skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apart from agreeing with all the reasons below why this won't work - both technical and the blazingly obvious - and still being an ardent lover of all types of tech... I think that in the 21st century where all our labour saving devices seem to take all our time to operate, control, log in/out, update, check and generally fiddle with so that we have next to zero free time.. isn't there a certain pleasure being missed here in taking a walk to your corner store, saying 'Hi' to a passing neighbour and grabbing a few groceries before getting back home in time to catch the latest episode of Family Guy? Isn't this just another reason for us to stay trapped in front of the computer never leaving the house? /me ducks under a flying car piloted by a pig
The Netflix Zen Master
I can find 100,000 in the private sector.

Why the double-standard?
I wrote the benchmark, and have never developed on a Mac or with the Cocoa framework. I started with a C application because I was familiar with the MySQL C api (specifically, their prepared statements), and that was very fast. Adding threading in C is difficult, so I took the opportunity to learn how to use NSThread, and really liked it. The benchmark is mostly C for the nitty gritty details, with some Objective-C to tie everything together. I wouldn't say I'm extremely comfortable with it, but it's very easy to drop straight down to C for the interesting bits.
Looks very nice -- as a feature suggestion, a floating number that automatically routes to the currently on-call staff would be a great addition.

As an aside, I find the best way to avoid regular failures and decrease the necessity for a large operations staff is to put the individuals responsible for building the system on-call for when it fails. Your operations staff is woken up when a server crashes or a hard drive fails, and your engineers get woken up when their code crashes in the middle of the night.

If you don't do this, the costs of writing poor production code have to be levied across departments by management, rather than avoiding externalities entirely and letting engineers and operations deal with the direct impact of their implementation choices.

Of course, this is ultimately a wash if you don't also institute development methodologies to help reduce the number of production-impacting bugs, rather than simply relying on engineer's reactive fixes to one-off issues.
"Well if you're going to complain that a guy "[does] not sound like someone who studied computers or technology" it would be more convincing if there weren't several well-known instances of you demonstrating a lack of knowledge of computers and technology."

but that is not the real "complaint". Dvorak just says that led him to dig deeper. The accusation (or "complaint"if you will) is that Kundra fudged his credentials. It doesn't matter how technical Dvorak is for the truth or falsity of that statement. Attack the accusation (which is very specific and can be easily disproved) not the accuser.
There was a system like this in New York until the 1950s, when trucks killed it off. If you search google you can also get the RTF version which includes some grainy photos.

http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_rtf/PneumaticTubes2-09.rt...

No doubt that such a network could be insanely useful (although why the empahsis on having it running to every house? Wouldn't one delivery point per block be adequate?). But I'm extremely skeptical about the autonomous tunnel boring machine. If it's so easy, buy some cheap land and do a demonstration, guys. Talk is cheap.
Well, Dvorak may know almost nothing about technology, but at the very least he should know something about frauds.
I operate under the credo that every strength is also a weakness and that (almost) every weakness is also a strength, and Asperger's/introversion is a perfect example.
"Prominent attention" is just people voting with their mouse. If nobody upvoted, the posts would go away. So clearly some HN readers are getting something out of his posts.
Poll: Do you use ad-blocking software?
How many of you use ad-blocking software such as Adblock Plus? If yes, do you blanket block all ads or only certain ads (like from a certain ad network)? What kind of ads would you be willing to unblock? If you don't use adblocking software, how do you find the ads useful?
Yes, I block ads.
No, I don't block ads.
I allow ads from certain networks/on certain sites.
Personally, I recommend a quiet corner of a 5 star hotel lobby/bar that has free wifi and accommodating doormen. Our first 2 or 3 weeks we camped out on the mezzanine overlooking the lobby of a not-to-be-named fancy hotel in DC (interspersed with on-sites at a nearby client's).

The best part was when the piano player started at 5:00 we knew it was about time to wrap up (and sometimes grab a scotch). That was a good way to end a day.

Libraries, however, are a great choice for telecommuting (especially when home is full of temptations for distraction).
One response to Dvorak's post, disagreeing with his conclusion:

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
I personally work at the University Registrar in a data analysis and records protection postion. Due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA - http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html) we do not disclose ADHOC queries about "does so and so have a degree from you" without consent from the party or a formal & legaleze "Open Records Request." http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/updates/open_records_act/

There is a considerable amount of effort and time involved in securing an Open Records Request here in Lawrence. The lawyers prevent people from just calling up and say 'hey what is Ex Gov. Sebeilius minor in?'

Anyway...
According to Carl Jung, who invented the terms introvert and extrovert, the two are really about preferring to focus inside or outside yourself. They don't necessarily have a social connotation.

