skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My friends and family say I "type in colors"
So you do this? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rpterEeRY8
You're right.

In the blog post http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/12/if_you_h... all he says about the matter is:

> And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing. (Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google.)
This guy is a jerk if his email trails are for real, but oh my gosh they are funny. I just closed them out so that I will not attract attention for laughing at work.
"Unfortunately the part that was commercially viable was not original, and the part that was original was not commercially viable."

That's awesome.
They're living in Silicon Valley now.
BBC BASIC had "RENUMBER" which would renumber your lines for you if things started getting tight!
I've started offering an online backup service with SFTP, rsync and more.
After I got really annoyed with current services for backups, their custom programs and limitations, I've started my own 'company' offering this sort of service.

I've designed a page myself over at http://www.royalbackup.com/ where I'm offering the service. I'm not selling small allocations since it would be a hassle to deal with too many customers for a few bucks.

More info is available on the site, and you can e-mail info@royalbackup.com for a free 100mB trial account for 7 days to take it for a spin.

Any opinions or suggestions are more than welcome.

More info: Public service has only been offered since yesterday, but I've had the service running for a while. Current uptime for bishop is >60 days, though it does get taken down from time to time for regular maintenance (security updates and such).
The real meaning of the word "hacker" has been lost forever (even in technical circles) so, no, I don't call myself an "hacker".

If I know the audience will understand it properly, I'll call myself a "geek". Otherwise, I'll just call myself a "computer systems administrator".
I usually just tell normal people that I work with computers or that I keep bad guys out of bank accounts. It's a word that one can use in self-reference, but only once you've been accepted by other hackers as being one.

It doesn't apply only to the word "hacker", though. Many labels don't mean much until you've really earned it and been validated by peers.
FYI: Tamiflu is not related to the H1N1 vaccines.
I'm going to use that when I see family for the Holidays--it's perfect.
In this case, he is clearly an entrepreneur writing about his venture. To think that his writing is anything approaching journalism is simply naive.
(full disclosure, I'm a founder at Cloudant)

Thanks for the kind words jot. The guys behind couch.io are smart and talented, and they really know their couchdb, but I don't think that hosting is their primary focus (they can correct me if I'm wrong).

The main technical difference between us and couch.io is the distribution (clustering) layer we've built. This allows a single couch database to be spread across multiple servers. It provides true horizontal scalability, not just multi-master replication. A database can expand elastically based on resource and concurrency needs. In our next release we'll be adding the ability to tune robustness via quorum constants (a la Amazon's dynamo) on a per-document basis. That should be coming soon.
It's easier to change chromium to use a search engine other than google than it is to change firefox.

I don't see any difference in handling of tracking cookies between chromium and firefox. Both offer very limited cookie handling really.
Hot Flashes Treatment
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Experimentation and Testing: A Primer | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik
Contractually, perhaps not, but both sides stated multiple times that they were working together, which would be enough for him to not want to slander his partner.
I don't think the term hacker really reflects the concept of Hacker News.

Sure, but what one word could? I'm not sure there's any word that you could replace it with that would work better.

The mandate of the site is "stuff that would be interesting to a hacker; i.e. an intelligent person who tinkers."

"Exceptional or interesting technology" is 100% on-topic. Please submit some more of it! This site isn't necessarily meant to be "entrepreneur news". One may ask why, therefore, there are so many business-centric articles; I think it's probably because there's a critical mass of YC people here (both funded entrepreneurs, potential applicants, and interested fans). The community works with a lot of different technologies, and a lot of different hobbies which wax and wane over time, but YC people are by definition very interested in business and they're interested right now.
Memprof: A Ruby level memory profiler
The third paragraph is boiler plate applied to all press releases. Granted, in this case it is longer than the press release.

The actual press release, the first two sentences, is almost certainly crafted to match the Nokia press quotes from their suit:

"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for," said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia's Vice President of legal and intellectual property, in a statement. "Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree [upon] appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation."

Assuming each side can make a few patents stick then they are probably headed for a cross licensing deal.
The smileys are distracting. I am not against them in principle, I think they can add a layer of emotion above that conveyed purely by the words (I think of it as an internet form of prosody); however, in this case they are over-used and distract from the overall quality of the post.
Multitasking Madness
'Reinvent' is mostly irrelevant in a patent infringement case.

If your invention includes all the elements of a claim in a granted patent, even if you came up with it in isolation, you're still infringing on that patent.

Saying you came up with it in parallel only protects you from treble damages from willful infringement.

And patent claims (while flawed works of man and deliberately twisted works of lawyers) are far more precise and narrow than 'unix clone' or 'mp3 player'.
Infringing a patent requires something far closer to the original than an iPod to a Nomad or iLife to Office.
#21 on the list: Paper.

