skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's just hope that Apple doesn't decide to adopt that as a new standard for the next iteration of OS X, like they did with the iTunes sidebar...
I actually found the article very interesting!

As an Australian I can see how people first arriving would be led to believe that there wasn't anything there to eat, most of the native food we do have either looks totally gross or is well hidden! Kangaroos are very tasty though!
And the Beatles tomorrow (never knows)?
This was my first thought too. Why not just denormalize the data in MySQL? What benefit is Cassandra really offering here over that option?
Ignore everything he said except this: "They are an introductory peek at what is cool about a complex subject. Then you have the opportunity to learn more about the parts the interested you..."

It's not a book that'll teach you how to actually do any of this stuff. It's an overview, a gloss, an extended Wikipedia entry in guide form, that shows you the work that goes into creating a programming language. It's like the show "How It's Made." If, at the end, you think you actually want to write a programming language, then by all means, read your set of books. (That's not to say that this was their goal--it was probably a stupid attempt to actually let people design and implement a language after reading one book--but this is what you should take away from it, and a perspective from which reading the book would be useful.)
I can't upvote this enough :)

The article is dead-on, though I like the Dr House character so much partly because of his failings, including the drug dependencies.

"Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity."

Arguably, all bureaucracy is stupid by nature, but the point still stands.

Sadly, in any environment where there is bureaucracy, chances are the users are nowhere near lucky enough to be served by good IT pros.
So, the other power-hungry superpower took over the world.

Ask the Afghanis, Iraqis, etc. how they like it. And eventually ask yourself - after the consumerism bubble pops / the petrocollapse takes place.
Acurest first non-invasive, drug-free
What's "peer review"? An academic article in a journal that's "peer reviewed" has been reviewed by what, 2 peers? Ok, 6? Jeff's posts are "peer reviewed" by hundreds or thousands of developers and you can read the reviews right there at the bottom of each post.
btilly, an excellent presentation, thanks for bringing it up.
I think some of this is genuine cause for concern, and some of it is a function of the target audience for this kind of offering. We have a lot of visitors who have our site set as their homepage, visit multiple times per day, and/or are heavily engaged in the forum. These people get a disproportionate amount of utility out of some of the enhancements. Removing ads significantly speeds up at least a few parts of our site (depending on what's going down with the ad servers).

There is also a non-significant segment of our traffic that wants long form articles in PDF form. For these people, the subscription may be worth it, and it can easily turn them into repeat visitors (because, hey, why not get the other PDFs too?) who then get more utility out of the other features.

The important bit here is that no one expect this to replace ad revenue anytime soon. It's a diversification that also gives us a nice cross section of visitors to listen to attentively.
Yes, ma'am, we are on the same page. :)
Warn HN: 8 GB iPod touch not upgraded to 3G S components (only 32/64 GB)
In case any of you were planning on buying a new iPod touch today, it looks like the $199 8 GB version does not have the upgraded CPU and GPU from the iPhone 3G S. Only the 32 GB and 64 GB models have the newer internals. (See http://www.apple.com/ipod/compare-ipod-models/) Sorry if you already knew this.
Yes, it's a different problem. Magenta requires at least two wavelengths of light, no matter what. Purple, on the other hand can either be red + blue or a single shorter-than-blue wavelength. Computer monitors only have the option of showing purple as red + blue, because there is no "purple" subpixel on a standard RGB display. This article is about how to mix the 3 RGB channels to stimulate your chromophores to simulate the effects of a single-wavelength color.
Things in common between founders and our favourite superheros
It's cool that the MIST gets around average human interrogators' variations and weaknesses. But what about the weaknesses of the human or algorithm that generates the MIST questions? Plus the MIST has no opportunities for followup questions.

Turing's intent was to define a sufficient condition for labeling behavior "intelligent", and I think a high score on Loebner's setup with a competent interrogator does this better than a pre-defined set of MIST questions.
Hello. I'm one of the persons who started this debacle (the Vladimir Slepnev from the signature at drupalsucks.com, the want_to_want who submitted the thing to reddit) and would like to add a note of friendliness to the discussion. Apologies if this comes late.

