skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I understand -- I think we are just here for very different reasons...

True, but there's an obvious intersection of the things we are interested in. We just have to figure out how to play friendly concerning the other things in our interest sets.

> Taking a "tolerant" approach without a big redesign to allow some kind of filtering means that the result will be simple majority rule, leading to a lot of very general interest posts about politics, current events, business, and technology.

Well, the good news is that HN has posting guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Despite what certain members of the HN community would have you think, these aren't "rules", but they do serve a useful function in focusing the site on a core set of topic areas. I don't think there is much danger of HN becoming reddit in that sense. HN effectively acts like 2 or 3 narrowly focused subreddits on reddit.com.

> Is it ethical, then, for me to flag articles which I think are not worthwhile posts? I'm not sure. Your comments make me reflect on whether that's an OK thing to do or not. I do wish there were a downvote button on posts, that means "I don't think this should be highly rated, but I don't think it should be killed either." I would prefer to use that.

Well, to my understanding, posts that are completely out of guidelines should be flagged. If somebody submits a post with a link to his blog about his Camaro, it's probably okay to flag it ;) A post to something like http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ should probably just not be upvoted if you don't care for it.

I could even see a downvote for something like the referenced post to the programming language perception matrix. But like I said, it could be an interesting driver of discussion.

> Now, it would be awfully judgmental to say that's a bad thing for a website; after all, it's providing a whole lot of people with the sort of thing they want to read. But there are so many websites that provide that kind of discussion already that I wonder if a "rarefied" niche site isn't a more valuable place in the greater ecosystem of the Internet.

Well, I think the reason most people come here is for the rather constrained topic set and the emphasis on interesting discussion (not to mention being populated with a very interesting mix of people). But it would also become very uninteresting in the general sense if it become a forum for academic discussions of programming esoterica.

> I voted your comment up because it made me think hard about the consequences of my actions.

That's really what all my pining away is on this thread, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I'm a bit shocked and amazed to see a population of people here that are unwilling to do the same. I understand they are peeved at being called out for bad etiquette, but I find the discourse on this site amazing when the mechanisms for the discourse are working properly.
The SWYM programming language (has an "etc" keyword)
5-Year-Old Boy Summoned For Jury Duty (2006)
LOL you want to build application on .NET, n00b.
Article is incorrect. Wikipedia and associated sites costs around 5.6 million per year, not 10 million (Source: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report)
Thanks! I've updated the article now :)
I find it funny that Apple recently just provided an easy way to share music: you see the other computer's music library in iTunes and can just drag and drop songs from there.
Very admirable. Let's hope these funds get used better than Jeff's last donation to an open source project.
Design Nomad — 6 Months, 6 Countries, 6 Agencies/Studios/Bureaus
The Ferality Show: Why That Was the Decade With Decentralized Authority
OK! OK! Hold it!
I just want to say something.
You know, for every dollar a man makes
a woman makes 63 cents.
Now, fifty years ago that was 62 cents.
So, with that kind of luck, it'll be the year 3,888
before we make a buck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3GLdtcmMw
Ask HN: Please review my app: "Achieve Your Goals - Choice by Choice"
Some promo codes to get started:

- TFRYWHKM339R
- R6YP6HFT7RXF
- 9MT369TYELJH

I'll post some more promo codes here if this makes it to the front page. (Not just a shameless karma whoring exercise! Promo codes are limited, and I don't want to waste them if this thread doesn't get much attention).

If you use a promo code, please leave a comment to let me know, so I can update this post. Thanks!
Racer 2D 1.1 su Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic
And yet we still can't share files. I'm serous, we can't. Not out of the box, not on any of the common OSes.

Uhm, what? Does one click on "file sharing" in the "Sharing" settings of OS X's control panel count as "not out of the box"?
Clojure 1.1 Release
There are good ways to prevent getting rooted, as you say, but I know exactly what you mean. The first time I set up a virtual server, someone began a dedicated brute-force, dictionary attack against ssh within 30 minutes. The attack wasn't particularly aimed at me, of course, since I had an empty virtual machine on an ip number that I had been given only a half hour earlier. Still, it's a bizarre thing to watch the logs and see some machine hammering at your door (even if you believe the door to be very solid). The attack went on for over 12 hours, for whatever that's worth. It felt damn scary the first time - even though I knew that I had absolutely nothing of consequence in the server yet (brand-spanking new) and that I could wipe the whole setup and start fresh with nearly zero effort. Nevertheless, it was creepy. It's sort of like being in a horror movie: you simply watch and listen as the monster pounds on the door. (Of course, you have a lot more options than the twits in the movies, and your monster is usually either (1) a pimply-faced kid in suburbia or (2) a cyber-criminal who doesn't much care where he gets in and happily moves onto the next ip in short order. But the initial feeling was like that.)

