skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Older JVM's behave in such way: in the OOM situation they runs Garbage Collection process to reclaim some unused memory. GC itself requires some memory to operate, so JVM reserves some memory to GC.
Mostly, I like this article. But... :

"This is the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The dumber the customers, the more effort you expend on the process of selling things to them rather than making the things you sell."

At first I thought this was funny and smart... but now I think it's rather glib. "Fashion brands" is almost by definition entirely a marketing exercise... tautology is a pretty boring type of argument. Now... the industry in wearable items is huge and not entirely oriented around marketing at the expense of value...

Defence contracting... I think it's a lot more complicated than dumb customers. For one, there are only a few customers... typically governments. So in a market with a low ratio of buyers to sellers, clearly you have to invest a lot in getting attention. And given the nature of contracts, once you have their attention (and their contract), the profit motive is then to satisfy the contract as close to the line as possible... that is... to skimp and make your product as crap as you can get away with.

Witty insights should really have some grounding in reality, and point the way to other interesting thoughts. This just seems to be a collective geek snigger at the aggressive and the fashionable.
There is currently an advertising campaign using the 'BasketBall Demonstration' running in London to make people more aware of cyclists while driving: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
Which conference was that?
I don't think the problem is the mailing list style of discussion. Looks like it works fine, even for big projects like the linux kernel. What I find frustrating with mailing list is the archive:

* sometimes there is no archives

* sometimes the archive is unsearchable, only browsable

* for archives with search capability, sometimes the search results are not accurate enough

If end users can find answers through mailing list archive, they needn't post nor subscribe.
My friend made this app for exploring tourist location and needs your feedback.
Joe Armstrong: Systems that Never Stop (and Erlang)
Many people have moderate hearing problems which makes this even worse. They may not even realize they have mild hearing problems because it may not interfere with anything else in their life. Some people supplement what their ears pick up with lip-reading and other contextual clues to fill in the gaps. Those forms of input don't exist over the phone. This causes phone calls to be something that requires quite high levels of concentration to really follow.
This really has worked for me, but maybe things are different in Europe.
Imagine if Wal-Mart tried to offer one-half of its customers one price and the other half a different price. Or even if they tried to change the price for a week to see what would happen.

Uh, they do exactly those things. 1) Wal-mart, Sam's Club and ASDA often sell identical items, but for different prices - different demographics, different prices.

2) Not all 'offers' are to drive stock levels down, many are a case of 'trying a different price point for a short period to see what happens', granted raising prices this way is hard, but again, wal-mart have done it in the past, which is why we so often see those 'Regular price $4.99, Now: $6.99' entries on Failblog and DailyWTF.

Also, the author misses out one of the most important reasons why NO MMO manages to adhere to real-world economics rules, even the economic focused MMOs like Eve, Goonzu, SL, Entropia, etc, and that is, people don't have the same 'value' to their in-game money, they know they can walk away from activities that are money sinks for small periods if they run out of currency to fund those activities. Overspending and then not paying your rent for a month or two, or not being able to afford to buy food, tends not to work so well in the real world.

So because there is far less risk involved, people treat in-game currency with less of a seriousness, and are willing to do things that economics and common sense forbid in real world economies.
One of the traits of the human species that differentiates it from many other animals is its capability to transform its environment to suit itself.

This is an outstanding characteristic of Homo sapiens, but many other living things (not just animals) improve their environments. Everyone in North America is familiar with the example of the beaver

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams

(the mascot of MIT and Caltech), the classic example, but lowly fungi improve their environment by poisoning it against bacteria with antibiotics, and many living things poison, shade, predate in, or otherwise alter their environments.
"Imagine if Wal-Mart tried to offer one-half of its customers one price and the other half a different price. Or even if they tried to change the price for a week to see what would happen."

Someone from the first group would set up a retail store and outcompete Walmart for the second group. Just like what would happen (but much more efficiently since there's no cost inherent in moving stuff around) in a virtual world that allows trade.
My favorite example of other animals doing this is the ants. They are incredible: they explore, have organizational structures, wage wars, expand territories, transform large areas -- possibly, in one case, a couple of continents in size.

Didn't know about plants/fungi though. :-)
I don't see how what you think is relevant to how I feel about it.

Maybe it really is only the beta scarcity, but then perhaps they could sell it better. Ever since Orkut I just assume it is a scheme to make it look cool.
I like #fail, it is short and poignant.
Sustainable farming: interview with Bill Mollison
I think since women can afford to let men work for them (their "service" to reproduction is more expensive, so they can ask a higher price), many will just choose to not work and let the men pay instead.