Neither of us subscribes to the unacceptable personal attacks on you and your family. We're also pretty much fans of your software; Jacques was basing his business on it, and I'm seriously planning to do the same in the near future. For any new business, voluntarily honoring the policy terms isn't likely to be a big chore - it does seem to be very carefully written in this regard.

The issue with the policy (as I see it) is twofold. First, the lack of a grandfather clause or anything to that effect will impact some existing legitimate sites adversely; this is Jacques's complaint. Second, and more importantly for me personally, trying to ensure that domain names mentioning Drupal in a negative manner don't get registered... sounds like a violation of some unspoken honor code of free software. No, Linux Mark doesn't do the same with the trademark it owns - see their FAQ. Neither do I with my open source stuff (which nobody uses, but still). While this issue likely won't drive me away from Drupal, I still feel that going down this path is a mistake.

Sorry if I misunderstood your comments, or misrepresented the policy, in any way.
As they say back home "I'm just gobsmacked". This is absolutely the most offensive piece of misinformed trash I've ever encountered on HN. Nothing more than a nasty personal attack on Dries. Whether or not you like Drupal is beside the point. Dries is one of those thoughtful, modest and intelligent contributors to the open source community. The trademark policy in question was carefully vetted with the community and with legal experts. This vile little attack is quite uncalled for. Excuse me while I go wash my hands. I feel unclean.
Cassandra gives you two benefits.

First, Cassandra uses a disk layout similar to the one described in the Bigtable paper (http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html sections 5.3 and 5.4); in particular it does no random writes. Relational databases like mysql pretty much all use btree-based storage which was great 20 years ago but is terrible today when seeks are your bottleneck.

I was talking to some people today who are struggling to get mysql to do ~100 insert/update operations per second. Cassandra will easily give you 10x that -- _per node_.

The second benefit is that Cassandra gives you real, scalable partitioning, invisible to the app, for when you do need to add nodes. When you have more than a handful of machines, not having to babysit replication + partitioning is a huge, huge deal.
As a follow-up to that: It might seem basic but understanding pipes (the '|' symbol) is very useful!
The pipe symbol 'sends' the output of one command to another. Examples:

tail -n 500 log/production.log | less (display the last 500 lines of your production logs one page at a time)

cat config/routes.rb | wc (count the number of words and lines in a config file)
Installation of Linux-hosted Cross-Compilers for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X
What that article says is if you do something analogous to backing up a live mysql database with dumb cp, Bad Things Happen.

Yes, we do plan to make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but this isn't a data-corrupting bug of the kind you meant.
Anniversary of first ever computer bug - a Moth
Nano-phone?
This was my initial thought as well, but I just can't see myself saying "Hmm.. no camera in the iPod, guess I'll have to get the iPhone instead and just not use the phone part of it." I doubt the camera functionality would ever be enough to push people into the cost of a new phone (contracts, initial outlay, etc.).
Link: http://www.apple.com/ipod/compare-ipod-models/
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813630
Light can scatter (Rayleigh scattering, Thompson scattering), which does not involve an absorption/emission event (unless you are talking about resonant scattering for example in the Lyman Alpha line).

That's how clouds work. The albedo of clouds is very high, so little is absorbed. Nevertheless, the small water drops scatter the light.
Alcor Cryopreservation Case Summaries (Cryonics)
Matthew Lesko's Government Money Club
Matthew Lesko's Government Grant Money Club Help's Members With Live Help To Free Money.
Rate my app: Squeelr - Location based Twitter with a business model
I have no idea of how melanin works as a photovoltaic, but if it indeed only converts UV light then the power output will be severely limited compared to visible-light cells, because the Sun only emits a very small part of its luminosity in the UV.
You might want to take a trip to the District and reassess that statement...the DC government is fairly delinquent.
Well, rocks. In a weird kind of way. The new things are all nice but iTunes has become this huge pile of features, thrown together with no sense of direction.

