skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looks like it only offers 25Mb as max file size?
I'm feeling nostalgic now. I think I might go get my Amiga 500 out from under the house and see if it still works. Anyone got a spare 1084 monitor? I went "PC" when it broke back in 93.
Microsoft's next operating system may start from BSD
Just jump in to barrel - http://barrelfish.org/
That's horrifying. You should buy her a 1984 Bordeaux for her birthday, then throw it away the next week because it's so old.
That is actually an article about what a tossbag ESR is.
Summary: Instead of making the first web operating system, Google should have made the idealized semantic web.
If it is just a community site I mean, then Joomla is probably okay. But if you plan to add some sort of application on top, like an index of movies, or characters in a game, or businesses in the area, etc. Anything beyond blog, forum, etc.
I thought of that... check out the FAQ's ;)
My BBC B+128 is still alive. My father bought it in 1985. Just last week I managed to hook up a brand new 3.5" drive and format a disc in single density (FM).
please don't use upper case for emphasis, use asterisk

(guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
I would think on any given night that most people without alcohol problems would prefer 1 pint of beer at a pub to 5 bottles at home. Same for a lunch out with friends vs 2-3 dinners home alone.

Your theory is obviously sound, but many times the "more expensive" (on a dollar per unit basis) item is even more valuable (on a hedon* per dollar basis)

* - hedon: made up unit of enjoyment
"TC faces no such risk and can publish anything it damn well likes without having to estimate the value to the public interest of its actions"

Isn't that a consequence of free speech?
12 Things to Shorten Your Lead Time
Script as blocking element and dynamic script loading
Sorry, I should have been clearer here. I was referring to queries with range predicates.

Your counterexamples are true where all the returned/aggregated rows have the same indexed value; it may make sense to hash index under such circumstances, but b-trees are a more sensible default.

I guess you could also have a situation where a range predicate maps nicely to a proportionate number of hash buckets. I don't know if any databases are clever enough to do this.
Dan Brown's New Book:The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown's new novel, the eagerly awaited follow-up to his #1 international phenomenon, The Da Vinci Code, which was the bestselling hardcover adult novel of all time with 81 million copies in print worldwide, will be published in the U.S. and Canada by Doubleday on September 15, 2009. THE LOST SYMBOL will have a first printing of 5 million copies, and it will once again feature Dan Brown's unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon.
How To Change Admin Password for Apple Mac Without The Disk
WebbyChat: Customzable Online Chat Rooms (useful tools review)
Perhaps they should first improve the quality of their services that aim to replace MS Office.
That's a bit off base, and Google is not making a web OS.

What was wrong with the original summary: instead of pushing users into using web apps, big G should pull them in with better ones?
Ubiquitous Computing or smart medicine bottle caps
Really? Look at Sasha Baron Cohen. As Borat, he's an ironic anti-Semite. Most people have noticed this, and if they find him funny, like him. Those same people would not like regular anti-Semites.
Tip for running application in Windows 7 Win XP mode (Internet Explorer 6)
In my previous post about Windows 7 Win XP virtualized mode I have explained how to setup and run virtualized Notepad++, but I guess you can run almost ANY application virtualized with this tip.
I prefer the Unix (and Erlang!) model of having lots of independent processes communicating, and individually serving a specific function. While I really like using Emacs's buffer-based environment as the common interface (such as working in a shell buffer and being able to edit results), I'm not convinced that adding more and more functionality to the same process is a good idea from an architectural standpoint. (And unlike Firefox, GNU Emacs doesn't even have good namespacing / isolation for its extensions, hence all of the variables with package-variable-name-with-several-parts names.)

Plan9's ACME preserves most of what I like about Emacs, but it's mouse-chord-based UI is a dealbreaker for me.
Make it as quick and painless as possible. They should be able to cancel via their account page/settings or contacting you. You should respond well within 24 hours with a generic, very positive note.