"Probably the biggest casualty of the decade. With most communication now conducted online, magazines and newspapers crumbling, and e-readers increasing in popularity, paper is now on serious life support.

It's likely we'll look back and say that, after a 2,000 year reign, paper was killed by the noughties."

I absolutely disagree.

The way we use paper is shifting, yes: Paper's domain over long-term data storage is, obviously, shaken and falling, and that's a good thing — it's bulky, wasteful, and slow to search. So, too, are the news and the paper further in sunder, as scaled communication moves further into the digital domain.

But as a means and medium for thinking and creation, pen and paper are still orders of magnitude more effective than computerized tools except in very specific instances.

It's possible that I'm being a luddite here, and that the generation being born now will find using a computer for the initial stages in the creative process to be more natural than pen and paper. My suspicion, though, is that this simple medium persists because we've had a lot more time to refine it — far longer than the modern computer has existed.

--

As an aside, does anyone have a better term for this decade than "noughties?" I've heard it a few times and can't shake the feeling that it's awful.
It's like being called "cool" -- you cannot apply it to yourself. When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I program computers.
You've also got to wonder about the extra overhead of running deflate on everything that you send with the XHR version of the code, and why there couldn't be some sort of compression applied to the packets sent through WebSocket if it is a really big deal.

Also, obviously, the smaller your send/receive, the better the improvement that your websocket code would see over XHR.
I can imagine an application of websockets where you open multiple sockets and send a number of constantly updating data-streams from the server.

A lot of articles seem to imply that websockets is simply XHR 2.0, and I'm sure it will be used as such for a while.

But it seems to me that there are certain things that you can do with this that simply cannot be done efficiently with other technology.

(Imagine being able to smoothly track a mouse cursor or watch another person edit a document in real time, how would you do that with XHR?).
Hundreds of years? Awesome.
I don't know anything about my family more than 2 generations back.
This is equally true for Facebook, which isn't showing a declining trend.
Recruiters exists because of two problems:

1) Programmers can't find all the jobs that are available
2) Companies aren't generally able to evaluate programmers

But #1 is less and less true, and the recruitment industry doesn't do a good job of addressing #2.
True - Safari ranks a bit better here

IE	$4.13

Safari	$3.95

Firefox	$3.03

Chrome	$1.98
Well, that explains my disbelief. Thanks!
I have heard "the naughts" which I like better than "noughties".
Where Does My Money Go? UK Government Spending App
Ok, to call it the "physical/organization structure" was probably too literal.

What I'm getting at is what I've seen from waterfall, where responsibility is "handed-off" from department A to department B to department C and then it's "done".

Managers use the waterfall phases to schedule each department's workload, so each team is essentially working in isolation.

e.g.: "Requirements and Design" is one department, "Implementation" is another, "Verification" is yet another. (Design, Developers, QA)
That argument doesn't make sense to me - what if people adopt 3rd party Twitter clients faster than the rate of new signups? You would have a net loss in web traffic even if new-user growth was increasing.
The ChromiumOS64 Project
I'm planning to switch to using tarsnap because of the robust security involved. Do you encrypt the backup and how? Who controls the keys?
It's a mixture of both. The code is complicated, and written in an incomprehensible way (not documented).

He's great at producing code fast, but he's poor at architecture/design and that slows us all down in the long run. However, since we're looking to launch soon, technical debt is not a high-order concern compared to the success of the imminent launch.
The Slim Fast Diet
Depending on the person asking and whether or not I'm in a conversing mood, I'd use either 'programmer' or "I do computer stuff" while making that vague and silly typing-on-keyboard gesture with my hand.
It's just a press release. Marketing != reality.
In my experience there's a difference between European and American doctors. I guess it has something to do with how much American doctors get sued, or how much American patients expect to be "in charge", or something like that.

My wife and I are both from Europe originally, and going to the doctor in the US is sometimes really frustrating for us. We go with the idea that we're consulting an expert for their advice, but sometimes find them quite unwilling to make any kind of judgment call. Sometimes they just offer a bunch of options and say "pick one". When pressed for an opinion, they'll sometimes just hint in one direction or another. Compared to a British doctor, who will almost always confidently tell you exactly what he or she thinks should be done, it can be quite an unnerving experience.
i'm going too :) gonna be awesome
Totally agree.

The closest level you can call your self is

Software Engineering Ninja
There are a couple of conclusions one could draw from the data other than the headline; For example, maybe Bing is better at targeting content to users.

