skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Although I think your overall point is valid I wonder whether there is a middle ground on the hardware. For many purposes offering a degraded service would be better than nothing and could perhaps be handled with 1.5x your needed resources rather than 2x. It may also be possible to make use of this fabled cloud to take the 0.75x resources you have left after an outage back up to 1x.

All this does add development time though and, as you say, for most sites it isn't going to be worth it.
To add why, it's rare that I'd want to listen to something when it's quicker for me to scan. The only time I'd do that is if it's inconvenient for me to read, ie when I'm on the move or driving. Then, I'd like for it to be fed to me audibly.

Good job getting it up and running. What do you use for text to speech conversion?
Of course, I would argue that it would come back to bite you in the end. You want clients to send you more billable hours in the future. And that can't happen if you screw stuff up. :-)

But then again, I don't run a successful consulting firm.
This is an excellent explanation. I'm not 100% convinced, but I'm definitely more convinced than I was before.
Because you care about your work?

Granted you are being exploited, but some people will rather slave away than being seen as a greased wheel.
It definitely isn't useless, the billing is in terms of that, so a tiny backup will cost you a tiny bit of money.

Anyway, I thought it was really neat.

It sets a new standard for honesty in business. No rounding required.
DATA ENTRY ONLINE - PRODUCTS
Not to mention that they may not look kindly upon you exporting data without their knowledge (they might suspect or consider it to be data theft).

My last employer had a good IT department, but also a strict security policy. USB keys were a no-no, so uploading company data to a third party wouldn't be favourably looked upon either.
There's a great book called 'Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids' which is worth a read if you can find it. Totally overpriced at $192 on Amazon, I somehow got it at a quarter of that price.
I know what it's like to be busy, I know what it's like to be rushed, and to produce thoughts while you have them, but without the time to mull over and polish them. I appreciate the post, it's resonating with my life at the moment, and I wanted it not to turn people off before they read it.

Kudos for responding.
Thanks, I think that's probably my best option. Have you compared these to halogen torchieres?
YWFFTMMR
ANd there will be murder in the streets, and fire will rain down, and dark times will come for all, and ...
This thread is most dramatic. Where is the demand for references I have come to expect from this forum? Folks, lets stop responding to emotional venting as if its fact.
Has this not been hashed over a billion (or, ugh, 10^9) times :)
I hope this will be on major news channels ASAP.
Actually, all of the documentation on tarsnap sets a new standard for honesty in business. That's probably the only good TOS page I've ever seen, and, perhaps more importantly, the need for a good TOS page is recognized.
The fork is just bacteria all up in your hard drive.
I am not so sure of that: Intuit seems smarter than I would have assumed by making him vice president. I would not assume that they wouldn't also recognize that bureaucracy is bad.
I agree but would add that, in my experience, getting your site to work in Opera is easy, so sites usually do work there. Getting a modern site to work in IE6 takes a lot of testing and hackery.
Throw Maven the hell away - ant is more than powerful enough for your needs and really simple to extend.
Agreed, Furthermore since when has your opinion been traceable to your ISP? I don't post anything (well nearly anything) on an ISP-hosted account; its on a public forum, or a cloud server etc. Encryption, proxies, public fora, technology in general will make this a futile effort to police. The genie is out of the bottle, and this rumored 'treaty' is a cry by a desperate administration that is feeling powerless. They may as well say "we'll put serial numbers on the buggy whips! We'll regulate steam engines! That'll stop em!"
No, not really the primitive one is quite good and for anything more advanced you will need Emacs anyway.
Kahneman on Choice with Risk (second in series) (short)
It's too bad we can't found a moon colony right now. Count me in as a founding citizen when the time comes.
I wonder if learning to read simplified Chinese and joining Q-Zone would be even more effective than joining a Darknet, at least for some types of speech--and they probably don't care what you say about Western governments on there, either.
That is an interesting oversight, but it properly steams from the notion that most people would get involved with Clojure as a way to escape from Java.

Anyway Sun has some not to horrible articles that explains Java and you might be able to find information there.

In addition, the stackoverflow.com is a great way to ask these kinds of questions since they have a lot of former and current Java developers.
Ask HN: the road to learning useful math
Background: I've got a fairly good intuition for logic and algorithms as a coder, but no formal training in the maths side of things. I last did math in high-school (A-level here in the UK at 18) and while I remember some calculus, pure maths, probability etc., I've never really touched advanced stuff. I didn't take any maths modules at University either.

I've recently come across quite a few interesting stats-heavy compsci papers where the mathematical notations and concepts expressed escape me. I'd like to correct this -- and I've seen a few comments floating around here that this stuff isn't actually that hard, and this has got me thinking.

Could HN recommend any 'math for programmers' resources or suggest structured approaches (ie. 'look into X, then Y, then try understanding Z) to go about learning this sort of stuff? I think I'm probably not alone here in wanting to learn more about this sort of thing.

