skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't be here (or much of anywhere) for more than 30 minutes each day. 8aweek won't let me!

And I am absolutely far more productive because of it. :)
I've been using it, ummm, 5 days now? It's saved me something like 12 hours during that time.

The red bar is counting down now, gotta run!
I stubbed my toe many a time at the Soda volleyball court. It's called sand, people... get more of it.
My God. I never noticed that, but you're absolutely right. I'm a vi guy myself, but all the other, more _visually_ oriented developers in the office don't read code from top to bottom. They scan the methods in the structure tab on eclipse. I always wondered why their eyes would constantly drift off the editor...
Communication Prosthetics: Threat, or Menace?
I think developers often make mistakes on 4 and 5. I know we don't give enough feedback on our site right now, and many times it isn't noticeable enough.

Then number 6 happens almost every time I call on any of my accounts and it is really annoying. Over the phone punch in your whole account number and phone number, then the second you have a representative they immediately ask for your phone number and account number... Which I just gave the system 30 seconds ago. That has annoyed me for years.

I don't think all of these are huge problems all the time, but some reasonable good points are made.
Please post the original link (http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html), not a hijacked copy.
"Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

God help those children.
"2. If you're not a spoiled only child and your parents have to divide that money up then you're screwed."

Financial aid calculations typically take siblings into account.
"Google Inc. will serve as the Republican National Convention's Official Innovation Provider."
actually it's funny if you read again the news title mentally replacing Gates as gates!
Didn't for several of my sisters, FYI.
GenieTown Launches To Tackle Local Services
I don't know how much you paid for your school -- but with math like that I'm sure you paid too much.

But anyway, how the heck can you blame the kid if the parents are tight with their money?
I did after the first two years.
Yeah I couldn't really tell what the point was until adding a page. Then since it wasn't really a page that updated I didn't get it. Have an about page that shows a feed for a commonly known page. Something that changes often. That would make it really clear what your product does and if I would find it useful. Since this is YC I went a head and added a page and played around to see how it works, but in the real web I wouldn't take that much effort to try to understand the point of the product.

Once you see it working it is a really cool. It would be useful for some of the sites and blogs I read that still have no RSS feed. Nice work, I like that you keep it simple, but if I want to know more and I am willing to click to learn more you should offer some other information.
Getting Real
Awesome (short) read on the 37Signals team's philosophies.
Man, I love legos. I (and Douglas Coupland, via Microserfs) think all good programmers were obsessed with them during at least one point in their lives.
I don't think anyone is asserting that gas prices alone will cause people to move. Over the next 20 years or so, many people will have to move anyway, whether they're getting a new job, moving out of their parent's house, moving from an apartment to a house to have kids, or retiring to a smaller house, or any number of other reasons. For these people gas prices and neighborhood walkability might be a significant consideration in where they choose to live compared to people who moved 10 years ago, especially if they were previously living in the suburbs and have felt all the ill effects of it.
What about grad students?
I recommend checking "Welcome to the experience economy", from B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in Harvard Business Review July-August 98.
This is one of the best articles I've read here.

Initially, when left alone, the kids had a free-market society: they owned the resources (lego bricks) they found and exploited (stuff they built) but, nonetheless, they weren't excluding people for the sake of it. Hard-working and motivated kids had more power than other kids.

After months of hand-holding (I'm reluctant to say "brainwashing") by adults, they ended up building a "perfect", planned socialist society where everything was public and standard.
For the curious, I've had the recent misfortune of working with JBOSS at work; this sounds identical to how it provides form-based authentication.

For the curious: http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=SecureAWebApplicati...
Link Attraction Factors: Getting Dugg and Going Viral
See also http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html
This is the result?
http://changefeed.com/rss?url=c2ae2edc266d898a2a1f06d41e2f2b...
Sign-up required. Next.
Misleading title. They only shared the numbers from yesterday.
Well, they are financial numbers aren't they?
T-Shirts for VCs
45 More Excellent Blog Designs
I certainly didn't make coffee shops with Lego. However, it is political correctness to ban it. Lego is a very flexible toy which develops spatial skills and co-ordination. You can do whatever you like with Lego but these teachers don't like it because inequality can be projected onto it. I'd like to know what replacement is deemed more suitable.
How many more times sigh. The plural of Lego, is Lego. It's like Snow.
>It would take a lot more pain at the pump to get people to give up their quarter acre.

All signs are that "a lot more pain at the pump" is very much on the way.
You can go old school 1990's.... and ask the person for their carrier, then append the carrier to their 10 digit number, like... 9546702445@sprintpcs.com and it should arrive as a text message.

like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways#Email_to_SMS_.2F_W...
What is "Techno Addiction"?
It sounds like most of the teachers' problems centered around the Legos being a zero-sum thing, where if I use all the cool pieces, then you can't.