Not everybody LIKES to work.
Circular loom weaves carbon fibre pillars for Toyota Lexus
I think by 'less than free' the writer of the article meant 'subsidized by Google searches' - that is, not only Google gives away Android for free, it also pays a share on the income on Google ads clicked on the devices to carriers.
By "less than free" he meant that Google is actually giving away money to phone producers, if they decide to build an Android based phone.
How does it work for Comet style apps? I am not sure, but I think one would need a proxy server that can keep a lot of connections open. Not sure if classical proxy servers are designed to do that?
It's not akin to C++/C++0x at all. C++03 is standardized and the current mainstream compilers do a good job of implementing that standard; the tools are rock-solid. C++0x is coming along nicely, with support from the big industry players. Concepts were dropped, but the rest of the features are still a massive improvement over C++03 and I can't wait to use them.

On the other hand, reading that blog post about D has confirmed my worst suspicions about the instability of the language and the immaturity of the tool set.
You're right, I didn't want to broach enforceability issues but you're right.

If true it'd only further contribute to the adverse selection effect: the ability to easily shuck the obligation will do more to draw out people you don't want to invest in than to ring in superstars who otherwise might say no.
> The QWERTY keyboard is the standard worldwide.

Try telling that to a frenchman.
How is debunking an anecdotal evidence better than anecdotal evidence?

Unfortunately that article did not provide the numbers required to make a judgment: what is the probability for complications with the vaccine, and what is the probability for complications with the Flu? It mentions 36000 deaths, but it is not clear if that is a high number (possibly a lot of the deaths are people who are already sick and could have a higher risk with the vaccine, too). Some people will probably die from the vaccine, too, if only because they have some stupid allergy or whatever.
I imagine the author of the article actually knows the difference but doesn't clearly distinguish this in the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo
"A logo is a graphical element (ideogram, symbol, emblem, icon, sign) that, together with its logotype (a uniquely set and arranged typeface) form a trademark or commercial brand."

So the logo would be the leafy V and the rest of the word combined with it would be the "logotype". That distinction doesn't seem to be made in the article and I think that's a little confusing. I'm sure it's best to design the two things together as they go hand-in-hand, but, strictly speaking, "logotype" is not the logo. I mention it because if you are a start-up trying to do your own logo, that detail might be helpful information.

RE: Remarks that the word looks like "ero" on the vertical design. I think it would be more obvious that the leafy V was also a letter if the "V" part of it (in white) was in the same color as the rest of the text. I would also think it would be possible to find a typeface that more closely resembles the style of the "V" in the leaves and this would likely make it more apparent that it's part of the word.

Also: I'm reminded of a passage in some book (by Heinlein?) that mocks advertising with "subliminal" sexual suggestions. In the book, a woman proclaims "There's a purple cock in my kitchen!" (The imaginary brand involved a purple rooster as the symbol of a cleaning product, if I recall correctly.) It makes me kind of wonder if the appearance that it says "ero" is some subconscious effort to "sex up" the product. Sex sells and all that.
Still, if Sun doesn't fix it, then Clojure should provide a workaround.
Climate change articles are flame bait, and not really pertinent to hacking or startups.
if we're going for outside the box thinking I would buy a homeless person a meal and claim the satisfaction was priceless. since priceless > $650 I win.
Ha sorry I didn't realize who I was talking to, yeah if you built mozy then mogile would probably hit the wall fairly early :) I work for one of the larger Japanese web companies, and the CEO has basically declared war on amazon japan (literally - they have anti-amazon tshirts, slogans etc) so S3 was not an option. Otherwise, a lot of people in this space would probably find S3 a perfect fit.
Airtel Freedom Plan STD Local @ 1p/sec : Airtel
I'm having way too much fun reading a programming book - Beginning Scala
Definitely different here in Norway, as a persons income is made public and distributed to the press.

If you know any Norwegians, you can search them up on http://nrk.no/skattelister2008/, for instance.
As a circle expands, its area grows proportional to its circumference. The circumference is proportional to the radius.

So you're getting the area by integrating a linear thing.
False analogies.

Taxes are forced on us, not chosen. They do support some betterment of mankind, but the inefficiency is bad for mankind. Taxes are an order of magnitude higher, and the individual benefits are usually far less.

Loans are paid back plus interest on a fixed schedule. These aren't. Most investees will profit from the transaction even without TVOM.

Don't like lump sums? Just convert it to guaranteed monthly income for life by buying an annuity. Rates are low right now due to the economy, but you'll still get ~$2k/mo for a $400k lump sum.. and you can get things like inflation adjustment too.

"You'll never be poor" is usually worth more than "a few percent of your income" plus the right to buy it back.
"That implies deception, and I see none."

Isn't it deceptive to make a reservation at the restaurant without any intentions to ever show up?

