skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Once you're at the capistrano level, deployment is a different game.. I'm talking about relatively small projects (I wouldn't deploy a big project on GAE anyway, if only to avoid the lock-in to Google)

I totally agree on most of issues you raise (once GAE Rails would work locally, console, testing etc could be resolved I suppose) - I would definitely not build any size Rails project for GAE right now. But if Rails community would put some work into that, I think it might be a great rapid dev/deploy/scale solution.
You could make this work if you took into account the time the call and voice mail were received. You could even treat them as a "conversation" kind of how gmail does.
What really gets me: 'Experts say it’s both a reflection of the country’s cultural narcissism'

Experts on what exactly?
New Twitter Homepage Goes Live With Search Front And Center
favorable tax laws != favorable business laws

To what extent will a government go to protect your investment/property? Are you big enough where the potential for loss is an acceptable risk? If so and your business is very liquid and global then I see no problem in having an HQ elsewhere. What do you care where their HQ is? Most likely, their investors are still collecting profits in the US. The saved money from taxes drives up equity, reinvestment, research and development. Am I crazy for not caring where a business is centered? I guess I don't watch enough Lou Dobbs.
There has ALWAYS been a "gap between people who understand what computers are and people who don't"; the growing problem is people who THINK they understand computers because they use them, but don't really have a clue beyond what to button to click to get their email.
Congratulations -- but keep in mind that cleaning (aka. garbage collection) is the hardest part of any log-structured storage system. I learned this lesson first-hand when writing tarsnap. :-)
Landlord sues tenant after tweet about moldy apartment
Funemployment is like enjoying the thrill of skydiving without a parachute. Sure, it's a blast while you're in the air, but the landing's going to suck.
Makes sense, searching Twitter is one of the useful things about it. It's like listening to conversations around the world about whatever topic you want.
I've just logged out and saw it. It has a pretty nice design and it's new main focus is clear: Search.

I think Twitter is also rolling out a new sidebar updates: http://i32.tinypic.com/8wb0w6.jpg
What did you learn from this? He doesn't seem to have any facts except that ever more pages are published. He doesn't even bother to index the number of articles and papers published in different decades by the number of profs, which is certainly much higher now than in the 50's. Nor is there is no argument that what is published is bad or worse than what came before. One gets the impression that this is someone who is tired of his field and wants into politics.

At the end he suggests that all the time they spend on publishing -- not having proven that it is more than they spent in the 50's -- is somehow alienating profs. from their students. In this case he has no temporal data, only a dispiriting survey of the present, so his claim to "know" that the (unproven) increased absorption in publication is the cause of an (unproven, even undescribed) prof-student alienation is basically a lie.

He's probably right that what people write is no good; that would hold of most of what is written, period.

I looked into it recently, thinking about another critique of the depraved habits of 'academics', by which mostly humanities professors, and particularly English profs seemed to be meant -- and found that the salaries of the entire humanities faculty at the local big U. constituted slighly over 1% of the budget. Much, much less than the sports program...
Actually I viewed the original "funemployment" article as a propaganda piece, focused on putting a happy face on what are pretty bad numbers.
So, in other words, just like Android?
The whole thing is a rather long winded way of saying that people working on complicated technical or craft problems need hours of uninterrupted time alone. This somewhat obvious point doesn't require pages of text.

"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" made the research backed argument 30 years ago that to progress in drawing one needs large chunks of uninterrupted time when the linguistic centers of the brain remain unstimulated.
Thanks; we're doing GC over the next few days (starting...now actually).
It's a reflection on how society absolutely does not need for everyone to be a working, productive member in order for society to continue functioning.
I really like how they have redefined their mission. For a long time, no one has been using Twitter (at least not primarily) to tell others strictly what they are doing. Twitter has finally turned the page, at least as far as their homepage is concerned, to allow themselves to be defined by their fans. Bravo Twitter!
Review my startup: ScienceSlides.com
Unless you're a scientist, educator or a grad student who is studying to be a scientists or an educator in bio-technology and medial fields then this site might not offer too much much for you. Still, I wanted to post this here to gather feedback since it might offer inspiration with programmers with similar projects.

The website is built on Google App Engine in python. I feel that the general performance, success and maintainability of the finished product is a result of GAE's easy workflow, deployment and scalability. You really can save a whole bunch of time by not worrying about DB and hosting issues.

Of course using a big table and key-value DB vs a RDBMS has its drawbacks, we were able to work around the lack of joins, etc pretty quickly.

Overall we can see using GAE for future projects.

Cheers,

r.S.
I think we can all agree its a vast improvement on the dog's breakfast that was the previous front page.
Do the SEO people have any actual evidence or numbers that they base that assertion on?

