skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Coro is just a cooperative asynchronous framework on par with, say, POE. You do not get to use multiple CPUs. You do not get to use a database. You do not get to use a normal multi-threaded webserver.

I would be suspicious of anyone seriously trying to create a high volume Perl website using Coro.
This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Chicago_heat_wave was the killer, literally.
With regard to corporate newsletters and the like, I would be inclined to agree.

=======

The article here though does seem to show that a more focused newsletter can still be quite useful/valuable:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865042
Telescope Discovers Giant Ring Around Saturn
why not "craj" like clojure does "cons" "conj" :)
I think most of us end up using this:

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
The University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) also has one of these. I'm not sure when it was introduced, but I think it was at the start of this term. Thankfully, it is cheaper than off-the-shelf books (at least the two or three titles I looked at were).
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=866612
I would learn thoroughly lib/frameworks like "R" (and ggplot2, very cool), weka and the python suite numpy / scipy, matplotlib

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

look at all the books out now. I think Witten/Franke (authors of weka) was the first one titled "Data Mining" but there's a slew of htem, read Amazon reviews

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

hit the blogosphere

http://www.dataminingblog.com/2009/01/30/three-new-data-mini...

http://www.decisionstats.com/
You are right about multiple CPUs. For that, fork and load-balance. Instead of each forked process handling one connection, it handles a few thousand.

If your app is CPU intensive, I have to wonder why you'd use Perl for that. You get a 2x speedup by using multiple cores, but a 50x speedup by switching to Haskell or Common Lisp for the critical section. (You could also use C or C++ or Java, but that's just being crazy.)

As for databases, most real databases have non-blocking interfaces; this means database queries won't stall your threads. (Postgres and BDB are known to work well. MySQL requires hacks.)

And yes, you don't get to use a normal multi-threaded webserver. I am not sure how that works.

This all scales quite well.
محيط - شبكة الإعلام العربية
The july article told of their decision to go away from .net; this latest article tells of the replacement that LSE purchased.
50,000 illnesses/250,000,000 people/9 years = 0.00002 illnesses per person per year.
Test designers take great pains to make up questions that should be largely universal and almost entirely unaffected by amount of education.

Test designers purport to do that, but it's a generally replicated research finding that increased exposure to schooling, cross-culturally and across different brands of IQ tests, improves IQ test scores. See

Ceci, Stephen J. (1991). How Much Does Schooling Influence General Intelligence and Its Cognitive Components?
A Reassessment of the Evidence. Developmental Psychology
1991, Vol. 27, No. 5, 703-722

for one classic paper on this subject.
You don't get multiple CPUs with ruby and python either.

By overriding the IO handling you can interleave IO (including DBI for drizzle and postgres).

You can interact with a normal multithreaded server by nesting the whole perl interpreter for all its coros in a single posix thread.

That said, for high volume websites there is the question of convenience. Coro is well suited for long running tasks when the concurrency is high but the load is low.

For web applications both ithreads and processes both provide more than enough concurrency because tasks are short lived, so you can reuse threads or processes quite easily.

AnyEvent and Coro are a good fit for network heavy applications that which exhibit long lived connections, especially when access to shared data simplifies things.
Space leaks are still possible in a managed language if you forget to nullify every reference to an old object, or if your garbage collector doesn't delete objects that have a chain of circular references, and accessing a null reference still gives a NullPointerException. GC is nice, and real-time garbage collectors (such as rollendurchmesserzeitsammler) make managed languages useful in more situations, but they don't entirely free the programmer from thinking about memory management issues.
It will take more than technology to win war
What is your revenue model? I can't initially tell if you offer premium services, or if the service is totally free.
Clojure, Parallelism, and Genetic Algorithms
I don't think the transfer to GPU memory is so much a bottleneck as it involves some latency. The PCIe bus provides a ton of bandwidth, it just takes longer to get stuff there from main memory than it does to get stuff to the CPU from main memory.

So, wasn't trying to pick nits, just trying to say that if it's a latency issue, the penalty is roughly the same for small amounts of data as it is for big amounts, and if you have a huge amount of data that takes non-trivial amount of processing, the latency penalty is, as you said, worth it.
You do want them to confirm that they do not have a conflict of interest. if they are not willing to do that, you're probably dealing with one of the many bottom feeders in the biz. See my comment below/about about how checking for conflicts of interest.
Creating Dynamic JSON array finders using the DLR
Why didn't you just resist it before taking Adderal then?

For the same reason a depressed person doesn't "just cheer up".

I have a prescription for Adderal and I haven't taken it yet....