Call the restaurant and tell them "we would like to reserve 10 seats with the intention of selling them on the free market". If they give you the reservations, you have a honest business.
It's been more than 6 months since I've deleted my FB account. But I have deleted mine not because of those spams, but because of the ads, overloaded video and applet features and the like which deteriorated the main point: Staying in contact with the friends. So I don't care if FB has achieved anything that will ease the life of facebookers or charged a billion dollars or more.
Fair enough, I can see the beta angle. However, they have a history of doing this stunt to make things look cool (think Orkut), so I just assume it is a scheme. Also, giving people invites to spread does not make it very plausible that they just want to keep the user numbers down.

For example, they gather valuable information from the invites: who is connected to whom. I don't think these things are an accident, if Google does it.
> Does anyone know if there is a Haskell that targets the JVM? That could be a cool solution for me...

While I'm far from an expert on the JVM, the primitive operations that it provides are probably a poor fit for Haskell. One could compile Haskell to the JVM, but some Haskell elements such as thunks would probably have to be emulated (with lots of overhead), and/or it would have some arbitrary limitations (such as problems with tail-call optimization) due to the implementation.

There would be a similar mismatch compiling Haskell to the WAM/BAM (Prolog) or Lua virtual machines. Most VMs are designed to run a specific programming model, if not a specific language, and have bytecodes for core operations that need to be efficient (unification in Prolog, table lookup in Lua, dynamic dispatch in Java, etc.). While I could see another primarily procedural/OO language running on the JVM, Java and Haskell are like SQL and LaTeX: the elements they have in common are too general to be useful.
"Less than free" sounds a lot like what i would normally just call "revenue share".
I also switched from QWERTY to Dvorak, as an excuse to learn to touch-type - after a decade or so of typing QWERTY in my own seven-or-eight-finger style, there was no way I'd ever be able to override such ingrained habits. I've been using Dvorak constantly at home and work for several years now, and I just clocked myself at 77wpm on TypeRacer - not that impressive, but then I find I spend more time thinking and editing than typing anyway. :)

Also: in those TypeRacer trials, I found my right hand doing a lot more work than my left-hand - possibly because my left hand stays on the vowels and my right-hand is jumping about all over the place. Why oh why couldn't Dvorak have put R and L somewhere more... convenient? :(
My personal top 3 is:

- getting into shape (it's needed, but I'm starting that tomorrow)

- persisting (in everything, 2years ago I was getting in a better shape, but see #1)

- live greener (we already use 1/2 of electricity a normal family uses, but I know we could do better)

That's it. And the best part is I can do all 3 things, it's not something I will never be able to do. Better start working on them!
As I understand it: Gators make swamps. In essence, they terraform.
Took a while, but it will finally end up truth in advertising.
TechCrunch is a frat boys club
How to Improve your Wordpress Theme with 9 Useful Plugins
Thought it was a rather insightful read, even if it gives new names to old things. It also makes me wonder what the next thing will be to marginalize the internet, just as the internet marginalized the OS.

A lot of this strategy hinges on people using google as a default search, and advertisers using it to perform targeted advertising. I think when you see another way that people find out about things they want to use (and pay for), that'll be a time when the tides turn. (saying it now, it sounds obvious)
> Ps. I never understood why vi navigation is done with hjkl instead of jkl; - if you touchtype the classical way, it means you navigate with 3 fingers instead of 4.

My best bet would be to support different keyboard layouts.

Edit: Wrong I was :)
It's a body hack. HN is about being clever, and this is sort of clever, that's my guess.
I wonder if the novelty of this wears off pretty quickly? Neat idea though.
A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today
There is an awful lot of problems with C++ though.

- The tool are certaintly not rock solid. Parsing requires arbitrary look-ahead and semantic pass, order of headers inclusion matters, #if and dirty tricks are everywhere

- compilation is slow

- non standard extensions makes painful portable C++ across compilers and platform, because you need them and they can have incompatible syntax

- C++ const is useless when it comes to optimization or concurrency.

- any real world project involving C++ is going to be challenging if you're not working with top C++ library implementers or emasculating rules (like "no exceptions" or "nothing goes in the constructor" at Google)

Anyway, even if C++1x was already here and completely supported (which C++03 is not), D would still have an edge.

Despite its current problems D greatly enhance productivity over C++. Refactoring is _way_ faster when you have import and no headers to maintain. Properties enhance expressivity a lot. You have access to the machine, value semantics, and reference returns, so there is nothing conceptually wrong with it.

Also, in D there is much less skill diffference between library writers and typical programmers as compared to C++.

Finally if you really want C++1x features, I sincerely advises to try D because there is a lot of overlapping.
Updated privacy policy etc for Facebook | Facebook Site Governance
NoSQL East 2009 day 2: Pig/Twitter, Cascading, Neo4j, Redis, Sherpa/Yahoo
A quote from the Hacker News Guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

"What to submit:
Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "

There aren't many other topics that have such a far-reaching effect on so many people, and have such a large body of scientific (and otherwise) research behind it. As such it doesn't just appeal to my intellectual curiosity (although it does), it also concerns me on a far more 'real' level of realising that decisions I make now will have serious effects on people all around the world - many of whom will be much less able, due to geography, politics and finance, to adapt to the changes that will occur.

