skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sorry, but 7 petabytes for the largest search index in the world? I'm hoping the reporter misquoted the developers here. If we conservatively assume servers with half a terabyte of hard disk space, that's 14,000 servers for the web index. Google was estimated to have 450,000 servers in 2006, and presumably has many more than that now. So less than 5% of their server stack would be required to store that size of web index. Considering that web search is still Google's core product, this seams easy to believe. And much more if you include image caching, maps, videos....
AdMob Is “Approaching $100 Million” Revenues. Google Thinks It Can Be Billions.
The screencasts at the bottom of the page will come in handy. Thanks for the link.
Very true, I just couldn't help noticing it.
Registered Nofib:

"The native code generator offers the best performance of the three but its a fairly close race, with the LLVM back-end less then 4% percent behind and the C code generator less then 7%. While this is slightly disappointing that LLVM doesn’t provide a performance advantage over the NCG back-end, it is very promising given its early stage of development that it is able to produce code of the same level of quality as the NCG and C back-end. Both of these back-ends benefit from years of work and optimisation, while the new LLVM back-end has only been in development for around 3 months and only just recently reached a usable state."

Data Parallel Haskell:

"[...] the LLVM back-end shows a very impressive performance gain for all the tests, bringing an average reduction of 25% in the runtime of the tests. The reasons for this are two fold. Firstly the LLVM optimiser and register allocator simply outperform the NCG. Secondly and of far greater impact is the use of the custom calling convention used to implement registered mode, as outlined in section 3.3.4."

Also interesting:

"As can be seen from the table, the LLVM optimiser produces no noticeable effect on the runtime of the program, indeed for the nofib benchmark suite it actually slowed it down."
I'm in European territory. For general purpose and informative sites, like a personal site, this makes no sense.

But, when you're talking about stores, web applications, entire online platforms (including advertising ones), I think you have to ask user permission to do whatever with user's data. I guess this is why EC decided to ask for opt-in.

Many sites, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, require registration, and you have to agree with the TOU and Privacy Policy, where usually they place the cookies TOU and policy.

How do they enforce this? I guess browsers with extensions like Firefox (eg. CS lite) would be advantaged. I remember only Chrome and Firefox with extensions and Opera's widgets.

EDIT: (some conspiracy) could this be a move against IE? (ActiveX is discouraged)
Portrait of an INTP
I upvoted you because it is a good point, but ... who is advancing the most quickly in manufacturing these days? That would be China....

Plus, I would hesitate to naturalize the idea of intellectual property as if it were a "thing" just like a cheese sandwich. Some of your argument seems to rest on protecting IP which (somehow) exists; a lot of people would doubt that IP is a valid concept or exists at all.
I fucking hate short urls.... stupidly - unnecessary imposition of 140 characters has caused the removal of any context .
I would like to see this supported (or not, methinks) by empirical evidence. A priori arguments without evidence aren't worth a damn, in my estimation.
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A currency, to be practical, needs to meet the following four characteristics: Be relatively scarce, be durable, be divisible, and be impossible to counterfeit.

But to actually be a currency, a resource still requires that people treat it as such; i.e., that large numbers of people with no practical use for the physical embodiment of the currency accept it in trade for things of practical value. This means that, practically by definition, the currency thus acquires some amount of value in excess of whatever value it would have were it not a currency. This excess is effectively "imaginary value"--a mass delusion or self-fulfilling prophecy, albeit a useful one. If nobody uses it as a currency, it loses that value, no matter how well it could theoretically work as a currency.

Likewise, non-currency commodities can acquire imaginary value through various means--such as an expectation of future value, or arbitrary fads. Debt is 100% pure imaginary value, completely worthless but for the expectation that the debtor will repay it. Now, "imaginary" value is still value, and is real enough for most practical purposes, but is and always will be vulnerable to disappearing rapidly.

Fiat currency is a nearly worthless commodity with substantial imaginary value. Shares of a public corporation represent a fraction of the true value of the corporation's wealth, plus some amount of imaginary value. Gold is a more useful commodity than the article seems to think, but it's still likely that gold's value is at least half imaginary, based only on the perception of it as a store of value. Real estate also has substantial value, but that didn't stop it from (temporarily) acquiring massive imaginary value as well. It's worth noting that, assuming a secure system of tracking ownership, the title to a plot of land meets your characteristics even better than gold.

Yes, gold is likely to remain a de facto currency of choice, but don't kid yourself into thinking it isn't massively overpriced for exactly that reason.