Case in point: Genius Mixes and iTunes DJ. They both do the same. DJ gives you more options (like a history of played songs, better display options, voting, etc.) while Mixes can pick out similar songs (which DJ doesn’t do). Both have the purpose to play a never ending stream of music. Why the heck do they keep them separate? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Combine the two.

Kick out the old and consolidate. That would be a bold goal for iTunes X.
What is cold-email?
Yeah, I hate lists like this. Don't just spit some generic marketing blurb at me for each item. Tell me why I would want to use them.
OK, I'm convinced. Good points.

But what you're describing as a scam is a "mere" breach of contract. I don't think that qualifies as a scam. I'm still partial to a definition that includes some sort of intentional malice, however subjective :)
I read the original article. It does sound like an arbitrary contest. Not real life. I can't really infer real lessons from what happened here.
You name a lot of elements which are not necessarily bound to the university experience. Technology can enable these elements to come together in a better way.
Self promotion is fine. If you don't believe in what you do, who else will? One shouldn't be annoying or inappropriate about it, but his comment was neither and if you look at his comment history, it's not like he's spamming the site with links.
WTF is a SuperColumn? An Intro to the Cassandra Data Model
For the U.S., I doubt there are criminal laws to worry about in this case. You can always get sued for "fraud" (not-criminal), but who sues for $50?

About the only criminal area you need to worry about is mail fraud. Which would be fraud while using the U.S. postal service. But that's not a real concern either, as your only using mail to process refunds, not to solicit. You also don't need to use the mail, as you can require faxing or email of birth info. btw, IANAL.
For those who are wondering (it's the first thing I checked): It's still not 64 bits.
I strongly suggest avoiding giving out equity except to people you trust. Sharing ownership is essentially marriage for the life and context of the company.

(now, things are somewhat different if you have a heavy hitting, expensive legal team on hand. Or so I imagine.)

As others have said, a domain name is probably not worth that much. I mean, once you have it, and you associate that with your brand in the eyes of the public, it's worth a lot. But it's your brand that matters, and right now, nobody associates the domain with your brand, so it's a simple matter to pick another domain. I mean, google.com? sure, the name is worth ridiculous sums now. But in '95? maybe $100. if that.

I know this is just a stereotype, but if at all possible I would avoid doing business with a domain squatter. If I did need to do business with a domain squatter, I would assume that they would try to scam me, and act accordingly. I would never give a domain squatter the trust that comes with a percentage ownership in my company.
This is well-known to be a moth-myth. This was NOT the first computer bug, nor was it when the term was coined (as the actual article indicates). Grace Hopper was just being clever in her logs.
OpenBSD needs your help - call for donations
That's because so much of the dating process actually requires you to be in the same place.

But really I wasn't making the point that taking online classes and dating were the same. I was making the point that people's perceptions and acceptance of a new technology encroaching on an old institution took some time to overcome.
This is interesting - LWN has tried to support itself on a subscription model (subscribers get access to articles 1 week early), but apparently revenue isn't high enough:
http://lwn.net/Articles/350385/

