skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the present limitation has more to do with the fact that karma is dolled out anonymously, which means there's no way to back up the legitimacy of your earnings from the status of your upvoters. It doesn't matter if karma is infinite, because there are a finite number of socially approved participants. This is why national currencies have value in the first place: because valuable organizations/individuals use them to transfer wealth. Money is just a communications medium, after all. One stuck in a pre-web mentality. Existing web currency manipulation systems are as primitive as a YouTube that only played TV in your web browser.

If you make karma transferable and allow negative values (thus creating debt and preventing runaway inflation), you could offer a genuine relativistic currency, in that individuals could back up the worth of their unit independently, without relying on trust in someone else (e.g. the state apparatus).
SMP-at-the-expense-of-UP

This is an interesting topic, actually. When the process of improving FreeBSD SMP got underway seven years ago, the initial work did hurt UP performance by 10-20% -- enough that in FreeBSD 5.x and FreeBSD 6.x, there are two kernels shipped with the release: the GENERIC (single-processor) kernel and the SMP kernel. In FreeBSD 7.x, however, we're back to only shipping a single kernel -- one with SMP enabled -- because the performance penalty on UP systems for having SMP enabled is practically nil. FreeBSD SMP development started out needing a lot of faith to say "we know that we're making things slower every day, but it's going to pay off in the end" -- and while it turns out that the team which decided on a fine-grained sleeps-and-spins locking structure were correct, I can't fault Matt for not having as much faith.

ports is waved around as a solution rather than the very serious problem that it really is

The FreeBSD ports system works very well -- as long as you don't mind compiling everything from the source code. Binary packages... yeah, there are issues there.
and CoS just got rickrolled

http://www.anonymous-exposed.org/
Anonymous:  This is why we fight
very thoughtful explanation. tht's exactly is my point - i think it's great start as a platform, which can be leveraged to build killer apps around it. it's true that it's not easy for someone to understand it's benefits on the first look, but with proper explanation of its applications, they might understand its value.
It seems to be a Page Rank for social networks.
all are great points. this definitely defends the twitter philosophy in more convincing way.
Don't forget choosing your own top bar color. And getting your name highlighted in orange.
Is Meebo Worth Half a Slide?
Comparison of different SQL implementations
Details of one of the incidents:

Soldier was in the Air Force, in northern Iraq near the Iranian border. They had a warrant to raid a house looking for a weapons cache. They did the raid with some guys from Blackwater. When they got inside, there was a guy laying on the couch watching TV. Normally, anyone inside a house during a raid would be put in flexcuffs. A guy from Blackwater just shot him, while he was laying on the couch.
What do you think of this idea?
Who would you think would want it? It's kinda tainted goods, no?

On the other hand, if you can convince PG you sold it to someone else, he might restore your rights...
I've often thought about applying a similar model to the book publishing industry.

Technologically, this is fairly simple. The hard part is getting people to use it.
Or pair it with twitxr.com and you can build a nice location enabled photo moblog that broadcast it all together to all other social networks you may use
Apple and Microsoft’s Flash dance
"while it turns out that the team which decided on a fine-grained sleeps-and-spins locking structure were correct, I can't fault Matt for not having as much faith"

I agree, and I'd find it very hard to have anything but the utmost respect for him. His C compiler for the Amiga, DICE, was where I began to learn about real software development and the UNIX tool chain, so he holds a place nearly comparable to K&R in my history as a hacker.

It's just unfortunate that some personality conflicts have led to a great developer bitterly spinning his wheels for several years on something that is clearly going the wrong way. (Then again, I can't say that of OpenBSD, as it's spawned a lot of great stuff, though it may have looked like the same kind of situation a few years into the project. NetBSD, I'm a little iffy on....)

"The FreeBSD ports system works very well"

Ah, you have to say that, or you'll wake up with a horse head in your bed. It's the official party line. ;-)

Actually, to be more clear about my intent, the ports system does work very well for the problem that it solves.

The problem is that it's solving the wrong problem, and no one will admit it because it looks so pretty solving the problem that it does solve very well. Because ports exists, and works really well for its problem domain, it has prevented any real solutions from being put into place for package management and has also caused a lot of weird and incompatible tools to spring up to deal with various meta-problems like managing software on many machines (for example). Meanwhile, over in Linux-land, not just one, but two, really good package management systems (yum+rpm and apt-get+dpkg) have sprung up and made it possible for many people to produce nicely bundled software (and provide for the dependencies in an automated fashion) for Linux...while distributing software for FreeBSD is a choice of many poor options, mostly ending up with a tarball and a shell script.