If you actually want a durable store of almost entirely real value, that can't be faked or quickly created, bulk dried beans might be a good start.
there is a new mogul twitter page. not sure if it's the same but here it is: http://twitter.com/newmogul
MG Siegler's response: http://parislemon.com/2009/11/on-citizen-journalism-the-degr...
Definitely something that struck me when learning about Ogilvy, Burnett, Bernbach, etc., when learning about great advertising legends, was how very few of them looked like a stereotypical advertiser. Leo Burnett in particular worked with my ad prof.'s father, and was described as a short ugly man whose garble was incomprehensible. But the man was a genius (I wish more people knew advertising legends, because they're truly fascinating). Taught me that the best advertisers are smart enough to see through a lot of their own stereotypes. Certainly the people I know studying advertising are nothing like what I'd have expected.
I think you are confusing contract law with patent law. There isn't really anything about the iPod that should be patentable, but Apple should certainly insist (in contract) that their manufacturers not give away their design.
Yup. Gold is money.
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Top tips for writing successful Software as a Service
RIP, Python
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Massive layoffs (15-20%) looming over EA
I think patent, copyright and many other things are all mixed up here. Can someone tell me about a case of "software patent" (not software copyright, not hardware patent) where it promoted innovation?
I don't think that's a crazy law, I think that's an awesome law! Ironically, it probably helps to drive up the salaries of professors quite a lot.
> 99% of those who can will not be on the level of a Felix Klein

We might be on the same plane though. (Sorry!)
Thanks. I found that interesting, but what caught me more was how Omar approached the obvious Google problem. Mainly the fact that he realized early on that the potential market size was large enough that the entrance of Google wouldn't be the beginning and end of mobile advertising.

Another interesting post along the same lines was the post on the Launch of the iPhone.
http://admob.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-does-iphone-mean-for-...
I don't think any version of Chrome currently supports rss, does it? I'm running the Windows developer channel and don't see any obvious way to subscribe to a feed.
It's more like, if you were starting a retail business of any sort, are there tech decisions you could make very early on to drastically reduce the eventual cost of operating a nationwide chain?
Ask YC: To learn or to outsource?
I have been trying to get our startup off the ground for sometime now. The problem is one of our developer Founders who did some Rails development for us left and now we are left with myself and another developer who is not well versed with Rails.

I used to be a very good Programmer in School and I know that I can do a good job programming, but I am the business guy now, not having much time to learn Rails development. The lack of time almost always discourages me to learn Rails, since there are so many other things on my plate. But at the same time, it is gating progress.

The other developer believes that we should outsource our Rails development. Have we accumulated a lot of technical debt as a result of the old Rails developer leaving us? How do we fix this situation? Also, the other developer Founder is more inclined to manage rather than coding. I believe the startup's founder should build the core offering themselves.

So following are my questions, so that we can get unstuck:

1. Do I learn Rails and come up to speed so that I can start contributing in a big way. What is the best approach for this goal? What kind of a timeframe am I looking at?
2. Should we hire a Rails developer to take things forward for us? Is outsourcing an option considering we want to get our core offering developed?
3. Should I be looking for a Founder who is a kickass programmer?
4. Should we consider switching the development platform to the one that my other Developer Founder is comfortable with. Because even if we want to manage a Rails developer, my partner may not be able to do justice because he is not too well versed with the platform himself

Any kind of advice would be helpful. Please advise!!!
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Forget the politics, and note the parallels with pricing.
Normally I agree with most of Jason's ideas, except on this one.

While, I agree old media needs to reexamine their business models, leaving the google index is a temporary band-aid, that does not solve the real problem. Murdoch, should focus on creating more value for his products. Paywalls, make sense when enough value is created, justifying the subscription cost.

In my eyes this is good news for entrepreneurs, its a lot easier to innovate when the giant is distracted trying to revive its old biz model.
Google shifts software value to operations, away from IP
I like that python is trying to work with projects that have become large and essentially help support it, hopefully much good comes out of this like libraries being upgraded etc.
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A bit of an overreaction, I'd say.
Thank you Steve. You've got a perk from us (when you go back to startups.com again will notice :) Hope you like it.
Generally, to get a promotion past first-level-supervisor requires some business degree, and this is usually (an unspoken) policy at most larger corporations. It is my belief that far too many folks have gone for MBA degrees and that they no longer really work for sifting employees. Anecdotally, there are several programmers I know who have MBAs working in my company and it has done nothing for them.

As for myself, I'm working on a masters in accounting. It is a business masters, so it meets the requirement for a business masters degree, but one that I think opens a couple additional options. I live in CO, and here (as well as MA), one can sit for the CPA exam with a masters in accounting (with no on-the-job time hired as an accounting). For me, this is one of my "Plan B" strategies to possibly transition out of IT. A CPA with a background in IT should be able to do well with sox/cobit/sas70 auditing.