Seems like so much "accepted wisdom" from SEO folks is just speculation.
Yes it is unfair.

As an example, consider that no matter what interpretation of any tax law you get from an IRS employee, it will not hold up in court - if an IRS agent tells you to do A, then the IRS decides later to disallow A and that you should have done B, they will hit you up with taxes and penalties and you have no recourse.

UNLESS, you pay money for an IRS administrative ruling; then, you can use that response in tax court. The key is that the cost for such rulings are $50K. Each.

See: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=151979,00.html
I am confused by this graph. The linear default behavior makes sense -- it always takes the same amount of time to insert a row. The logarithmic behavior confuses me -- as you add more rows to the database, the time to insert a row decreases? If you add an infinite number of rows, each row can be inserted in zero time? That doesn't make sense to me.

I would like to read the benchmark script.

Also, I'm afraid to read their source code after reading the license agreement. I can't sell support for any product that can communicate with RethinkDB? That sounds unenforceable, but it is scary enough to prevent me from even looking at the code.
An amateur historian have have found the key to Nixon's lost 18 ½ minutes
This article is total BS. If you want to start your own business do it by all means. You don't have to be lucky to start your business. If you never failed, you never lived.
Full GC (removing everything which is not needed to read the current DB state), or partial GC (removing old metadata such as indexes, but leaving behind data which has been deleted/modified)?

The former is much harder -- it's a significantly complex task just to figure out which data records are still live.
When I said referenced "double-blind studies", I was referring to the ones that were done. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivit... . The burden of proof is indeed on those who continue to claim it exists in the face of strong, peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. Science has done its bit.

A scientist goes into the experiment with an open mind, and is ever mindful of the possibility of future evidence causing the most likely hypothesis to change, but is not obligated to keep their mind so open that they never decide anything, even after the evidence is gathered and the peer review is done.

I think you are criticizing me based on the belief that there were no experiments done, and since that is not true, you would agree your criticism is invalid. If that is not true and you still think these experiments are not adequate, and "science" still has some sort of obligation to continue investigation, I would say, what would discharge that obligation? By which I mean, give me a concrete, immobile standard for what it would take to convince you before the fact that the investigation has been done, regardless of the outcome, not after the experiments. As I referenced in another message, you can always move the goalposts, but this is a sign of weakness in a position, not the strength some people seem to take it to be.
Since they're building a MySQL storage engine, you should be able to just hook it into Sphinx and have everything work.

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/
Um... wow. I guess someone at that company was really bored.
Ask HN: Is a home server good enough ?
Hello HN!,

The idea:
I'm planning to launch an image storage service that allows users to upload photos from their IPhone. Think of it along the lines of twitpic wherein the user has a native IPhone application that can upload photos from the device's camera. I don't intend to copy twitpic, I'm just using it as an example to illustrate the general nature of the service.

The problem:
After applying for an IPhone developer's license, my budget is now fairly close to $0, leaving me no money to rent a server.

The proposed solution:
I have a 512KBps internet connection at home. It's supposed to be 512 up & down, but my ISP oversells its bandwidth as any ISP does, so this tends to vary wildly depending on time of day.
Using a combination of dydns and port-forwarding I can set up a computer at home to be a server. The computer in question is an Acer with a 2.5GHZ intel processor & 2GB of RAM. This computer is only used occasionally for checking email or light wordprocessing. 95% of its time will be dedicated to this application alone.

The photos coming from the phone will be resized and compressed down to about 20kb per photo. There will be some additional metadata that comes with the photo like username, geolocation, etc. which brings the total data outgoing from the phone to about 25kb per photo.

Once receiving the photo, the server will send back some confirmation data which weighs in at about 4kb. If the user is requesting their profile for editing, the server sends back data that is about 25kb, ie; username, email, thumbnail of avatar, etc.

The server app is written in PHP with a smidgen of .NET for some image manipulation.
The estimated frequency of use is perhaps 4 photos per day per user.

The question:
This setup is only to launch the service and gain minimal traction, say 5000 users or so. That means it has to run for 3 months ? ( I have no idea how long it'll take to get 5000 users)
The general idea is to get the service running with some users, iterate to the 2nd version of the product with the feedback received and then approach an investor.

Is this set-up good enough ?

Thanks HN !