Anyway, I think freebsd-update is a great improvement, and the right direction. (I'm really not just blowing smoke...it makes me feel a lot better about our customers using FreeBSD. Now, if only you could do something about the silly secondary groups limit of 16, and fix the default username length, I'd have nothing left to complain about...well, except for the other package management issues.)
I actually like it a lot.

I had a little to do with movies (a friend of mine was nominated for an Oscar two years ago and we had some discussions about starting a company together in the film biz) and my (limited) experience would suggest that you would run into the following problems:

- They are a dead conservative bunch. It is hard to convince them to try something new.

- There's a lot of politics and who-knows-who that you would have to overcome

- Instead of having just a few people read through a script maybe it should be free for all to read through and rate. That way you will have a good selling point to Hollywood - "hey - 500.000 people read this script and rated it, they will all go see the movie when it comes out. And bring their friends and family!"

- Marketing will be the hard part. You actually have to get people to use the damn thing...

I think that you income model should probably be to take a cut of the selling price for a script. They aint cheap you know...

Just some thoughts...
I don't get it. Sure, the site is cool and all, but what are they doing to get such ridiculous valuations?
Looks like it's about time for me to consider making an upgrade from 4.11.
The username itself is pretty generic. I figure some people would love to have the huge karma number, with or without voting rights.

I'd start the auction at $0.01, I'm quite confident it would get some bids, especially with the proceeds going to charity.
Thanks! I really appreciate it. :)
Its buggy. Too aggressive timeout perhaps?
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bsnl.co.in
I'm opposed to editorializing in headlines unless said editorializing is sufficiently funny and/or tragic, preferably both.
3) Use of human devices that are biped specific

Ladders, automobiles and heavy machinery, household equipment, etc. all rule out quadrupeds.

While it would be possible to custom-build all of this stuff to be usable by a quadruped, it means you then have to have two of everything if you plan to cohabitate with a robot assistant. From the perspective of assistance robots, it's not going to be possible to accomplish everything without bipedal bots.

I think wheeled bots (like Trevor's Monty) will also be a great option--probably a tenth the cost of a walking mechanism, an order of magnitude more speed and endurance, etc. But they'll still be unsuitable for many assistance robot tasks. Stairs, for example. And unlike the Daleks, leveling the building will not suffice as a solution to the problem of climbing stairs.
You'll surely admit though, that this won't work for everyone. It's fair to say that facebook solved online dating for some people, but that raises more questions than it answers.
Or he might simply nuke the account entirely to put the kibosh on that kind of dealing...
Let me clarify what I mean.

If we apply for a job, this means we are in competition. Competition may have two outcomes: either we win the competition or we lose. If we lose, we have to be fair and respect that someone else has done better (whatever this means). As the loser (or second winner ;o) you may think about how to improve, but what does killing mean in this context? If someone has the notion to kill he is not smart enough to win a competition and he knows it. Who wants to identify with this?

In his post Seth Godin misses some points imho. In most jobs, and especially in most developer jobs, work means being added to a team. Team - this has to do with fairness again. Now, who wants a self proclaimed superstar in his team? What you need is a smart contributor who does not have to be the best and most shining everytime.

If you talked yourself into a situation where you think you are so great that you don't even need a resume, you are definitely out of the team game.

If, on the other hand, you have a cool working business, website or any reference and companies approach you, you may not want to work for companies any more.
I think some personal experiences are interesting, if they're somewhat unique. People seem to appreciate some of my writing about living in Italy, and even more importantly, I've made some good friends after people have contacted me to say hi and get information. I don't mix that up with the technical/business blog, though, which is on another domain entirely.
for a long time it seemed like two guys with their head+torso stuck in a funny box. but truly, wow !

edit: it seems very close to AT-ST from star-wars though.
Another tip for accomplishing the same thing: being active on mailing lists and having a .signature with a link to your site. Open source projects are a great way to build up google points.
I think our respective definitions of the word hacker fundamentally differ.
Slideshare Ramping Up - Leading Online Presentations App?
I dunno...you wouldn't want to rush into anything...
Ask YC: Any newbie coders?
About a year ago I started reading PG's essays and one thing that stood out was him saying 'if you don't know to code, learn to'. Since then I have had my head immersed in html/css/php/msql and nearly have something that works, looks good but would have probably cost me upto $10,000 (give or take) to create.

I just saw another post by someone that made an elearning site who has only been learning to code for 9 months.

Are there any newbie coders here? if so, have you got an app. and what language did you learn in?

I struggled with Ruby to begin with so moved onto php and found it a much easier language to get going on. Some people said to start with Python, i'd be interested in what more experienced developers think are good languages to start off in, also any useful tips or resources for the newbie coder.