I wonder if they would be as bothered by the inner-circle thing if the students were programming, instead? If I use some cool hack, then nothing prevents you from using it also (except me being too busy to teach you).
>The news of the death of the suburbs has been greatly exaggerated ... The simple fact is that not everyone likes nor wants to live in more densely populated areas.

The article addresses this issue head-on with actual data, did you see that?
that is funny.
This is the best WTF I have seen in quite a while.
Does this mean you disagree? You believe that a class based capitalist society isn't unjust? Really? You think you have the same rights as anyone else in your society? Interesting.

You might think that a class-based capitalist society is the best option available, but that's a far cry from claiming that it is just and non-oppressive. The simple fact is that the statistically most likely way to be a rich person is to be born into a rich family. No one is saying that it's the only way, but if you want to lay odds its the way to bet. That's just? It plays havoc with the idea of a meritocracy.

The lesson that I understood that the kids were learning is that what you happen to have started out with doesn't give you inalienable rights. In other words, be sensitive to the fact that you got where you are _at least partially_ by luck. The rest is just figuring out what it means to be sensitive in this way.

There is another important lesson that I think the teachers missed (about how to handle the disenfranchisement that the Lego-less kids felt), but that's another story.
Is that the new definition of profitable?

Seriously, I get that it's a catchy headline, and the fact that money coming in the door on the first day is a good thing, but calling it a profit is a little bit on the newspeak side of things, no?
10 Things I've Learned From Politics (so far)
Startup Brings Second Life To Cell Phones
I think you may have gotten bored and stopped reading. They got the lego back.
Reality sucks.
I certainly disagree.

Just because you weren't born into money doesn't mean you can't get there. That's the beauty of the free market, you have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed and get ahead.

If everyone and everything is the same, then why even bother doing anything better or trying?

Socialism scares me to no end because it is way easier to scream for support and get it than it is to actually make something out of yourself.

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to have to live in a world that is built for the LCD.
Weak...
Ask YC:  Would compulsory voting in blocks force voters to think carefully about their vote?
The problem to be solved is that people don't have an incentive to vote nor think carefully about their choice if they do vote.

My solution is compulsory voting in blocks.

By voting in blocks, I mean that for you to be able to vote for X, you need to convince a certain number of people to also vote X.

By compulsory, I mean that you have to enter a valid vote satisfying the minimum requirement

Note that entering a "no vote" is possible but would require that you also convince a certain number of people to cast a "no vote".
Use Your Wii as a Media Center
Reddit discussion here:

http://reddit.com/info/69efs/comments/
Yeah, with Rasmus Lerdorf being a Yahoo! employee, I don't think those asp.net nazi's will allow php to roam in the Microsoft camp.
Here's my version, a little more cynical:

1. Personality is more important than policy.

2. It's better to believe in nothing, and go with the crowd.

3. Words don't matter, who's saying them matters.

4. Negative gets results.

5. Authenticity is like sex, it only matters when you don't have any.

6. Money wins.

7. The internet is irrelevant, just like your vote (this may change).

8. Influence is contagious, hope can be sold.

9. You can't force people to like you without money.

10. Same shit, different year.
I can agree.

I think a lot of us geeks - as smart as we claim to be - have a difficult time executing our ideas because we're so in love with the ideas themselves, that often they suffice for the actual thing. Many of us want our products to be perfect at launch. It's a totally insane way to be.

Hacker News helps me get real and break through my self-imposed reality-distortion field (you know what I'm talking about!). I discovered Hacker News two weeks ago and I've done more actual work on my product since then than in the last 3 months. Loving it.
Whoops, didn't realize (it was emailed to me). Thanks for the correction!
Oh I see, jealousy will solve all economic problems.
It's been done!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Hehe
Using bugmenot extension to skip past paywall > you
In future episodes:

Why We Banned Names "Individual, parent-assigned names can make children feel unique and special. We reassigned children names based on positive concepts and numbers, such as Equality 7-2521, Democracy 4-6998, and Unanimity 7-3304. Only then did children learn that we are one in all and all in one, there are no individuals but only the great we, one, indivisible and forever." †

Why We Introduced Mandatory Handicapping "Some children's varied talents and interests were causing disruption in the classroom. Each child was assigned a handicap, such as a headset playing random noises to level intelligence, ankle and wrist weights to offset strength, or masks to hide
excess beauty. Everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way." ††

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)

†† http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html
SuperiorCat.com

Like SubservientChicken.com, except it ignores your commands, mostly sleeping, stretching, and occasionally pointing to AdSense ads at the right.
Einstein: Curiosity trumps intellect
From the article: "It seems the three popular hash functions these days is the Jenkins, FNV, and Hsieh hash functions."