We're sorry to lose you as a member! Your account has been canceled (effective immediately|will remain active until the end of your billing cycle). If you'd like to renew at any time, blah blah blah. If you have any feedback for us about our service(s), we'd love to hear from you.

You will be surprised at how many responses you get back from an email like that from people who like your service, but maybe just don't have the need for it right now, and from others who will tell you exactly why your service doesn't meet their needs or expectations. Exit surveys are an incredible annoyance.
Growler — Notifications for Safari
I have an account on this: http://www.cse.illinois.edu/turing/

Had very similar thinking, but decided against it because of usage policies. :-p
Inside Twitter HQ
It's a BSD-licensed research project. It doesn't appear (at first glance) to be derived from BSD at all.
Seaside: Your Next Web App Framework
As a Xobni user, who runs it constantly, I must say I don't find the product's prospects too great.

Most people I know who use Xobni get it because their Outlook is too old to have full text search. Sure, those graphs of when people email you are nice. So is the sometimes-working extraction of details from sigs. But they're not what you install Xobni for. Full text search is the killer feature.

As time goes on, newer versions of Outlook will be deployed. Outlook 2007 has been around for two years, Outlook 2010 is being released now. Large companies can use the newer products for no additional charge. Once they get round to doing so, Xombi's reason for being goes away.
So you're motivated by a tech conference. Now what?
Spot-on analysis of what has gone on: journalistic responsibility doesn't apply to this hack -- they haven't stumbled across details of shady dealings or bad treatment of users.

Instead, it seems TechCrunch want to publish the info because a) they find it mildly interesting, and b) a voyeuristic 'scoop' on Twitter is guaranteed to generate a lot of traffic.
Assuming the second one is supposed to be VHDL, there are so many syntax errors that I can't figure out what the OP's intent is...
"Public good" is not so naively defined, and the grandparent made this explicit by reference to the multiplier effect of public harms.
UKers: Get £5k to develop a digital idea (4iP/UnLtd)
Ask HN: Any advice on new Streamfile functionality?
If you were following the story you could see the computer criminal, some script kiddie, guessed some passwords and got into the Yahoo Email or Google Apps accounts of some Twitter employees. Typical of script kiddie computer criminals, they were seeking fame which means seeing their handle/nickname plastered all over the Internet.
Why doesn't it count as trafficking in stolen property? The documents weren't leaked, they were stolen. They are not "confidential", they are stolen property.
New Streamfile features just added! 1. As a downloader/receiver you can now see upload/sender progress bar in real-time 2. Optional PIN/password code + .zip/disk encryption if a password is set by uploader/sender. Any feedback on current functions or future functionality you would like to see?
When making moral judgments you have to treat society as a single entity. Either that or choose to simply not make the judgments at all. Because there are just too many people in society to calculate the exact amount of good or bad a decision will be to them.

Accordingly, you can only really use "it's good for society" if there's a clear benefit. Exposing a chemical company that dumps waste into a town's water supply is a clear benefit. As is making false financial statements in order to inflate your stock to the point where millions will eventually lose their savings. These are clear cases where a whistle blowers in justified.

But yes, as far as what's a clear case there is some judgment involved. As my old ethics teacher used to say Morality isn't a math equation it's an essay question.
In business, "trust" is an incredibly valuable asset. I've seen huge deals made on a handshake (with agreement to draw up contracts) based solely on the mutual trust the parties have earned.

It's also the most slippery of assets. Lose it and it's gone forever.

Regardless of your definition of "ethical", if I think it's unethical, then you've lost my trust and our relationship is over. Was it worth it?
Next time it won't be a spit, it will be a punch in the face.
After a think, ignoring the VHDL syntax,I think the Verilog example has edge sensitive set/reset, whereas the VHDL has level sensitive set/reset? I don't write Verilog mind so I'm guessing a bit...
I sometimes think that patent trolls are just the scapegoat for larger issues at hand. Patent trolls are simply acting upon their rights with issued patents. In many cases, the patent trolling is not what is absurd - it is the patents. Patents that really never should have issued.

