skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Biggest red flag No regulators == no means to protect depositors, and no means to punish bad actors. History has repeatedly proven that the market itself is not sufficient to regulate bad behavior because it depends on the participants choosing to remain in the market, rather than amassing an ill-gotten fortune and then pulling out.

2ND biggest red flag: There is significant risk, but absolutely no incentive for bearing that risk (i.e., interest). Interest exists, and indeed, is based upon incentivizing people to take risks with their money. That's why higher-risk investments have higher interest rates and returns.

It doesn't provide any means for the bank to make profit, ergo, no incentive for banks.

It doesn't provide sufficient security measures to protect money/ecurrency/whatever that's held in these accounts. Even worse, b/c it's electronically based, it's dependent on power supply. This won't work in most of Africa, and large/undeveloped portions of India or the Middle East.

It doesn't provide any means for "trust", which is the foundation for the entire banking system. Example: I don't care what Joe Flo says about you on Facebook; I don't care if a million of your virtual friends say you are trustworthy: I want actual data, or I won't lend you squat.

Final Red Flag (Possibly the biggest) -- Where does the money come from? It states that the amount of money in circulation is the money deposited by people, but where does the deposited money come from?
What about people born after the system is created? Do they get starting cash to deposit, or are they screwed?
DoD Announces New DARPA Director: Dr. Regina E. Dugan
Hunting for Treasure in Paris’s Marchés aux Puces
I knocked one of these up a while ago, used a stylesheet that's supposed to be good for an iphone, I haven't got one to try myself.

http://www.davedevelopment.co.uk/meetingclock/
It's a metaphor, not a description or some sort of iron law of physics. If I was on Google App Engine right now and there was a competitor that I could switch too, then I damn well could be up, especially if I took the opportunity to keep both options actively available for myself. No matter how hard "switching planes in midair" might be, it's just a metaphor.
Always useful reading for anyone who thinks C++ is great and can't understand all the curmudgeons who think otherwise:

http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html

The rest of the FQA site is good too, but the summary is the best enumeration of all the brain damage.
Etsy.com peddles a fantasy
Yeah.

Great post, but the comment spam shows that this site isn't very well maintained. Clearly the author hasn't spent much time on it in a long time.

Too bad.
HTML5 Video Demo with Clipping and Transformation
I'm sure AT&T would love that. Virus protection, now from AT&T, only $20 more per month to protect your iPhone.

I don't think I'd trust them to keep up with all the new threats.
Hiring teachers is a beggars-can't-be-choosers situation. Starting pay is relatively low, stress is high.
Wait 'til the oil runs out and they run on red matter.
All true, but you can make those rules work for you. First, genre expectations are different. Generally you need a famous name attached to sell a movie, and you can't get one. But horror fans don't care much about actors. (Neither do sci-fi fans, but sci-fi is exponentially harder to pull off). And fortunately, horror fans like bargain-bin, formulaic movies.

There are plenty of horror and no-budget festivals, so if your film is not total crap then you have a good chance in being selected for one. That'll help you get more money from the distributor, but if you don't succeed it's not too much of a loss.

The union doesn't matter too much. The lower your production budget, the less likely they are to bother you. SAG (actors) has a very cool deal for no-budget films that lets the actors work for free or minimum wage. Writer's guild just does not care below 6 figures. Ditto for the crew and camera unions. Of course the less you have to spend the less you can get in the way of experienced people, but if you have a few enthusiastic key people who are willing to shepherd some enthusiastic amateurs, you'll be fine.

RED One is an amazing camera, but I wouldn't use it for this kind of project. It's still pricey, and says that you have money but you're not willing to spend it on the crew. For the dirt-poor filmmaker, what you want is a Panasonic HVX or similar that shoots 24/5P and which can put out or be converted to something that looks fairly decent at 720p. And a friendly producer.

If you turn in a film that does not completely suck for under $50,000, you can probably sell it for enough to get your production costs back.
Let's hope they get the update out before someone writes a worm that blocks updates.
I blame flickr.
What's interesting is that new posts are added to the search index in real time. Twitter used to have this (Track) but couldn't scale it; they're testing it and may reintroduce it. For FriendFeed to have put this out I think they must be confident it can scale.
Job security is very high, the pension scheme is very good, you get the summer off.

There are much worse jobs than teaching.
Modes, Quasimodes and the iPhone
Will Your ID Soon Be a Microchip Under Your Skin?
been through all this before. It's a backtype wordpress plugin, ironically a YC startup and we're not changing it. Although it would be great to see the threaded comments (which i believe are coming), the comments are all relevant to the story and we link right back to where they came from.
This is something that's been bothering me for the last decade (okay, more.). Every time I've articulated it in the past I've been dismissed, but it really is key to good performance.

iirc, the GNOME folks once did some benchmarking and found they could get huge speedups by trimming a few bytes here and there from the gnome libraries.