The introvert, according to Jung, generally perfers to focus on his own feelings, thoughts, ideas, dreams.

While the extrovert, generally prefers to focus on things outside himself, like objects, other people, and their ideas, feelings, etc.

So, in the original sense, these definitions have absolutely nothing to do with shyness or lack thereof, or about feeling "drained" by interaction with people vs being alone.

An introvert could be perfectly happy being with other people, as long as he can focus on his own internal world. And an extrovert could be happy being alone, but as long as he can focus on people or things outside himself.
You are right. Thinking that they are doing it purposely is a bit harsh.

But I do think it's fair to be worried that cabinet members are "blissfully ignorant" about other matters if they are about their own careers and matters with severe punishments.
As a person who is entering a top ranked MBA program in about 3 weeks, I think any MBA would agree that doing something like this is a good idea for the learning. At very worst, you will learn what doesnt work.
The new garbage collecting firmware is probably only effective for consumer use, not enterprise, as these firmware chips (we think) need some downtime to operate properly. We haven't gotten our hands on them, but we don't think they'll solve the problems we're solving.

We don't support clustered indexes. Clustered indexes are good on rotational drives because they allow you to read data as soon as you find an interesting node in the index tree. Because SSDs don't have slow random access, this is not necessary, so we don't do it.
Why do you believe Dvorak but not the guy who was vetted by a presidential administration?

Fair question.

1. OP was well written and seemed well supported. If he's wrong about the degrees, then he's wrong and so am I. We'll find out soon enough.

2. "Attack the messenger" is a last resort tactic used when you don't know how to "attack the content". It doesn't work with me.

3. I believe that the vetting is strictly for political purposes, not for achievement or better use of taxpayer dollars. At least Dvorak earned his own way instead of sucking at the federal teat that I help fund. That gets him a little extra cred from me.
I use AdBlockPlus and I allow ads from reddit.
Interesting! Is there a theoretical maximum throughput that can be estimated based on the parameters of the SSD (and other variables)?
<awed_whistle/>

Makes me think of the beginning of Ghostbusters (although IIRC that was Columbia's library).
I've found you actually get a lot more disruptive crazies at the libraries. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is free.
Beautiful pictures of robots
Erasing files from 'the cloud' just got easier
Pretty valuable info for a "very worst" scenario.
The surprising links between anger and time perception
Logo I did not even see one nor does it matter.

In five to 10 seconds the copy & design conveyed the site's purpose. I got it and thought cool - there is a need for this utility!

good luck!
Choose Your Revenue Model Early
I don't think it looks ancient. I immediately understood they purposely made it look like text on a pager.
This looks very useful in keeping your monitored issues from getting dropped/missed b/c someone forgot to change the oncall phone number for that week,etc.
Wow, hard to believe I've spent the last few months working in NYC without going here. I'm heading over there tomorrow, with work in hand.
Jazzman's on the first floor provides decent coffee, but sadly not open 24/7.
Depends on the kids! My brother (2 years older) is a night owl, and I'm not. When we were young, we'd tag-team our parents around the clock so they hardly slept at all.

Unfortunately I was too young to remember it. Ah, good times, though.
thanks for the tip. I'm going to check this out
Dave writes:

> "there’s a much better - and cheaper - option just down the road. My library."

I disagree, I think coworking spaces are a far better option than the library! Far cheaper than office space, environment for working and actually talking to a co-worker or two, no social isolation, it just makes so much more sense.
Your link has "Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology."

Which actually doesn't indicate that the MS in IT was from UM, and hence doesn't clash with Dvorak's post.

Edit: Interesting that the Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra , has already been updated with "claims to hold... but no record" using Dvorak's post as the citation. Should have waited a few days to see how this gets resolved or at least backed up by more journalists.
Would've been helped by concrete examples. It seemed a little hand-wavey.
I block ads from certain networks/on certain sites.
Microsoft: Helping technology to evolve!
We should move on because the U of MD PR office didn't fact-check his degree in putting out a press release?
The images aren't procedurally generated; they really are that large. Stamping is just an easy way for artists to generate an image that large; the stamps are baked into the texture as soon as the artist places them, and afterward the artist can go back and individually edit every pixel.

Obviously you can't ship an image that large on a DVD, so there's a lot of compression that has to happen, and a lot of that data will eventually just get thrown out. I believe id is using a system that uses recorded player sessions to figure out which parts of the texture are likely to be shown on-screen in actual gameplay.
I should also add that you won't feel obligated to pay for a piece of cake or a coffee every so often, just bring what you need. Williamsburg Coworking in Brooklyn is a great space, so is Indy Hall down in Philadelphia.
Verified: Kundra Did Receive an M.S. in Information Systems Management
I think they should add a few rules and dice, and make the cards into a playable game. They are competing with mtg after all.
love the idea, great work.
Thank you, bilbo0s. One of the best posts ever on hn. We get so caught up in all the fuzzy other things going on, we often overlook the binaryness of ethics.

