skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Personally, I like the mix. And there's not always a solid difference between the "news" items and the AskYC, anyway. If I'd be interested in clicking on some guy's post about Ruby vs. Python, I'd be just as interested in clicking on an AskYC post on the same topic.
I don't think the mode of delivery changes the passive nature of the activity. A movie downloaded and watched from the pirate bay is no more 'two-way' than one seen in a movie theatre. I read your original comment to mean that because people can do many interesting things on the internet, they will give up traditional 'one-way' things like movies and tv shows. My argument was that there is a basic human need for listening to stories that will not go away. So it makes sense for movie makers to figure out how to best fulfill this need on the internet.

As I pointed out, one of the biggest uses people are putting this amazing new two-way medium to, is obtaining loads and loads of one-way material.
"Beginning Python - From Novice to Professional"
This was far more entertaining than I expected.
Sony Paid Warner Bros. $400 Million to Go Blu-Ray?
Pittsburgh seed stage fund doing YC-magnitude investment + incubation, with one YC alum advisor
This one is very Pittsburgh. There is explicitly no Silicon Valley pitch day and they expect their companies to stay in Pittsburgh indefinitely. Pittsburgh has a thing where they try and encourage bright young people to stay, because most of them leave. This is a decent attempt at encouraging people to stay in Pittsburgh, but it's counter-productive as far as actually making profitable companies. But hey, that's what investment from the State of Pennsylvania is for!

One of the advisors for AlphaLab was the CEO of YC company SlapVid. Whatever happened to them?
Does anyone have a link to the actual blog entry? I'd be curious to read Marc A's actual analysis of the newspaper business, rather than have it reported second-hand by a journalist. It doesn't seem to be up at blog.pmarca.com yet, though.

That said, I think the idea of immediately killing the dead-tree version of the NYT is flat-out laughable. Obviously the media business is moving online, and it's crazy for the NYT not to have some more clued-in people on their board, but killing off the paper version of the NYT is a sure-fire way to eliminate one of the NYT's most valuable assets (its priceless brand and ability to influence some of the world's most important decision makers). Sure, many of those people will turn to the website, but they could do that now if they wanted to -- there's a reason they are still paying for the paper version. Plenty of those important decision-makers are old-fashioned folks that actual want something they can hold, and read on the subway, on the airplane, or at the gym. Online media is making progress toward making dead tree editions redundant, but that hasn't happened yet.

But since I haven't read Marc A's actual analysis, it's hard to tell if he's serious or not.
I'm with ya on rewriting code to make it cleaner. Maybe it's OCD, but who cares. It's one of the joys of coding to me. And yeah, sometimes it's costly, but sometimes it's very beneficial, and regardless it's like an itch.
Facebook Targets FriendFeed; Opening Up The News Feed
Google Very Exposed to US Recession--Expert
Have you looked at bjam - a make system by boost. Quite useful and a few steps closer to ant than make is. If you really need a gui - kdevelop is pretty good. If you dont mind paying for it, SlickEdit does a fine job too.
DataPortability Logo Competition
here's the web link to the book: http://www.diveintopython.org
Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche
David Friedman on the popcorn question:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Cha...
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Cha...

Also, how to double the volume of your popcorn kernels:

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1278
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ is also a great way to learn (albeit secondary to a standard book)
Programming Python or Core Python. Both from the O'Reilly collection.
Scoble: Is Facebook doomed?
Actually I think it makes more sense if you don't report pledges as a monetary amount (at least not directly). It feels a bit like a rip off when the real amount is inevitably lower and any potential users is going to be trying to do the conversion rates for any figure they see. A user report might say you got 100 pledges and $5 this week.

Already a lot of people are worried about people tipping and absconding - I think you should redefine the way people think about your tips: its a way of showing your appreciation which you can convert into real money at convenient times. Don't fight the people who want to show appreciation and not pony up the cash, and don't fight with bloggers to see the pledge amounts as real dollar amounts when they won't be.
I found the python challenge incredibly hard. Not programming-wise but it's just really hard to know what to do next in most puzzles.

I'd rather recommend http://projecteuler.net
I went through "dive into python", "learning python", and the python cookbook by oreilly, in that order. If I had to do it again, I would skip dive into python which I found a bit easy. Cookbooks are usually dry and this one is too, but it does beef up your skills.
In addition to all the advice from the other comments, read this essay: http://paulgraham.com/die.html.
How about showing two electrons sharing the same state? We could call it "Forbidden Lust".
But I thought "IP" stood for Ixtreeemly Personal! :-O
Do you guys know of any website blocking software?
Hi guys like the title says do you gents know of any website blocking software to prevent employees from wasting time surfing popular sites like myspace , facebook and the like? thanks a bunch!
Elegance and Power in Haskell
Higher-priced and more brittle (so they can sell more support contracts)!
Just install a logging program in your router and post the logs in a public place. That way, your employees will have to own up to any wasted time instead of find ways to circumvent it. It's also a good accountability program for your employees.