I hope more people take the time to consider the implications of code bloat. I'm not asking for hand written assembler, but just a little bit of thought here and there can produce huge improvements.

EDIT: This is also why ssd's are so exciting. Yes the're not perfect yet, but they promise to (all but) eliminate disk latency within the next few years.
If quasimodes are a hindrance to usability, than Emacs is full of these, but I never thought of them that way. Maybe it is different on the desktop an Vi is the perfect editor for the iPhone?
I worked for a startup 4 years ago that started off with this very premise: enabling users to buy tickets to events in real time. The company very quickly changed focus to just being a ticket search engine, due to the assumption that the money was in helping people find the best price not shopping with their friends.

Don't let that dissuade you though. You might be on to something. Planning trips with a group is a painful experience considering conflicting schedules & budgets. Once users clue you in to their intended destination and budget you could find plenty of ways to monetize this.
I don't know anything about this area at all, but I remember in a cryptography lecture, being told you can perform arithmetic on un-padded standard RSA, is this similar to that. I imagine this could be very useful for banks possibly in databases, to for instance increase and decrease peoples funds, without standard employees seeing the total ammount of money in the account.
This article is not really about the memory cache hierarchy.

It's an excuse to show off the author's exciting new algorithm for computing the value of the integer "max": (func_table[max] - func_table[0]).
Default case is refund
> a reasonable technical explanation

Alright, I can come up with a reasonable explanation:

For databases and servers a lot of bugs and corner cases are only hit by servers that get loads and loads of traffic. Fixing those bugs cost a significant amount of money. By charging more to the high-traffic servers the cost of fixing those bugs can be justified.

It is also fair, in a sense, because only the high throughput servers really benefit from the extensive testing and stability, so why shouldn't they be the ones to pay for the fixes?
The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time (2006)
3500c Camera On Standby Mode | repair-mobiles.com
Wow - 3.5 stars for both search engines will get a lot of people to take a look at bing.
I used to do all my Rails development on XP, with no hobbling.

Nowadays I work on Kubuntu, and maybe things have changed, but I've no bad experiences with Ruby on Windows.
Although booking travel was the catalyst for the idea (and used to give background), I see this as more general social collaboration. I often send people links via instant messenger, but why not go one step further and 'share' the browsing experience in a painless way?
Too true.

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time" Donald Knuth

We often forget about the rest 3% too.
ParAccel TPC-H dust up
The Board of Trustees has a few people who are affiliated with reputable organizations (BetaHouse, Microsoft, etc). Seems legitimate to me.
ahh... there are few things so constant in life as the ability for a consumer electronics company (minus one and maybe two) to take what might have been a nice concept and screw it up.
Not only is seeing your completed tasks fun, it's a psychological motivator to keep checking things off. I'd consider it a crucial feature of any task list!
if you want to know more on this topic

"What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory" - http://people.redhat.com/drepper/cpumemory.pdf
We have large projects under both BSD and GPL. We have different motivations for each, and the different licenses suit our needs. I'm always astonished by the self-righteous tone on both sides of the debate (though I find BSD extremists far more annoying for some reason...maybe just because RMS has inoculated me to the most obnoxious bits of GPL extremism).

And, yes, it is about who's in control; I don't see what's bad about that. If I wrote the code, I can exert as much or as little control over that code as I want...including making it more difficult for businesses to fork the code and distribute it under their own brand without giving back.

I have yet to hear about a BSD project that went under because of some company that refused to contribute back. I do however know of a couple of projects that thrived because of more liberal licenses.

This is a specious argument. One can point to dozens of GPL projects that have thrived because of the GPL; and none that went under because of something some third party did or didn't do.

Linux is one example of thriving GPL code, while the BSD-licensed competitors are dramatically less popular. Could it be because the BSD world forked off into dozens of competing commercial and free versions in the early days? Maybe. Maybe not. I dunno. But, for every BSD success story you'd like to trot out, I can trot out an equal number of GPL success stories. And, again, I'm a developer on projects that "prove" that both licenses are effective.

I can also assure you that the BSD projects see far less giving back than the GPL project, relative to total number of corporate users. When I worked as an IT guy, I regularly came upon server "appliance" products that used our software with a custom theme and heavy modifications, and we'd never even spoken to the company in question; the BSD permits that, and we aren't offended by that usage. It certainly isn't going to kill the project. But, in the case where we wanted more control, and had a very strong interest in that never happening because it would seriously impact our ability to build the products we wanted to build, we opted for the GPL license.
Anti-Databases and NoSQL
Actually, if this thing works then there is no longer an API lock-in with Google App Engine: http://code.google.com/p/appscale/

Assuming you can still dump your data out of Googlage?
The Mathematics of Gambling
Does anyone know which company this is?
I also wonder to what extent our general responses to possible diffuse future threats, are today watered down as a result of the media continually bombarding us with such, and thus de-sensitizing us?
I think the article mentioned that there was insufficient data.