-------------------------------------

Home computer details here :
http://www.acer.co.in/acer/product.do?link=oln93e.redirect&changedAlts=&kcond48e.c2att101=50579&CRC=3875343219
Is there room for another Hacker News?
Just wondering, is there room for another hacker news type site, only a little more focused?
The LA Times article does actually quote two experts: David Logan, a professor at USC who specializes in cultural change in companies, and Jean Twenge, an associate professor at San Diego State University who has published a bunch of papers on youth culture and its effects on individuals.
Pemetrexed (lung cancer treatment)
Home setup is never good enough unfortunately. Though, I am not saying DON'T try, as it could work out for you. One thing you should consider, is, most internet service providers have fast downloading speed, but the upload speeds are very slow... meaning you won't serve a lot, if any, without long waits for the end user.
Only if you're absolutely insistent on playing chicken with the ground. You will, of course, lose -- probably badly. People have walked away from their parachutes not opening, though. Most don't, and it's not an experience you should seek out, but it is something to be mindful of, should you ever find yourself in that situation.

Your simile is inapt, though: funemployment is a ride you can step off as soon as you find one you like better. I've done it both ways, after a fashion, and can heartily recommend it, provided you've gotten yourself together enough to step off in time. Hell, I'd even recommend it (though somewhat more reservedly) if you don't step off in time. Nothing teaches you more about yourself than hardship, particularly when it's self-inflicted.
I stopped reading at:

"Traditional corporations are obsolete. With the advent of the Internet, organizing by physical proximity and geritocracy is no longer necessary."

The new does replace the old, eventually.
Congratulations! Glad to see some fellow Stony Brook folks on the map.
Used shipping containers for your storage needs
When most people think of the need for extra storage they do not think of using used shipping containers…but these containers can solve a lot of your storage needs. Instead of renting a storage space, stuff everything to the rafters in your garage, or using every room in your home for storage…a shipping container could be the answer to your storage problems.
Shipping containers come in many different sizes with the most common being the 20 ft. shipping container, 40 ft shipping container, 40 HC (high cube) shipping container, and the 20 One Trip shipping container. These containers, even the smaller sizes, can hold a lot of items that you might need to be stored.
Since shipping containers are made of strong durable steel they make a very secure and safe place to store your items. A wind and water tight cargo container can hold your furnishings, or whatever else you storing, in a safe and very secure manner.
If you think about it a strong steel container would be very hard to break into, and if fitted with lock boxes a shipping container can be almost impossible to break into unless the thieves were to go to extreme measures.
Another great advantage of using a shipping container for your storage needs is the fact that they are mobile! When you move…you container can move with you…as long as you have a place to put it. So when you buy a shipping container you do not have to worry about leaving it or buying another just because you are moving…if you can take it with you, then do.
When renting storage space you could easily spend over $2000 a year. For that price you could buy a quality used shipping container and, again, that container can be used for years and years saving you tens of thousands over the years.
If you need to have doors, windows, vents, louvers, or electricity added to your shipping container that can also be done. So when you are thinking of your storage needs, think about shipping containers. They are terrific for storage and they could end up saving you thousands of dollars…or allow you to see the floor or back wall in your garage.
I don't know if the sites are "great minds in action", I do know they are mind-stimulating speakers and insights into their works. Example of great minds in action (my view) is watching Feynman lectures.

TED is not the only place for thought provoking videos, http://fora.tv/ is equally good. I wonder why this site doesn't come out as popular.

And one place to watch many insights is http://www.charlierose.com/
OMG QIP=PSPACE
HN Request: Borderless Screens
To any hardware hackers in the audience, I ask you this: Is it really technologically impossible to create screens without borders? If not, can someone please invent one already? This whole border thing is getting old. If my screen didn't have a border, I could stack it next to other screens to expand the viewable area. If there was some intelligent software behind the scenes making the whole stacking process seamless, the possibilities would be endless. For example, wouldn't it be great if we could literally drag content between two mobile devices, or a mobile device and a desktop computer. Just a thought.
I did speak with Apple support. The rep told me that Apple does not support any non-Apple cables. I asked her if she meant "made for ipod or iphone" cables purchased at a legit retail store. She confirmed that they do not support any non-Apple cables after the 3.0 update.
The benchmark is incremental. It measures how fast you can insert N rows given M rows already in the database. So, the second data point means you can insert roughly 750,000 rows in 140 seconds, given 750,000 rows already in the database. The limit certainly doesn't approach zero as the number of elements approaches infinity :)

The engine isn't open source. We're considering open sourcing it in the future, but we want to understand all business implications of this decision before we proceed - it's a decision you can't easily retract. The license is a bit draconian, but this is because we've only released a developer pre-alpha. We don't want people to use the engine in production yet - it's not ready. AFAIK, the license says you can't sell RethinkDB support, not that you can't sell support for software that uses RethinkDB.
Cool snippet from one of the [founders?] on TechCrunch:

> All of our interesting work is MySQL API-independent, so a Postgres port is not out of the question. We’ve also been entertaining the idea of porting to SQLite, as many embedded devices use that, and have SSDs already.
How do you get Google to index you properly?
This news actually has a practical impact on my business: if it means that I can buy advertising across both search engines at the same time through the same interface with the same creatives (ad text), then Microhoo can deliver me enough clicks per month to make it worth my time to actually sign into their website.