Like most of the other posters, I ended up taking the following steps to cut down on the problem: (1) disable root login at all, (2) switch sshd from port 22 to another, random port for listening (that alone cut the attacks way, way down), (3) disable all password based logins; only key-based logins work now, (4) limit the users who could login remotely at all to a very small group (you can create a group just for this purpose, enroll two or three admins and edit your sshd_config file to allow only members of that group to login at all), (5) use rate-limiting in iptables to freeze out any attacking ip after two or three failed attempts in a minute.

A link with lots of detailed methods to handle brute force attacks and their pros and cons, in case anybody wants it: http://la-samhna.de/library/brutessh.html
There's a pretty interesting analysis of China's current investment boom:
http://www.pivotcapital.com/reports/Chinas_Investment_Boom_t...

It argues that China's investment boom is not going to continue and that private consumption cannot possibly fill the void. They think the bubble is going to burst in 2010/2011 and they have pretty convincing numbers. I'd love to hear why they are wrong.
Cute idea, but

•Dali has been quoted to say, "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." Steve Jobs is notorious for his perfectionism.

are opposites, not a mark of similarity.

And I'm surprised the phrase "reality distortion field" didn't come up.
In a conversation with real people, I can usually go back to somebody who disagrees with me and we can have that discussion (or they can do likewise with me). In other words, they must think about the nature of their disagreement more before openly disagreeing.

In addition, it's good manners. A person who is just contradictory to everything you say, and responds to all of your statements with a "no, you are wrong" over and over again with no further elaboration is usually considered an asshole and doesn't get invited to parties. People want to get invited to parties, so they try not to be rude in this way in real life except towards people they have utter contempt for and whose parties they don't want to go to anyway.

The anonymity of a virtual space however, opens up the doors to people to be out and out rude to one another. A downvote sans comment is even more anonymous because the recipient can't even see who their detractor was (and in addition, by the site guidelines can't even ask for clarification of the downvotes, which is silly).

However, HN guidelines also proscribe:

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

I think this is reasonable, my contention is that a downvote sans comment is the same as the hypothetical person who just responds "no, you are wrong" over and over again with no further commentary.
While I don't know about Norway, nor the rationale, such paternity is an option in Sweden.
I always liked the fact that in Knuth's MMIX, the antipodal opcode to SYNC is SWYM.
What did Bourbaki do?
Ask HN: Form generator / parser from pdf or image
I've just filled in on paper a printed passport application, and it got me wondering: isn't there anywhere a piece of software that would be able to parse a pdf or image, guess where somebody would input text and generate a form (maybe an web form)? A bit of google found a number of tools, but they're simply write text on a background, none seem to be able even to center cursor in the text box.

If I have enough time I'm tempted to play a bit with this even though it's not really my domain, but I'd like to hear if anybody has seen something like this before.
fwiw, I didn't have a contract - I could have left at any time. I stayed because I really enjoyed working at Rackspace, which is a great company. Leaving was a very difficult decision but I felt the team and product were more than able to carry on without me.
As usual, missing is from this is any analysis about causes of terrorism, which seems to have gone missing in most/all(?) discussions about terrorism these days. They are only talking about how to deal with the symptoms not the causes. That will never solve the situation, only dampen some of the symptoms, at best.
This is not a bad idea. Force a person to spend some karma to take somebody else's karma away. It's similar to how and upvoting commenting seems to help build karma here.

And meta-comment, really? Your post was downvoted? Way to discourage ideas and effort....sigh
USB was ridiculously slow at the time, mind you.
I wonder if the TSA airport security is all just misdirection.

It's so clearly theater, and particularly the most recent set of regulations being so obviously ineffectual and just stupid, that it can't be serious. At the same time, there are so many better targets that remain unprotected: energy and communication transmission hubs, bridges and tunnels, malls and arenas, etc.

Can it be that Homeland Security is fully aware that what they're doing to air travel is stupid, but it's all designed to keep attention tuned there? Like a magician that's directing attention away from the real trick, DHS wants to keep the terrorists from thinking about the "better" targets. They keep all of the debate focused on air travel, so alternate ideas aren't discussed and incubated.

I'm start to believe that DHS has chosen air travel as cannon fodder, intentionally concentrating terrorist attention there, in order to keep everything else safe. It's kind of like the wildebeests at the watering hole. As long as the lion is eating the one weak animal (air travel) the rest of the herd (American infrastructure and industry) is safe.
I have developed games professionally for both PlayStation and Xbox, but haven't heard of these engines supplied by Sony/Microsoft you are talking about. Are you sure they exist?