I've also been struggling with the question of whether to take medication. I have a bias/desire not to take meds as well. But you know what? It doesn't seem like anyone's saying that the effects of most of these drugs are permanent! Seems like you and I could simply take the drugs, see if the benefits are worth the risks/deleterious effects, and make the decision then. If we notice, say, that there's too much of a creativity loss, then we stop. No big deal.
Calling CUDA from Clojure
Is that because of the alibi green stuff that gets slapped on burgers?
You're right, I didn't see the other 2 weeks mention.
I also find 2 weeks for setting up an environment very long, but one can imagine he didn't spend 2 weeks before writing his first line of OCaml.

And even if he did so, I think he would have spent the equal amount of time for configuring Emacs and/or Vim.
Just to be clear, Gmail was _not_ written with GWT.
Every once in a while, I look at the comments before the original article, just to see how I'd like to proceed.

I'm not going to read this article because no matter how good or bad it is, it can't possibly be more entertaining than maxklein's assessment. I wish I could just hit an F key to post this review whereever I wanted, replacing "twitter had anything to do with the decline" with some context sensitive text.
Ruby Daemons and Angels
This is a hold over from the last few people who Just Don't Get It. (It being the Internet)

They'll be gone soon.
Sigh, please check the answers I got on "brother" level from your comment. :-(
So far I have not encountered browser compatibility issues with GWT. Please do understand that GWT handles the JS part, someone still have to handle the CSS part.
(vector) EPS files are sold over PayPal - no subscriptions yet, was a side project really but seems to break even the hosting charges etc ...
We had gone for so long without seeing a dwtf link on the FP. C'est la vie.
Launches on Nov. 15 for $20 (according to the video).
Learn English The Gujarati Way
no price drop for the dx :(
Interesting - type in barcoderbot in google search.
(I misread your URL so stumbled on this google nugget).
I don't think he failed, I think he just realized that his idea was crap.

If you can chalk that up to a good learning experience and something that should be written about, then I guess every Tom, Dick and Harry should be Nobel Prize winning Pulitzer Prize waving success.
SproutCore is also gearing up for 1.0 release soon. Some really good choices nowdays for javascript based windowing apps.
Google says Mac users are douchebags
Are all the FOWA 2009 London talks online yet, or just this one?
Yes, actually finding a good domain name for this purpose is difficult - so ended up with the long one. Best written in camel case: BarcodeRobot
Yep, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
Websites (crappy ones) could cost $50 initially if all they are is static content or generated in some uniform way without human involvement. They won't be web applications, they won't look novel or unique, but it will be a web site, a meager web presence. Obviously many people don't come in asking for this option, but it is an option. If the client only has $50 they're going to have to lower their expectations.

We can all get together and complain that there shouldn't be $50 web sites but if a client is asking for one and knows what it means then yes, there should be $50 web sites.

These people will not be gone soon. There are many people still starting their online presence, still understanding the online world, and there will continue to be as more and more people are exposed to the ability to connect to the internet.
I couldn't agree more entirely. Some 97% of internet users use email on a daily basis while only some small bubble of a demographic use twitter.
With .Net there's also the issue with disposables of native resources. Also, if you're call takes a bit of time to complete, even automatic objects could get promoted up the generational chain unexpectedly. Take a look at the GC with MSoft's Singularity OS (bartok compiler). Looks promising but much farther down the road.
Forgive me if I missed something, but where exactly does it say they're switching to Java? The slashdot blurb says they're "ditching .NET for GNU/Linux" (which doesn't even make sense to me - it's kind of like saying we're ditching Python and re-implementing everything in FreeBSD). The linked press releases mention only a mixture of Solaris and Linux. It all seems like a load of hot air - no technical details whatsoever. Frankly it won't surprise me if they royally muck this one up too.

For an example of a trading platform project done right (with internal development teams initially competing against each other), read about BetFair's FlyWheel: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb2007...
You are not passing the current shell state though. So you could start 3 new shell processes with enough data to set the state right and then start the individual processes but that is both inelegant and inefficient.

Instead if we fork thrice and each fork execs a command and does the pipeline plumbing, all three processes start simultaneously and inherit the exact same shell state all for free. And copy on write means we did not waste any memory replicating the shell state for 3 processes.
Comments like this are why I love news.yc
... of the people foolish enough to give their passwords away.
I would consider straw men arguments more difficult to point out because you need to actually know about the subject to find them.
Copyright holders can earn money from pirated youtube videos
"123456" - 64 times out of 10,000, i.e. 0.64 percent.

So if you know 200 account names you should make it at least once, right?
How We Jumped 50 Places in the iPhone App Store - for Free
I personally love Cmd+Opt+H, especially when I'm working with Interface Builder.
GWT is wonderful. If you've come from a world of swing programming (like me), it's very easy to build great, responsive GUIs.

I'm really excited about GWT 2.0. The new out-of-process development mode will let me debug in any browser, using both the eclipse debugger and firebug at the same time. Furthermore, the hosted mode browser on Linux was Mozilla 1.7, which didn't support some things like SSL or Canvas. Now I plan on using canvas a lot more.