We have a IP culture in the United States where patents are distributed very freely and with minimal review. This generally isnt a problem because litigation is the "nuclear button" of IP enforcement - it costs 1million+ for both sides even to start. So, as long as everyone just uses patents are trading cards everything is fine. Companies routinely start new enterprises without a prior art search... because they do not expect anyone to actually _litigate_.

When the absurd patents go to litigation, though, it becomes painfully clear how broad and abusive the patents in question were in the first place. Big companies are embarrassed and emptied of their money because they _did_ infringe.

The USPTO must become more selective when issuing patents, and companies must own up to the fact that they are responsible for infringement, no matter who owns the patent or if they are an NPE or not.
....because it sounds kind of boring....and it's not news....it's analysis. Different.
Are these numbers correlated with numbers of visitors to your blog? If your visitors went up by 10% during a month and the amount of your followers went up by 10%, it doesn't necessarily mean it was because of wording...
Not everybody who uses Mongrel is a multimillion-dollar company.

Yet they can afford to hire employees who know how to deploy Mongrel and Rails. Programmers and sys-admins aren't cheap, neither are executives, marketers, salespeople, etc. Even if you're running a tiny Web startup, you should be able to afford small donations.

edit: You can treat the donation as a "license fee" if that makes the accounting easier to deal with
I'm a little more familiar with SNOBOL, but ICON is imperative and procedural and a bit complicated, and it looks tempting as a target for this little thought experiment that we have, writing a compiler to understand how it works.

Now it would not be a fair test to go after scheme or lisp, as there are many examples out there of people who have implemented toy schemes and toy lisps. Toy here in the sense of tutorial or exploratory.

So being a simple country boy, I seem to be having trouble coming up with examples in line with your point. I wonder if you could give me some examples of non-procedural languages for which this exercise would not work--the exercise of writing a compiler for a language not being successful for learning the language without doing extensive rigorous mathematical semantic modeling?
I wondered the same thing. It's not like TC is going to publicize his hacker handle to get him credit. Seems like a disgruntled employee or user or spammer trying to stir up bad press for them.
Is a whole new news item really necessary? He could have showed "his reaction to our reaction" in comments, or whatever.

All this talking around the issue is annoying. Show the damn documents. This is nothing but corporate voyeurism, so give us a flash. Either that or link to the .zip/torrent!
Saudi family try to sue a genie for theft and harassment
Members of a Saudi family are trying to sue a genie for theft and harassment.
Mormon sisters share a husband 
While sisters are known for their love of sharing, Mormon siblings Katie and Priscilla Churcher have chosen to share more than most in their choice of husband Travis.
Innovation is welcome in any front.

If they decide to design an electric roadster, I'll support them even if Tesla complains with a barrage of payperpost.

Kudos to Google.
You seem to have left your thinking about a lot of important issues to too late. You seem to have assumed that you would be equal business partners when the two of you should have been smart enough to work all this out in advance.

I don't see why you are concerned that you have signed an NDA. As you say it means you can't tell other people about the workings of the start-up, which is exactly what the NDA is designed to do. Why would you want to go and divulge information about the company to anyone outside it - thats really concerns me as a business owner. Your friend is working full time, and you might be capable of 3 hours a day five days a week by the sound of it so the relationship doesn't seem equal. Sure you have the technical programming skills, but the real value is in the idea and execution of the idea. He could just hire someone to do the technical parts but obviously he may not have start-up money to do this which is where your real value lies in being able to negotiate some equity for your work.

You shouldn't question trust in your friend because of the NDA, you should see that he is smart and looking to protect the start-ups ideas in the best interests of everyone (yourself included if you have an ownership share in the end). I am in a similar situation of executing an idea I have had for years, and its very scary to think about others stealing your ideas for their own benefit after you have put so much thought into something.
Someone should do the same to Tech Crunch and see how they like it.
Included in the proposed federal electronic system is a streamlining and standardization of the business logic of health care.

