skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is an interesting idea growing bigger and bigger in recent months.

Some say that proliferation of feedback-based recommendation engines and machine learning algorithms for predicting "what I may like to read next" is bad for our society, because eventually people will be revolving in their own little narrow worlds of interests, reading/watching/listening same stuff without exposure to anything new, disruptive and mind-stimulating.

Many Americans are already largely ignorant of what's going on in the world partly due to CNN+friends that have been doing somewhat similar "content suggestion" for years and now the matter will get only worse. People are being enabled to build these "walls of ignorance" around themselves.

From personal experience, it is especially noticeable with music: if it wasn't for my friends who introduce me to their music, I'd still be listening to the same old stuff (or similar, coming from suggestions on sites like Pandora)
"Algorithm Design" is a great book. A similar quality book that focuses more on introductory material is "Introduction to Algorithms"
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Corme...
Agree, this is why I do not use pandora or findory.

If you teach jaanix that you like new and mind-stimulating things, it will find things that are new to you. It even lets you stretch the limits of your comfort zone with sliders.
Hmm. I think they actually had it in mind to have it visible to the naked eye. Imagine a perfectly round, full moon with the coke bottle right in the center. I think that's what they were going for.
he wants it to be google :)
Is this a test by a moderator to get vote data about spam?
Loving the concept. I had always imagined that sliders or dials would provide a much more intuitive and accurate feedback mechanism than simple up or down votes.

Still, a slider is not as fast as a click, so curious to see how that affects user participation.

I'll give it a whack for a few days and see how I like it.
Iran my impose a countrywide Internet shut down during there elections.
We are good in having human experiences. I think AIs will really like sites like ycombinator or reddit. People sharing their view on the world in a format which is very accessible for computers.

Some guy (maybe Kurzweil?) said something along the line that he was always more afraid of stupidity than of intelligence. And I can agree with that a lot. I'm way more afraid that humans are destroying the world out of stupidy than of hyperintelligences which we created & teached trying to get rid of us.
On jaanix sliders serve two purposes - they let you know where you are and why the system is showing you stuff on the left, at the same time they let you quickly change your view of the world.
Microsoft reverses IE 8 defaults to be “standards mode”
So if we have brutally powerful machines, that can do a human scale brain - how to we "start" it - is it going to have to learn itself, as we do, or is there tech to "read" our minds into it? (creepy sci fi style).
Just spotted that the original MSDN article on this was posted to Hacker News seven hours ago. However I think this piece still has merit in it's conclusion.
Take books for example. I read lots of books, from all different genres (computer, fiction, history, economics, business, math, etc). How do I find books to read? If I look on Amazon, it suggests books similar to books I've already read, but that doesn't help me find books in different categories. Recommendations on Hacker News will give me a well rounded set of computer and entrepreneur-related books, but what else? I hear about books in other fields when they become popular enough to get press on NPR or IT Conversations or something (like The World Without Us) but mostly it's just random things mentioned here or there. I actually use an Amazon Wishlist to keep track of books I hear mentioned, because it might be a year or two before I read it.

As an example of how you can do an excellent job but miss most of the picture, try the Pandora music service. You choose a song you like and they make you a radio station full of songs with similar characteristics to the one you picked. I tried "Fade to Black" by Metallica and it played other metal and rock songs, but it had no idea I liked classical, Hawaiian, reggae, old school hip hop, or anything else.

I haven't encountered any recommendation service that was both accurate and broad. The best way to get recommendations I've found is to know and interact with different kinds of people (the kind who wouldn't know each other). That helps fill in the holes.
That's really cool. It's amazing the profound effect that little UI tweaks can have. Not only in the sense that it makes software a better tool, but also in that something as simple as focusing on a textbox encourages users to use that tool in a certain way.

In this case, a way that makes Google money by the bushel-full.
The First Amendment (and the Bill of Rights) is a contract between the government of the United States and its citizens. Free speech doesn't really have a meaningful definition outside of that contract. Since you are the benevolent leader of this community you define the rules of conduct.

For forums that I moderate, I am very aggressive with locking threads when even an ounce of negativity is present. I prefer to be very terse with my explanations too. I have my standard set of reasons and try not to elaborate to much. I'll finish the thread with a very terse final post.

Locked: Spam.
Locked: Negative.
Locked: Troll.
Locked: Offtopic.

But this probably wouldn't scale to reddit size. People would probably try to get threads locked on purpose to quell discussion about topics they didn't agree with (especially politics).
It's cool, I have used it before but stopped after a while because it didn't have critical mass (enough users contributing links). I hope you would be able to gain that mass or already have. Would you share something like the number of active users and how old is the site?