This idea just came to mind. Do you guys think something like this would work?

As far as your original question goes, I don't know of anything off the top of my head, but you could always get a sort of parental guardian box the plugs in between your router and your internet connection. Those usually have a block by site function built into them, as well as password protecting certain sites (you know, if you want to bypass your own security to get to HN or whatever).
What Does Sun’s MySQL Acquisition Mean For Government IT Usage?
"Companies are expected to remain in Pittsburgh after the end of the AlphaLab program."

They have high expectations.
Ugh. Run the following code to make the UI bearable:

function makeSlide(src){
return "<br/><img src='"+src+"' style='border: 2px solid white;' /><br/><br/>";
}

document.write('<html><head></head><body style="margin:0; padding:0;"><div style="width: 100%; background-color: #555; text-align: center;">');
for (var i=1; i<10; i++){
document.write( makeSlide("http://www.venge.net/graydon/talks/mkc/html/mgp0000"+i+".jpg"));
}
for (var i=10; i<=58; i++){
document.write( makeSlide("http://www.venge.net/graydon/talks/mkc/html/mgp000"+i+".jpg"));
}
document.write('</div></body></html>');
document.close();
I'll back you up there. It's what I'm using and it is wonderful except for one thing: it doesn't have that much real and difficult examples throughout, only some sprinkled here and there and the rest of the scripts are nonsense.
YC's own http://8aweek.com
At https://tipit.to/ we don't normally count pledges. We do display them, but in gray. Right now in our top charts I've turned on a little flag so that pledges are included in the front page top charts algorithm, but that's just for the launch. I'll turn that off sometime soon.

One of the main reasons we do this is because not counting pledges automatically reduces on welching. When an unpaid tip is something only you yourself can see, then there's absolutely no point in pledging a tip without any intention of paying it. The only welching going on would be those that honestly forgot. Either way, it doesn't drag down the validity and utility of the statistics.
I'm not sure we disagree.

We expect some percentage to pay, and showing the full amount might encourage people to pay.

Regardless of whether they pay, it is already a way to show appreciation.

Perhaps we should make it clearer that only paid tips affect the top tips ranking. Either way, I think this is going to be a decentralized service: payment rates will vary by communities on different sites. Don't fight the internet.
"... I knew I would probably get attacked on this post in some way. I am not naive and I do realize my limitations. Additionally, in a business you are looking ideally for individuals who complement yourself in skills (i.e. one business person, one technology person). ..."

Hi Mel, normally I'd be ripping into a "business" founder as well. Well until I was re-reading "Founders at Work" [0] and come across Mitch Kapor. It made for very interesting reading and totally made me re-think non-tech founders. You see Mitch came into developing right at the start of the Apple ][ software building a companion bit of software for VisiCalc called VisiPlot (TIny Troll).

'... I was totally ignorant how long things took
I had no background in computer science. I
was self-taught -- I was still writing in Basic. I
had no management experience; I was in
business school ... I was a transcendental
meditation teacher and a mental health
officer ...' [0]

Now Mitch got himself hired as a product manager as a way to finish his product. With limited recognised "professional credentials" he was sidelined by the software publishers he was working for so he went back to finishing product. Now comes the interesting bit. First he recognised good technical people and seized on the fact that the VisiCalc publishers ignored the technical problem of data-exchange and [1]. Mitch also took advantage of the business in-experience of Software Arts by licensing his software at 33% above SA's gross margins. [2]

Then several things happened that played to his advantage mainly through other people severely underestimating his technical & business abilities. A) He was bought out of the royalty agreement for his licensed software (US$1.2M), convinced them his non-compete was not applicable to their product, hired key technical staff to re-build another product with spread sheeting & graphing & releasing the product as a second generation product to the new IBM PC.

Now I really must have glossed over this bit the first time. I didn't realise Mitch was a non-technical. He was completely underestimated and written off by people with "technical". So what did Mitch really do that stood out?

- created product

- recognised that change (new hardware) brings opportunity

- could read people better than given credit

- recognising technical weakness & hiring well

- killer business instinct

So don't let the negative replies curb your determination. Now 2 questions. Are you still at school or have contact with places where people learn to get a co-founder? Is the fact that best friends (potential co-founders) are normally of the same sex a key factor in finding a co-founder?

[0] Jessica Livingston, Founders at work, Ch6 Mitch Kapor, pp 90-93

[1] Ibid, p91. In the Apple ][ there was not enough memory to save data b/w applications and Mitch saw the potential key technology enabling seamless data transfer via floppies.

