In 11.04 the Gnome fall back just about worked. In 11.10 it does not. As for Unity I can't tell whether it's working as intended or is buggy.

Every progressive update from 10.04 has gotten increasingly slow to boot and respond.

As we speak I'm preparing to install Mint, with a fall back to Ubuntu 10.10.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3222045

Points: 15

# Comments: 0

1. Reduced queue contention: queues are typically implemented with a list, e.g. linked list, this introduces contention (queues spend a lot of time empty or very full) for the head and tail of the queue which are often the same dummy node. The ring buffer removes this contention.

2. Machine Sympathy vis a vis cache striding and ensuring concurrent threads are not invalidating each others level 1/2 cache.

3. Pre-allocation of queue data structures to ensure GC is not a factor.

Personally I think the LMAX team have done well in advancing the state of the art in what is often a key component in event driven, high throughput low latency systems such as those used in banks for trading, exchanges and market data.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3017588

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

They have an API which I used to mine the relationships between users (who follows who) and so by using a PageRank style algorithm (UserRank) I scored each user in terms of how influential they are. I then used this to chart the 100 hottest tracks on soundcloud each month (based on an aggregate score of who created, favourited and commented on a track).

You can play each of the tracks directly from the page, either sequentially or randomly, so it's like a single page playlist of the best of that month (a little like an old style independent record shop, think the Rough Trade wall in London).

As UserRank is a function of influence and not pure 'numbers' it means that unlike a traditional chart top ranking tracks do not necessarily need a large number of people favouriting/commenting on them.

Note - doesn't play tracks on iPad as it requires flash.

www.soundcloudwall.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965703

Points: 6

# Comments: 3

A lengthy process (about 3 months) to get signed up with Sage Pay only to be declined the merchant account (yet to give us a reason although they said they would tell us, that was 2 months ago).

We ended up settling on PayPal just to get started, not ideal for taking recurring payments, but quick, easy and better than nothing.

In addition, unlike normal Google search results the history search seems to weight every word on the page equally, in recawl there is an attempt to prioritise body content whilst ignoring repeating menus & footers, and it is built on top of Lucene's excellent scoring function.

In addition for any gives search terms it learns to prefer the search results you click on, so that over time if you constantly search your history for the same or similar search terms then historical results you have already clicked on bubble up to the top.

This makes it quite a useful tool for recalling often used pages.

It also offers keywords related to your search to further help narrow down your query.

Finally, you can block certain sites that you know are not of interest from appearing in search results, again cutting down on noise.

Finally, being able to remotely search your history can come in really handy.

Website: http://www.recawl.com

Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pmoicpmjnblomdapfi...

Why is this useful? Imagine you know that last week you read a news article by author "X" but you can't remember where, or how you got to it; by searching your recawl history for "X" you can easily find the page you were looking for.

http://www.recawl.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2950080

Points: 6

# Comments: 3