FNV is popular in banking applications.

From the article: "'we read Knuth so you don't have to'"

People working in languages with good hash functions can achieve small miracles while in ignorance.
Yes we can has
Why is this relevant?
That is actually the only funny "webcomic" I've ever seen.
I use a programmable windows CE modem and an actual SIM, and I do inbound as well. I am well-versed in the SMS APIs and market and have worked with a bunch of the vendors. Clickatell is the best I believe for going the API route.
They may not move just to save on gas, but if they're moving anyway for other reasons, you can bet that gas prices will be a factor in where.
I'm claiming that whatever I build with natural resources I find is mine. You happen to disagree with that statement. Fine. Now, tell me how you would practice what you preach (socialism, wealth redistribution, etc.) without attacking me (or using the threat of violence, which is practically the same thing) to steal my work (or part of it).
Great, great article. I'm amazed that the teachers went through this exercise with such rigor. It seems like a cool program.

That said, the ultimate lesson they implanted in these kids is flawed.

I'm sure they'd be thrilled if these kids ultimately grow up and demand society be like the utopia they constructed in their after-school program. But the whole thing stems on there being a finite amount of resources. In the classroom, sure, there is a bucket of bricks – and that's all there is. But in the real world wealth isn't a finite resource.†

The brick game is based on this flawed thinking: According to the game, different colored bricks are worth different amounts, and the luck of your initial draw determines how you rank. The kids are told they can trade (I guess to make it seem more like capitalism?), but that's stupid because there's nothing to gain by trading – who's gonna accept a 2pt brick for a 3pt one?

So the kids are supposed to take away that wealth gets randomly, unfairly distributed, and the only way to make things right is to force the undeserving to share their bricks.

But in real life you aren't stuck trying to trade your money for money: you can attempt to trade wealth – wealth you can create. So a kid could offer back scratches for 1pt bricks. Or agree to carry all of Liam's green bricks for a couple interest bricks. Suddenly you're not limited by your initial draw.

And I think that's a very important lesson that these kids didn't get.

The article says these kids are upper-middle class, so it may not matter as much, but imagine that these were poor kids. Here they've been taught that they can only reach a certain random level of success, and to get any higher will require resources be taken from some undeserving, rich bastard – which, hey, some politician will make happen once in a while – but otherwise your efforts to succeed are futile.

What a hopeless lesson.

† http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
A good friend of mine is infinitely curious. Whenever he comes around he always finds something that he doesn't quite know how works, or that is broken in an unexpected way. And he never stops before he has learnt how it works, or fixed it.

Since he now has roughly 38 years of experience (his age...) in finding out how things work and how to fix them he is almost unimaginably good at it.

For this reason he is the greatest hacker I have ever come across.

So yes: Imagination and curiosity are more important than intellect.
broken windows. Thats all they need.
"Don't pitch me, bro."

Priceless.
What is the site that shows the platform a specific site in on?
this was on YC a while back - i need to know what that site is. You put in the url and it will show you the platform and tech. that that url site uses.
Ask YC: Are you using O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf?
If so, would you recommend it? What don't you like about it?
Maybe they should just let the kids play with the damn legos and enjoy themselves and not try and get all philosophical about it, one way or the other.
Actually, I agree with you. I assume that you are reading into my comment some enormous weight of dialog that I wasn't a part of. I'm unsure about how to respond since I feel like we're talking at cross purposes. So with the fair warning that we may simply continue to misunderstand each other, here goes:

Of course you can 'get there'. But that doesn't make it 'fair'. If someone has to work for 0 hours for 100% chance of success and I have to work for 2000 hours for 0.01%, that isn't just. Horatio Alger stories are, frankly, rare and far between.

The basic problem is that the outlook that a person should take on life is that they are the master of their own destiny and that they can make it on the strength of their own power. When I say "should" I just mean, that is the viewpoint of the world that makes them have the best chance of achieving success. It's a psychological trick that gives people courage, and helps them to recognize opportunities. That's a very short form of what I meant when I said that there was another lesson that the teachers missed out on.

What is frustrating to me is that people take an outlook ("I am the master of my own destiny") and apply it to the world as though it were _true_. So it is common to hear people look down on the poor by saying variants of "if only they weren't so lazy they could make something of themselves". This ignores the fact that different people have different oportunities and that those oportunities are not of their own making.

In any case, have a good day.
The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the least.

