skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm a cofounder at MemSQL. The explanation around durability and in-memory databases is more nuanced than what is assumed with disk-based systems.

First, it's worth mentioning that you use in-memory databases when you have performance requirements that far exceed physical capabilities of hard disks or even SSDs. The workload will have a high degree of contention, high concurrency, etc.

Second, you're probably working with non-human-generated data. If you're not a bank that needs to guarantee a debit and credit went through (and that's slow human-generated data anyway), then you're looking at in-memory technology because you can guarantee every read will hit memory.

For writes, you basically have to use more machines to guarantee durability.

Any in-memory database worth its salt will write a transaction log to disk, so in the event of a power failure, it will read back from disk into memory.

You can increase the probability of 0 data loss, even in high contention and concurrent workloads, if you run the dataset across a set of machines, which both multiplies the number of disks capable of writing a sequential log as well as storing an extra copy in memory for high availability.
Bitcoin is being killed off by DOGECOIN
I always think of the Grey Goo theory when the subject of nanobots taking over Earth comes up.

"a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.
haven't read the link yet, but i love that a wedding emoji was used in the title!
I try to always have a set of at most ~5-6 files I'm actually working on (depends on the kind of work I'm doing but in most cases that works pretty well). I can then use Cmd+1/Cmd+2/... to switch between them which is way faster than any fuzzy matching (which I would use to switch to a different file). I work on many projects with very similar file names/directory structure which makes project windows (globally) and tabs (project locally) very nice.
Evolution doesn't lack falsifiability. Evolutionary theories provide falsifiable predictions of future observations -- which (while many have resisted falsification) are, in fact, sometimes falsified, which is why the theories in the field, while much of the broad outline is similar, have evolved over the whole time that the field has existed.
you can buy 32GB DDR3 modules on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239...
Absolutely. I was pretty shocked myself upon reading this article. I guess that forum is going to be only people who are agree on climate change now.
How Many Calories Should I Eat To Lose Weight
Yes, but the hand that I wish into requires less frequent washing.
In this wonderful country you can select the government at age of 18 but you are not allowed to drink alcohol till the age of 21.
depends. a lot of these mice are specific breeds designed to make it at least feasible to perform experimentation. It's common to use mouse lines that have extremely deficient immune systems. Otherwise there would be almost zero chance of tumor cells transferred from a different species (i.e. human) being able to grow on the mouse for study.
Those poor helpless /r/science masses, unable to control theirselves when a controversial post is made. It's a good thing we have moderators to save us from ourselves. (Face it: People suck)
exaggeration of talking to some high-level eccentrics that find their way into academia

Well, he does spend most of the article gushing over the magic insight of Kurzweil. It's really a "baby's first exposure to the concept of self-advancing AI" article with a movie promo thrown in at the end. (Maybe? I just skimmed.)
Macbooks can be grounded, too. The round metal thing that's holding the plug in place also serves as a connection for ground. It is moot if you're using the small plug which doesn't have ground but if you connect the cable instead of the plug, or use a UK plug, the computer is properly grounded.
The article seems to indicate that they primarily forbade the posting of conspiracy theories (ie, the "Big Green" and "Big Oil" accusations), and that bans only came after repeated violations of the rules.
How I fell in love with Pact Coffee’s Service
Reddit is not something that should be held up to scientific rigor.

Also, the assumption that the climate change denial comments have any chance of being well supported (not just because they're wrong, but because they're not authored by people with scientific training) is probably misplaced.
I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.
5 Things Every DBA Needs To Say To A Developer
Reading the article, and then seeing responses posted here, I am starting to think hacker news isn't the place for these kind of discussions. Any time any kind of contentions topic is posted a small number of people, similar to those described in the article, come out of the wood work and feel the need to share their uninformed opinions.

On an unmoderated forum like this one, perhaps it is better to keep the discussions restricted to subject like programming languages and operations systems, and avoid inadvertently providing a microphone for those with an axe to grind.
We have worked pretty hard to push the speed at which our mobile webpages load.

In the interest of sharing...this is what has worked for us:

1. We don't have any references to external CSS and JS files. This means there is almost no reason for the browser to stop painting the webpage as soon as it starts getting the document or even fractions of it. This means that the user never gets impatient cause it seems that his device is doing nothing. I know this seems like a huge management hassle in terms of changing things, but we got over that by using a server side helper library that spits out the HTML of all the components based on certain input parameters. That way the HTML of the user interface is even more modular and centralized than CSS etc. Besides, it also makes the making of new pages a craft project of sticking different user interface blocks together.

