skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Amazon has an interesting approach to this for extant products: A/B testing for infrastructure.

Just as they test UI tweaks by funneling percentages of live customers through them and comparing conversions, they also send live traffic to both production and development servers (with the user only seeing the production responses), checking to see if they produce the same output after refactoring.
Taking yourself public: the personal IPO
I wonder how the executive meetings at Microsoft and Yahoo went the next morning. Disbelief? Dazed? Anger? A sinking feeling?

Misunderstanding?

(Every time Ballmer says something along the lines of "I don't understand their business model" as a way of dismissing, for eg, Google's Android play, I wonder how much he is just trying to create FUD, and how much he genuinely doesn't understand).
I am not interested in really learning another programming language, and from the looks of it, the productivity claim is questionable. Not only can many of the examples they show be done in fewer lines of code in other languages, but you also do not need to re-learn the languages you already know. Many programming languages offer many of the features they are mentioning as useful so why learn yet another programming language unless it truly has something useful to offer that does not already exist. As one person stated, it has braces. I like braces for the purpose of organization, but I dislike variable declarations because it only serves to clutter the code and sometimes decreases productivity. The programming language needs to become more productivity oriented, and I do not think Go accomplishes this goal. Developers want to be creative with their code, but they would probably rather be more creative with their projects instead.
Most of Google infrastructure is soft realtime so GC delays have definitely been a concern. The memory footprint for a simple hello.go on arm using 5g is currently ~70k with the optimizer not yet enabled. I'm planning to do some work on a AT91SAM7 with 256kb of flash and it should fit OK. You might be able to squeeze it into a smaller space if you drop some of the runtime.
My Million Dollar Mistake
This seems generally true. Once a measurement of success becomes popular enough, people eventually forget to question it.

How many people live thinking money or material wealth is the point in life with no question?
Cloud MapReduce
What's WWI? World War I?
wow... first impression is this is my dream language... Can't wait to start messing with this...goroutines yay...I could be wrong but this looks really nice.
I wouldn't be surprised. I started writing stories for fun when I broke up with a girl, and I'm still sticking with it. It's almost like these crushes supply a kind of necessary activation energy for some large projects.
It seems like Ars Technica also have their own shortened links...

http://arst.ch/9uw
Really?
http://tinyurl.com/y8zjorj
Star Trek-Like Replicator?
Soon, we will print all our planes...
is there data backing up this n+1 claim? without A/B testing it, it is hard to be convinced that it is definitely the cheaper strategy. in fact, it makes a lot of assumptions about how people will behave, whats to prevent a culture developing where someone always grab the last roll but is responsible for flagging down the next batch? thus severely increasing your costs. regardless tho it is definitely non-intuitive and clever and worth testing for the sake of academic curiosity.
> [...] then really you're using "the invisible hand of the market" to enact the change you desire.

It seems to me that many people revering the "invisible hand of market" imply that there's no point acting to cause a social change: the best possible world should emerge from individuals fighting to maximize their financial wealth.

If you take "invisible hand of market" in the widest possible sense, I'd rather call it "natural selection".
There will always be a need for a bottom layer language, but 20 years from now, will it still be C? I hope at some point the world will migrate to a newer language.
Dropbox (YC S07) looking for Android Developer
Ask HN: Please give your opinion on why no traction in child safety technology?
I recently moved 3K miles to silicon valley to launch a start-up. Unfortunately I am not a great technologist, my skill-set is sales/execution-(For reference purposes: I have founded 2 successful companies, the last all self funded and scaled to 90 employees>$15M revenues).

So, coming up with a viable technology idea I believe in has been challenging. Afer months of research/brainstorming I have an idea I love. Problem is that there are companies in the space and they seem to have very little traction.