All it takes is a second to stop and realize that wealth is created, not taken. If it was all really taken, then where in the heck did we take it from? (I mean we as in the whole world.) The world is immensely more wealthy than it was a thousand years ago, and all that wealth was created by the hard work of all those generations. Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that.

I think this is generally an economic misunderstanding that a lot of people have. To them, it's "Every dollar Bill Gates has is a dollar less for everyone else, so that is unfair." In fact, PG made this argument much better than I can, here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

That said, I did really enjoy how these teachers approached the art of teaching children. Challenging the children to examine and modify their own worldviews seems infinitely more effective than preaching to them about 'the right way.'
it never says how food was distributed through lego town. and if i had to stand in line to get toilet paper. if their economy is any good. : )
The pitch is hilarious!
netcraft will do it (netcraft.com)
my random guesses for their revenue:

- basecamp: $550,000/yr

- signal vs noise (jobboard + deck): $200,000/yr

- backpack: existing + new customers = $100,000/yr

- highrise: $100,000/yr

- campfire / writeboard / ta-da list: $75,000/yr

- get real book: $75,000, span of its entire publication run

37s is at least a 1 mil a year company
Yeah; that's what free-market anarchy is all about in the first place :)
37signals / basically the google of the SAAS model.
This article surprised me. I thought it was going to be some news piece about how some school banned legos, like how some middle school banned dances.

Instead, it was an exploration on social and power dynamics between people through legos.

I have to admit, as someone can see how the invisible hand works, I also reacted when I read that the teachers thought a capitalist society was unjust. But in their classroom, the situation arose because the amount of wealth, "cool lego pieces" were fixed, thus giving a zero-sum game. In the real economy, wealth is not fixed because peoples' needs expand, and is not a zero-sum game overall. I'd like to see the same experiment if kids could create their own types of pieces. I suspect the same power imbalance will arise where some kids can make cooler pieces than others, but that doesn't mean it can't change as some kids can get better over time.

So they brought back the legos, and I was thinking that they might end up with more communistic/socialistic rules due to the teachers, but then at the end the kids made up their own rules, and the article listed some of the rules that the kids came up with:

* All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the
builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.
* Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.
* All structures will be standard sizes.

To me, it sounds remarkably like open source software. Translated, it's stuff we hear in OSS all the time:

* Anyone can contribute patches, but only the maintainer and his trusted developers can commit the changes
* (a bit of a stretch here, but) All bugs are shallow with enough eyeballs
* Adhere to coding conventions you see in the code. 2 spaces for tabs, not 4.
"Then we decided to combine all the classes."
"Brown eyed people are dumb"

Good they didn't try Jane Elliot's famous and controversial "Brown eye/Blue eye" exercise in that classroom:

http://www.janeelliott.com/
Navy has 10 seconds, $60 million to kill satellite
Ha, we wrote almost the exact same thing.

And I'm in Kansas City too... Weird.
You've got to add value when outsourcing and the project has to be of a particular scale.

A friend recently outsourced development which could be concisely specified. From the UK, he got a student in the US to develop security software for 600 pounds. He installed it on two servers which cost 1000 pounds each. He sold the system to an existing client for 8000 pounds. The student required supervision but it allowed my friend to do on-site consulting while the outsourced software was being developed. The difference in timezone wasn't an issue. Indeed, if you're already working full time then outsourcing to a different timezone can be very beneficial.

However, there isn't much opportunity for a start-up to outsource development. Cost isn't a issue. You should be working in a small field, within your competence. There's also transaction cost which places a minimum size on the project to be outsourced. For a start-up, most projects will be too small to outsource.

If you're thinking of outsourcing a project, think whether you should do it at all.
builtwith.com
thats the one - thanks.
1. Many programmers are music fans.
2. Many programmers are collectors.
3. The very existence of this collection is surprising.
4. The ridiculous $10 rebate says something about eBay's software, which was being discussed here a few days ago.
That's probably true. Complete changes in environment seems to clear the distraction build up better than surfing. Plus, surfing easily turns into "just one more page."
Wow, this is pure genius.

Especially love how the shirts are ridiculously expensive and next to the "buy this shirt" button there's a "buy this company" button that actually works.
NYT: They're Working on Their Own, Just Side by Side
I fear that femtocells will give carriers no incentive to improve coverage in offices and homes; they can just say "want coverage? buy a femtocell" which translates into customers paying to build out the carrier's network for them. It almost sounds like a 2.0 business model: user-generated infrastructure.
So that values each employee (5000 total approx.) at about $8,920,000?

That's either a lie or complete madness. Why doesn't he just put up some job ads with an annual salary of $1 million dollars?