For yourself, the question should be along the lines of "do you want to move into management" or "do you want to stay in technology." Because I think the answer to that question decides what degree to go for (and really, I can't answer that for you, I can only say "I did X and why" and perhaps that might be useful to help you decide). And I think you should only consider the masters if your company (or family) is footing the bill, as I think this is a terrible time to get into debt for college.
Somebody had to justify their salary for today, and they just did.

It is the inevitable curse of big organizations selling tasty sandwiches that they eventually employ people whose personal success is totally unconnected to selling tasty sandwiches.
What's the point of this inflammatory piece? Did the author speak up in the relevant forum? Others certainly did.
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Indeed "strictly necessary" to achieve what? If it doesn't tell you then that leaves a whole the size of reality in the law through which many truckloads of lawyers salary can pass.

Strange how all those lawyers aiding the writing of the law would miss such a thing ...!?!
Yes, the labor theory of value is, in short, what it means to be labeled a "classical" economist. All economists writing before the marginal revolution took it for granted.

Also, Marx never wrote anything even resembling this: Some, like Karl Marx, argued that the value of a product is based on how much labour you put into it. Not whether people want it or not.

He actually mocked people, like Proudhon, who proposed such ideas.
Indeed "strictly necessary" to achieve what? If it doesn't tell you then that leaves a hole the size of reality in the law through which many truckloads of lawyers salary can pass.

Strange how all those lawyers aiding the writing of the law would miss such a thing ...!?!
For the love of God, take your time.

Under no circumstances do an MBA with less than two years of work experience. You won't get into a top ranked programme and if your programme isn't top ranked you'd be better off doing it by distance education while working. If you were going to do a second entry degree a J.D. would be a much better idea.

An M.Sc. in CS probably has a better ROI than most MBA programmes, and it'd let you compete for jobs that wouldn't be available to you fresh out of a Bachelors. The thing is you might be able to get enough real world experience in the time that you'd be doing a Masters that you'd be at the same level in the same time, but you'd have been earning and making contacts in that time.

If you love what you're doing keep doing it until it palls.

Don't pay to do an M.S. get in as a Ph.D. and bail once you've got what you want. Alternatively come to Europe where education is dead cheap. Karlsruhe in Germany has a fantastic CS programme, and it's a beautiful, beautiful city.

For an MBA, consider INSEAD. It's highly ranked and it only takes one year.
Judging by the number of blogs and people on Twitter, your mom is probably no longer the typical internet user.

For those of us who travel in tech savvy circles, I think it's all too easy to forget that his mom absolutely is the typical Internet user, as depressing as I sometimes find that prospect.

Or at least there's enough savvy folks to be a sizable marketing opportunity.

I'm not disagreeing with that, but don't think for a second that the majority have any real idea what these Interwebs are all about.
"When the debasement rate is 10% and interest rates are 7%, the negative debasement-adjusted interest rate is a debt factory. It is easy for borrowers to make decisions that assume these rates will continue. If they end, the typical result is a recession. These kinds of dependencies make it very hard for politically sensitive authorities to end debasement, or even significantly reduce it."

From (http://www.safehaven.com/article-5205.htm) likely by the same author in a different mood...written in 2006.
You're probably right - syntax changes were practically impossible to implement anyway. What upsets me is the mindset a community must be in to propose and pass such a decision - thinking we've reached a somewhat optimal expression of syntax for Python is very proud and foolish.
"Other than monetary, there have been no practical uses for gold in antiquity."

Except for those silly Egyptian and Aztec people, who thought gold was good for making art objects and jewelry.
Oh the DRAMA! Really, a short hold on syntax changes doesn't seem like the end of the world. Especially when almost nobody is using Python 3000 yet.

This seems like a sensible move, even if the geek in me doesn't love it.
So you're saying we need patents because people will completely ignore those patents anyway?

That isn't much of an argument.
The author's point is lacking, despite his heavy-handed rhetorical flourish. The sales of books may be down, but the number of writers are up and climbing - and the downturn of the sales of books originated far before Twitter came to light. Arguably, even before the Blackberry. And I question as to how many "viral" narratives the author even knows about - maybe my online social net's unique in this, but when a good story is found, it's usually something with an extensive archive and requires a few hours to fully absorb.

Not to mention that, in the defense of Twitter and other short-burst mediums, treating them with the same standards as a long-form narrative Misses The Dang Point by a rather large margin. The rising popularity of burst mediums is because they're /dialogue enablers/, not because they offer an alternative to a good novel. Lamenting Twitter's effect on storytelling is like blaming cell phones for the decline of Broadway.
That surprises me. I've been learning Ruby recently (only really working with 1.9), but every time I learn about something that's new or different in 1.9 compared with earlier versions, the new version seems better, cleaner to me (e.g. 'hello'[1] # => 'h' not 101, Enumerators and MiniTest::Unit, off the top of my head).