Without an ability to test it, I'd hypothesize that rain matters more in areas where people are more likely to be outside. In areas that are more car-dominated it may matter less because you can cause trouble while staying dry.
As per (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=684376), such large colonies are probably only maintainable with the help of humans (inadvertently transporting them around).

Even the large continental colonies probably need a certain amount of help with humans transporting new queens/males from one side of the colony to another side to help keep the genes similar. It's not like colonies that large only have a single queen. And with a large number of queens there is the possibility of genetic divergence from each other.

Unless the ants in those colonies have developed some sort of system themselves where they distribute new queens/males from one part of the colony to another... but I can't imagine that it would be easy for them to transport breeding ants (or for those ants to fly for that matter) 900km from one side of the colony to the other.

On the other hand, when it's time to mate, all the breeding/flying ants take to the sky. It's possible that each of the points of exit is close enough to other points of exit that somehow genetic 'stability' is maintained through this mingling. It just seems incredible that just random chance and proximity of flying/breeding ants to others with the beginnings of genetic divergence are able to keep genetic divergence in check to a degree that allows for these HUGE colonies to maintain close enough familial ties to cooperate.

Edit: Sorry, this just kind of turned into me rambling on with your post as a starting point.
I should have said "some people". I don't think developers in general are dismissing SQL. I just think there's a certain vocal minority who has a loathing so great for SQL that they willfully ignore the power of the relational model in their analyses of why some of these new DBs are so great.
It's some type of cipher. The pi and chunks of two are some clue that i've yet to figure out since I'm busy at work...
Ignition Alley: A coworking space opening in Atlanta
I'm not sure what you mean by "tight polling", but we basically keep a connection open to the server at all times (often known as "long polling"). This is similar to how IM works.

You can pause it by pressing the pause button on the top-right of the feed.
I don't think Clojure uses the same "trojan horse" strategy, i.e. it isn't a superset of the Java language with Lisp extensions.

It does use the Java virtual machine, however, which allows it to use existing java libraries.
http://news.google.com/
This process is only slow if your DB is already huge. CouchDB forces you to think your query a bit more before building your DB. To be fair though, try to add an index to a huge SQL database, it will take long too, and sql indexes are needed on any frequently used query.
I guess, but I would think that they would have to create a lot of damage to make it cost effective to engineer something that would hit them at the genetic level (taking advantage of their genetic similarity).
I looked at the agreement and the law firm. They have no background in entertainment law and it shows. I hate to be the bad guy and am not a lawyer but even I can see it's a ticking time bomb. I don't know about securities, but I do know a fair bit about entertainment contracts.

In the event that any of the principals is reading this, read clause J again. That is the least of the things wrong with it.
For a serious treatment of this subject, I'm going to keep trotting out "Information Rules" by Varian and Shapiro. (Yeah, I also have a summary "somewhere", but go buy it, it's worth it!).
I couldn't agree more. The quality difference between my artsy professors and my semi-retired from industry professors is so stark as to be comical. There is no substitute for understanding exactly why something is important to learn.
Researchers unite to distribute quantum keys
Because market segmentation in itself, as a concept, is not a disadvantage, which means that lack of it is not an advantage in itself.

Like I said, market segmentation in software does not necessarily have to be a bad thing. Consider a hypothetical text editor that comes in two editions. The "basic" edition has features like syntax highlighting, regex search and replace, etc. The "advanced" edition has a feature that allows you to open and save files not just locally, but also via SFTP. When it was first written, the editor didn't have the SFTP feature, the author developed it because there were some users who asked for it; they weren't the majority, but the author thought the idea was nice. Instead of incorporating that feature into the one and only edition, the author decided to offer two editions: a cheaper "basic" and a more expensive "advanced" edition. It was the author's idea of placing value on the effort involved in writing the SFTP feature. The majority of users can go on happily using the "basic" edition without paying extra for it, while those who really want SFTP can pay for it.

One way of looking at this market segmentation is to say that the author was greedy and imposed an artificial limitation on one of the editions in his product. Another way of looking at it is to say that the author offers two products that satisfy different needs at different costs. If we were talking about two products from two different authors, we would be comparing their features and prices quite naturally, without complaining about market segmentation.