I'm not sure how this changes the incubator project. I imagine they will bring in many of the incubator classes into the main branch.

I'm going to have to play around with the declarative stuff. Not too sure how useful that will be.
There's a big difference between an idea failing and a team failing.

To be more clear, maybe we should replace "fail early, fail often," with "test early, reject often." The point of the phrase is to get you to test your ideas as soon as possible, before you sink too much work into them.

The dichotomy isn't between "fail XOR succeed" but between "let it be tested XOR keep working until it's 100% complete."
No dice. Kolmogorov complexity is critically dependent on the encoding scheme you use for the complexity measure, and given the nature of the problems in question that's going to really not work. If your encoding scheme favors polynomials but makes expression squares a royal pain, you're going to get a radically different K-complexity number than you will if your encoding goes the other way around. And coming up with both such encodings is trivial.

This is why proofs using K-complexity (forgive me, I often misspell it) always use it in a way that doesn't involve actually assigning numbers to the K-complexity; while it has certain desirable properties, there is no unique K-complexity value for a given language.

Aaaaand it's exactly this reason I also loathe those questions. It is much less "do this mathematical thing" than "read the puzzle-maker's mind", and quite frequently there is simply literally not enough information in the sequence to read the puzzle-makers mind. With an uncountably infinite number of functions to choose from and a finite set of inputs to choose among them, it's a complete joke of a test. On the other hand, with suitable constraints given in advance it could prove quite useful. (... but that would remove the thrill of lording the answer over people, methinks, which I think is a distressingly large part of such problem's appeal....)
Dumping Startup Plan A is easy enough - but how to get to Plan B?
Since many people use the same password everywhere, would it be safe to say that `123456` is universally the top pick?
When I get a newsletter that's under 140,000 characters, let alone 140, I'll buy it.
I have done a lot of modification to my GXT widgets :: with a comparable amount of pain I've had with normal widget sets like Swing and SWT

There is definitely room for improvement with GXT. Event handling sucks (different handlers for different widget types WTF!!), and maybe your usecase exposes some pathologies I've been immune from. YMMV, but thanks for the tip hello_moto!
If IQ is a valid measurement, then why isn't it used to make important decisions? While your surgeon example may be a bit contrived, it raises a valid point: Why haven't you ever considered the IQ of your surgeon? Does anyone even know their surgeon's IQ?

Investors don't seem to care about IQ at all. It wasn't an issue of public consideration during the last presidential election. If it could reliably predict anything, don't you think more people would ask about it? I'm sure there are places where IQ scores are considered (applying to college or Google), but these are the exception, not the rule.

There is generally a difference between people with an IQ of 50 and an IQ of 150. But you don't need a standardized test to see those differences. The problem is that there is very little difference between an IQ of 120 and an IQ of 130. If all IQ is good for is telling the difference between the very intelligent and the learning disabled, then it isn't very useful in daily life.
In E-Books, It’s an Army vs. Google
Excellent analogy maxklein. In fact, you should be able to copy/paste this for over 90% of the "x is dead" or "y is the x-killer" blog postings.
Introduction to Computing Explorations in Language, Logic & Machines [Book]
They are launching a beta on Nov. 15th which will be $20.
Who's the better translator: Machines or humans?
Are there any iPhone apps that will read traditional barcodes such as the one on the Google homepage?

All the ones I've seen seem to either only read the fancy 2D datamatrix-type ones, or go off to some price comparison webservice and don't actually tell me anything about the barcode.

Edit: Just tried zXing from the app store, and it failed all of the pictures I took in good light conditions...
Failure is more than ok - it's essential. There is literally no other way to learn how to do something than trial and error.

What's important to remember is that even though it's important, failure still has a cost - be it in lost money, lost opportunity, lost time, etc. You're trading something away in exchange for knowledge. You need to make sure you maximize the value of that transaction by making your failures as cheap as possible.
Security researcher shows how hackers spy on BlackBerry and other smartphones
Ah... so what is the plot in The Story of Ping?
good tip! I wonder why cmd-opt-ctrl doesn't have any other numerical bindings... it seems like there's an opportunity to create a usability convention, but instead, this function is sitting by itself on an island named "8".
Google Wave is the Segway of email
So, I received an invite to Google Wave. Ignoring all the problems inherent in a new service, I'm underwhelmed. It looks like the application of cool technology to a problem I didn't have.

By far the worst part is the IM in the middle of otherwise static data. I can see how archived conversations all in one place are good, but Wave's busy UI means that I can't keep more than one IM-like conversation going. That's something I can easily do with any IM client.

Also, the watch every character as it's typed is horrible. Especially when the person on the other end is a poor typist.

I can also see how reach editable, email is nice to have. But I'm not sure trying to put this all together is the answer. Yes, I like IM with my colleagues for real time stuff. Yes, I like shared documents. Yes, I like the store and forward nature of email.