The idea is to leverage hardware/software advancements to make sure all the world's children are safe from abduction & abuse. Why isn't there a well-designed (think if Apple did it) device, worn at the wrist or around the neck, that captures gps location, video and audio that is wirelessly uploaded to the cloud fo all children 0-15? The device would only be removed with key/combination. If otherwise attempted, email/cell phone alerts would immediately connect to parents. This device would:
1. Protect against child abduction.
2. Protect against abuse by child-care providers, black-sheep uncle, etc.
3. Serve as a life-recorder that could actually be stored and indexed.

The primary purpose and revnue model would be prevent child abduction and abuse....why wouldn't all parents want this? Apparently the current offerings don't excite because there are companies that exist that offer pieces of what is outlined above, eiter by gps wrist-device or chips injected into the skin. Based on my due diligence, it appears neither concept has an industry leader that is a household name or has achieved real traction.

Please submit your opinion as to why and if you think this is a good place to allocate start-up capital and resources. Many Thanks.
When you ignore the CDN and other external resources, that's pretty much how most text based sites are. The ads alone probably exceed that 6.5TB number.

Also, be careful with those dedicated servers. They can give you ONE MEEELLION TB of bandwidth but it won't do you any good on a 100mb pipe or an extremely oversold network.
That still remains a barrier to entry to people who are not savvy. Video devices are becoming more and more pervasive, the number of people uploading video will grow, and it needs to be easier.

One of our primary goals is to remove friction. Reduce the number of steps it takes to distribute video to the audiences that matter to you. The ideal number of steps: 1. We're almost there.

Convenience is another goal. People are lazy, I am lazy, and I prefer something that is convenient and does all of the work for me.

Tell your parents to go to Accounts > Settings > etc, and watch their eyes glaze over.
So the idea is to replace traditional journalism with... aggregated tweets?
Hard working couples struggle to buy the basic food and shelter which their grandfathers had purchased while their wives stayed at home.

Is this an example of truth through mere assertion, or of pluralizing anecdote to equal data?

In any case, I disagree with the assertion, because I think it's a stretch that such a couple would consider what was "basic" in 1955 to be acceptable. It's tough, though, since quality of life is so, well, qualitative.

Another aspect I question about the mid-50s is how war surplus affected cost of goods. How many of those single income households were buying goods that had been subsidized by their wives' work for the war effort? There are strong hints of this effect in early computer power supplies, as 400Hz wasn't historically common in commercial power.
Yeah. Languages with no control flow other than "call" and "return" were ok for the 80s... but we know better now. Just add continuations and you get functions, coroutines, exceptions, loop exits ("last", "next", etc.), and so on for free.

I am not sure why I'd use this language with no libraries when I could use a better-designed language with no libraries instead.
Jake, I'm glad you did ChicagoTechCal. I've been meaning to do something like that ever since we had Chicago Startup Weekend overlapping Flourish Conf, and only a week after PyCon. I'm sorry about the overlap; Chicago has at least one person going to interview at YC, and we wanted to have the meetup before he leaves on Wednesday morning. We've already announced Tuesday night as the next meetup, so we should probably leave it, but we'll check the calendar next time to avoid an overlap.
Nice article, but calling Go not innovative because it has a C-like syntax is a bit naive.
An interview with the hacker who founded foursquare
It fails with two people (particularly couples) as they get to split it in half and share it.
Python objects are dicts by default, but become essentially structs if you use __slots__
Personally, I find this boilerplate equivalent to the comments one has to write documenting the requirements of the type, with the added benefit of readable error messages when you pass the wrong type. In other words, I find:

// T here is a type that must support these two operations:
// bool froznit();
// void frobnob(Foo* foo);
template <class T> class Frozner { ... }

And

public interface SomeStupidName {
public bool froznit();
public void frobnob(Foo foo);
}
public class Frozner<? extends SomeStupidName> { ... }

To be just as much work to type.
No such luck, I'm afraid.

http://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/5567344755
How Twiki failed to keep it's community when trying to commercialize.
Wouldn't a "bad" fake (i.e. anything with a valid checksum) work just as well?
Assuming the OS threads/preemptive multitasking are playing nice (i.e. letting me devour timeslices at my leisure), how well do you think the GC would work when I need to land events in a 15 microsecond window at 40hz on a normal desktop PC? I'd be crunching a decent amount of math and discarding/creating objects between events, but total memory utilization would not be going up or down.