By the way, the other engines you mentioned are all geared towards first-person shooters.
If I am in a room on a balcony and there is a key on a bridge (i.e. I cannot get the key without using matter magnet), then I am stuck. I cannot teleport and cannot get the key (to "clean the room") without matter magnets.
Actually, I think it's just déjà vu plus the TSA never learns: The date on this is December 31!
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
Since everybody is talking about predictions for 2010, I thought I would bump it up a notch. Anybody care to make some predictions about what we'll see in the coming decade (2010-2019)?

I'll try a couple.

- Major changes will happen in Iran, one way or the other. The current trajectory they are on does not seem sustainable for a decade.

- Ubiquitous computing will finally arrive, with smart cards/RFID on our bodies seamlessly interacting with computers in our environment. As you walk up to your refrigerator, for instance, you're logged in and presented with a customized display. Same goes for the car or the entertainment surface at the Dentist's.

- Flat panel displays will not drop to rock-bottom. Instead, a new generation of 2160 and 3240p 3-D panels will appear for consumer setting. Rock-bottom 10-20 inch panels will stabilize in the 50-100 range and stay there. Sorry, no panel/OLED wallpaper, at least not cheaply in the coming decade.

You guys have any?
The article was suggesting ranting was very pleasant to read- and it is very helpful when correct. The point he made about the game review was that he rants, and he is 100% correct.

"No better way to get your point across than to say it and call the person a dumb shit at the same time!" (Although you look ridiculous if you are incorrect, +irony of being the dumb shit)
Radical changes in books and magazines could transform the world we live in
Public Safety Announcements
Easy file sharing effectively was killed by network security back in the 1990s. In times of Windows 95 it wasn't too hard to share, if you forget about endless bugs, glitches and inadequacy in detecting computers around you in early versions of Windows. Since Microsoft realized security their networking has become even less adequate and less usable.

The best solution I came up with for my family was, so far, Skype. The fact that Skype is closed source and I otherwise wouldn't use it is regrettable, but it gets sharing right. In fact, better than anything else that I know.

Every time a family member wants to share something with me - a link or a file - my answer is short: open Skype, click on my name, grab the file and drop it "onto me". Most importantly, very little prior setup is needed: actually downloading Skype and opening an account, which novice users and kids who can't write usually need assistance in anyway. Once set up, Skype communication works even if you move to a different location. Actually any point in the world.

All in all, this is genius and simple in such a degree that a 3-4 year old child, if not younger, can understand and do easily.

Thankfully, Skype establishes direct connections between computers, although honestly I don't know how exactly this works behind the same NAT/firewall device, which is usually your WiFi router.

Back to Apple and Paul Buccheit, of course Paul gets the problem right as usual, I just wonder if Steve Jobs and his team think the same way. Something suggests Apple should be thinking in the same direction and so my expectations from iWhateverIsNext are high.

Edit: I just realized that there's actually one slight paradigm shift that makes sharing easier with Skype: that's a shift from sharing between computers to sharing between people. You have a person's name possibly (and better) with his/her picture. This works so much better than the archaic "computer name", "workgroup" or whatever else. What "workgroup" in my own house?
Digital piracy hits the e-book industry
> Roughly agree, except there are official guidelines from the HN HQ so it isn't completely subjective.

This is true, but even within the guidelines, there is considerable room for topics. Some people seem to want to constrain that further to some smaller set of topics they are personally interested in by using the downvote.

> Maybe, but even if so I don't see it being a problem. HN isn't turning into an echo chamber because of it, HN has always been a self selected echo chamber, as are all self selected groups of people who choose to belong to a group focused on some area(s) of interest.

Self-selected, narrowly focused? Sure. But an echo chamber is not what we want, they are by definition, undesirable.

> Don't understand you.

I wasn't clear I guess. My point being is that posts that are off-topic and generally disagreeable are not the ones being downvoted because by and large we tend not to have those too much on HN. The ones that are being downvoted are the ones that are, on topic, but have some other characteristic that the downvote patrol doesn't want to see, such as humor or a dissenting or contradictory voice.
Engineers harness cell phone technology for use in medical imaging (2008)
The problem with the pure service model is that only RedHat and a few other companies have been successful at it. The argument “I created it, so I can service it best” doesn’t hold anymore- too many people have technical expertise in open source software. So unless your service is the cheapest and the best, it’ll be killed off by other service providers.

I've seen this claim quite a few times ("the service model only works for Red Hat") - is it actually true though?

Sure, there aren't that many billion dollar companies built around services, but I've seen dozens of smaller lifestyle businesses built around consulting against open source projects.

Off the top of my head...