But making a single stew out of them all seems like a mistake.

Would love to hear HN users' thoughts.
What Really Kills Great Companies: Inertia
Many of us do it like that, thanks for spelling ist out. We are a crowd, here on HN.
C:\ONGRTLNS.OSX
Joel Gets Beat Down on IoC
Someone has to handle DOM part too. If you are writing your own widget wrapper (if you are subclassing UIObject or Widget, and I imagine that the Wave team is doing this), you will also have to handle cross-browser compatibility.
While all that's true, it's not the design of SSL that is at issue, but rather bugs in the SSL stack, such as this null-prefix certificates issue. While I don't know the state of Microsoft's stack for this bug, ubuntu just released a patch for wget yesterday for it (USN-842-1, CVE-2009-3490). No one is really talking about DNSSEC, but if you were using a wifi connection (the original use case in this thread of using a VPN over wifi) and thought you were secure because you were using SSL, MITM via DNS is still a possible attack vector, as hapless points out elsewhere in these comments. Obviously a VPN over wifi wouldn't secure you for accessing paypal.com via SSL (which is a public resource), but other, private resources secured with only SSL but resolved via public DNS are at risk (wifi or not).
If you're a blogger and you're really upset about this, you're telling me that you're now pissed that you have to now disclose all of your back-room dealings, and that doesn't instill much confidence in your reporting.

Bullshit. This is akin to saying that if you're upset about the government running illegal wiretaps and eavesdropping on your cell calls, it must be because you have something to hide.

Perhaps we just don't like the idea of the government butting into one corner of the media world and spewing arbitrary and ambiguous guidelines that carry heavy fines if violates, despite the fact that it's not really clear how to avoid violating them.
I started off on that end of the spectrum too... I haven't shifted dramatically, but little by little as more friends get it I am finding myself wishing I could use it with still more.

So far it's a great replacement for a lot of my emailing, user groups, and certain IM chats.

EDIT: Oh yeah and wiki-like things that aren't really wiki-fit.
The 'Veritas' About Harvard
I don't like it much either, but it mostly depends on what most customers want, whether there is enough value involved for some players to go for niche (hobbyist &/or programmer) markets, and on how well the closed systems can be made to work together (for example exchanging info between phones and other systems).
Twitter is not killing, or even changing, the newsletter, and we know this.

For almost 10 years I've watched daily and weekly newsletters go out for a few of my clients, and they attribute the success of their businesses to these newsletters which are basically blog posts filled with relevant content that are emailed to lists that range from 1000 to 7000 people.

If you're click-throughs drop from 23% to 6%, you need to check if your messages are being filtered as spam, you need to rethink whether your content is relevant, and you need to double check the links in your email because they may be going through a tracking service that is breaking down.

My clients who send newsletters have added Twitter to their newsletters in the form of a "follow me" button. The reason for this is because they post on Twitter when they've sent out their latest newsletter and use it to chat with their subscriber base.

Twitter is not a newsletter replacement, but a tool that you could certainly use to enhance communications with your subscriber base.
Leopard behind you
Funny notes from employees who had food stolen at work (slideshow)
I've seen similar technology before, from a company called Tibco, about 4 years ago. I believe it was called GI Builder.

Edit: Not as impressive, but I believe it's the same concept - http://media.tibco.com/gi/2_create_gui.swf
The Common Lisp Cookbook - Strings
We use GWT; it works very nicely. I think it is nice that the hole application (client and server) can be written in Java.
> If IQ is a valid measurement, then why isn't it used to make important decisions?

It absolutely is used. We are simply forced to measure it through indirect means, given that IQ tests are verboten.

> Does anyone even know their surgeon's IQ?

Medical school is (perhaps above all) a proxy IQ test.

> Investors don't seem to care about IQ at all.

They are quite interested in heavily IQ-correlated traits.

> If it could reliably predict anything, don't you think more people would ask about it?

U.S. law de-facto prohibits the use of IQ tests for anything of economic importance: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US...

> But you don't need a standardized test to see those differences.

There is also no need to use a thermometer in laboratory work - we're all equipped with fingers. At least ten measurements' worth, at that.

Indirect measures are useful.

Want to determine which teenagers would make decent electrical engineers? Instead of $500 worth of IQ test (proper IQ tests are administered by private psychologists, who do not work for free) one can use $150,000 worth of college/trial-by-ordeal - a poorer measure of general intelligence, overall. Yet it continues to be the only allowed measure, because IQ tests are Officially Evil.

> there is very little difference between an IQ of 120 and an IQ of 130

On what basis do you say this?

> If all IQ is good for is telling the difference between the very intelligent and the learning disabled

This is merely its last permitted use.
Complaints I’m Seeing About Common Lisp (2007)