Many commenters have pointed out that Ars Technica manages to have in-depth technical articles supported by only ads and asked why LWN can't do that same. Honestly, I'm not convinced the Ars Technica proposition is enough to make me sign up - but I'm a poor student and so very little really would unless I viewed it as essential to my studies.
I was hoping to hear more about improvements in the technology that regularly offers to delete all the music on my iPhone or iPod. For instance, the Genius feature could save time by deleting only the tracks I am likely to enjoy. With pocket-sized tera- and petabyte storage on the horizon it's the sort of forward-thinking innovation that distinguishes Apple from the lesser players in the field.
Hey Alex, congratulations for getting admitted into Berkeley Ventures. AM analytics is very cool/useful concept. I would be more than willing to try/pay for the product when you alpha/beta launch.
Hm, I forgot they were running the contest, because all their article says is "Look at the other blog, they've got all the information." It looked like link spam.
It would be extremely unlikely for a new iPhone to be released at an Apple Music Event.
No, it absolutely does not suggest that at all. For example, ROSCAs are inherently non-profit, they don't even hold money at all, and yet provide needed services to their users in ways that for-profits simply can't.
Yeah, completely unrealistic -- basically just a publicity stunt from Wired. Someone who is really trying not to be found doesn't create a Twitter account describing his actions, protected or not.
How does it move?
I think there are plenty of people who can do it well enough considering the constraints of startup. Adobe and Apple shouldn't conflate these roles, but if you're a startup who can only hire 5-6 people you don't have that luxury.
...even if you only weight 80 pounds.
A digital raw file is not an original image
His authority is out of sync with his authoritativeness.

I often appreciate his posts, but they can be vacuous. He's your business partner, I expect you to defend him. I'm criticizing what he writes, not him.
Unless those reading the article have the power of rejection, it's not the same concept.

Peer review is more than just providing actual reviews. It's also having the ability to tell someone "sorry, try again." Hence, getting a peer reviewed paper published actually means something: your peers, who are also experts in your field, decided what you wrote is good enough to publish.
well, all the popular books these day (predictably irrational, spend, etc) all fall under that category of easy to read, not very deep, no?
First, I said this would be the experience of the average person. People that typically go to Ivy League schools are way above the average.

Yes, many of the very best, well known professors teach at good schools. But I think you'd be mistaken if you didn't think that many of these professors wouldn't jump on the idea of communicating their ideas to many thousands of people at once instead of a select few (especially if they were paid royalties for every student who took the class).

No one was saying it would be the same experience. You wouldn't be singing with the Tiger Tones in Nassau Hall or playing frisbee on the quad, but for many people that wasn't ever the choice. The choice for people that go online isn't going to be between a school like Princeton and the University of Phoenix. It's going to be a much smaller gap of prestige.

If schooling (like mine) had cost 12k instead of 160k, there would be many who see the opportunity in carrying no debt and using that money for another purpose. There will be tradeoffs, but an extra 100k would surely have paid for one hell of a semester abroad.
It never occurred to me that this might be a language problem, but I do find it somehow hilarious to imagine a Dutch person saying that (assuming you've translated the sentence literally). This makes me wonder how, shall we say, zany we must generally appear to the Dutch. It also makes me wonder how many other such misunderstandings are lurking under the surface with continental Europeans who appear (damn you) to have native-speaker-level command of English.
Iphone 3.1 out of beta?
No, its not rocket science as to how it works. But, at least one of these companies is making a good-faith show of openness.

As the article mentioned, the scary part of this technology isn't the technology itself - it is the potential applications of the technology. Any openness coming from a company with an application like this is a positive market pressure.

I'm perfectly fine (and I think most people would be) with certain applications being throttled (to a reasonable extent) as long as I am told up front about it in my ToS, and as long as I know that my data is not being stored anywhere.

A first step to that kind of trustworthiness is more openness as to the filtering software being used.
What real life lesson were you hoping to "infer" from the contest? "If I ever need to disappear completely, I hope this article tells me how to do so?"

I found the fact that he was actually found within 30 days, using interesting applications of technology, to be rather entertaining. Not everything on HN has to change your life.
As someone mentioned elsewhere (Gruber I think), it uses the older Carbon API which is being left in the 32-bit world. They'll have to upgrade it to Cocoa to make it a 64-bit app, but Cocoa isn't ported to Windows... So they have limited options:

* Port Cocoa to Windows and port iTunes to Cococa

* (Gruber's prediction) Port iTunes to be entirely based on Webkit (though I don't know how well that would work as I've never looked into Webkit performance/issues on Windows)

* Port Mac iTunes to Cocoa maintain Windows iTunes in Carbon

* Drop Windows iTunes (not going to happen)

* Port iTunes to iPhone/iPod Touch and drop it on OS X (yea right)

* Port Carbon to 64-bit -- even though it has been stated that they won't in a push to force developers onto Cocoa.