It's pretty much taken as gospel truth in SEO/SEM circles that Microsoft's search engine has better conversion rates, and if you're on a tight budget you're better off using MS ads than Google ads. It wasn't unheard-of that a site targeting MS would get 3x the traffic from google, but similar revenue from both. The reasons for this were never really delved into, although a less competition may have helped.

In terms of ad-click rate, I would also wonder if the presence or absence of ad-blocking software has a significant effect.
1. The tech details are great. However, maybe not on the first page. I understood them, but do people that use for example Mozy.com know what RAID6 is? A picture is worth 1k words.

2. What are your typical upload/download speeds? What could I expect in terms of latency?

3. I would suggest that people set up their own encryption before they upload the file(s). I don't think many people have considered that as an option.
This may be true, but Arrington does push himself as a journalist, not as someone writing about his own venture. He's gone so far as to say that he is ushering in the next era of journalism...
Yes but if you read carefully, instead of just "look"ing, you would see that 1) I am a student with a semester left and therefore don't need a job and 2) I am soliciting offers to work with someone on solving this problem i.e. creating a solution. I am NOT asking for hints on job searches or tips on how to create a "creative" resume. Sorry if this sounds condescending, but it is frustrating when people don't read the post and respond to some other issue altogether.
This post would have been much better if the name was faked. Exposing a person like this is simply rude - - and should not be seen as humor, but as an attack on another person.
Advertising isn't all click-oriented direct response, like mortgage lead generation. Branded display advertising is rarely clicked, but viewing it has a measurable effect on user behavior later.

Fred Wilson's got a decent summary of a comScore study on exactly this:

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/12/display-adverti.html

A little searching will dig up additional studies. While many of these are somewhat self-serving, I've also seen some more academic work with similar results.

I don't know whether the people blocking ads would've displayed atypical post-viewing behavior - it's an interesting question. We're rarely conscious of the influence of display advertising on our decisions, so I suspect even people who actively resist clicking ads have value to a brand marketer.

In any case, it's not the advertisers that worry about ad blocking, it's the publishers. As long as the display advertising is sold on a CPM basis (which is common on larger, higher-quality sites), anything that blocks a request to an adserver reduces their revenue, whether you would've clicked the ad or not.
How Vevo Makes Google More Like Coca-Cola - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org
fb's pageviews have flattened as well, according to compete.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com/
Scientist discovers new way to repair damaged nerves
(un)features
Not really hidden, it's very common (and extremely useful - Fitts's law FTW) user interface convention.

I already became conditioned - I keep middle-clicking to close tabs automatically in every application, feeling something is broken when it doesn't work.

Though Mac people don't usually have more than 1 button, so I kind of understand obsession about workarounds :).
About My Beautiful Candy Button
In which video does he explain how to tell the difference between a brilliant startup founder and a crazy person?
>> "or watch another person edit a document in real time, how would you do that with XHR?"

Works fine on Etherpad.

Having said that, I agree, the lag with WebSocket is likely to be a less. Hopefully WebSocket will get the ability to do deflate/gzip soon as well. That would make it a very clear winner.
The title Occam's Razor made me read this article; I was disappointed to find out it was just the name of his blog. I was hoping the article covered more about the simplest and easiest perform solution being the best.

I am going to add it to my RSS feeds and see if any more good testing tidbits come my way.

Thank you.
the stuff about Asus would indicate to me that either Arrington is an even bigger idiot than he appears to be or is trying to bluff his way through this. If Asus actually did have legal action in the pipeline Arrington would be an idiot to talk about it. Talking about his own suit on his own website is fine, talking about other, unpublicized suits?
Proof from IEEE that lottery can be technically rigged [video]
Previously on reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/acvd0/
Google Earth To Help Fight Deforestation
Point wasn't that famous programmer don't have an easy getting hired. Their fame, by itself, would allow this whatever else is happening.

My point is that a theory that bases itself of "the qualities of great programmers" when you mean famous "rock star" programmers, is fundamentally flawed. I think the ideas of the great programmers, at least their great ideas, support this.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo...
#6 Maps

Sorry, no. There may be alternatives to maps now, but maps will still be around for quite some time. There isn't cell service everywhere, and a GPS is not the end-all-be-all of navigation. I can take a map and a compass out into the boondocks through rivers and rain and ice and mud and brush and still find my way (which in some circumstances can be a life or death thing). Electronics are a good complement to maps, but they are not a 100% replacement yet.