A quick google provides some interesting links to get started:

Math for programmers: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html

'Concrete Mathematics' by Graham, Knuth & Patashnik:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics
simply means that there are certain things that even a majority vote can't achieve, as the majority is also bound by the Constitution

Not really, even the Constitution is amendable by a super majority. You should have said a simple majority.
I only tend to visit the forums when I have a problem - as pointed out in the first post this is probably true for many people.
Most people out there need to see some sort of units they can reason with, and for storage, that's probably megabytes or gigabytes. For money, it's dollars or euros, not picodollars or gigadollars.
The reason we do this is that many of them have split the article or several "pages", which is super annoying to read.
According to a Freedom House report (http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=463), only about 50-60 countries can be classified as "democratic" or "free", so I think saying "many" countries instead of "most" would be more appropriate.
That's probably the only good TOS page I've ever seen

I probably look stupid asking this, but... what makes the Tarsnap TOS page good?

I didn't set out to create a particularly exceptional TOS page; I just said "gee, I guess I need to write a TOS page" and sat down to write what I, as a user, thought such a page ought to contain.

(I'm sure many people will say that I should have had a lawyer review the Tarsnap TOS page -- but unless you pay a lot of money, a lawyer's advice in such circumstances generally comes down to (a) looking for really dumb mistakes and (b) providing that lawyer's standard block of boilerplate text, neither of which is particularly helpful.)
Spam? My signature is valuable, even if attached to a petition. Shame on you.
Perhaps the rest of the world should find out who's supporting this (shouldn't be too hard) and perform a distributed denial of service by sending spurious copyright-notice takedown demands to all the ISPs hosting all their pages; especially revenue-oriented pages.
p.s. edw, given your closing nosarcasm tag without an opening one, must we now assume that everything you've ever said was non-sarcastic?

Only in ie6.
Array Languages for Lisp Users
computer games , and educational software in general could make learning more fun , more personalized , and probably much more effective.

But , one of the most important things children learn in school is to concentrate on boring things , which is very usefull in most jobs.

So probably a balance should be kept between interesting, fun learning , and boring learning.
No rounding required.

That's not quite true. Tarsnap does billing computations daily, so -- in months which do not contain 30 days -- there is some rounding.

However, usage costs are computed to attodollar precision, and are rounded down -- so I don't think anyone will object to said rounding. :-)
Yes, and some people still get it wrong!
Lost and found: could GPS keep tabs on your pets?
I think the page itself doesn't necessarily stand out as exceptional (though it looks good); but the [why?] page is definitely a really nice feature.
When I first looked at tarsnap a few days back, one of the first things I thought was "What the hell is a picodollar?"

So I gave up on the idea.
+1 for Felix Dennis & How to Get Rich. Holds a permanent place of honor on my bed-stand. He shares his steps and missteps on his way to becoming a self-made bill-eee-on-air. Owes much of his success to negotiation. Fun read.
Look at any good book about, or take a class in discrete math, probability and linear algebra. Those are the subjects that stand out for me. Discrete math is the most fundamental for computer science. That Concrete Mathematics book looks promising - plus it's got some information about algorithm analysis and other computer science specific topics. You should take a class in discrete math, or if you're disciplined enough, start with that book.
Litl Webbook unveiled in Boston. No windows, files, or menus - just the Web
I'm in a similar situation - My last academic exposure to maths was at GCSE level (age 16 for non-UK people), and I've recently attempted to rectify that. I've just begun a degree in mathematics through http://www.open.ac.uk - The first module has been useful for me but maybe less so if you've done an A-level, but it looks like it progresses onto some useful stuff. I can also highly recommend 'Concrete Mathematics' - It's been really useful for filling in some context around the (first module) OU course - typically we're taught practical applications of mathematics that skip over the proofs and derivations - and CM is great at filling in some of the rigour that the OU misses out.

Also, you might want to check out the wikibooks High School Mathematics Extensions textbook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/High_School_Mathematics_Extensi... - there's a whole lot of rigarous but accessible introductions to some pertinent mathematical concepts. Marcus du Sautoy's 'The Music of the Primes' is also great as a bit of light reading to give you a sense of the history (and some very basic mathematical concepts) of the subject.

Cheers,

Tim
Average people suck at literary criticism in more or less the same way that average people suck at theoretical physics. Given that you admit to knowing nothing about literary criticism, so I'm curious to know how you can be so sure of what you say here.

In theoretical physics there is an absolute authority by which to judge what is good and bad, namely the degree to which it conforms to reality. Appealing to this authority may be challenging and may not ever be practical, but it exists and it therefore means something specific to say something is wrong in theoretical physics. Also, when that theoretical physics is later applied being wrong about it can be have real negative consequences.