After having worked on a few projects for a health care provider in the US, I agree emphatically that updating the business logic has a much greater chance of saving time and money than even a hypothetical 'perfect' digitizing of the system itself.

(And it's not just State/Federal regulations, but insurance provider processes that make a royal mess of everything.)
Could: AND SHOULD.
The Scorpion & the Frog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
Autism as an Academic Paradigm
I think I speak for every Feynmanophile when I say OH FUCK YES.
from a quick look at the source: http://www.electricprism.com/aeron/slideshow/
Do you realize that the logo on your blog does not link to the product? Clicking that big "Get Satisfaction" banner at the top of the page simply takes me back to the blog home. There is no way to get to the site in question short of hand-editing the URL.

Instead, I just clicked the back button, so I have no idea what the site actually looks like or does.
For number 1, I recommend you read this blog post: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram... - especially if you're considering using the type of interface that Siri has.

"The task of "guess the application I want to use" is actually not even in the domain of artificial intelligence. AI is normally defined by the human standard. To work properly as a control interface, Wolfram's guessing algorithm actually requires divine intelligence. It is not sufficient for it to just think. It must actually read the user's mind. God can do this, but software can't."
Auto Load and Refresh Div every 10 Seconds with jQuery.
The article is a bit short on details of Obama's policy initiative, here's a link from the White House:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Excerpts-of-the-P...

While the rhetoric is good, the realities are far more complex and I don't see much in this plan that addresses deeper, long-term rot in the system of American higher education. Watch the documentary "Declining by Degrees" to get a big-picture assessment. Major problems: costs that are spiraling out of control (outpacing inflation for decades), incentive structures for professors that largely ignores students and student learning (e.g. research papers that few read versus teaching well), no agreed-upon evaluations of what students are actually learning, and broadly declining standards at all levels (e.g. increasing numbers of remedial classes for entering high school students, grade inflation in college to retain students).
Seems the server had a little case of stage fright. Sorry, everyone! (And it should be fine now.)
Does the phrase "lives and treasure" weird anyone else out a bit? I know this is off-topic, but "treasure"? It sounds like we're losing pirate booty by the bucketful out there.

Where did this start?
Anyone know what software was on this computer that couldn't run in a newer OS? Anytime I hear that I just feel baffled. Couldn't a newer machine at least emulate the older OS?
Fake Update for Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express (KB910721)
There was an email being circulated about an update released by Microsoft for Outlook and Outlook Express. The email looks pretty legitimate, showing a KB number which actually exists and is indeed an update for Microsoft Outlook. It also offers a hyperlink that seems to be pointing to update.microsoft.com which is the domain that one expects to go to for actual Microsoft patches. However despite looking pretty legitimate the email is fake and will instead download malware if the link is clicked.
MINA vs Netty - A User’s perspective [Part 2]
If they consider themselves a "news organization" then they have an obligation to their readers to publish "news". I don't know how much of the documents they're gonna publish (3 of 400?), but hopefully they'll have reasonable judgement; ie. plans for a Twitter tv show is newsworthy (tell me that wouldn't end up on HN), and disclosing private details of an employee is not.

All these docs are gonna be leaked at some point, then everyone will be "reporting" on it.
It broke my http client too (written in Arc, btw) some time ago: http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8283
So, one concludes that that Vista 7 has more hype than Vista had? Is that what should I be getting from this?
That's just the nature of writing open source software -- IMHO the whole idea is to write something that other people find useful, and give it away.

