skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Mysql/innodb lays out the data on disk in sort order of the primary key. If you use GUIDs as primary key it will have to re-write the entire disk layout every time you insert. Just use auto inc IDs, they are by far the best option as long as you use a suffix of 10 or so to avoid ID collisions when you ever have several masters to write to ( which you will never have ).
So you're saying that because Apple was given the choice as to whether or not to reveal that information, it's 'stupid' to blame Apple for deliberately making the choice to hide it.
Not sure if using another sites API is what you were getting at but I have heard some people using the Viddler API (no personal experience with it).

http://developers.viddler.com/documentation/
It's certainly not a legal obligation. It may be a contractual obligation, depending on what you've signed.
"I see vision, not monetization."

You see years of great PR, not reality. Most founding myths are the result of gross simplification and made-up mythology which the are designed to be interesting and consumable for mass media. (see Amazon, eBay, YouTube, PayPal etc).
That's the thought I was pondering for quite some time: eternal hosting. How does one make the site eternally available?

It seems like service like this doesn't exist, possibly because nearly everyone is lost in the current moment.

The serivce that I think of should be something like cryonics. Well, not exactly. Cryonics suspends human beings for indefinite period of time in hopes of time being in hopes for future resuscitation. Eternal hosting should keep site alive, just not updated by the author anymore. But the problem is similar in both cases: how to preserve something valuable for indefinite period of time with maximum probability, no breakage and no author's intervention, to the best of our estimates and technological ability.

Seems like our society doesn't have services designed for eternity.
http://www.fliggo.com/ (These guys are a YC company)
Somehow, I doubt Buffet understands the applicable laws better than Apple's lawyers. I guess it's not just the Hacker News Effect, Matt ;) (http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/)
Apple lied. A hormone imbalance is not the same as a liver transplant. It's the kind of information that can materially affect the price of a stock. The SEC will probably take an interest.

EDIT: It was certainly a lie by omission. Apple is a large corporation with a significant number of employees and stockholders. It is a requirement to keep them informed. The secrecy and cult of personality is fine as a marketing ploy, but not as a fiduciary responsibility.
And my car's speed approaches that of an SR-71.

Sure, it is fast for a mobile device, but it is still damn slow compared to a "real" computer.
Steve Jobs' boss is his stockholders

His obligations to the board and his stockholders are so different from what most people consider by the word "boss", I think that's more misleading than informative...
Whenever Mayer trots out this same story, I think the same thing: "Why of course they search less, they find a good-enough result past #10, before either reformulating or next-paging!"

That makes a lot more sense to me than her usual spin, which is that the extra lag discourages more searches.

There's are reasons Google might prefer reformulation and next-paging beyond just "ad impressions": it gives better feedback about user's intent for training relevance algorithms.

That is, they learn more from your second query formulation to get a better result than if you just find a good-enough result at #11.

Or, if you open multiple results in background tabs before deciding the best, by forcing you to express click-intent to get past #10, they get a stronger signal as to whether the top ten results were good enough.

(I always set my result count to 100, and often open 3+ results based on snippets, some from below #10, before viewing any of the target pages.)
Statement: "Where does the money come from? Mostly Windows and Office. This revenue streams are beginning to dry out."

These are well known facts. The yearly income fluctuations do not matter, Microsofts problems are of structural matters. The markets for Windows and Office are more and more saturated and not growing any more.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/375410/microsofts_ca...
Here's the RAW transcript I got back from Mechanical Turk. It's the fastest way for me to get transcripts, but as you can see, the results are ugly.

It was painful for me to work with it, which is why I didn't post it.

I'm still trying to find a quick way to get my interviews transcribed and still maintain accuracy.

http://mixergy.com/hotornot-interview-with-james-hong-the-qu...
Maybe it's just solving the wrong problem. AHN only discusses CS, but I'm sure the discussion would not devolve if you included other subjects (ie Physics, Biology). A potential problem is that though you might have read something interesting, it might not quite fit.

Perhaps because the articles are dense and require time to read (a prof. told me to expect to take at least three hours to read an academic paper properly as an expert in the field), it would help a lot if the original poster would help jump start the discussion by talking about the interesting features of the experiment or study. I'm not sure if this can be forced though.