It is not clear to me that saying something is wrong in literary criticism even has a meaning, and even less clear that it would ever matter if something was wrong.

If you think this then you clearly agree with me that there is something that is valuable in and of itself (i.e. utility to mankind). But valuing utility above everything else is clearly wrong. For example, beauty, love and compassion would be valuable whether or not they had utility.

I actually do agree with you that some things (including beauty, truth, and love) have intrinsic value. But I take that belief starting from a Christian view point. If one were to examine it a priori or from an athiestic viewpoint it is not at all obvious or clear that anything has a value outside of its practical utility to mankind.
Schneier on Security: Fear and Overreaction
I thought there was an announcement some time ago that he was done with milw0rm? Perhaps someone else has taken over already?
This pesky little gravity well ... we just need 8.9 km/s to get out, then a few more to the Moon.
suggesting that copyright is vital for innovation and
creativity is just silly

You realise there are no CC licenses without copyright. That anyone can take my published work and reprint it as their own without any attribution.

Copyright has been much abused by big business, but that's capitalism at work, we shouldn't disavow people of the rights to an interest in the results of their labour.

Copyright only works as a contract between creators and the public. We're doing our part by protecting rights of content creators via the treaties and laws but we are being denied our part of the contract - having works enter the public domain in a timely fashion.

Copyright IMO needs fixing not removing.
Twitter's OAuth has a gaping security hole
the [why?] page is definitely a really nice feature.

That's an innovation which I'm hoping other people will pick up -- I'm sure it helps readers understand the terms, but I also found it very useful as I was writing the terms to write "these are the rules" and "these are the reasons for the rules" in parallel.
I second that friend! I thought these p2p sites made money from adds so whats the deal? Pirate Bay is like a diseased ghetto in comparison to Demonoid.
"should I get royalties for anything invention that uses it forever?"

It says your interests are entitled some protection, but doesn't specify method or compensation.

I find it rather disturbing when someone wants to throw away the UN Declaration of Human Rights because it protects some interests that are against yours.
Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC
The thing about working for free is you really don't have to do it and if you do require this work to be done for one reason or another you really aren't working for free (or nothing).
Democracy doesn't have to be total, it can be limited.

But you are right, it isn't without some very big costs.
some may wish to consider disruptive technologies which will render treaties such as this irrelevant.

It's only irrelevant if you don't mind breaking the law. If you are trying to be a law abiding citizen the ability to avoid being caught is itself irrelevant.
update : http://dailyapps.net/2007/12/hack-attack-install-leopard-on-...

Right now i´m trying to make this work, i will put my conclusions later.
What approaches do other OAuth providers take to this problem? Revoking all OAuth tokens on a password change/reset takes away a good chunk of the value that many people get from using OAuth.
AddThis+%7C+nshtry
Can someone shed some light on the back story here?
As ErrantX pointed out, the "Why" links are a huge part of it.

Most of all, it's readable. Also, the sections are organized based on what the user wants to know, not what lawyers want to say. Where you say "Money," a megacorp would say something like "Terms of payment processing for the client service," or something similarly stupid.
I have strong doubts this could ever be implemented, simply because reality works against it.

Sure, they can try and criminalize half of the internet in one fellow swoop - but that won't change how we do things. There would be a few lawsuits thrown out by sane judges and that's it.
Believe it or not, I've upgraded Ubuntu successfully several times through the GUI. Before Ubuntu 7.x this tended to fail spectacularly though. It's a very friendly process when it works, which admittedly seems contingent on the maturity of the release in question.
I've made a note to make sure I start doing it. :)
Just ran some rough numbers for the fun of it.. no hard science here.

$1.5m over 18 months works out at about $2777 per day. Currently there are 135 jobs on the job board - we'll assume they're all $300 jobs (they also offer $50 listings for internships). This averages out (on the 30 day lifetime) to about 4.5 jobs posted per day over the last month, or $1350 of revenue - less than half the revenue necessary to meet the trend..
Desktop Linux needs salesmen
AMD DirectX 11 Demos: Mecha & Ladybug. Recorded with PlayClaw. [HD]
Yeh there was a lot of confusion (heh, how ironic :D) but I was under the impression he was still at the helm.

Might be wrong then.
Then, OSes get this wrong and calculate storage in GiB.

Also when I see a 128 GB SSD I somehow expect this to mean a proper power of 2, not to mention it should be addressed similarly to RAM.
Free International SMS Messaging Service Which Works
There are numerous free SMS websites and hacks which advertise allowing users to send free text-messages across the globe but most of them fall short of their claims allowing free SMS's to selected operators only, but new free online SMS service KuripoTxt worked as advertised allowing absolutely free international text-messaging.
Sort of.