[2] Ibid p92.
yes parenting is hard and quite different from self indulgent activities such as shopping and taking heroin - but does it make you less happy? duh

the smile and sound of little feet running to the door when you walk in the door is better than any thing you can buy or inject.
I read about half of Dive Into Python, and it was pretty advanced stuff. It's good if you know another programming language very well. The book starts out slow, but the difficulty curve accelerates very fast. I wouldn't read it cover to cover. It would be a good reference to have though.

I'd suggest skimming the table of contents of both books first.

Then again, Dive Into Python is free, so you might as well start with that, and if it's too advanced, switch to Learning Python (I read the first 100 pages of it last summer, and I thought it was good, I'm a fan of O'Reilly).

If you really want a beginner book, Learning Python is a great choice. It was just updated too. Good luck.
The end of Netscape
Not a single mention in the article of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and how the light affects the electron!
At least now I have a visual idea of why I was so confused after watching the movie.
Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-less Windshield [Google translation from Italian]
What brought you here?
digg has become cesspool which I refused to believe for the longest time. I was one of their biggest supporters in the early days and looked over the influx of mass stupidity as it arrived in waves.

I just couldn't take it anymore and stumbled upon (pun not intended) reddit which seems to have become a political battlefield and 4chan playground along with digg.

I am here and content for now. It offers the quality stories I have to literally search for on digg and reddit without the words, "newfag" or "sheeple" in every other sentence.

From the very short time I have been reading here, I've seen something that digg and reddit has lost. A sense of maturity. A genuine desire to converse rather than enrage. That's why I am here. I am curious to hear what brought others here and hope this didn't sound too much like a soapbox speech.
Any Mobile Streaming startups?
Any mobile streaming startups you know which use video as a medium <<apart from entertainment>>? I know there is a mobile version of youtube and got to know something about fineplayer based in czech republic.TV/news/podcasts on mobile is a good way to utilize time while travelling/elevators/waiting for somebody. Please share your views and urls on this topic
Have you tried O'Reilly's Safari service? For 14 bucks a month, you get a subscription that will let you have access to 10 different books at a time. That way, you can read different chapters on the same subject.

I tend to bounce around in what I learn and try to look at things from different angles. I find that different authors cover one subject better than another. And, thay way, I don't have to feel bad about buying the book and only reading 2-3 chapters out of it.
Trust your employees to act like adults.
Ask PG: Statistics
There have been a few posts (one being mine) around concerning fears about "fluff" posts taking over. Solutions are ranging from allowing downmods, adjusting weighting algorithms, and even just blacklisting Reddit posts.

One thing I'd like to see before considering adjustments like this would be more detailed statistics about how people vote, how leaders vote, how karma is distributed, &c.

I feel like interesting data sets would be:

Across all users
Karma
Number of votes
Number of submissions
Times downmodded
...

Across all posts
Karma
Comments
Flag for whether it's considered "fluffy" (mod's discretion)
Flag for Reddit submission
...

Really, it could be a pretty big problem. It does seem like a potential playground of hacks and at least some of those statistics are certainly not difficult to mine (probably Arc one-liners).

So, if it seems interesting and there's not any issue with privacy (strip out usernames and it'd be hard to correlate anything beyond the leaderboard) is there any chance of seeing a hn-stats tarball?
Bad article, but good points made in it. If you think about it, given that SQL is used so much with data containing people's names, it's perversely ironic that the creators of the language chose to give a special meaning to a symbol that is so likely to turn up in the data.
You've actually summed up pretty well my own reasons for coming here. :) I think frustration with other once-great sites is common.

But I have also started to appreciate what is unique about yC, both in site design (e.g. you can't mod things down) and that the content is even closer to what I'm generally interested in.
Use a linux box at your gateway, squid and squidguard:

http://www.squidguard.org/

Then use iptables to do a transparent redirect of all outbound web traffic to you squid server:

http://www.squid-cache.org/mail-archive/squid-users/200404/0...

This way you can actually have your employees end up a page of your design that says "Quit wastin' time foo'" whenever they hit a site you've placed on the block list. Mr. T. is optional of course.
The parallels between mathematics and Haskell were what initially drew me to learn the language.

If you're looking for a 100-year language, it can't hurt to keep an eye on math. It's kind of like a lisp first written 3000 years ago.
Virtualizing Embedded Linux
Using nextgen PCI Express switches to eliminate network I/O bottlenecks
enjoyed reading your article.
I found Core Python Programming by Wesley J. Chun is the best python book so far that I requested the university library to get it (among couple other books) for my research.

I started with Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional. Extremely helpful and easy to follow book, since I already have few languages in my repertoire.

After you are comfortable with python and its syntax then get some python cookbooks.

Good Luck
Indian business empire eyes global role
In general, Paul, is there a reason not to open up a machine-readable HN platform for people to tinker on top of (other than the time it'll take to code)?
Worthwhile en devours have hard parts that might not be as enjoyable as watching a movie or a trip to Cancun!? Holy cow, give that guy a Pulitzer!