Cheerio..
Will
If the iPhone SDK is a “joke”, Apple will laugh all the way to the bank
The Silver Lining to this Economic Mess
Apparently, we will all go back to the art of doing what customers want instead of chasing high valuations.
Well I am pretty fresh i've stuck to LAMP just like you. Its a good base. I built some of this, though had some help from a friend.

www.scribblesheet.co.uk
Be funny, or have an extraordinarily large nose?
Slackware 12.0 on the eee
The problem is that [the ports tree is] solving the wrong problem

I'm not sure from what you've written what you consider to be the right problem -- can you clarify? Would you be happy if the FreeBSD ports tree had a magical "make installbinaries" command which would download and install binaries instead of building from the source code?
Solution: Re-brand IE as "Microsoft Web Viewer" or some such and start with a clean slate and a clean set of core libraries. All the version-checking routines will not discover IE, so the IE hacks will be irrelevant. MS gets a chance to leap-frog the competition by starting over (even though it's going to suck -- sometimes you just have to suck it up)

Or -- continue having a strategic plan that goes two directions at the same time.

BTW, this solution works for some of the other problems Microsoft is having. Once you give up the idea of trying to lock people into a brand name and start thinking about the best ways to provide solutions, you don't have these kinds of problems.
I would consider myself to be relatively new to coding. I can read code in almost any programming language, however, I have never been involved in a large scale project. I just never could find the time to get involved with something that would take longer than a weekend to work on; that is my own fault. Now that I am unemployed (I resigned to move back to Ohio due to the cost of living in Rhode Island) and have no hope of finding a job in finance anytime soon due to the credit crunch, I have decided to pursue a second undergraduate degree. I will be working on a computer science degree at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I hope to use my time there to get a team together for early 2010's YC.
Fear and doubt spread in Silicon Valley
I started coding around 9 months ago, so it might have been me blabbering on about that.

I did the html/css/php/msql with the addition of some javascript thing as well, primarily because it seemed like the easiest thing to do, and because I could get results fast. Which I did.

I find it to be great fun, particularly the fact that I now can mock-up whatever ideas I have without having to convince someone else that it is a great idea.

I'm currently doing an online project management tool, which I think will turn out pretty well. Particularly since I am normally a manager, so I know what functionality it needs. I've run into some database problem, which I have learned is called EAV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-Attribute-Value_model) that I'm currently trying to solve. Not all that easy, but a great learning experience.
I can't comment on the HN part of your comment, but I like the way you think, rms. People who design interactive web experiences do so under a lot of assumptions. Seems like you are always asking about the edge cases where the assumptions fall flat. What if I want to game the system to get as much karma as possible? What if I want to sell my karma -- it was my time I spent on the site, why shouldn't I own that effort I put in. Would it be any different than sitting side-by-side with another user and telling them how to work the site?

I have a feeling it ticks people off, but I like the questions. I think awesome business opportunities are built around folks who ask the same kind of askew questions that others don't consider. It's the lackeys following the main path of least resistance that have a harder time.

Good luck with your trip through the wilderness.
Installing The Open Source Ticket Request System (OTRS) On Fedora 8
I'm 18 and have worked for three startups in the past and am currently the lead designer on two. I really don't mean to brag by this, it just leads to my next point. Also, this doesn't fully pertain to programming per say because I am a front end designer, but hopefully this comment helps :)

When I was younger, 14 or so, I really became fascinated with server technology, databases, the web, etc... I was just starting High School so I essentially had all the time in the world to dick around with linux and php and all of that jazz, and I did. I was REALLY frustrated until maybe 6 months ago with programming in general. I would try tutorials, and could follow along and do what was written, but it never made sense in my head.

I pretty much dismissed the concept of being a programmer and stuck to what I feel is my talent, front end design. I build blogs atop Wordpress, dabbled with PHP, but never really became a programmer.

In the summer of 2006 I joined my first startup and began working with a team of really, really talented and smart guys on a Django site. This is where I was first introduced to a real smart environment. I was in a place where I knew just enough to ask good questions to help me learn. It's now 2008 and although I am STILL not a programmer, haha, I feel I have a really good grasp on database modeling, basic functional programming, etc... I know PHP fairly well and am becoming familiar with Python because every major site I have built since that first startup in 06 has been Django :)

Anyways, moral of the story is, a few years ago I could have never even dreamed of being where I am today. In the world of front end design and back end programming. I went from looking up to designers like Bryan Veloso, Steve Smith, Dan Cederholm, to actually feeling like I can sit at their lunch table and talk the talk with them. I still admire those guys of course, but now I feel like I am closer to them.