But what it also needs, to really move into the desktop realm proper, is a more cohesive community. More effort spent on the mundane stuff like usability tweaks, interfaces and better package work.
I wonder how much energy is being consumed in providing you with a shower when you get to work. I mean.. you are showering after a 7 mile bike ride.. right? ;-)
YWFFTMMR: "You Work For Free To Make Me Rich"
Asking someone not to drive 2 miles to work everyday is a "radical political viewpoint"?

I don't know if you're being radically political, but you seem to be evangelizing that other people should live in the same way you do. A lot of people don't want to.
No, 10^9 is a Milliard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliard
Uncovering Steve Jobs' Presentation Secrets
I share your viewpoint. Like Fried, I don't read fiction novels either but.. I do read short stories from time to time. Especially J G Ballard.

It's all about the time issue for me. I read lots of long novels as a teen but it's either do that or actually do some work nowadays.

As an aside, the death of the short story as a significant literary force is worth mourning here too..
TwitterPeek Is So Dumb It Makes My Brain Hurt
Rackspace:"We Have Work To Do"
Ditto. Except I do occasionally read some good short stories - particularly J G Ballard's. You can get some really mind-bending stuff in < 20 pages from the right authors. It's a shame the format isn't more popular. You can pick up insights and feelings that non-fiction rarely delivers.
Numerical Recipes is must read
I'm really happy I'm not in competition with you, you set the bar rather high :)
It might be PR, or it might just be the truth.

I don't use an alarm clock, and I wake within a few minutes of the same time each morning. I always thought it odd, but maybe it's common.
sorry, it was a joke, I never meant 10^9 == 1 Billion. I edited the brackets in afterwards ;)
He doesn't know how to write Oracle PL/SQL, nor apparently how to use DECODE etc.

So he blames the company and puts sensitive corporate data up on an external resource with no ability to audit its security.

Brilliant!
I'm not sure who's running things there (if anyone) but he had said he turned over duties to some friends. Milw0rm was (is?) a source of quality PoC exploit code, much of which was zero-day. For security research, it used to be a great resource. I, too, have noticed it hadn't been very active lately, so it's hard telling who (again, if anyone) is running things there.

Also, I haven't really seen any other posts about str0ke's death, other than ones linking to bl4cksecurity or mentions of it quite a while after the initial post there.

It's not that I would consider it a hoax, but it highlights one of the oddities of pseudonymous culture. First and foremost, I was under the impression he was in his late 20s from his profiles elsewhere on the web, and the link says he was born in '74. Again, pseudonymous culture means that data could be false, accounts could be impostors, etc.
The question now is, who buys the rest of the IMF gold?
... but not really the sort of mathematics it sounds like the OP is interested in learning right now. (I agree that NR is a first-rate bit of paedagogy. It's usual for numerics experts to be sniffy about the actual algorithms, which are often chosen for simplicity or clarity more than for their actual performance.)
Bill Gates sums up Microsoft's abusive history
Great idea! It looks great too! I second (third, fourth, whatever) the calls for a mute button. I'd also like to see the ability to change the voice being used. I noticed that between channels it's different, any way to choose between those voices?
This rang loudly and clearly for me ...

Skepticism, the ability not to be fooled, was clearly
important, but it is also cheap. It is easy to disbelieve
everything, and some scientists seemed to take this
approach. Sometimes Luie was skeptical, but more often
he seemed to embrace crazy ideas, at least at first. He
rarely dismissed anything out of hand, no matter how
absurd, until he had examined it closely. But then one
tiny flaw, solidly established, was enough to kill it.
His openness to wild ideas was balanced by his firmness
in dismissing those that were flawed. He had a finely
honed skepticism. Perhaps that was part of his secret
talent.

Far, far too often I've seen people dismiss ideas because of a single, obvious flaw, when the idea is salvageable with a small modification. Staying open to crazy ideas to find the nugget of truth or value is an incredibly useful skill. Skeptics need to hear that message. Disbelieving everything is easy.

Related:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=you+and+your+research

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
Snow Leopard shows values in the correct GB's. Stuff like df uses Gi and similar prefixes.
I'm a little late to the party here, but a lot of people are obviously angry about this. Skimming the comments, it looks like a lot of 'end-of-the-internet' speculation.

Not if we can help it. If you're in the U.S., please write your representatives and let them know how dangerous this is. This is still a country ruled by its people, for its people. Even if this is a hoax, it will let your elected officials know copyright law is a serious issue in their district, and hopefully treat it as such.

Find out who your reps and senators are at this link, and write!
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
Mac OS X 10.6 get this right and calculate in true KB, MB and GB that is 10^3, 10^6, and 10^9 bytes. I heard that Linux also get this right and now use the KiB, MiB and GiB prefixes for 2^10, 2^20, 2^30. Both options are good.
It would be of plenty of importance, but fat_elf does not actually help solve the problem in any way.

You can produce all important functionality of the fat_elf patches with a single simple shell script.