?). I went after Ford based on Mullally's performance at Boeing. I went after Boeing based on the 787's promises. (It's doing very well.) I read Deming.

I lost $900 in American Airlines, and $300 in Washington Mutual. I did lose $6K on a $10K mutual fund that went south in 2007-2008. It looked like it would recover, but then wasn't following the market up. I've made a lot less money with mutual funds that with stocks.

Granted, I've been riding a pretty nice wave since the drops of fall 2007 and mid 2008, but I don't blindly pick a stock and buy in. I'm very careful where I put the money, and will do 2-4 weeks of research on a single company.

I also research their competition, and business trends in general. This means I don't watch TV, don't watch sports, and will do one movie per month with my son. Instead, I read. A lot.

I do max my 401k because of company matching, but I'm not holding my breath on returns. There's an event horizon where it's better not to match and buy securities directly, because of the 1% or so fees. (You start out with twice as much, but you get less annual yield.) You don't pay taxes till you sell, and you can sell at a time of your choosing.

I don't day-trade, I don't even month-trade. I generally invest for 7-15 years.

Finally, I invest only my own money, and that is a very strong motivator for spending the time to do it right. (Small caps do slightly better than large caps--more risk, more return. Diversify.)
Not to mention Switzerland, Norway, and Finland as well.
It has been implied that it's so other devices couldn't as easily implement their 'convergence device' idea as they could have with Wayland.
My extended family owns a cabin on a tiny island on a lake in Wisconsin.

* You're right - having a house on an island is cooler than having a house on the shore. :)

* Probably not applicable to you, but when they need to move heavy things (Backhoe to dredge the dock, materials, etc.) to the island, they drive them in over the frozen lake in midwinter.

* The power comes in over an underwater cable. Something you might want to look into.
I don't disregard the possibility of retiring in cities other than San Francisco -- I just dispute the notion that a $25k/year "retirement" is anything but silly dreaming by 20-somethings who don't understand what choices life is going to bring their way. Want to have a family? Want to send your kid to college? Want to be ready for the day when you're old and paying for medical problems? You're not living "like a king" on $25k anymore.

"[Firecalc] gave very positive results for withdrawing $25k/year on a $1M portfolio for a total of 60 years."

Well, again, you're not likely to accumulate a $1M portfolio in a decade on a $100k salary without a nice helping of luck. And not for nothing: that 60-year period encompasses the largest bull market(s) in US stock history. Past performance definitely does not extrapolate in this case.
I don't use Twitter the way it's supposed to be used.

However, I've found its search function useful for tracking breaking news. E.g., you can get to see the perp's mug shot an hour before the world does. Or pull up his LinkedIn before it gets deleted. Or find his Facebook page without doing the spadework yourself. You'll also come across random factoids that you can use to sharpen up your Google searches.

It's also useful for keeping up with certain technical areas. E.g., you can do a search on golang, scan through the results and happen upon stuff you might not come across otherwise.
I wouldn't even really call that a duff's device like entry. It's a pretty standard implementation of a state machine...

I'm still really scratching my head questioning to what extent you can really consider this implementation a "coroutine" solution. It sure looks to me like a state machine solution.
I'm not saying it did happen (I have no idea what "it" even is here), but "paper trail or it did not happen" is laughable. I think I see what you are trying to say with that, but you know that successful corruption actively avoids paper trails, right?
What publishers do you recommend? I've been a real big fan of No Starch Press lately, though they don't have that many books yet. Syngress also isn't bad.
Snapshots? I could find it in the documentation..
<i>A 4% rate of return from an index fund is long-term average behavior.</i>

Average return for S&P 500 from 1928 to 2012 is 11.3% [ source : http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... ]

Inflation rate averages about 3.2% [ source : http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Long_Term_... ]

11.26 - 3.2 = 8.1 % real return.

Long term investment in a diversified set of equities is a very good investment and is very likely to secure your future finances.
I know comedy is typically frowned upon on HN, or anecdotes.. but I had to say:

I thought I was reading the comments for the 'I bought an island' thread and was suddenly amazed / confused.
iOS or Windows Phone
Fear and excitement.
You just have to remember how bad GFWL was, and look at how bad the current Microsoft App Store is, and you'll know there is no threat to Steam coming out of Microsoft. Even if Microsoft manages to get the right people on the ball, they are still years behind.
You dont have a family with kids I take it.
So your position is, if Bernanke made it rain 100 trillion dollars and 250 million people charged each other $(100 trillion/250 million) for the massage, then money is not devalued?

Yes the example is contrived but it illustrates you are wrong.
Your first statement is an attempt to demonstrate moral superiority and therefore merits no response. Your second statement is misleading, in that it sweeps under the rug how Detroit's descent into poverty mirrored its changing demographics.

You could, of course, attempt to disprove Daniel_Newby's contention that demographics is at the bottom of this. All that you need to do is provide a single counterexample by pointing out an instance--just one will suffice for our purposes--of a city that became richer or that economically speaking at least held its own even as the percentage of blacks comprising its population grew. This seems like a simple enough task.
I should add that these college courses weren't just some courses I took, but were part of a BA.
My favorite quote (from "Are We There Yet?") is "I'm just trying to program without going crazy".
If we don't get accepted on our FIRST application...
...Would Y Combinator possibly accept a different idea from the same team the following term? Or the same idea, even?

Thank you!
Step 1. Buy Island
Step 2. Build treehouse
Step 3. Swiss Family Robinson
Step 4. Thwart Pirates
Step 5. Become a host on AirBnB. "Lovely Family Getaway"
In my opinion, building a Viral Product takes more than just Marketing or Luck. I believe it begins with an understanding of your customer, and their desire to Share information within the Context of your Product. Taking this into consideration when designing the Product (or it's features) will allow you to build a Product that provides an environment that facilitates viral growth. Weather or not the Product actually goes viral will depend on how useful / valuable the Product is, in conjunction with your success rate of understanding your customer, and integrating this understanding into the Product.

In your example, I would start with some customer validation. Are you currently talking to your customers? If not, then this is probably an area of concern as you are likely out of touch with what they actually want. If you are talking to your customers, then you would want to modify your interaction with them to include some questions about what drives them to share, and what types of information they like to share, as well as who they would want to share it with. Then you basically take what you've learned and integrate it into your Product.

Going off the top of my head (this has not been validated, just my own understanding from knowing lots of parents), I would key in on the fact that Parents like to Brag about their Kids. So when their Children accomplish something cool, they want to tell all their friends about it. I would integrate this into the Product by identifying common Accomplishments that children experience in life (just learned how to walk, just learned how to talk, learned to ride a bike, etc,etc all the way up to graduated from college, got a good job, bought a house, and/or started a family). By identifying these moments / memories as Accomplishments (and perhaps assigning them a special badge of some sort), you will increase their value in terms of something worth sharing. Your Product already allows Parents to share specific moments / memories, but because these moments / memories are special, you will increase the Customers (Parents) incentive to share them, which becomes a vertical for potential viral growth. By following this train of thought (which always starts with customer validation) you can identify multiple verticals for potential viral growth. Essentially, you just want to learn and understand what makes your Customers share information, and then facilitate the sharing of that information. Good luck!
Most of these are all just implementation or platform divergence issues, though what was the FPU emulator issue? That actually seems fundamental to formatted output strategies.