AHN (completely) aside, I had another idea for a news site that addresses a pain point of mine. I'm not sure if it belongs in this thread, but it seems as good a place as any.
Many, if not most, articles in the mainstream media are horribly devoid of content, information, and context. An aggregator that posts stories and has a historian annotate them and add links to documents (especially primary source!) describing previous relevant events (sorted by importance and date) might be really cool and useful. I am stumped as to how to actually make it work though as if you do it with personnel, your labor costs would be enormous. On the other hand, there may be a ready supply of liberal arts doctorates who missed out on professorships (I understand there is a major discrepancy between the supply and demand). The real trick of this would be that if you managed to realistically rate historical events according to how they impacted the world, then you could sort your front page by both newness and importance score, thus mining the gems that are misplaced in regular papers. However, this would be susceptible to gaming by writers - which is unavoidable in the long run.

Automation would be much better. However, it becomes a classification problem along waaaay too many dimensions, and assembling a supervised learning dataset would be a giant task that I'm not even sure how to do as these labels can be very uncertain.

The rewards would be great if some sort of system like this could be devised on a reasonably sized scale.
Conforming with the standard is not "effectively free".

The only way to _really_ validate an email address is to try to send mail to it. But that has non-zero cost (depending on how often you have to do it, what the odds are that you'll end up on a spam blacklist for no good reason, etc., etc.).

The alternative is to use purely server-side validation routines. But these become more and more expensive as you progress through less common edge cases (e.g., regular expressions are not capable of detecting every valid address). So most people, sooner or later, make a trade-off, favoring some more common subset of cases over some less common subset.

If anything, we should be arguing over what constitutes an acceptable place to make that trade-off. Should embedded comments be supported? What about bang paths?
Warren Buffett is not up on the legal disclosures required involved when the health of a CEO of a large public company is imperiled? Boy, he'd better bone up fast then! He's coming up on 80 pretty quickly.

He might just have a clue what he's talking about here. People don't fit in pigeonholes; a guy with a math degree may, in fact, know how to fix a running toilet. I know! It's amazing! And a CEO of a very large public holding and insurance company might just have more than a passing familiarity with SEC disclosure laws. I know I'm going out on a limb there, but I think it's a reasonable bet.

Me? What I know is that I don't know anywhere near enough to referee this discussion.
Also, nobody in their right mind would leave their computer plugged in while working on its internals.

Actually, it's not such a stupid idea, as the case is earthed when plugged in, which can help prevent damage through static discharge. I'm pretty sure my Intel SSD's leaflet actually recommended it. You're very unlikely to get an electric shock from a PSU unless you literally stick bits of metal through the grilles or open it up.
Blast from the demoscene past
Ugh, I really don't want twitter to do payment processing because I don't want my idle chit chat mixing with my bank account.
When you want to take a picture with no free hands
Sure, another website's API is fine. And may even be preferable, since they already have the infrastructure.

We've taken a look at Viddler's API, and while it's possible to record, it requires a Viddler account to record. There could be a big communal Ramamaia Viddler account, but then the videos have to be completely public and visible on Ramamia's Viddler page, which is undesirable.

Then again, last time I looked at it was a few months ago. Things may have changed.
Lied?

Steve Jobs, January 5, 2009
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/05sjletter.html):

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

Some random article on hormone imbalance (http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/hormoneimbalance.html):

A second factor that leads to hormonal imbalance is liver health.
Not according to the law. The Plaintiff's lawyer will allege that the camera is defective where it does not have the necessary safety devices to accommodate third party batteries. Courts consider that a design defect. Manufacturers have a non-delegable duty to install safety devices in their products.
The price for a used copy of TAODSE is a bit high ($1200 + $3.99 for shipping?), which makes the kindle version at $17.57 pretty attractive.
Bruce Schneier: Fixing Airport Security
The jquery one only has a 1 year expiry time...
Link to original post: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/12/drive.html
For the power supply, you can usually just follow the manual for installation. I just replaced (last night, actually) my 700W power supply with a 1600W one and I think it took 30 minutes, including time to unplug everything and take off the case. The cables are all pretty self-explanatory and can only be plugged in one way to one port. The only way you would ever be electrocuted is if you worked on it while it was still plugged in. If you do that, you probably deserve whatever you get.
The article is half-true. Doing something opposite everyone else is only valuable if you create demand for it, or if (very rarely) everyone realizes its worth.

Just as with everything else, it comes down to marketing. In popular areas, you market how you are different from competitors. In unpopular areas, you market how what you do is of value.
I'd never actually heard that. Interesting. I just use a ground bracelet when working on my computer to prevent static discharge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_bracelet
Should You Go Beyond Relational Databases?
Encrypt-then-MAC
Palm App Catalog Hits a Million Downloads
Lets be clear here Buffet is not saying Apple DID do something illegal - just that he thinks Jobs' health might be a material fact (I think that is a distinction.. isn't it?).