Edit: Have you considered importing bookmarks from del.icio.us and voting from digg, reddit, news.YC? Facebook style. This can really boost the site's content and would give the learning algorithm plenty of data even for new accounts.
Maybe there's a reason why she's so interested in something as mundane as a mouse cursor? I mean, interested in minutiae, vaguely dopey grin, . . . I get the impression that if I watch her for long enough she'll get the munchies and wander off.
Totally. The interesting thing will be in a few years when software like advances to the point to where we've climbed the other side of the valley and this just looks like a stoned girl with a webcam.

After all, if it LOOKS human and it engages in vaguely human-like activities (though perhaps nothing too specific, lest it slip up and show itself to be obviously virtual), I'm sure it could convince a large number of people that it is. Suddenly we have a face for that chat bot that made the news a few months ago for talking lonely young men out of their personal information . . .
Great concept, but you're a little late. The userbase seems small, and the user submitted content is definitely lacking so much so that I can't find anything on the front page (after adjusting sliders) that interests me. Had this site launched pre-Digg/Reddit, I definitely would have jumped on board.
As of today about 1000 unique visitors a day. ~100 people are posting. But I'm sure the site can bootstrap from that, as it can be useful even if you have just a few friends there.

Jaanix has been running as a closed system for almost a year. Opened up in December last year. Usable UI is less than 2 weeks old.
This is only true if the recommendation engine is primitive. There must be a relationship between the stuff you currently like and subset of "new" stuff that you like because it's disruptive and mind-stimulating.

But I don't want a news site to figure out what articles I will like. I just need it to filter out the stuff it knows I definitely dislike so I have less crap to filter through.
that's not even a real title
'Cause Google was the first company to ever think of putting the cursor in the only input[type=text] on the page onload.
Amazing collection of urban photos
Called network effect - true for network-based systems with similar functionality.

Jaanix will have much more, soon, this is just to bootstrap.

Start posting, and people like you will stay :)
Nevertheless, it's still interesting to note that 1) Standford had a class where they had students building Facebook apps 2) there were no breaking news from the experiment.
That's what I currently do. But I have to actively evaluate the links. Is it a discussion/poll, or will this take me somewhere else?
Looks neat.

I think after voting you should replace the up with "jaa" and the down with "nix" because I didn't understand the name until I read the explanation that will presumably not always be on the fp.
have you tried searching? what was that you were looking for?
yes, del.icio.us import was there, people were importing thousands of links, had to turn off due to too high post to user ratio. I'd prefer less links but higher quality for now. Once more users join will let more stories in.
PBX Hell: 50+ Hacks Get to a Real Person in 10 Seconds or Less
It's infuriating to sit on hold for 20 minutes, only to be connected to a service agent has less knowledge about how to help you. The following tricks will help you skip to the head of the line and find a better person to talk to.
No, of course not, but it was fun at the time.
Here is the RRW article detailing all the above and some others!
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/guide_to_seed_fund_incu...
"Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias."

I have to say this in case anyone's got any illusions: this is a different Europe from the one I live in. I mean, the French go on about how the "Anglo-Saxon" work ethic is polluting their culture, and in the UK people will wish you luck if you start a business, while secretly hoping you'll fail. I'm sure other countries have their problems too, but overall Europe is a good place to live, work and do business.

We don't "do" Silicon Valley because it's not how things are done here. Whether or not they should be is the subject of another, far more interesting essay than the one in the title.
You need facts to make an argument too. The article doesn't provide any of those in support of its quite slanted assertions about "welfare states". Given that empirical evidence seems to suggest greater hacker activity in Europe than the United States, this guy is running uphill.
I kind of agree with the article, but would be more likely to dismiss it on the grounds of it being a bit too political for yc news.
> there's probably a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes which is proprietary.

There really shouldn't be, though. I set up a CA for a large company way back in 1998 and while it was a pain in the ass, it wasn't something that a novice Perl hacker couldn't get to run smoothly. (This was before Microsoft fucked everything up by not allowing people to import trusted root CA certs into their own browsers, hence the exorbitant $85K fee to do today what I did for free then)

It just isn't that hard to maintain the CRLs and a CA with a proper chain. It's an issue of trust like anything else, which is why I brought up the difficulty of determining whether you trust eg. NSI or Thawte.

If you think DNS is easy, I think you should try and get a tld delegated to you. Then sit through some ddos attacks on your tld's root servers and see how easy you think that is. Consider that DNS is meant to be more or less contstantly available, while a cert chain only needs to be checked periodically (and the CRL on cert load). Neither is earthshatteringly hard, neither is easy, they just are.