None of those are particularly attractive decisions. Going back on their word and porting Carbon to 64-bit or porting iTunes to be entirely a Webkit view seem to be the only options with the least friction, IMO.

I think that porting Cocoa to Windows would probably be a larger undertaking than it would be worth it, though they may have some portions of Cocoa ported already (IIRC, Safari is Cocoa, but they maybe have only ported what they needed to make Safari work).
A Shuffle-phone would be interesting...

I could see a good accessory opportunity for a Nano-phone though... make a 'shoe dock' that's a dress shoe you can dock your Nano-phone into... turning it into a phone (007 or Get Smart style).
I don't like the new, white UI. It clashes horribly with the rest of the (dark, grey) UI feels rather tasteless. Screenshot: http://twitpic.com/h48v1

The old UI was far, far classier.
Google: We're Rolling Out Awesome New Ad Formats That Will Drive Revenue To Moon
Someone should let the US Navy know that
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566kc.ht...
I think the third option (cocoa on OS X, carbon on Windows) is the most likely.
Twitter’s "Link Click Count" Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors
My problem with the Loebner Prize these days is not that it's mis-representing Turing's intention (I don't think it is) but that they have moved to a hideous input/output system that each entrant is required to use.

Each program, upon startup, must provide a “browse”
function to select a directory. Communications shall
be by means of the creation, detection, and deletion of
sub-directories within the specified communications
directory.

To simulate a key press the entry program must create a
sub-directory within the communications directory with
the following format:
“time.keypress-name.extension”

where time is a monotonically increasing 18 digit number
(in lexical and numerical order) (i.e. zero filled to the
left) to be retrieved from the system clock and expressed
as milliseconds past some initial time as defined by the
system clock.

“keypress-name” is either a single letter (case sensitive)
or the name of the special character, as appended to
these rules.

The extension is “.other”

For example: “000001234567890123.bracketleft.other”

To detect a key press by the judge, the program must
detect, within the communications directory a
sub-directory with the same format, but extension
“.judge” and then must remove or delete the judge’s
sub-directory from the communications directory.

It's not the end of the world, but at the same time it's a fairly nasty way of doing something that should be relatively easy. I entered in 2002 before they introduced this and have been hesitant to enter again in recent years partly because I don't want to have to deal with the hackery of the 'communications protocol'.
re. the second story:

Indeed, but the pictures were left out. Maybe someone had that rare quality called tact ?
It's a machine collecting billing records off a telephone exchange. Hasn't stopped in all that time, and definitely mission critical
Not really. You don't have any way of tuning to a different channel except while sitting at the PC.
Jena HBase Extension - RDF Graphs on HBase
If a domainer is willing to let a name go for equity, it's either not worth much to them, or they're essentially loan sharks. I don't have data, but I'm pretty sure the present value of most web startups is around $0, so this kind of deal really doesn't make sense from their perspective.

Wait until you're profitable before trying to buy a killer domain name. You can't pay your hosting, rent, or employees with a domain name.

If you're dead set on this domain name, renegotiate a cash price. Domain Capital provides domain name financing, and Escrow.com will reduce your risk of being ripped off. If the seller refuses Escrow, he's definitely trying to rip you off. The domain name secondary market is rotten with fraud.
When I first moved to the Bay Area, I was really surprised at the number of UX and usability positions that required a background in graphic design.

It's why I like the role of product manager in a startup. There are few people who have an engineering and UX research/design background, and it's one of the few situations I can use both competencies.
Secwatch.com is a competitor. I like freerisk's description of the filings better though secwatch has way more data.
Yep. The new, white UI is atrocious. I grabbed a screenshot (even signed up for twitpic just to share my anger): http://twitpic.com/h48v1
Down With Megahertz