But I will not countenance a liar, no matter how well qualified.

I've seen guys blow million dollar deals because they misled the customer on hundred dollar issues. I could never understand why they would do something so stupid until I realized that it had usually worked before.
Awesome...I was just wishing for something like this yesterday...will definitely be giving it a shot.
There is a huge difference between collecting links to say "here they are -- look at me!" and collecting links to say "hey! look at the content of this link!". Most of the former start with a number -- hence the 5, 10, 20 ego-camp. Most of the latter tend to contain interesting content.
Individual effort is controlled for in the study discussed: "each extra required maths course raised the annual income of black males by 15%". Of course, this study still doesn't make a strong case for causation -- the number of required math courses in a school is likely correlated with school quality, which is likely correlated with other socioeconomic factors.
You should try to get a refund for the Windows license (see http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381).
I think the idea is solid, but since I'm not in your target demographic, the only useful criticism I can offer is:

Your front page is very busy. There's many different kinds of text and pictures in so many places, I don't know where to look. Does the "feedback" link need to be in such an unusual place? I understand that you want to convince potential customers that your product is a good one, but if you throw too much information at people, they'll ignore everything you have to say.
He obviously meant that if you add useful, basic functionality to a major system or app (iPhone in the original discussion, Word here), don't be surprised if it is directly incorporated into the system/app.
So yeah, you and Dvorak are wrong:

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
"robots" (forever undefined beyond just that they're robotic) have been promised as the general fix-all to the world's physical labors since at least the 1950's.

Regardless of who does the labor, the reason robots have not spread further is that its still significantly cheaper to have people do things. So why spend the money replacing people with robots in this situation, all to build something that can be done already?
This comment explains why several of the startup leaders I admire most went to that same government-sponsored leadership program down at Quantico.
Using Tokyo Tyrant in Production
We tried to design PagerDuty to minimize the possibility of message storms. We did this by decoupling the sending of alerts from the reception of triggering emails. Specifically, we don't generate new phone calls or SMSes if an already triggered alarm receives a new triggering email.

As for the pricing plans, we don't plan to bump you to the next plan if you exceed the limits. We have overage prices for each type of message (phone/SMS). So, going slightly over your quota isn't going to cause a really big bump in your fee.

Currently, PagerDuty only integrates with monitoring tools using email. We do have several customers sending their Nagios alerts to us. We are also planning to build a Nagios plugin to better integrate Nagios with our system.

We haven't actually found the email integration to be a big problem so far. What some of our customers do is set up some external network monitoring tool (i.e. Pingdom) to make sure their mail servers are up and running. Those services are in turn hooked up to a PagerDuty alarm so that we can notify the right person if a site's mail server or external connectivity fails.

Phone call alerting is text-to-voice. It tells you which alarm went off, and also reads you the subject of the error. What kind of customization are you thinking of?
Your odds of hitting on Red or Black is not 50/50. It is 47.37%. The ball can land on green. If you don't get your money back, it's a loss.

http://wizardofodds.com/roulette

Most games at Casinos are stacked against you. They have very smart math and stats geeks who've figured all this out. Try counting by yourself with a 6 deck shoe. Or even a single deck is hard because they reshuffle after 2-3 hands.

One interesting thing from the article. Picking unpopular combinations of numbers can offer less competition in large jackpots. i.e. adjacent numbers 23-24-25, etc... because people mistakenly believe that's less likey to happen than totally random numbers.
NextGov has called the University of Maryland and verified that he did receive an M.S. in Information Systems Mgmt in 2001:

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...

Dvorak, on the other hand, appears to have used a website that cost $6.50 as his source (see his screenshots).
clearly some HN readers are getting something out of his posts.

That's exactly my point—I don't understand what so many HN readers get out of the banal tripe that Jeff seems to be spewing in almost every post these days.
Stuck in Legal
There's no dispute today. There was during his tenure at the IMF.

By "more liable than a normal person", I chose a confusing set of words to make the point that Geithner's tax situation was more confusing than my mom's: he was effectively self-employed, even though he held a long-term salaried full-time job.

As a businessperson paid in LLC distributions instead of W2 wages, I'm sympathetic to the complexity of self-employment tax. When you fail to pay taxes on time, you aren't a criminal. You simply incur interest and (in some cases) penalties. Penalties are frequently waived.