Both rely on standard protocols with extensive documentation.
Does anyone have experience in using Swiftiply in a production environment?
Why not? The unemployed are on generous welfare.
If all employees are equal, that means that Germany is running on 88.3% productivity, vs 95% in the U.S. Not a big difference.

But since the people who tend to be unemployed are generally much less productive than people with jobs, the actual difference in productivity is much smaller.

Really, Germany is doing just fine. Which is not to say that they couldn't be doing even better.
My, news.yc is becoming a who's who of the new web.
The cynic in me wants to see another article about 7 entrepreneurs whose dogged determination in following something that turned out to be wrong led to despair and ruin.
Wow, that is an amazing suggestion. I'm making a mental note of that for when I get more free time.

Upon second thought though, it won't be as easy as the 2d version; a mere texture wouldn't suffice. Anyone up for the job, or have further insight?
That actually seems like a fantastic class. Outside of the classroom, where would one get the same amount/quality of information?

And, do you follow related research? Does it fit?
This was on YC like 3 months ago...
The human brain is mainly just a giant pattern matching organ (filling in gaps, resolving ambiguities, cross-comparing several senses, etc). Simulating how it works is one thing (that's what they've done). "Installing" existing memories, patterns, and connections is a giant step beyond what they're currently doing. This (and probably all) AIs will have to be trained. The hard part will be bootstrapping the first AI to usefulness, but then the next AI is a copy-paste operation away!
Google Gears Goes Mobile
Ask YC: what are the best books to learn CSS and XHTML from?
Today I almost bought the Agile Web Development with Rails book, until I remembered some posts here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104745 a.o.) that you should The Rails Way instead. So now I'm getting that one :-) But also, I'm looking into the frontend of developing web apps, so what would be the best choices for books on XHTML, CSS, etc.?
Ask YC: What software makes you happy?
Do you feel extremely happy when you use some particular software?

I'm trying to see if there's a pattern in software which makes users happier (not more efficient, etc.).

If there's an application/webapp that is particularly enjoyable to use, comment! Maybe there's a pattern we could uncover, replicate and make life better for everyone around! :)
Dan Cenderholm's "Bulletproof Web Design" is a must read.

http://www.simplebits.com/publications/bulletproof
Ray Kurzweil notes that brain scan resolution and scan duration are both following Moore's law. So, within 50 years, it may be possible to take a full-resolution, real-time snapshot of a brain. Ray Kurzweil doesn't explore the possibility of snapshots being taken without consent.
> Should we treat AI like our slaves, or should we treat AI like our children?

more likely scenario would probably be, how _we_ would be treated by _them_.
I'm quite impressed with the quantity of tips. Many articles in this format struggle to present five factoids.

From the article: 32. Do nothing.

Sometimes, this leads to disconnection. Re-connect and try 0 or "agent". For smaller companies, you may speak to the same person regardless of options selected. In this case, the purpose of a menu system is only to collect statistics. If the statistics are ignored then the menu system is futile.

From the article: 49. Hard to Find 800 Numbers

In the UK, http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/ allows you to find cheaper alternatives to premium rate telephone numbers. Often, premium, national and freephone numbers map to the same PBX.
Dealing With a GPL Violation?
I advise people to get the oldest books possible. The reason for this is that the books don't get thicker but they have more topics to cover and tend to concentrate on the most whizzy features. If you get an old book then it'll cover the basics in more detail.
One of the most charismatic persons I know was educated in a boys-only school. He's married now, but he definitely has no problems talking with women. Many boys from boy-only schools tend to hang out around girl-only schools so that actually ameliorate the effect.

I personally feel co-education is the way to go but just pointing out it's not a general rule.
Actually I did :) Nice site you got there mate.
Hack into a Windows PC - no password needed
20 Money Hacks: Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Finances
Microsoft changes IE 8 defaults to be “standards mode”
A couple of opposing views on the matter from ALA:

Against: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/theyshootbrowsers

and

For: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/minorthreat

I, myself, am very glad for this decision!
The Sipser computation theory book is absolutely fantastic, I agree. Definitely the most readable and clear book on the subject that I know of. However, I don't think it would be particularly useful to prepare for an interview -- the number of people likely to quiz you on the details of computability theory or complexity theory is pretty small.
MurmurHash - interesting new hash function
The HTML Dog looks pretty good, right? http://www.htmldog.com/book/
Internet Lessons from Nine Inch Nails and Obama
The responsiveness of contemporary applications has vastly improved. Two examples would be Photoshop and Firefox.

Photoshop3 didn't have many features but it was the best application in its field. However, after using Photoshop4 for short period, you looked upon the previous version as clunky, even though you never noticed the shortfalls when using it. This cycle of improvement continued for the next two versions.