To my mind the science will appeal to many hackers.
And the many solutions that will be required are extremely suited to the startup culture and the hacker mindset.
One of our other developers looked at Satchmo before he moved on. That was probably a year ago; it seemed like it wasn't mature enough for what we were looking for.

The problem is, I'd love to use python/django or ruby/rails, but it's a hard pitch to the boss if the platform we're looking at doesn't start off with many features. He really wants to avoid reinventing the wheel as much as possible.

I've heard what you're saying about Magento around the web quite a bit; that the way it's laid out makes it very hard to work on, and that it can be very slow. I think if a django/rails project started off pretty close to what we were looking for, we could implement the missing features ourselves in less time than it would take to work in PHP, simply because of developer productivity increases in those languages/frameworks.

Anyway, I'll take another look at Satchmo and see where it's at. I'd really love to avoid getting into another huge PHP mess again.
So when MS bundled Internet Explorer, that was bad because it was using its profits from selling Windows and Office to subsidize its entry into a new market. Now that Google is using its ad revenue to build a mobile operating system (not its core business) and bundle really good value-add, that's good?

Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Is our memory really that bad?
A personal peeve is pubs that play music so loud that it becomes difficult to speak. It's not a nightclub - why go to the pub if it's impossible to hold a conversation?
Google tells us there are more than two circular looms in the world

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22ci...

What is rare about it?
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon are poker players. Poker players are amongst the most creative "investors" I've ever seen. They love playing around with interesting odds to see how it turns out.

If Matt Maroon gets in to this thread, I'm sure he has some interesting war stories about poker guys getting big stacks of money into bizarre schemes.
Desertec
I find it a lot better.
I don't think many-cores compatibility is a little gain.
A Concise and Precise Definition of P-Value (a vaccine discussion)
I suppose it does for adults, but kids can play repetitive games for a long time...at least it would teach them the right habits for the rest of their lives.
hjkl were the arrows on the keyboard used to develop vi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg
Why don't you try lots of different things and then write an another article about how you got on - and what worked and didn't, with numbers?
My preferred JS test runner is QUnit from the jQuery project. It's a very similar design to KISSUnit, but not quite a bare-bones simple.

http://docs.jquery.com/QUnit
There is some problem with the numbers for Redis:

"Can do 19,600 gets and 13,900 sets a second on a MacBook Pro"

In my macbook (not PRO) Redis performs like this:

% ./redis-benchmark -q
SET: 34705.88 requests per second
GET: 31055.90 requests per second
INCR: 28739.25 requests per second
LPUSH: 35013.98 requests per second
LPOP: 30496.95 requests per second
^C

But redis sucks on Mac OS X compared to how it performs on Linux. The same macbook running Linux reaches almost 100k query/sec. An entry level server running Linux is in the 150k/sec zone.

Sorry but I spent some time in order to make Redis so fast, so to see numbers an order of magnitude less does not make me happy ;)

About the replication: Redis supports master-slave replication with very very fast first synchronization. The replication is non-blocking, this means that if you attach N slaves to the master it continues to reply to clients without troubles when synching with the slaves.

If the link between master and slaves goes down the two will resynchronize again automatically. It's possible to use a replica in order to enhance data durability.

Replication can be controlled at runtime. For instance if you want an instance to become a replica of another instance all you need to do is something like this:

echo -e "slaveof 1.2.3.4 6379\r\n" | nc 1.1.1.1 6379

Final note about the snapshotting persistence mode, in Redis edge on git there is already support for append-only journal, that makes Redis an option even when data is very important.
When Windows bundled IE, it had 90+% OS market share. Google currently accounts for about 3% of the smart phone market.

It's okay to fight dirty when you're coming from behind.
Innovation Open House @ HubSpot – My Notes
Google Ready To Offer Navigation App For iPhone if Apple Agrees
I mean do more stuff through email, like Posterous and Xobni did. People are comfortable with the interface. I think Google Wave starts in email actually. But they extend it into XMPP.

You got me on the money equation. But I'm sure there's some way to make it.
Something similar used to apply to tv. On either a Buffy or a Firefly commentary, Joss Whedon said that they wanted to cut to black, then hang on it for a few seconds for dramatic effect.

The problem was that if they actually cut to black, that would trigger the commercial - the software that controlled when the commercials went on must have monitored the signal, and when the video was black, played the commercial reel. So they had to cut to almost-black to avoid ending the scene prematurely.
That not such a big problem. Just buy a good adapter like http://www.swisstravelproducts.com/index.php?site=productvie... and a multi-plug!
Dustin Curtis's new web app