skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Its a neat idea, but I would echo the sentiment brought up in the thread linked that casual users would have a much harder time with a lua config in comparison to the current one.

Its probably a good idea to move in this direction in the long run, but there is always a risk of displeasing your current users.
The examples have that LaTeX beauty http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/examples/Struik.html (top-right corner to flick through)

It's a bit slow to render on my little eee PC. That's understandable - but when using the back button, it re-renders all over again. It is possible in Javascript to somehow cache the result, so it is instant when you return to a previously rendered page?
Judge Tries To Order Facebook To Turn Over All Of Its Source Code
I mispoke when I said "can't use the name". I meant to say "Drupal claim that you can't use the name without applying for a revocable licence and paying a fee".

This still isn't ideal if it is being implied that the licence and fee is necessary when (in many cases) legally it isn't required. I believe under UK law falsely accusing people of trademark infringement can open you up to lawsuits in return.
Surprised to see so much discussion on that. Instead, would expect someone to simply implement it, throw it on the table, and provide instructions for building it into your own apache.

If it catches on, then you have a replacement to the current config syntax.

That said, in my experience, admins are slow to change. There are still sites running Apache 1.3 out there.
Gas plants have an advantage over nuclear power stations in that the heat produced by the latter is wasted, the DIW energy expert said.

And by the same reasoning, they have an advantage over solar stations... Reusing the heat will boost the efficiency a little (if you define it as pollution per kW/h generated), but it'll still be nowhere near nuclear power.
Seth writes something and it get's up-voted because it's Seth. Pretty standard.
Maybe. It could just mean that they are going to make Oracle software work better with the SPARC/Solaris stuff. As to be able to sell the software for other platforms as well as give you a reason to buy SPARC Boxes from them in the future.
In the past Oracle has been the type of company where they provide a one stop shop for their customers: software for every department/industry, full suite packages, consulting. While the rest of the companies piece together software from different providers.

So its very likely that they would use their own hardware now that its an option.
I really want to know what Orcale's real plan is. Before the acquisition they have to have figured out some way to reconcile Oracle Linux and Solaris, I just wish I knew what it was. No matter how you slice it, they are competing products in a very similar space. I suppose they could continue to develop both separately and take advantage of having two brands.
Very informative article. Has particular relevance to the cloud and to privacy. Essentially, you can put a file onto a cloud or service (e. g. Facebook), but you can't necessarily truly delete it securely.

He discusses a project, http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/index.html (Vanish) that does true deletion.
Anyone know how to get this OpenID thing to work?
The way I read it: "Make good stuff" or "Content is king", or somesuch.
I should think the reduced latency from receiving the data within the update would be a greater benefit of a fat ping.
thanks, that's exactly the service i thought of...
Don't spend your time trying to touch as many people as possible (first circle). Make great products that make those that you do touch want to go and touch others (second circle).
The invention of the car caused suburbanization. As soon as cars were invented roads and gas stations started springing up. It's natural that people followed those.
It would be cool if we can use runtime variables in Apache's config
> Now enter "Big Red," a debt clock that will comfortably display numbers up to a hundred trillion dollars

That seems short-sighted.
Pretty insightful. Regarding the last part of your comment, I don't agree with the idea of using a developer certificate. In the case of malicious software, this only pushes the malicious developer into having to have their piece of software create maximum damage at once, since they will only get one shot at it. I like the current Android approach better: when you install an app, the phone lists all the pieces of functionality that the app will make use of. I assume this is done through a cursory source-code analysis but i'm not sure. This means that you can tell ahead of time if that app will be using your GPS sensor, or be sending SMS messages.
my friend works digitising film stock.

He told me that a Portuguese tv station is deteriorating and the fumes it gives off spreads the process to the other film stock and even if they had all the 35mm film digitisers in the world running 24/7 they would still lose a significant portion so they are having to make some tough decisions about what to save.

oh and it was Bell-Labs that invented pixels.
AI isn't about copying the thing but about copying the information processes. So a 1:1 copy isn't AI. Also if you make your assumptions the way that AI must obviously work then, well - it certainly must work and there is no way that it can't. Doh.

So far we haven't nailed down consciousness and until we got that I try to keep some alternative theories still in my mind. Especially if the alternate theories correspond rather well with many user reports. That's not because I believe in magic or something like that, but rather is influenced by working long enough with virtual worlds to be occasionally irritated how much easier it is sometimes to put the intelligence in the world instead of putting it in the bot and make the bots just reactive. The user watching them won't see the difference, to him it looks like intelligent bots. And unless a bot registers to the world it doesn't even matter if he is an identical copy - he won't do much (just to mention that identical copies are no guarantee for same behaviour as long as there are external dependencies which must be met).