Also, I'm surprised they missed CRTs. That's a pretty big change that's affected huge numbers of people.
How to organise a Children's Party [video]
Apple, Google Vie for Start-Ups
more zsh and console tips and tricks are also available on identi.ca (@grml) and twitter (@grmlproject)
It is not a good reason for not suing bad partner. The kind of appealing to pity is irresponsible. Even the product is likely to fail, you have responsibility to expose that your partner is not trustful in doing business. And to learn that, will do benefits to all others if anyone plans to do business with the bad partner in the future.
Wow, a fully Ajax front page (http://cloudant.com). Looks nice but a bit overkill?
Many computer geeks may not be confused by this, but many normal people will probably wonder why their "802.11 a/b/g/n" wifi card doesn't work with their "802.11 a/b/g/n" router.
You mention on your site that the servers are in "an N+1 redundant environment". Is it your own data center or is that outsourced?

Also, I would second jgrahamc's question re: encrypted backups.
Maybe that should be :s/revolutionized/popularized

Tabbed browsing wouldn't be a popular if it was only in Opera.
The Elephant is Not its Trunk: Stop fooling yourself about marketing
> SQL should be that standard API.

Unlikely. How will SQL deal with low-level semantics that do not provide transactions in the way SQL-users understand them but requires the user to understand the concepts of the CAP principle? How well does SQL deal with conflicting data being returned from retrieval operation? If SQL is being used as nothing more than a small set of verbs (a la memcache) then why bother?

I certainly hope that document-store developers do not take the lazy route and prematurely converge on a standard like SQL. Fortunately it seems that few of them are particularly interested in this route and the more likely path seems to be providing multiple interfaces with RESTful HTTP, memcache, and a programmable/functional interface using JavaScript and/or the language the DB is coded in (Erlang and Java primarily.) Other possible candidates here are things like LINQ, Hive's QL, and Pig.
bokep
Wanna share what game? You might get another player ;)
> There's absolutely nothing wrong with stealing features from a competitor, that's how progress is made.

Not pointing any fingers (cough Microsoft cough Apple cough) but the problem that most people have with 'copying features' is when the copier tries to claim that it was their 'innovation' or that they've got some claim to fame because they 'copied it better.'
Agreed. Anytime I hear people go on about how paper is obsolete, I think about how useful whiteboards are for brainstorming. I've never heard people claim whiteboards are obsolete, and paper often gets used for the same things. Sometimes new inventions give you more options, rather than just replacing something else.

See also: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IsAnythingBetterThanPaper
Of Lobsters and Space Telescopes
Have you ever used a Cintiq?
If I recall Damien Katz recently added a "many writers" patch.
No, I don't own the datacenter, as I probably wouldn't bother with backup services if I had millions to throw on a datacenter, and instead I'd be selling rack space and bandwidth ;).

Regarding the encryption: the files stored are not encrypted, it is your task to encrypt them, with whatever method you choose, as I believe this removes some of the limitations I might impose if I were to forcefully encrypt everything, though I understand this can make it harder for newer users that are inexperienced.
That won't happen. I imagine TC posts have hard-coded protection against being dead'ed too.
Hotel Indonesia
Re #1: Thanks very much for the link!

Re #2: Mine never goes away once the bug occurs, no matter what I do or click. If I have TB open for a month, the mail icon will be there for a month, even after deleting and recreating my account! This bug occurs with every computer I own. Also, the "Inbox" stays in bold (as if there were new messages) permanently until restart. It's been that way for years, and doesn't seem it will ever be fixed.
Email accounts you have to pay for? I don't remember ever paying for an email account, per se. They show a picture of an American Online graphic; I never used American Online, but weren't you paying for the whole service, not just email? I've had multiple email accounts that were tied to ISPs, but felt I was more paying for the overall internet service.

CDs? Maybe to a large degree, but one high-end jazz group I know of just released a new album strictly on CD, because they don't feel that digital distribution options offer enough sound quality.

Getting film developed? Definitely fading, but as I look at photographs that I've taken over the past few years, I like the overall appearance of the photos taken on Fuji NPH-400 film over those taken with a $3000 digital SLR camera.
It looks like Apple's patent's are primarily UI/software related, which in the worst case are relatively easy to workaround.

Nokia's patent's on the other hand are related to wireless technology which are not easily workaround-able, so IMO if this goes towards settlement Nokia has a much stronger hand.
> I doubt anyone is going to magically be able to make Firefox faster if Mozilla's full-time staff is unable to

Maybe, maybe not. It depends where their priorities are. Firefox still has memory leaks that need to be plugged, etc. If Mozilla staff is divided between fixing memory leaks and adding features, then a group solely focused on memory leaks might have a better chance.
From what I experienced of ODM in China, I'd guess that Pegatron not only provides the starting point but also do all the designs of the specific motherboard, the plastic outfit, pretty much all the hardware. The guess is reasonable because from what FG claims, they put much resources on the OS development, thus, for a small startup, it is impossible for them to develop the motherboard and the whole industry design (even they have the ability to hand build a prototype).