What I got was that Buffet finds it a bit underhand/secretive (not that there is necessarily wrong with that so long as it was legal etc.) in a way that doesnt sit well with his "way of doing it".
So cynical, yet so true.
Actually, that's a lousy summary of the article. The important point being made - and it's a very relevant one - is that by actually thinking about what risks can impact your business, you can work out what ones you need to do something about, and develop mitigation plans for them.

It's standard big-business risk management, but the article presents it for start-ups, so it's well worth a read. It also takes a step back from assuming business knowledge, so there's a number of things there which the first-time entrepreneur might not have thought of as a risk to their business before.
Here is one thing you can do that 95% of web startups aren't: "add a Pricing page "
I don't have a justification I'm just observing that choice vs. an inherit attribute is generally the stratifying line used in our society to determine wether or not it is just to apply a man made penalty or advantage to a particular state.

Because of that I think that the comparison of using height as a deciding factor in taxation is like comparing apples and oranges.
cough DOOM cough shareware cough

Funny how we're coming back around to a pretty old model, only this time playing both fields between retail & piracy.
Buffett is around 80. He hasn't announced his successor yet. and he finds it a bit underhand/secretive about Jobs not disclosing his health?
This made me think of the current ACLU lawsuit against the TSA, where a man was detained for carrying a large sum of money (he was the treasurer of a political party). A recording of his interrogation is available on their website, and although he was, admittedly, causing a bigger scene than was necessary, it clearly illustrates that not even the TSA officials are completely familiar with the rights of passengers.
I know this is news.YC, but if it's a good company can we link to it without the affiliation notice? It's understandable - though irritating - that any company with a "(YC 200X Grad)" label gets all its minutiae voted to the top of the page, but let's draw the line at comments and provide ideas for services without the wankery.

Fliggo looks really nice without my knowing anything about how it's funded.
Nitpick: The host itself wasn't hacked. Part of his website had a vulnerable MT installation that allowed spammers to insert spam into that part of this website.
What I meant is that as a business, your priority is to get the candid talks for your people, rather than something you can broadcast to the world. Obviously the 'open' stuff has plenty of business benefits in terms of publicity for you, and the YC funded businesses, so you're not just going to close stuff up for the heck of it.
Hi there,

I realize neither this comment nor the one on Nick's blog from my Google colleague Greg are authenticated, so you'll just have to trust me that I'm me :).

We do often remove entire domains from our index when there's evidence of hacking and/or malware... not to be mean, but rather to protect both visitors to that site and the site owner (from angry visitors). We can't be sure that the hacked links aren't or won't soon become particularly malicious (e.g., phishing sites), nor can we be certain that the server hasn't been or won't soon be more substantially compromised (with drive-by malware installs, etc.), so we fall on the side of caution.

We do make a good faith effort to contact the webmasters affected...
- Through e-mail addresses we believe to belong to that webmaster.
- Via our free Webmaster Tools service, where webmasters can sign up and opt to get e-mails from Google on just such occasions as this.

For more info, you can check out our most recent blog post on this topic:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-prac...

Hope this helps! Believe me, we want good content back in our index as soon as possible, too :)
the important thing is to do your own thing. Trying to adapt to how others do things won't help that much, because no matter how successful a person is, there are a ton of examples of people being just as successful doing completely opposite things.
Is 80 too old now? He seems perfectly able for another several more years at the very least. I'm sure if an illness strikes him down he would tell people :)
It's possible that Buffett doesn't know who his successor is - last I heard, he had a shortlist of 4 candidates and was evaluating them all. That's different from knowing if you're about to have a liver transplant...
Maybe for everyone that enjoys using it as well. This will make so many people start using UStream that had never heard of it before. I'm not sure if they were in any danger of "going away" anytime soon, but certainly they aren't now.
Here is the official response from Office.

http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-o...
If you are not going to email to it, why bother asking/storing it?
I agree, but it also helps to study others and learn from their decisions and mistakes. Buffett for instance, spent a good deal of his youth reading books about famous executives: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and so on.
It depends on the phone you're using. That is correct for most feature phones (not smart phones).
I unfollow people who play games like that, drowning my twitter and facebook with stupid posts. I think a lot of people do.
I don't know a way of saying the following without looking like an asshole, considering the occasion.

If you find yourself admiring Naggum's acerbic wit and online presence, that's fine. But please please look for ways to live your life so that when you die, the fact will be discovered not because some irc channel regulars notice your longer-than-usual absence.

Please try very hard to arrange that there are people in your life who you love and who love you, and with whom you're in daily contact. People whose fondest memory of you will be as a spouse, a parent or an intimate friend, and not having been cursed by you to hell and back in flawless and elegant English.