And there was some recent article on ycombinator about anaesthesia which I found also interesting. Basically it seems that unlike sleep this is a way to completely disable consciousness. Like switching it off. And (the wished for) side-effect is that the body nerves do no longer trigger pain. But the brain certainly still works. So yeah crazy - but the only known way of completely disabling all inputs without disabling internal processing is at the same time disabling consciousness completely. And yes - I'm aware that we probably find a better explanation for that any day now.

It's a fringe theory and I realize that I got even one step further in my post above. But still, I don't think I'm in theology territory with that already. The fact that something so basic that everyone experiences it evades a good explanation for so long gives me enough reason to keep some fringe theories in mind. That's why I agree to your post - but miss your certainty. The last few time we humans got it really wrong in science (that sun-earth rotation thing and that evolution stuff) we got it always wrong because we put ourselves so much in the centre that we ignored alternatives.
I've spoken with Rackspace's people about the ability of cloud sites to scale. It is true that the sites will auto-scale but the mysql database will not auto scale - they have the same database scaling issues as everyone else.
While this may sound like it's coming out of nowhere, Lua was designed primarily for use in extension/configuration, and has been used in production this way for about fifteen years. It's a scripting engine, config file format parser, JSON-like data format library, etc., all in a library a bit smaller than SQLite.

The lua interpreter is essentially just a "code = read(); f = compile(code); print f()" loop written in the C API, with better error messages. The C API is primary, not the standalone language, and using it with existing C projects is quite easy. (As a language, it's very much like a twin of Javascript that was able to mature for another decade, rather than suddenly getting standardized. Most of the flaws Crockford describes in "Javascript: The Good Parts" were fixed in long ago in Lua.)

More specifically relevant to apache, running code in a sandbox is trivial. You can use setfenv() to control the environment, global packages, etc. available to any code. If code shouldn't access the compiler, OS or debug packages, etc., just pass it an environment without them.

There's also a chapter in _Lua Programming Gems_ (http://www.lua.org/gems/) (it's "Lua as a Protocol Language" by Patrick Rapin, no sample PDF though) that shows how to set up a simple filter at the bytecode level to block loops, guaranteeing that code will always terminate. With a few minor changes, it's completely safe to use as a network protocol language.
I'm not a security person - you're saying hashing is useless because an attacker could capture passwords before they were hashed?

I think maybe you're over-thinking things. There have to be compromises that don't involve getting access to the whole system - plus even if an attacker does have full access, how likely is it that they're going to try to capture pre-hashed logins versus just dumping the auth db?

As far as I can see, hashing provides clear value over not hashing, so there's no excuse not to do it.
Anandtech's has some more in-depth coverage:

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634

http://anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3634 (printable)
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813313
Not necessarily - the could have simply worried about their customers on Sparc falling into the hands of IBM/HP salesmen with DB2/SQLServer salesmen in tow.
I'll admit that it will definitely end up being more expensive over a more 'Hacker Focused' option like Slicehost. I think the reason that I like Heroku is that it makes my deployment/configuration easier in the same way that Rails makes app development easier. I know that there are guys over there who are implementing the Varnish cache correctly, setting up load balancing, implementing full text indexing, etc. It allows me to focus on my application and not on the thousands of configuration options that I have to think about if I'm the admin.

Now, with that said, once you start to grow your application the costs would probably start to add up rapidly and it may be in your best interest to roll your own, but in the beginning at least I think it's a great option for getting off the ground quickly and correctly.
Knew someone would post this.

Thing is, it doesn't make much of a point - it's 4GB, to do that in 2 hours you would have to have an upload bandwidth of very roughly 0.5 mb/s (and corresponding download bandwidth).

The thing that was most interesting to me was that it took an hour to copy it off USB (it was about the same time to move the files 60 miles than to get it off the stick!).

On a side note if the ADSL was only at 4% then they are only getting around 22kb/s so we're talking what 256k "adsl"?

Apparently the company in question had made recommendations to improve the speed that had been unaccepted but who knows what those recommendations were.
Yes; something a few lines long that demonstrates a particularly pleasent piece of code from your source tree. Obviously there are limits as to what you can infer from such a small slice of code, but I think it would provide more information about how the company develops software than most job descriptions do.
Thanks. I'm going to read up on that :-)
Your idea will probably change
you could always.. just.. you know.. not upgrade
If you don't get word-of-mouth advertising, your product isn't worthy.
Flash plugs into my browser (and I can choose my browser) as does Silverlight. ITunes does not, it is a completely different application.
Basically the joke still stands. In 2009 the largest online supplier of music does not have their catalogue on the world wide web.
This is true, though it is possible for phones to check the certificate online at install time, so the app could potentially only affect phones up until the certificate is revoked then no more.