So, my advice is to just dive into anything you can, just like you have. It really doesn't matter what language you learn first. Focus on learning the thought processes behind building something. You can write a book in spanish or english, the meaning will be the same. So focus on problem solving, finding solutions.

Also, surround yourself with smart people. Stay passionate. If you're passionate about becoming a programmer, you will, and you'll do it the right way. The best way to learn something, hands down, is to just do it. Don't try learning PHP through tutorials on how to make a shopping list, start learning PHP by building the webapp you want to build :)

This all kind of just spewed out of my mind, I hope it makes some sense :)
try www.assembla.com you can post gigs there.
Joel is from Mars, browsers are from Venus
Interesting, however, the following quote makes me suspect the researchers made the usual error of using average life expectancy, which is very distorted because of high child mortality. Would be interesting to see more precise numbers.

"Pygmies around the world are short in life expectancy as well as height, with the average adult dying at 16-24 years of age. Only 30-50% of children survive to the age of 15 and less than a third of women live to see menopause at 37."
I'm not a game theorist, but wouldn't people just game SpecArena the same way spammers game digg and reddit now? By 'game' I mean automatically rate the competition with low scores and have voting-gangs/bots give their own submissions high scores.

Except it would probably be worse because there would be more at stake.
I can't (easily) add my own ports tree path to a configuration file...

Good point. In most cases the solution is to have your application added to the ports tree (unlike certain ungulate/avian operating systems, FreeBSD doesn't mix up religion and computing, so this isn't only an option for free software), but there are certainly cases where that isn't an option.

Distributing software to FreeBSD users is generally done via a tarball with maybe a shell script

I'd say that a more common method is to distribute a package (which can then be installed via pkg_add).

[The ports tree] asks questions using an ncurses interface, which, as far as I can tell, cannot be disabled.

This needs to be documented better: Add BATCH=YES into your environment, and the ports infrastructure will run without pestering you. Of course, there are a few ports which absolutely need to interact with the user (e.g., to have the user accept an EULA) -- if you set BATCH=YES these ports will print an error message rather than installing.
I used to work in the industry, so I will take a stab at explaining this:

Bear was overleveraged. The summer of 2007 saw the failure of two internal hedge funds at the company, a confidence crusher. As 2007 wrapped up, the subprime issue spread to other credit markets, effectively freezing the financial system. Bear found it more and more difficult to obtain short-term funding to cover their existing debt that was coming due.
Last week, the CEO came on CNBC and stated that there was no liquidity problem at that time. I don't doubt that statement. Then came Thursday morning. A fund at the Carlyle Group failed, and Bear had a lot of business with the Carlyle group. It was the failure at Carlyle that finally TKOd Bear, but it was only a matter of time before it did indeed happen.
Now, had Bear declared bankruptcy, which they would have had it not been for JP Morgan, a panic none of us have seen in our lifetime would have ensued. Bear would have been forced to dump all of its assets on the market, even the ones that Wall Street doesn't even know how to price. A complete breakdown of the US financial system would have ensued, and there would have likely been a run on not just an investment bank, but a retail bank as well.
The Federal Reserve is not in the business of bailing out companies that mismanage their businesses, but they are in the business of maintaining an orderly market (in addition to their mandate to control the money supply). When Bear went to the Fed on Friday, the Fed knew they'd have to find someone willing to take Bear. JP Morgan was the company best situated to buy Bear; JP Morgan had the capital and was looking for a prime brokerage division and better clearing operations. While Bear provided both of those, there is a large set of unknowns on Bear's balance sheet, and had the Fed not offered to cover up to $30 billion of the more illiquid assets, the deal would have fallen through. Part of the taxes you pay will be used to eat any losses the Fed takes.
Ode to Apple fans
hey, two leg will be able to play soccer nevertheless!
Sandusky, OH
The exchange would be used to determine the relative value of karma from different sites - like a currency or stock exchange. So if you wanted to track hacker news karma with karma from reddit someone would have to be willing to trade with you, and they could set the exchange rate (i.e. 2-1, 1.63 to 1 etc).
Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux
It is basically very similar to Parallels for Mac though I am running it on Ubuntu, and it is free. It works quite well.

I use it solely for web developement and testing exlporer and other browsers on windows, and was actually able to get Windows to access my lamp server running locally on Ubuntu by using NAT and modifying the hosts file to point my named virtual hosts to 10.0.2.2.

So if anyone has being dual-booting for the same purpose, or using VMware, this is an excellent alternative.
definitely help from friends cannot be underestimated!