Also, it's significantly faster, no?
This is the same strategy that Sirius used when they tried to 'break' normal radio by signing Howard Stern.

That deal seems to have worked out pretty well for Stern, but was a disaster for Sirius. It might work just as well for Bing!
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There's a great deal more to a language than syntax: libraries, actual implementations, and so forth (so say nothing of documentation, community and other non-code matters).

PEP 3003 puts the brakes (temporarily!) on one point of evolution - giving the rest time to catch up. Certainly, it hardly spells the death of the language.
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or the Software Freedom Law Center.
Read the source:
http://rubygems.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/lib/
Not only is it an overreaction, I can't find a moment in history to support it. Has a language ever gone out of favor because of a couple of years of a lack of syntax changes? Like, ever?
That's a valid argument. If your blog post had mentioned anything nearly as reasonable as what you just typed, this comment thread wouldn't be here.
The very first sentence in the PEP states that language changes will again be allowed in 3.3, several years is not really that long for something so essential as the language itself.
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For those that follow gaming, it isn't a surprise that EA is shrinking. The article doesn't say so, but I would imagine it is the lower level people getting laid off for the upper level's constant terrible decision making. Sad.
You can burn time or money, and you may be able to substitute equity for money.

If you're the business guy and your co-founder is "more inclined to manage" you have no dedicated coder. As such you're probably already circling the drain. Really, outsourcing something like this is a big risk. You won't know it in your bones, and if it breaks it'll take you longer to fix it if you're just learning it than if you wrote it.

Code it yourself.

My impression from this post is that you're up the faecal watercourse and need to start paddling.
The context of a hyperlink is meaningful, but the text of the corresponding URL is of little relevance.

'Clean' URLs tend to be a REST anti-pattern, as they are tied up with the notion that the ability to edit an known URL to refer to a different resource constitutes an API, much less a REST-ful one. HATEOAS Motherfuckers!
Looks like he stuck a header banner on someone else's theme? The css is called freshnews.css but inside is called "creative theme".
http://gemcutter.org and the search feature of the website might reduce the need of googling for rubygems.
Nice post. I think this is a really cool idea in general. A few of us on one of my projects have been thinking myself recently about a package manager based on git, where you could literally merge in feature branches or patch branches as you wanted...
Crap article.
This, this is the value of the internet - it's not "content".

I'd agree that's where the value is, but the money is all with the content (regardless whether that content is aggregated from users or produced in-house).
I don't think anyone is saying that python syntax has reached such an apex of perfection that it cannot be improved.

The two issues that drive this moratorium are the alternate implementations need to catch up with the current state of python. And, more importantly in my view; the need to focus attention on overhauling the standard library and porting it and external packages to python3. This is a resource allocation shift, that's all.
I was just at a Panera this past weekend with my laptop and I also noticed they blocked anything with the word "torrent" in it, for obvious reasons ;-).
Okay, I'm going to come out and say it. This is a sign of the times, and it's a very bad sign. This "article" never would've made it to the news.yc front page two years ago. No chance. It's reactionary flame bait and has zero content.

I think there needs to be some kind of moderation system here (perhaps members with high karma would be able to vote on instantly zapping an article, or something to that affect), or we're going to go the way of reddit.
While I don't appreciate the tone of your comment, I have to agree. Seeing a short URL instead of a long URL with a slug co containing some context is welcome. I'll save my surprises for birthdays, thanks.
Well if it bothers you so much, you have the freedom/right to not use Python. Furthermore, I sense that the majority does not share your sickness. And I personally see your view a bit distorted, but that would be my view/opinion.
The references section could benefit from including why's classic Ruby vs. Python video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZ_htL1rOI
The US dollar is about to collapse because of a simple economic fact that no one has the power to change or conceal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenarianism

These people are exactly like those Christians who think the rapture is always just around the corner. Maybe next year.
That's not what the article is about.

There needs to be a name for when a commenter makes an obvious point on an article that is delving into fine detail.
Carmack says Apple is not proud of the iPhone being a game machine
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-memleak/
I can't help but be reminded of when Merlin Mann said "little stories are the internet's native and ideal art form... little dumb stories that I never expected."

Read it all--it's worth it. Plus, that this was even written (not to mention well-received) poses a fine counterpoint to any argument stating that storytelling on the internet is dead: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/169873399/clackity-noise