2. All user-interface images for buttons and icons and all are in image sprites. So, an average page is just 2-3 requests. Also sprites once cached load beautifully. In fact, it also makes for a much more pleasing page load as opposed to some parts of the page coming in and some coming in a little bit later.

3. All background repeating images are make 1px thick and saved as optimized as JPEGS and then made part of the CSS with base64 encoding.

4. Of course we very aggressively cache and reduce DB calls and combine DB calls etc etc.

Having done all this, we find that our pages load...well more or less instantly at least with respect to what matters to an average human. But this instant loading is only on a network where the initial connection time is not relevant. On 2G & 3G even, all the optimizations in the world cant save you from the fact that the device takes a LONG time to just connect as Ilya Grigorik has mentioned in his presentation.
Another advantage of pair programming is that two developers can share one desk in a coworking space.
Can more money actually make you less happy?
try dogecoin and love again

DDjPtTjwFigCzPxAW4LDLR8eM8sJufXCnq
"Differential intellectual progress consists in prioritizing risk-reducing intellectual progress over risk-increasing intellectual progress. As applied to AI risks in particular, a plan of differential intellectual progress would recommend that our progress on the scientific, philosophical, and technological problems of AI safety outpace our progress on the problems of AI capability such that we develop safe superhuman AIs before we develop (arbitrary) superhuman AIs. Our first superhuman AI must be a safe superhuman AI, for we may not get a second chance."

- CEO of the Singularity Institute

I believe he also said that if you die now or soon, you don't just lose a few decades off your life but possibly immortality.
How would you define an ethical wage for menial labor?
Yeah, and it would be even safer of the entire functionality of the ATM were implemented as an ASIC. Except that's completely impractical.

My point is that a system's resilence against manipulation is not all that important if the way it is operated affords little or no opportunity for manipulation. Note that the trojan described in the article apparently requires a criminal to be physically present at the machine to harvest the collected information and says nothing about how the machine would get infected. Remote infection (which is impossible for a normally operated ATM) wouldn't be much use when profiting from it requires physical access, so I infection probably also requires physical access to the inside of the machine. That's a worst case security scenario anyway.
Copenhagen: The Unsung Hero of Europe's Startup Scene
>> costs of compliance for a full-time employee

I'm not sure this is the driver. Instead, the primary factor is likely the fact that hourly employees cost a 50% more the moment they cross 40 hours in a week.

>> Google would rather hire 15 guys at 40-60 hours instead of 40 guys at 20 hours

Not if they are paid hourly, they wouldn't. It would just be throwing money away.

In my way-back days working hourly jobs in retail/fast food/etc., we would game this by trying to get as many excess hours as possible early in the week, so that we could get to 40+ hours by the 5th/6th day. Then, we'd aggressively try to get extra shifts from people who called in sick, etc. But management always tried to prevent this.
Get rid of him right away is how I'd handle it. You're on a very slippery slope that doesn't just lead to failure it leads to jail time.
Chargebacks are a double-edged sword, so much so that a whole class of scams is using them to defraud people of goods and services. It's even worse for the small business if you consider how much money is tied up by the bank/paypal to allow for the charges to be reversed at least a month after payment has gone through and the goods sent.

There is a need for cashback, but there are circumstances where having that possibility only causes issues. Transactions in fiduciary money can't be reversed. Bitcoin is more like that.

Bitcoin also allows multiple party arrangements where money can be released irreversibly according to various configurations. It allows the implementation of a system similar to an escrow without the escrow having to hold that money (and without requiring a payment for their fee).

And maybe you do not transfer money abroad a lot, but a lot of people do, whether it is buying goods and services from abroad, or simply sending money home if you live abroad (that's about 230 million people who live outside of their country of origin according to the UN[1]).

Bitcoin also allows micropayments, which is an unsolved problem today since you must have a Credit Card to pay anything online and the fees charged prohibit small payments.
And I'm not even talking about being able to accept credit card payment...

[1]:http://www.dw.de/more-people-living-abroad-than-ever-says-un...
That's what I call pure genius.
Transaction is being used in different senses there. The first sense refers to an OLTP workload. The second sense refers to ACID transactions. The in-memory architecture would relate to details of how the database manages memory internally. There's no question that updates need to be written out to disk as soon as possible for them to be durable.
in germany you can drink at the age of 16, but smoke at the age of 18
Having untangled ideas using hunks, when diff doesn't choose the desired boundaries I'm not quite sure it's worth it. Certainly an engaging exercise.
Pair Programming seems like it would be great if both programmers have similar ways of approaching problems, and can bring their different perspectives to bear on the problem in compatible ways. What happens when two people approach things from very different perspectives?