I pay Microsoft $30 a month for ads currently, and they just don't generate the traffic necessary to justify me logging in and optimizing their ads like I did for Google. (Which can fill $500+ per month of ads per me, even at the cheaper post-optimization CPC prices.)

I also tend to rank fairly well on Bing for searches of consequence to me relative to Google. Currently, that scarcely matters because few of my customers use Bing. More of my customers presumably use Yahoo (you should see how many @yahoo.com email addresses I have in my database) but for whatever reason I've never ranked particularly well there. Thus I'd expect a modest increase in traffic. However, the sad fact of the matter is ranking #1 on Microhoo for a tier-one keyword has been worth less to me than ranking #8 on Google for a tier-two keyword. (Tiers assigned subjectively based on search volume, perceived fit to my business, and observed conversion rates.)
Full GC. In the framework of what we're doing, it's not very complicated (we think). This is because of our indexing scheme (we can simply walk the index tree while the database answers queries). We hope to release more info on this shortly.
yep, that's me. hi!
Education has not always been funded by taxes and need not be.
Yes.

Go build it.

Post link when done.

Thx.
Very much not new. Nobody's done it for MySQL yet to my knowledge though, and I don't think many have looked at the implications of log-structured storage on SSDs. That kind of storage is notoriously difficult to do cleanly on a rotational drive, but our indexing scheme is quite simple. It's essentially some combination of shadow paging and side-effect-free style from the functional programming world, if that makes any sense to you.
The burden of proof is always on those who make extraordinary claims.
The argument is that "what cops always do" is wrong, and that race played no part.
Hardware-wise, you're probably fine.

The issue is going to be that you're violating the terms of your consumer Internet connection, and will likely be subjected to all kinds of random filtering and outages. Murphy's Law dictates this will happen as soon as you start to get some attention, as soon as you try to go to sleep, etc.

If it wasn't for the .NET thing, I'd give you a slice to get started on, but I don't do any windows hosting.
In my experience, dydns will be an enormous hassle that never really does work quite right. It will work from some places and not from others in a very haphazard fashion that leaves you never quite sure if you're up or not.

I'd spot you a slice too, but its specifically forbidden to have any windows machines with public access in our rack.
GV Mobile v1.21 available via Jailbreak
This applet has a bunch of interesting patterns. Click "Enjoy Life" then "Open"

http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/inspiration/justaride.html
I also wonder why voice messages aren't put in the "Messages" app. Seems like a more natural place to put them. When you launch the Phone, you want to make a call, not read messages. It's just a relic of the dial-to-get-voicemail era, probably cemented in place by AT&T contracts.
Same idea, different slant:

http://www.newmogul.com/

The Internet is always evolving; probably something like 89 percent of the Internet spends its time talking about how the other 11 percent evolves.
Nowhere does the logged-out site answer the question "what is this?" anymore. I guess they are assuming everyone knows what it is already. I think that could be a mistake.

I wonder what will happen to the signup conversion now. I hope they did some solid AB testing.
Technology is not Coke. Google is a huge brand, but brand only matters when it comes to brand loyalty, and in technology there is no brand loyalty.

The minute someone comes up with something significantly better (and it will happen), Google will join Yahoo and many others in the "former king of the hill, still important, just not very influential" camp.
You present 2 separate issues. The latter about moving items visually between devices in a seamless way is being worked on and I recall exists in some form. I don't remember exactly where I saw it but I'll update if I think of it.

The second issue is having LCD or LED flat panels without the border. It is technically possible. You cant just take the border off. Some sort of surrounding protection is needed or else you will end up with dead pixels all around which makes it look like an ugly border. The screen won't survive long either.

It's possible to wrap it up in plexi-glass or a similar material. I don''t know how you can avoid any refraction at the edges. Even the slightest oddity ruins the point of piecing screens together.

The real question is why do you want to do this? It will be much more expensive to piece together screens to make one large screen than it would be to buy the large screen. Big screens are pretty darn cheap now. I don't know how much room there is for the price to go any lower. It is still a manufacturing process that is based on preciseness - so there will be wasted units that add to the overall cost.

I'm not sure if that answers your questions or if you specific technical details. Either way I would love to see something like it for the coolness factor!!
Am I the only one here who's thinking "About fucking time"?

I don't regularly use twitter, I've used it to keep track of the pirate bay trials, and thats about it. It seemed absurd that search wasn't front and center on their homepage before, at least to me.
Yes, especially if it's in a language other than English.