Also, I had to go through a number of hoops to get the certificate in the first place - proving that I was a registered company, handing over a chunk of cash etc. That has to be pretty off putting for a malicious coder.

Its even simpler with an app store model: if the app misbehaves or is misleading then it can be downvoted or even removed.
At this point, I'd prefer smart, experienced developers who can demonstrate results by showing me complete projects and code over resume wonders with a full listing of magic acronym soup under a skills section.

Seriously, people really, really need to get past the <insert favorite language/db/IDE here> prerequisites. Not that this is a new or provocative opinion.

I've been thinking lately that developers and hackers of any type should punt on resumes and instead offer up their portfolio of work to potential employers. At least some small set of code where during an interview you could talk through your design choices, coding style, and the impact of schedules or customer requirements on the code you produced.
New life for old stuff
It doesn't, as far as I know. I don't like multi-page no-print articles either, but that isn't a license to copy it in full.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

I think that a full reprint here is clearly against the spirit of #3 and #4 -- this is the entire piece and it stands alone (#3), and by reprinting it here the market (advertising revenue on the original site) is affected (#4).

Edit: Since this is a UK publication, this is probably the fair use doctrine that applies (similar in principle to fair use in the US):
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p09_fair_use
You could use the full version of iTunes and leave a lite version to those who wanted that. FWIW, I'd use a lite version - the full thing is a bit of a slug.
Users need to be reminded a few things, including:

* IT wants to help me.
* I should keep an open mind.
* IT is not my personal tech adviser...
* IT people have lives and other interests.

This goes for everyone IMO. Just replace "Users" with "family and friends".
> In fact, when the density of my agenda drops below a critical threshold of overwhelm, my productivity collapses to zero.

I agree.

However, when I worked at a major DoD contractor for my first job, I was able to be productive even when there was 0 overwhelm. It was only after I worked at a pressure-cooker company that I became completely dependent on having lots of work and little time in order to be productive.
I wonder what is wrong with the current way of configuring apache. I might be biased, but I have experience with both lighttpd and apache and I always found the apache way of doing things perfectly fine and actually prefer it to the kind-of procedural style of lighty.

Let's just hope they don't switch to an XML based configuratino file. We don't need even more filler-code in our configuration files.

XML just isn't human readable (and writable! and, yes, you DO write configuration files here and then) enough to be convenient. IMHO at least.
This does seem to bank on the fact of the big Baltic Sea pipeline Russia-Germany coming into service.

I like the idea of a small power station, but if you are going to be paying $7,000 per installation, you might as well go solar or wind power(probably wouldnt generate as much power though).
Are you saying its not possible? I don't know if I agree with Freaky, but I learned a long time ago to be hesitant saying anything is impossible.
This reminds me of a Mythbusters episode I saw where they tried numerous "antigravity" devices. A few of them did manage to levitate objects, but worked either on magnetic fields or thrust. There was no alteration of gravity.

That said, I'm a bit confused as to how scientists want to apply this achievement to low-gravity environments. Since gravity is not actually being altered here, it doesn't seem relevant. Am i totally off base here?
Agreed. Despite the poor architecture of the site, if you value the article itself, visit the original source. If you do not, the site receives less notice, less advertising revenue, and less funding. QED, less interesting articles for you to consume.
It is inevitably a question of belief.

If we want to stick to what we seem to know for sure physically and scientifically, then I suppose we can consider humans equal to computers albeit much more parallel and complex. In other words, if we reduce a human to mere electric signals in the nervous system and accept that finally the whole human life derives from that only, then we can eventually build a similar machine ourselves.

If we want to think that a human is merely a physical projection of some greater energy, be it the while universe, gods -- or a single $GOD, if you prefer -- then we definitely can't produce consciousness ourselves. Instead, we would have to wait for, or somehow invite, the greater energy or consciousness itself to find and take presence in the form of a machine that passes electric signals around.
Given the complexity to which apache and its ecosystem has grown and the consequences for screwing up this configuration task, this seems quite similar to sendmail in that I think a reasonable argument can be made that casual users should not be configuring this particular system. Period.
See

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815039

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806050
“The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car.
We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work...enough for all.”

—Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (1967)

Quote is part of excerpt from an excellent book on the topic: "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream" Also, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is a seminal work.

http://www.radicalurbantheory.com/misc/subnation.html
Also useful is mathURL: http://mathurl.com/

which provides a tinyurl-style link to the formula, and a png which can be saved or referenced using the same reference.
How are we unique? Do you know there is no other life in the universe similar to us? Can you prove there is no other life in the universe similar(or the same) as us? What do we have a connection to? God? Am I less significant because I don't feel this connection, because I don't feel humans have eternal significance?
I prefer the nginx config style over apache2.
Why the hell would anyone need a turing complete configuration file syntax?
> Google's way of preventing site X from doing this is by intimidating.

Again, so what. I don't care how they do it, but I'm glad they do. The idea that Google is doing something wrong by using their size to try and make a site comply is simply absurd to me; of course they are, that's what they should do.
Good through article. It is clear that implementing such wide-scale enterprise systems is not overwhelmingly technical problem, it is more of a cultural problem.

An item for consideration is whether part of this customization disaster is driven by a misguided belief in software reuse.
Nuclear power isn't very popular in Europe, partly because of what happened in Chernobyl, but also consistent with the more socialistic learnings.

Also some claim that we don't have that many years of uranium left.
Al! You're famous!

P.S. My web mail interface still getting worse :)
Apple and Amazon to users: Shut up and give us the money
Google Docs Preview Firefox Addon
You can make that argument, but reality is that casual users do configure apache so it ends up becoming a concern of the developers whether they want it to be or not.

Like I said, in the long run, it might be better to make the switch, but a change can cause significant risk/inconvenience to casual users or users who have such complicated configurations it would require significant time to replicate in another format.
These are the geek versions of "movie plot threats": increasingly unlikely contrivances of a combination of poor choices and brilliant evil genius which can only be addressed by the fact that the hero studied ballet back in high school which we know because he was razzed about it in scene two.

Back in real life: All four of your scenarios give me full access to the users table, right? That should be sufficient for me to run my favorite common passwords dictionary and compromise, hmm, 70% or so of them at my leisure. If I wanted a particular one, for example for the admin account or an email address which looked interesting, I could rainbow table it. If I wanted to be extra clever real name and email address gives me two extra datapoints to run for brute forcing and the opportunity for targeted spearphising, but hey, with successful compromise of most of several million accounts I'll already have my hands full stuffing my pockets with your users' money.

Like most proposed solutions added to stop movie plot threats, this one doesn't even work, but it does take mental bandwidth you could be using to implement security that actually matters. (Look how every always latches on to "you don't salt passwords!" and most ignore "Rails does not escape HTML by default, which puts every Rails site at the mercy of the worst coder remembering to h() all their tainted data.")
Critical: Vulnerabilities in Windows TCP/IP Could Allow Remote Code Execution
I have a lot of complaints of iTunes, but that (file deletion) has never happened to me and I've never heard that complaint.
What is “Bayesian” Statistical Inference?
IT World's description is garbled. The device isn't a debt clock, it's just a calculator that has lots of digits in its display. (Well, really, it's a gimmick whose purpose is to make a political/economic point; but its actual function is that of a calculator.)

See http://www.bigredcalculator.com/index.html for more information from the people who actually make the thing.
It's more complicated than that. Suburbanization existed before highways - there were streetcar commuters, after all. Most American suburbanization has its roots in the decade after WW2, however. The economy was running on its wartime momentum, and the GI Bill gave waves of veterans college tuition, money for housing, etc. They overwhelmingly migrated to new suburbs.

(Segregated universities, among other things, meant that black veterans had a harder time using the benefits from the GI Bill. This was a major factor in the "white flight" to the suburbs.)

I was a history major, did my senior year research on suburbanization, and still barely scratched the surface. It's a big topic. If you want to talk about suburbanization in the US, though, look at the postwar era. The gradual switch to a car-based society provided the infrastructure, but the postwar economic and civil changes funded it.
How to Write a Top-N List (If You Must)
Oh god. That's it. I'm going to herd cattle out on a farm that has no internet access and deny that I ever coded anything in Ruby or in Rails. You can tell this company is probably full of assholes farting out half-assed ideas, while jerking off onto their keyboards. Yes, I'm harsh.
Their content is available over the internet, and individual pieces of content can be refered to by URL. What remains to induce laughter in you is the distinction between launching an external program versus writing said program within the confines of browser plugin prison.

To each their own. I'm a fan of Mitch Hedberg, myself.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?...

I realize that some people want the browser to replace the operating system, but I'm not one of them.
"Taser International" "pain and suffering"? Sorry, but this article sounds like satire.