Sorry if that's kind of specific, it's some of the limitations in one of the current problems I'm working on :)
I agree. This would need to be tested thoroughly before it could have any degree of certainty attached to it.

I would also argue that the remaining roll shouldn't be reused for other customers anyway (if it has been sitting out on a table for hours), thus rendering it unusable and therefore a cost. The restaurant owner might inadvertently find themselves wasting the +1 roll - or it simply being eaten anyway!

It's a nice, thought-provoking story, but I wonder how applicable to the real-world this really is?
Rich Hickey picked the name Clojure partly because the name is easy to search for.
I don't know if I should have emphasized this more in the original post, but 11/17 is next Tuesday, not today. :) I wanted to give everybody a week's notice to make plans.
The Very Serious Paradox
4 years in prison in a bankrupt state for sending a letter claiming copyright infringement? Yeah right. The Unabomber sent bombs through the mail for years without being caught. If someone can do that, it should be trivial to send email to hosting companies without going to jail.

Have you ever jaywalked? If so, you'll realize that not every law is enforceable.
What is nothing to do with Google & Search?
These people are --- and excuse the breach of decorum here --- insane.

VC's (for instance) won't sign NDAs because they don't want to be sued by spurned startups over something they "never" do (stealing ideas from pitches --- note: this is something several of them do). VC's get to not sign NDAs, because no VC will sign them, and they have all the money.

Consultancies sign NDAs because they are going to work in close contact with their clients code, documentation, client roster, sales pipeline, and, oh-yes, client protected information. Consultancies don't get to not sign NDA's, because every other professional consultancy will sign them, and because they have none of the money.

NB: Many fun prospective clients are legally and/or contractually required to have you sign NDAs.

NB: Many smart clients don't simply want to give you cart blanche with their name and logo for your portfolio page, which is the real subtext behind not signing an NDA.

My advice, as both a consultant and as a buyer of consulting services, is: if you have even the faintest sense that your client has legal representation, don't bother ever trying to negotiate out of the NDA. Just walk away from the deal, which you aren't going to get anyways once you try to avoid signing contracts.
Incidentally, NOT putting the content back up would be a violation of the DMCA, which also opens you up to litigation.

I don't think the DMCA says anything about having your account canceled for causing problems, however.

("Sorry, we determined that your node was using too much CPU, and have terminated your account." Now the host does not have to deal with your DMCA problems, as they are no longer your host. They can even pull a Comcast and keep the limits unpublished and enforce them arbitrarily as they please.

The little guy never wins.)
How to combine Elastic Mapreduce/Hadoop with other Amazon Web Services
So how long before we start seeing craigslist ads that ask for 5 years of Go experience?
Isn't that the point though?
The host receives a DMCA request and take down the content, they are perfectly safe (safe harbor provision etc)

You (the author) come along and say, no it isn't illegal - please put it back up. If they put it back up don't they lose the DMCA safe protection? They are publicly siding with your claim that it's legal.

Also there is the practical point that a takedown notice simply means clicking a link on the host's site or emailing an address. Getting it back involves sworn affidavits, visits to lawyers an trying to find a human contact at the hosting company.
Interesting idea for a service. I wrote an Apache module that is very similar.

http://code.google.com/p/moddims/
Anything you could write a native filesystem or device driver in would be semantically quite similar to C, even in the ideal microkernel fantasy.
Congrats on getting the meetup going. I run the hackers and founders meetup in silicon valley. I have a bunch of graphics like a logo, name tags and table tents already made up if you're interested. Its open source meetup hosting.