For web browsing, Mosiac1.0 was a fantastic program. When it was written, it was the best in its field. However, if you've used a modern web browser then it would only take about 10 minutes to make you entirely frustrated with Mosiac. Let's run through some of the features. A single, non-presistent connection to web server. Caching of previous pages in history only. No incremental rendering. Awful responsiveness, especially when using multiple windows. No scripting. No tables. No background images. No font styling. No text alignment. And on very early versions: no forms. It also crashed frequently. Regardless, it was an absolutely fantastic program which made impossible tasks trivial and saved lifetimes of effort.

Important aspects that make me happy in decreasing priority: make it open source; make one task trivial; make it crash less; make it more responsive; make the repetitive parts of interaction take decreasing amounts of subjective time.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/microsoft-changes-ie-8-defaults-...
Unbreaking the Web
A First Haskell Experience
In games, I always found the design of the Diablo series interesting. Every action and click is designed to have some kind of reward. So clicking on a jewel or sword in your inventory makes a pleasant sound. Killing enemies is even better.
"... A couple of opposing views on the matter from ALA ..."

Nice reads. I think this kind of thing is going to look mild compared to the bunfight over new Javascript language spec ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript#Fourth_edition
XDrive-like service for non-Americans?
Any recommendations on shared storage space with access control? I've got people in China, Thailand, and Germany. I need to be able to grant varying levels of access to dirs for individual users. Cheap would be good, free better. Ease of use is essential, as some of my users have a tenuous grasp of computer concepts.

And yeah, XDrive would be perfect, but it looks like you have to be a US resident to get an AOL screen name.
Gender differences in language appear biological
Recipe-book style, light on theory but good for solving problems:

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/cssant1/
I see four cases where you'd be eager to deal with Sun. The first case is an integrated, one-stop-shop for SAMP [Solaris, Apache, MySQL and Python running in a JVM].

The second case is where you're in a corner and need to scale up. I wouldn't be surprised if Sun offers servers with 2048 cores. Another case is where you've got a huge volume of data on a SAN and the throughput of Solaris justifies the cost of the licenses. A final case involves the energy saving gained from RISC. However, I've previously argued this latter case ignores the opportunity cost to a fast growing organisation and is therefore irrelevant to a start-up ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123587 ).

The other cases aren't important to new companies either. So, I agree with you that they're running out of options. I agree with Cringely that vertical integration isn't a big draw.
Creating a "phone-book for ET"
Nokia bringing MS Silverlight to millions of mobile phones
I'm sure you wouldn't mind if it ended up as google :)
There are a number of examples of this. For instance, the guy who developed Passage, Jason Rohrer, lives entirely off donations (http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/supportMyWork...) and he releases all his software under the GNU GPL.
I used news.yc to make someone happy the other day. There was a new user that didn't understand why he was getting downmodded so I told him the reason. It seemed like karma really meant a lot to him so I upvoted all of his stories and current comments, giving him an extra 20 karma points. In an economy with infinite karma, I didn't think it was a big deal to arbitrarily give him more. I think he was joking a little when he said it "made his month" but hopefully I made him smile.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125233

Paul Graham told me via email that up and downarrows aren't for arbitrary karma operations and then a couple days later he took away my ability to vote on any comment or story. I upvoted this story to 4 but it didn't count because I can't vote anymore. I find the whole scenario somewhat bizarre.
Yes, and a thousand people invented different flying machines. So why do we remember the Wright Brothers? Because they made it work.

(Not that YouTube is the pinnacle of 21st century innovation -- but it's important to note that, unlike their predecessors, YouTube was executed quite well.)
I'm hopeful that by changing the rules, you can transform the incentives for trolling behavior from a force of evil to something more productive.

We all have the troll gene. Whether it expresses itself is another story. Community-based principles seems one way to clamp it down. But radical changes in the product design is another. Making people less anonymous seems like one very fruitful path.
Acid3 browser test is out
Paypal Advises Mac Users To Stop Using Safari
The foo is strong in user NSX2 but that grasshopper has a long path to travel.
Improved try() in Ruby
I hope he sticks around. In communities like this some contrarians are a good thing.

(I upvoted you but it didn't count)
I hope that he sticks around too. He could easily get frustrated with us but he may learn less elsewhere. However, I don't see him as a contrarian; just lacking some old hacker lore.

I'm sorry to learn of your temporary lack of moderation weight. The sentiment is greatly appreciated.
Even though the murder rate may seem high, often those are cases where some guy decides to kill his family, and then himself.

This kind of thing happens almost exclusively in the Finnish countryside.

It's strange, but it's better than lunatics killing random people on the streets.

I'd say that random killings are extremely rare, maybe unlike America, and that this is still a relatively safe place.

But lately we've had our share of totally incomprehensible violence too..