Like many other entrepreneurs I know, I'm also very sympathetic to the idea of not paying taxes until you have to.

Geithner didn't attempt to hide his tax liability. It was in plain sight. When it became more troublesome to avoid paying taxes than to square up, he simply paid them. I don't understand the political drama behind this. Geithner simply wasn't a tax cheat.
Hmm... what do you mean by "floating number"? What we do right now is route all alarms to the engineer currently on-call. Each person can set up their own notification sequence so they get alerted using any combination of phone calls, SMSes, and emails.
Too little credit? He got the national CIO job off of it. And it's not even very impressive.
Then don't do that. Its easy enough to avoid. Javascript (like every language) has some really great ideas, and some really stupid ones, so just don't use the stupid ones.
I had a graduating class of 531, which means there was more than enough outcasts to form an outcast clique.
This one of the funniest things I've read all week!
This is the kind of guy I hope to be in my middle age. Given his antics probably won't actually result in a quicker turnaround, but I love the idea of sending the DVDs back on the same truck they came on just for the hell of it.

I also like the idea of the contest the author proposes, although I'm sure Netflix wouldn't want to publicly encourage piracy.

Great article, made me smile.
The Future of Agile Software Testing
I don't want to get into Mr. Kundra and his abilites or whatnot, but do you actually know people that have had to deal with the city of Washington DC's bureaucracy? It's not a pretty sight. I can say that the folks I know say he didn't make things much better than when he started.
Unfortunately, I think an apps popularity isn't based off of the things mentioned in this article. Apps like "Pull my finger" and "Mafia Wars" are not popular cause the creator priced them correctly or they were marketed well.
We talked to some datacenters, and they said they've been playing with SSDs for a while (I don't remember whether they're offering this to all their customers yet). One interesting thing one mentioned is that with traditional SSDs, they see a noticeable drop in performance after the drive is about 1/3 full, which seems to come from the controller's need to remap and erase free sectors during downtime (which they don't get under enterprise loads). Our approach will let them use the entire drive up to capacity.
Great idea. Hearing the barista yell the drink she finished making every 30 seconds tends to interrupt my train of thought.
These are really Fox News-caliber points we're making here. The exact same logic says that someone with a bad credit score shouldn't be qualified for a high-level government job. If you believe that, fine, but then I get to believe you're dumb.

Not paying taxes on time simply isn't a crime. We have an entire IRS with bookcases full of regulations dedicated to handling situations where people dispute or are delinquent with their taxes. In both the Geithner and the Daschle cases, the system worked: they paid their taxes and the interest they owed on them.
This is why I skipped CS, and got a degree in Mathematics. It's not that it's impossible to pick up some solid math skills on your own, but if you're already programming for a hobby, learning a lot of what gets covered in CS is pretty simple, compared to picking up higher-level mathematics.

Abstract algebra and analysis (Calculus the way it should be) changed my perspective a hell of a lot more than any of the CS courses I took, and the time in formal math makes the process of turning academic papers into working code a lot easier.
White House calls Dvorak's report "a lie"
This is an incredibly weak argument, because the actual hard data is here for everyone to see, and you are completely disregarding it in favour of an unconfirmed anecdote.

The CS community is pretty big, and according to the stats page (http://www.couchsurfing.org/statistics.html), there have been over 1.3 million positive traveling experiences. Your argument seems to be projecting one negative anecdote against that entire dataset. Criminality rates in pretty much any city are far beyond 1/1.3M, so do you also feel we should restrain from all social contact?

If anything, i actually see CS in general as a perfect example that generalized fears of insecurity are typically misplaced, and that while it's useful to take precautions, you are only really punishing yourself by not being more open to all the different cultures and perspectives available for free at your doorstep.
I am pretty sure that the White House guys did due diligence before hiring this guy.
He does have the MS, what else do you want?

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
Sounds a little like, "He said, she said..." I don't know. I only know what I read here at hn :-). If OP is wrong then shame on me for believing him. He'll never have the same credibility with me again.
The daughter of a friend worked for the Patent Office, she had a PhD in physics. The patent office was paying to put her through school to get a law degree, as well, as though there weren't enough lawyers working for the gov't.
Making Geekdom Cool and Profitable
And of course, it turns out that what looks like a total muff in checking Kundra's background is just par-for-the-course negligent linkbait from Dvorak:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758857
I have a 2 year old. I go to sleep around midnight, wake up via alarm at 6:30, and can't work late that well anyway.
all he was saying is that it goes the other way too, especially as the app market populates. iFart was made by Joel Comm, believe me when I say he had a hand in marketing the app to drive the number of sales that it did.

http://www.joelcomm.com
Link to HN item where his degree is verified - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840