Coming from a physical science background, I've found that I "think differently" than most computer scientists and engineers I've ever worked with. It's different enough to my mind to be quite incompatible with in situ pair programming; the few times I've done it have been in interviews, and it was uncomfortable to say the least.

It seems like the difference between a kinesthetic and a visual learner. I don't care how often you expose one type of learner to the other kind of learning, there will only be so much improvement; after the improvement plateaus frustration will set in.
I was reading, waiting for the mention to IBM Watson... and here it comes! I'm so tired of reading how Watson is a step toward Artificial General Intelligence, self-aware machines, etc.

People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Watson does not feel anything. Watson does not know what soccer is. Watson knows that a label "Soccer" has a distance of x to label Y and Z. Watson can answer Jeopardy questions, and now medical questions, but it's structurally unable to learn the slightest new task. So please, let's credit Watson for what Watson is good at, but stop using it to tell us AGI is coming.
That's what I was going for, gravity has probably almost never been controlled for.
You mean PHD Biologist that lectured at Cambridge University? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

So if you were a scientist interested in a field that others called, "stupid", you would just change for fear of peer pressure? I admire following your interest with scientific method... Which is what this man advocates, and not just blind faith to stats... Did you even watch the video before forming your opinion?
Mozilla Firefox monument is being installed to the SF office
Congratulations on being an ignorant elitist. I have both Mac and PC and have been using both for a very long time. The point of my statement is that whether or not I can see my scrollbar, I shouldn't have to look at the size of the bar to determine the functionality of the site.
https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/11/26/the-monument-t...
We actually "launched" as a company[1] way before 2013, but now that I think about it, 2013 was significant for us in that we only really had a product "for sale" this year. We announced[2] LA (Limited Availability) of two of our products in 2013. We had hoped to close our first deal in 2013, but barring a miracle in the next week, that isn't going to happen. But going in 2014, things are looking very encouraging.

So, given that, I'd say that the following points from TFA resonated with me:

Your idea was too big

What we're working on is big, and as a result, it's taken what feels like forever just to get to this point. In hindsight, we might could have decomposed things a bit more, and done more to look for a way to get traction with a subset of the overall vision. And that's an adjustment that we are actually still looking into making. In 2014, we'll probably launch a SaaS version of our Information Discovery Platform, tailed for use as a "sales intelligence" tool, and targeted at sales teams. We've gotten some very positive feedback on this idea from a number of sales teams, so we're pretty excited about that. Had we decided to go this route sooner, we might be a lot better off now. But, hindsight is 20/20.

You didn’t build an audience

We only started really "working" social-media with an eye towards specifically trying to grow our audience, in 2013. I mean, we had a blog and a Twitter account and a Facebook page and the gamut all along... but last year we started taking it seriously. What I have come to realize is that growing an audience is a lot of work, but it is somewhat predictable. There are things, that if you do those things, will result in more Twitter followers, more mailing list signups, etc. We haven't dived full-bore into "growth hacking" but are definitely seeing the importance of these ideas.

The other thing we hope to do in 2014 is more marketing efforts, including: presenting at user-groups and Meetups that relate to what we do, hosting Google Hangout sessions, and/or Twitter "live chats" on topics related to our domain, still more "content marketing" via our blog, and maybe even writing and publishing a book (or two).

You tried doing it alone

Did that for the first year I was working on Fogbeam, but we've grown in fits and starts. IMO, you should invite people to join you when the time is right, and not just to say you "aren't a solo founder". We have three members on the founding team now, and a fourth person we're talking to about joining up to do sales. It's taken time, but we've been patient and looked for good fits.

[1]: http://www.fogbeam.com

[2]: http://fogbeam.com/news.html#press_release_08282013
One size could fit everything. With a good flexible query language and an sufficiently smart compiler, it might be possible. Which means: one size, one winner and SQL isn't flexible enough. SQL will fall down to earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBIL2sdfoVc

Not all TED talks are worth their weight in bandwidth.
Science is a process and not a state. It doesn't need to be perfect, as long as you take slightly more steps forward than backwards the extent of knowledge progresses.

I think virtually no one likes experimenting on animals and scientists are acutely aware of all sorts of problems with these systems, but what else should humankind do? just twiddle our thumbs until better alternatives come around? The better alternatives also often come out of this type of research.
I am a big fan of what Joe Lonsdale calls human-computer symbiosis. He says that humans are good at certain things and computers are good at other things. For example, computers are good at looking at huge amounts of data. Humans are good at finding intuitive patterns in data. Though in time computers will undoubtedly start to be better at these things, I do not think that in my lifetime (or Matt's daughter's) we will see computers that can do literally everything better than a human can.
Actually, at the Googleplex, when you see someone boarding an early shuttle with a stack of to-go boxes for their friends and neighbors it's most commonly a contractor.
> If the security guard wants to earn more, he should either start a business on his own or improve his skills to get a better job.