However, when you're offering exactly the same product, with no differences, for two different prices, then you're just being greedy and taking advantage of your customers (which is something commonplace nowadays and most people, myself included, just accept it). Close to that is the situation in which you slap a truly artificial restriction on a cheaper edition of your product, not through a lack of feature, but through a deliberate crippling of that feature (e.g. the five-dollar edition can open only up to 3 files). The exception, of course, is a crippled free edition which allows potential customers to try your product before deciding whether to buy it. In that case, you're just being annoying ;)

That, in summary, is why I believe that market segmentation is an advantage, within certain ethical bounds.
Good article - I'm happy to find out that other DBRs have the same healthy fear & utter suspicion for each analysis they write as I do.
In the This American Life episode referenced at the bottom of the story, it is mentioned that they ultimately received a sizable royalty check for licensing it to Apple.
I used Vimperator for a while, but it slowed Firefox down significantly, and made it more prone to crashing. I believe it's a known bug.
The NSA's math problem (2006)
I agree with charging more for the Datacenter edition than for Standard edition, for those same reasons . But that's not a reasonable technical explanation for artificially limiting the amount of memory your OS can use. I was specifically referring to that issue.
One should be able to do something similar with analysis of images. You can’t scramble them though...
Except that competing smartphones (BlackBerry, Android, Pre, etc) almost all do OTA updates which is more reliable and doesn't require the user to keep up to date on their computer.
(Can't edit any more) after taking a bit more time to look through their offering, I retract my statement about the lawyers. Legally speaking, it's radioactive. The upside is that the sums solicited are so small it's probably not worth suing over.
I had that theory for a while. I figure if you're trying to avoid being mugged, you don't have to be invulnerable, just the second most vulnerable person a mugger can see. If we had better data, we could even figure out if, e.g., a guy listening to an iPod is more vulnerable than a woman who isn't, or if it depends on age, or what.
http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/blackout.asp
MySpace now a “digital ghetto”
This is the problem with the “self-esteem at all costs” message. Self-esteem should be earned. I find that parents today, at least those in a high socioeconomic bracket, never want to say anything critical of their children.

Really? I've noticed this phenomenon in the exact opposite end of the socioeconimic spectrum.

I've heard the same story time and again from friends from disadvantaged backgrounds; how they regularly were mocked by friends and family for using proper grammar or for even going to college at all.

Education and self-improvement were seen as nothing more than pretension while their friends were damned proud of their own ignorance.
Remote debugging - debugging pesky server only bugs
Just because the frog in the pot turns out to be not literally true, it certainly demonstrates a point in a nice, succinct manner. Im sure everyone knows by know the frog will jump out in real life.

Do you teach your children to ignore "its not easy being green" since no frogs can actually play guitar or sing? Or do you let them take the metaphorical meaning anyway?
Just bing it.
Relatedly, our crime rate here in Minnesota dives every winter. Even the criminals know when it's too cold to bother going out.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2009/04/minneapol... (check out the fun graph)
Offering my case as datapoint:

I don't own any MJ music, but I like at least 5 songs enough to buy them. (Only reason I didn't is lazyness in getting around to clean up my music collection and having it all on my computer etc.)
Believe me, those who truly believe that C++ is great, consider some of those deficiencies to be advantages.

It helps to remember, that C and C++ don't exist on an "VM island", i.e. as an isolated process, like all high-level programming languages do. They are effectively extensions of UNIX-derived operating systems, i.e. they run under "UNIX VM". They even have a garbage collection of sorts: when you exit the program, the memory gets freed. And, according to Linux philosophy, launching processes or forking/dying should be quick, efficient and, in fact, desirable. Also, having many independent binary modules is the norm, so here is your runtime encapsulation.

But C family is still the only tool out there that allows you to extend an OS, i.e. for instance to build a piece of code, a single instance of which will be serving all other simultaneously running processes. This explains why Apache eats so little RAM. None of VM-based languages can do that. It's called systems programming.

Building a web-based CRM in C++ is stupid. Building a filesystem in Python is impossible.
This article is silly. The real reason for the rise of C++ is that "C with Objects" fit the metaphors that GUI libraries need a lot better than C.

And in the end...it's not such a bad language. In the real world, you only use a small part of it on any one project. In the real world, your framework or libraries matter more than the language anyway. And in the real world, performance always matters in the end.
Bjarne Stroustrup: the problem with programming (2006)
Implementing Java interfaces and subclassing Java classes does allow Clojure programmers to introduce Clojure into a Java organization without forcing the Java programmers to accommodate them in any special way.

(That is, as long as Clojure code can be deployed easily as jars, and as long as Clojure doesn't create any special classloader problems because of its runtime system. Those are problems that bit me hard when I used Jython code in the Eclipse plugin framework, and I imagine any dynamic language might accidentally create classloader problems unless it was specifically designed to avoid them.)
Over the top, but fun:
Unix Systems for Modern Architectures

http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Systems-Modern-Architectures-Mult...