Feel free to ping me iamelgringo @ googles email service.
I don't think the +1 roll /is/ reused - I think they meant that if you can assume rolls uneaten by the party to which they are served are simply thrown out. With that assumption, the total rolls "lost" by the restaurant stays at n+1 - compared to serving that extra n rolls (which, if uneaten, may be assumed to have been thrown out as well)
A Cheap Nest for Fledgling Firms
I can think of generalities in regards to patterning offerings tuned to human behavior, but nothing quite like this.
I disagree, those milliseconds are important as the market is continuously moving. From the time a trade enters your system until it's booked and executed you're carrying the risk that a deal you think you've done might not have been done. When you're processing thousands of trades a second that's not a small risk.
A small startup worth $1 billion. They laughed when Facebook was valued at that too.
Blocking Google from their sites isn't the end point - this is just a step in a campaign against net neutrality by somebody that owns a lot of cable companies/ ISPs and content providers.
Another thing that might happen is that by having +1 roll is causes the customers to wait a minute to see if anyone else wants the roll before grabbing it. This extends the time that is needed for the bowl to be refilled and the longer the better (i.e. the closer to the food being ready)
Hem... at one point you will need to search for more specific things.

"package management for go programming language" or "XML parser go programming language" probably won't be so useful, and it is sure cumbersome to type.
How come who was behind it is important but who says what on HN is not?

One could have extra information right beside each submitter/commenter's name (e.g., ... founder, Google employee, PhD in ..., etc.).
I saw a story about it when they reenabled text for canadians and a couple of friends of mine were able to start using twitter from their phones again.

I find this story http://www.thestar.com/article/592619 but it doesn't mention any deal w/ twitter.
Isn't that what Streamlined was trying to do? It looks like it was EOL'd a few months ago. Their site now mentions looking at ActiveScaffold as an alternative http://activescaffold.com/

Not to say they are trying to replicate Django's admin, but rather to present a semi-automated way of surfacing CRUD actions on your Rails models.

To go all the way to a Django-like admin, a Rails plugin might have to do things like tie into authentication, which is not standardized in Rails, and either create some of its own models or require the addition of attributes on existing models (e.g. for things like modification history).

It may be a combination of possibilities:

1. Rails devs create a bare-bones / scaffolded admin as needed

2. Rails apps that really need CMS/admin functionality build something highly customized to their app and haven't seen the value in generalizing it for the community (or it isn't easy to do)

3. Developers that need out-of-the-box admin haven't found a barrier to entry that prevents them from using Django instead of Rails

I don't know the answer, but I think game2studios makes a great argument that the 2 frameworks arose out of different needs.
They actually maintain at least four browser codebases: Chrome, Android's Webkit, Picasa (uses Gecko), and their server-side renderer.

They have at least three product OSes: ChromeOS, Android, and The Google Search Appliances.

This is at least their second new programming language project: there's also Rob Pike's Sawzall. They have numerous in-house implementations of existing programming languages: V8, Closure, GWT, Dalvik, Unladen Swallow, plus all the extant ones they maintain forks of.
What the hell??? Didn't they come out with programming language last week already or some such? I don't see the point exactly. I mean I can learn it, but then what? It's not going to be installed anywhere where I can do work, it's not going to have any third party libraries, it's not going be be supported by any decent editor for a while (I use vi, throw your rocks).

Google: what is the point? First it's browser plugins, then browsers, then two OS's, now programming languages? How about a nice new processor architecture a la PowerPC? It's better and faster you know. Maybe they'll also invent new people to be their user base. I can imagine that intro video: "Welcome to GPeople - the new Google interaction experience. When you interact with a GPerson you don't need to talk. They already know what you are thinking and will insert relevant advertisement into their conversation with you. The advertisement will be unobtrusive and will target your innermost fears..."
Thanks Adam.
Dandelion and Orchid Genes
I found it in an antique bookstore near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. (where I live.) I forget the name.
I am 36 years old and have founded 2 companies. One with a co-founder and the other I gave near-founder equity after 2 years. Both relationships ended poorly.