Part of the reason people are engineers is because they've been exposed to good examples and opportunities over a lifetime, not because they are especially or particularly motivated over anyone else. There are all sorts of factors which lead to people having the profession that they do. Work ethic is one among many, and probably not very high on the list.

And, being taller and prettier is absolutely a predictor for being better paid.

http://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn-money.htm...
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020368750...
We don't even need to evolve them - finding a way to quickly cram in lots of knowledge is more than enough. Also, if we could take one geniuses knowledge and transplant it to another human's brain (no crazier than transferring conscience to a computer), that would lead to amazing advances (not to mention that it would solve the problem of people not understanding each other).
>almost 2014
>Not investing in Dogecoin

It almost looks like you guys don't want to have a trip to the moon.
If they can be resized and used as normal windows - I'm all for it - that's how I use apps on a normal desktop operating system!
Filtering out a signal that's in the same band is notoriously difficult.

If the signal you're subtracting is known to you, you can simply lock the phases and subtract. That's pretty trivial.

But knowing the name of the song doesn't necessarily give you a known signal to subtract. Conceivably, you could be working with a version of the song that was compressed differently than the one playing on the target computer. In which case, the two signals might not have the same waveform, and they wouldn't cancel.

To the listener's ear, the signals may sound identical. A good example of this principle is musical instruments. Have a skilled violinist play the same note twice with the same articulation for the same duration under the same conditions. Record each sample the same way. Most listeners would say these two samples are identical. But if you invert one and then mix them, they won't cancel, because they didn't actually have the same waveform.

But it's definitely an interesting approach, and potentially viable, if a good filtering algorithm can be worked out. My suspicion is that such an algorithm exists or is at least possible. But I'm not an audio engineer, so I'm not certain.
No. I think the idea of inverted totalitarianism ridiculously abdicates the individual's role in our society, but I don't care to argue that point.

The point I was making is that you cannot use the election of Obama as confirmation that racism is dead. If the argument you make is that "Obama isn't elected if racism exists" you have zero facts behind you.

Giving you the greatest benefit of the doubt you could assert as fact that 28% of the voting eligible population isn't racist. Again, being as generous as possible to your (in my opinion horrible) argument 72% of the voting aged populous may or may not be racist.

That's a FAR cry from "no racism to see here, move along".
You simply provide no facts at all to support your position. I grant you that racism is a difficult and nuanced issue, but dismissing it cavalierly is sad.
The Death of Web Advertising (at least for me)
I'd be super uncomfortable with anybody asserting that conclusion.

What the quote in the original article says is that they have data that in a preliminary fashion supports the hypothesis that being cold (and trying to keep warm) suppresses a mouse's ability to fight off tumor growth.

That is very different from saying cold/stress causes tumors.
No. The 'flag' link is for stories that are inappropriate for the site. What you describe is a "downvote" button. Using flags to downvote is abusive. My understanding is, the mods catch people using the flag button to downvote, the mods make your flag stop counting.
I wouldn't find that desperate at all. Just throw up a "Donate here" and that goes to another page with multiple options - so it doesn't seem cluttered. Can always throw some small icons under the initial "Donate here" to show what's supported if you'd like. Split test it.
> non-scientific opinions

hmm... lets check out your link...

> ...be removed from the TEDx archive if the ideas contained in it are wrong to the point of being unscientific...

So who judges this? Did you even watch the video? The whole thing was about questioning things we already THINK we know the answers to. How is the opposite of such not Dogma? Did you even research Constants? He had. But you're right, just plain wrong.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/11/fundamental-constants...
> Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent
> than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is
> you're talking about.

You can only define things to a certain level. No matter the topic, you could always complain about a lack of definition. xkcd.com/309 comes to mind.

Expecting computers to be millions of times faster then humans has some appeal for 2 reasons.

1) Machines are already millions of times more powerful then humans in some tasks. For example mail delivery is now done with the speed of light which travels millions of times faster then a human.

2) Would we consider a million people to be a million times more intelligent than one single person? In some sense, I think so. So when we can clone a brain and we clone it a million times - voila.
As somebody who works in the fuel industry. We easily can keep about 3-5 liters of fuel at ~15,000 psi for injector testing in about ~1kw to 2kw watts of power (with 350F heating). So not super far off.