You can charge a redistribution fee or something else instead of just giving away the software. Don't you dare suggest that people are unwilling to pay either, a lot of people buy Mac apps that do the simplest things. Those suckers don't even get access to the source code!
That Zeitgeist project is interesting. It shows (of course only for this subset) how negative the popular mainstream music has become. It's mostly no more "hooray, I am in love, holidays, just happy, let's party" but "she/he broke my heart, the world is so terrible, my rehab #3" etc. I can't stand all this negative-emo stuff.
You basically just said that Phusion wasted their time re-inventing the wheel instead of supporting Mongrel and making it better. The whole point of releasing the code is to stop wheel re-invention...If you want to rely on Zed or any other Free software developer for support, start paying them.
The Difference Between Total Users and Active Users
This article only served to remind me that I've never found a good article comparing Javascript frameworks in a fair way. Does anyone know of any?
Online (Machine) learning in Clojure
Tesla opens showroom in New York with new Roadster model
That would be like comparing oranges to rhinoceros.
Unfortunately I don't know how much this will help. I think LLVM will add like 7mb to any python exe distribution.
I think it has more to do with how displeased they are with whatever they are using already.
The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed
hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of
Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents
publicly

The hacker is releasing the documents publicly. TechCrunch is commenting on public information. They didn't cause the breech, twitter did, and they aren't acting as an exclusive disseminator of information, they just acted the fastest.
That was in imitation of protest banners. I believe it's the first time I've used such formatting.
PayPal shuts down Hackers For Charity
They'd like the publicity. Better to flag and ignore them.
Free and Open Source software law review launched
That a large number of people are familiar with Microsoft's pattern of: Screw one up and "fix it" with the next major release?
I am already using Windows 7 RC as my primary OS. It's so much faster than XP and the UI improvements are fabulous. Vista was just a beta version of Windows 7, or another Windows ME. XP lasted me almost 10 years and I figure 7 will do the same.
If it's all about the image they shouldn't be using half of the libraries out there. Most of them have scant documentation, ugly websites, hard-to-use bug tracking software, or some other problem.

By the way, who exactly is "they"? If it's management, they should know that you have to trust knowledge workers to know and do their jobs. Management != programmers.
Sorry it's just for the UK, but maybe you'll find this interesting: http://bit.ly/cmGDY
Tismer is working on a new version of psyco; so I'll be interested to see how that comes out. That being said, psyco is only good for certain workloads (math heavy, for example). Unladen's goals are more "real workload" oriented, so don't expect targeted math speedups.
I note it repeats the lie that Microsoft took IE out because of an EU ruling. I can only hope this plan backfires on them and people install Firefox or Chrome instead.
Why are they so different? Both Self and Unladen Swallow compile two highly dynamic languages just-in-time.
Faster than XP? Can you please elaborate on this? I'm a long time Windows internals geek although haven't seen a windows PC in a long while, so I'm genuinely curious.
Honest question: who in his sane mind pre-orders an OS???
And I managed to miss out on the half-off preorder. Sigh.

Hopefully they'll run another one before release day.
Google OS is not about allowing people to do things they couldn't do before on the web, it's about removing friction from getting online. Google has many other initiatives to make a better Web - like NaCl. Semantic web is obviously not on their priority list, maybe because they are evil, but more likely because they don't think that vision could work.
I'm currently running Windows 7 on my laptop. It's a lot more responsive and stable then Vista, so this is no surprise.
Goofram: Combining Google and Wolfram Searches
50% off is a pretty good incentive to do so. However, I heard a lot of people were burned when they preordered vista. And I don't just mean they paid good money for a shitty OS.
Was tempted myself, but the installation seemed aimed at individuals who are not particualarly computer savvy (really awkward to format and reinstall) and their biggest concern is that they are pissed off at vista (Not using it).

So close MS, almost made me buy an OS for the first time(Aside from OEM includes).
US building education system to compete with India, China: Obama
http://www.startupschwag.com/2007/09/swag-shwag-schwag/ old post but relevant
The link is in the blue column on the right.

"Join us here as we chat about customer communities, the benefits of transparency, principles of hospitality, and what we're doing with Get Satisfaction."

Italicized bit links to http://getsatisfaction.com
Twitter Break-in Exposes Major Flaws in Cloud Computing. We are not ready yet.