Hwaci for SQLite: http://www.sqlite.org/support.html

Dozens of companies for PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support

Revolution Systems for Django: http://www.revsys.com/services/django/

Spring Source for Spring: http://www.springsource.com/

Lucid Imagination for Solr/Lucene: http://www.lucidimagination.com/

Lemur Consulting for Xapian: http://www.lemurconsulting.com/

Then there's the fact that a bunch of the current NoSQL efforts (MongoDB for example) are getting funding, which suggests investors still believe you can build a business around open source support.
CellPhoneUltrasound Demo
Happy New Year 2010 Photos, Happy New Year 2010 Wallpapers
Now, it’s time to welcome New Year 2010 and goodbye the old year. New Year starts on January 1, this is a biggest celebration across all countries of the world. It is expected to be an eventful year with achievements and success in every field. Here you can get extraordinary wallpapers of New Year 2010 and Happy New Year 2010 Photos.
Can I weigh in with "myths about the myths"? Cause this article is loaded with them.

Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people -- Americans are at far greater risk of being killed in accidents or by viruses than by acts of terrorism

Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people today because small numbers of people acting violently have the ability to sway a populace to do irrational things. That's why it's an existential threat, not because you count up dead people one way or another (damn, I get tired of this old chestnut)

* When it comes to preventing terrorism, the only real defense is a good offense. -- But offense has its limits...an emphasis on offense has often come at the expense of investing in effective defensive measures, such as maintaining quality watch lists,"

The problem here is that the magical amulet that keeps bears away is really beyond questioning. Or in other words we don't know what didn't happen because we took certain actions. Obviously strategies that are both totally offense or totally defense are going to miss attributes from the opposite tact. But nobody has suggest or is implementing strategies that are one way or the other. Best you can say is that there is an opinion call involved here, one way or the other, and that there's probably not a right and wrong in the traditional sense.

I could go on, but the article is just bad. Bad, bad. I got to this point and dang if he isn't digging out Bush as a strawman to kick around some.

Terrorism is a complicated subject. In a lot of ways it's just rough-and-tumble politics taken to the logical next stage -- blowing up kids in a bus to get politicians to do what you want. Articles that have the words "myth" and "terrorism" are almost guaranteed to contain exaggerations and oversimplifications.
The Hindu : News / International : Russia to push asteroid away
Oh god...

No, it's Dvorak... but I don't know my left hand from my right.

Actually, it's a common joke around these parts that people originally from Jerusalem can't tell the difference between right & left. Taxis there are known for turning the opposite direction of what you ask for given just how bad it is.
> No, I'd feel the need to politely excuse myself from that person's company. I have better things to do than blather on to bobble-heads.

I'm guessing that you participate in remarkably few conversations then, since that just about characterizes every conversation I've ever had.

> You can ask why you're downvoted. I've seen that asked and answered many times.

No you can't, it's even mentioned in the guidelines. You'll also notice that requests like that are usually immediately downvoted, again without comment (or with a link to guidelines). Even requests on somebody else's behalf are treated like raw sewage.

Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> I can only assume you've never actually had a real beating or helped tend to the injuries of someone who's actually experienced a beating. Otherwise, I can't imagine why you would use such melodramatic terms to describe the mere act of strangers not following your personal protocols if they dislike one of your comments.

The melodrama does not end with me apparently ;)

What I mean by that image is that beatings are usually provided with little commentary, and if commentary is provided, it's usually of the epithet variety. I'm equating the downmod not so much to the beating I suppose but to the abject lack of reasoning as to "why the beating?". Beatings are usually rather senseless and provided without much reasoning.

A comment that's immediately downvoted several times without comment is certainly a comment that's being ganged up on. And I can tell you that when a gang of people has set themselves on somebody, there's usually not a whole lot of interesting conversation during the altercation.
Googles turnover exeeds Microsofts by 2015, if not earlier.

As for the displays the 30" screens already do 2560x1600, they're still a good bit of money but they'll be affordable within 2 to 3 years (and some people already think they're affordable).

The decade that parallel processing became commonplace

the end of 32 bit computing.

Some unknown manufacturer will make a tablet-phone-musicplayer hybrid and score.
Chrome OS might be a better example of a project created to commodify. No-one sells a browser but Microsoft still makes a lot of money selling desktop OS's. Unlike Android they don't seem to have any market goals for themselves.

Ironically Chrome OS is Ubuntu (and Chrome is based on Webkit) so they are also examples where commodification has already happened.
That's a fair question. I think upvoting tends to provide positive feedback and encourages discussion. Downvoting (particularly the uncommented variety) tends to provide negative feedback and discourage discussion.

The point of HN is to encourage discussion ergo, upvoting is, in general, in line with the point of the site.

I agree that upvoting can also create an echo chamber, but since it doesn't outright suppress contradictory voices, the effect is much less pronounced.
Opera (Re-)Introducing &lt;video&gt;
Ah, such a nerd. Years aren't zero indexed. Technically next year is the start of a new decade. ;-)