Many of us here can easily rationalize ourselves into writing a five-page missive on a technical topic that will utterly demolish the sack of shit our opponent is, at the same time making the merits of our cause blindingly obvious to anyone with a three-octal-digits IQ. Please balance the time investment for writing that five-page missive against the possibility of spending that time on your family, or, if you're single, and then it's vastly more important yet, on looking for a person of appropriate gender you'd really like to spend time with.

Also, don't be the kind of person who's polite with others in face-to-face conversation, and then appallingly rude to the same person in email or online forums of any kind. You'll find it's easy to rationalize such behavior to yourself by appealing to lofty principles. Don't.

The world is cold, and we'll all be dead in the long run. Please have someone to hug and be stupidly sentimental with, and share some happiness with.

Thanks for listening, and sorry for being an asshole.
How To Succeed in the Coming Social Gaming Explosion
Work 40 hours for your employer and another 20 hours improving yourself.
T-Mobile UK already does with the G1.
Social Media Kills the Database
I'm sure this may come as a shock, but a lot of people are interested in knowing whether or not a company is YC funded, given the domain we're at is ycombinator.com.

I'm sorry if you feel this is "wankery"; I just prefer not to drop naked links.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/continuity.html
Startup Law 101 - What it means to own x% of a company
Maybe you don't need to send email right away, but want to store the address in case you need to get in touch with the user?

Sending one email per signup can be problematic depending on the volume of signups. Sending email only when absolutely necessary can help with that.
I think Buffett is spot on.
For reference, the discussion about my earlier post is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652768
I think Macs are quite counterintuitive for people from the Windows world. I jump between:

- OSX (my home box for Lightspeed/iTunes/Squeezecenter)

- KDE3 (my home programming box, and my work desktop until I started using Awesome a few weeks ago)

- Windows XP (my work laptop)

I feel perfectly comfortable jumping between Windows and KDE3. They're basically the same logic, the same way of thinking. OSX, which I'm posting from right now, is entirely different and extremely frustrating for me. To switch to an app, I click on the same icon I used to launch it? The menu bar associated with a window lives at the top of the screen? When I focus different windows, the weird detached menu bar at the top of the screen magically changes? GUI conventions like these don't make any intrinsic sense. You're either used to them or you're not. People who are used to Windows will find the KDE3 conventions quite familiar, whereas OSX will be quite alien.

Customization is a different issue. "End users" aren't likely to sit down at the desk of a customization-mad hacker. They might inadvertently screw up their own desktops, but they can do that with Windows anyway. "My entire screen is gray!" "Where did all my files go? They were here yesterday!" Except with complete computer beginners (a vanishing species) it's a relatively minor problem.
You can't win, it seems. "Service X will never take off, it's confusing because it doesn't look like anything else anyone knows or understands" or "Service X will never take off, it looks exactly like a service people already use and understand and doesn't look like it offers anything new".

As for how this is better/different than email, I don't know any of the email addresses of the people I follow/communicate with on FriendFeed, nor do I want to know. Getting their email addresses is just another hoop to jump through before I can send these kinds of files to them.

I'm sure someone can write a plugin for <insert your favorite email client here> that sends to your whole address book and limits your message to 140 characters. Then we don't need to use twitter either.

It is a cool feature though, and those who can make use of it will, and those who can't won't. Is this going to make anyone switch to using friendfeed? Not necessarily. Will this make using Friendfeed more meaningful for people who are already using Friendfeed for some of their communication? Definitely. Does this distinction matter for every feature deployment? Not really -- at some point in your growth, you can start deploying features that cater to the long tail. Friendfeed's deployment history is to get something out there, see what about it sticks and iterate. Sometimes simple, organic feature announcement, rather than massive fanfares, is a better method (FF has done both). Especially if you're deploying features all the time, not all of them can be epic.
Iranian government using crowd-sourcing to identify protesters
Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book
Is a Proof a Proof If No One Can Check It?
As indeed he has (see last comment on OP link).
Holy crap you sum things up better than I do!

Maybe I should sum up my interviews in this bullet form and just forget about the headaches of transcripts.
Can a non-engineer start a tech company?
I'm not an engineer. I'm an MBA with a BA in Chinese history. But in my current job, I've spent six years analyzing wireless companies. I've found a really clear opportunity, a product which customers will need. I also have a team that can help me build it. Does the HN community think I can run this business?
Costs in iPhone 3GS
Nobody wins arguments on the internet, so let's agree to be unable to agree on the definitions of terms about which to disagree.
That's like a pilot saying there's slight turbulence and forgetting to mention that the turbulence is a result of a dying motor, severe fuel leak, and rapid decrease in cabin pressure.