They say finding a co-founder is akin to finding a spouse. In this country > 50% of marriages fail, what does that tell you?

I believe that for those adequately capitalized they should fund themselves and then hire for skill-set gaps. If you need the financial and technical resources of 2 or more then just be careful what you wish for and take off the rose colored glasses before entering the relationship.

Lastly I would offer that a multi-person team needs a clear and elected leader (CEO), there are far too many decisions in building a company to expect that a democracy can compete.

The above is offered as testament to real-life experience. There are obviously going to be exceptions that have worked out great...and I'm happy for you!
You can say that who is behind it is important because you do not need to add extra information besides their names, their names stand on their own.
If a commenter on HN says something about Google, wouldn't you take his/her comment more seriously if you know that he/she is a Google employee?
"Tech Bloggers" might cite this as yet another proof that Twitter is useless :-p
Google may spend about $500,000,000 / year on servers [educated guess, probably within a factor of 2]. More than the cost of 1000 engineers. It's worth it for them to put serious effort into efficiency.
Not really.

First, small is relative. If 'company' is 3 guys working on a project for a couple of years, maybe they can be bought out at a price that Twitter can afford.

Second, twitter is a big deal. That means it probably has the potential to be a big company. You may disagree and that is fine. But other people consider Twitter big.
Ask HN: Are Google driving directions worse now that they cut Tele-Atlas?
I've heard some people mutter about this, and I wonder if anyone can point out any searches that seem to be worse than before.
My word, a whole bunch of what I'm reading is exactly what I have/had intended to implement in my toy language, prism. Bit-specified integer (and real) types, increment/decrement operators as statements (prefix only!), hell, even using "var <X> ..." for variable declarations. The guiding principles are divergent though. And the bit about deducted type relations (http://golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html#inheritance) leaves me with mixed feelings.

I'm actually happy! It means my stupid little language has some validity :P

For those who wish to deride it: http://code.google.com/p/prism/
Provide facts. You can do the experiment in a few minutes, unless you are proven wrong. Remember that you have to wait for it to finish compressing before you tweet it out, so you have to come back and check a few times.
What sort of stuff do you want to know ?
Wrong!

This is a common misconception.

According to the DMCA, the host MUST wait at least 10 business days after receiving a counter-notification before they can put the content back online. This is ostensibly to give the complainant a chance to file a lawsuit.

In other words, I can knock almost anything off the net for two weeks with a single bogus message.

See for yourself in 202(g)(2) http://w2.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304...

It's true that the linked article didn't go into detail about counter-notification, but it is dead on and I think you're the one who doesn't fully understand the system :)
Create an inbound link count widget with PHP and Yahoo
Just as an observation, I spent the last month on vacation, taking videos, posting them on YouTube and letting YouTube make the tweet when it was done. The tweet went out, my FaceBook friends were notified, life was good.

It only took as long as uploading the video. Maybe typing in a name. If you wanted to make it take longer, you could spend another 30 seconds geo-tagging it.

I did this about every day or two. Is that enough experience?

Biggest problem I had was intermittent and dropped internet connections. But the new Vimeo desktop tool is great at handling that.
That's the weird part. Twitter is often held up as a darling of startups, but they don't act very startup-like. They move very very slowly and seem very risk averse.

In contrast, Facebook has over 10x the people, and 10x the user base, but does major UI shakeups regularly, tries out new features often, and isn't afraid to tweak or remove them if they don't work out. They also are doing interesting things technically (e.g, Cassandra, Scribe) and open sourcing them, some of which Twitter deploys themselves (e.g., well, Cassandra, Scribe).

Facebook definitely seems to fit the startup ideal much more than Twitter, yet Twitter is much smaller. What gives?
Heh, I've been using ESRI since 9.0. Well, to be honest it's required by the contract. I joined when it got bought out.