Next week he's got an article planned about how people often don't find their jobs as much fun as DisneyLand!
What's Facebook? Is that some kind of photo album site? ;)
I wish it were that simple friend.
Exposing voting history strikes me as an obviously bad thing to do given that votes have always been anonymous. Even if you tried to scrub personal information from the data, it'd be fairly easy to match anonymous ID's to HN nicks.
Actually I just installed one on my browser the other day. But I want something that I could help me keep logs of their browsing so come review time I have something that could keep them on their toes.
We're working on a corporate version of 8aweek.
Europe invests in real-time Java for multicore systems
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22start+using+cgiproxy%22

The point of installing blocking software is so you can fire people that circumvent it and go to facebook without your explicit, written permission?
China in appeal over 3Com deal
I sit for hours every day; had an Aeron but am now using the Humanscale Freedom chair.
We had an ergonomics assessment at my former employer, and were given a couple of high end chairs to try over a week. We liked the Freedom chair best. It has a gel covered seat, which I personnaly prefer to the Aeron mesh which started to rip into pants after a while. The Aeron also has a rigid frame around the seat mesh, which can dig into into your legs and become quite uncomfortable after a longer time.
The best aspect of the Freedom chair though is the backrest, which is counterbalanced by bodyweight. Love my Freedom chair. It's pricey, but considering the time I'm spending on it, it's totally worth it.
http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/02/inaugurating-th.html
If each employee is using Windows on there workstation you could modify the hosts file to redirect the domain to some other address, like your company intranet. They will never figure it out. This is free and dead on easy.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=window...
Yeah, that site is totally lame.
Even in a real world democracy, there are people whose opinions have a disproportionate influence. Why do we think that democracy would work differently in an online community?

Further, one would expect to see a power law distribution in things such as no of submissions, karma, edits etc. If somebody choses to spend 10 hours a day submitting links to digg, I don't think that is anybody's business.

What the article seems to be wishing for is a socialist utopia, not a democracy.
Full voting history, probably, yes. Number of votes (some relation to activity, perhaps) not so much.

Anything that's obviously going to make it easy to reverse engineer anonymous things isn't a good idea, but that doesn't mean you can't still find interesting gems.
I agree. Aggregate stats such as whether a small group does most of the voting, whether the same people seem to vote for the highest ranked items, etc. would be pretty interesting while not giving away too much information.

I am also curious whether a completely open system would work. Has that ever been tried? On a system the size of Reddit or Digg it would be intriguing to see how groups cluster.
What is karma inflation?
Read his book "Stumbling on Happiness". He addresses the first two of your concerns, and it's a fascinating book. (As for your third point, I think you missed what he was trying to say: that if you create a myopia around any one thing, it tends to exaggerate its effects.)

And you're right that there's more to life than happiness, such as fulfillment and love. Being a Dad is, like the Marines, the hardest job you'll ever love. I wouldn't change it for the world.
Interesting. The other side of the coin is that encouraging people to click that button is the first step in getting real money. I don't think I could tell you which is a better idea without seeing stats for both, even then...
I understand. I came here because I have a start-up, but the community here is one of the best I know. I'm afraid as it becomes more popular, that will change. But I'm enjoying it for now.
Is there a downloadable version?
Over time karma is worth less, because a popular story will get 20 or 50 or 100 points when it might have only gotten 7 points when this site was just getting started
a hell of a lot
i have worked on several mobile products and streamed music to a mobile phone thru a java app, but streaming video is a bit tricky due to the phone specs and the connection speed.
What makes karma valuable?
I think its primary function is a commodity for bonding and shaping the group, i.e. like economics or information flowing on a network.
Heresy and turtles (all the way down) with Avi Bryant
Nice hack
Google advancing a specious argument for personal gain... one would think people would find that more interesting than the votes indicate.
Does Microsoft really want to be buddies with Open Soure?
That's pretty good news. He's not really in it 100%, and some new blood will help it move along faster.
Google lunar challenge gets under way.
I wonder about this too. Sometimes you come across thought provoking articles that cry out for comments, but there are none. If the article is already a few hours old and fallen off the front page, and you do post a comment, it probably won't get a response. This greatly decreases the incentive to comment (since what you want in the first place is to discuss it with others).

I now try and leave a comment if I find a good article that has slipped through the cracks.
Google Gears for non developers
Even developers need a shortcut on occasion...
If you want to learn Python and are interested in gaming, you could write some scripts for Counter-Strike: Source / HL2 / TF2:

http://python.eventscripts.com

Tutorials (some are pure Python, others are game-related:

http://python.eventscripts.com/pages/Category:Tutorial

One kinda neat example:

http://python.eventscripts.com/pages/Mugmod
Learn Git 10 Different Ways
It is simple feedback. It tells you that your contribution (however small or infrequent) is valued by others.