skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I bet someday somebody comes up with a formula that describes the optimal amount of fragmentation for any given community.

I would think that there must exist some sort of rational percentage of fragmentation that is beneficial to prevent stagnation, but above which creates a less than optimal signal-to-noise ratio and leads to a steady decline in the percentage of useful or substantive interaction.

Hmm, I can only hope whoever it is names it "Trevor's Law" :-P
Elitism is the new black? A karma whoring social network idea
Time and again I read comments here on HN about new features with the catch that they are only open to users of a certain karma threshold, so as to keep a standard of quality. The "gigs" thread comes to mind. Hey that's cool; I think we can all get behind a little elitism, especially when karma points are being thrown around like something really throwable.

So, I'm proposing the Mecca of elitist social networking sites. Any page created can be assigned karma thresholds for viewing, commenting, voting, whatever. To place a widget onto your page, you must meet its karma requirements. Want to view my new page? You must be this karmic to enter. Want to read my latest hack? That will cost you 1 point deposited to my account.

But those were not very good examples; there isn't any point in restricting your audience. But for abilities such as embedding pictures and video that can be abused, the karma requirements would be set very high by the karmic gods themselves (the top 100 users).
The bigdog is better at recovery when slipping on an ice patch. I need that.
I learned I could enjoy a social news site. Digg and the others weren't able to hold my interest as long as HN has. Gooo news.yc!
I would argue that as far as music goes, a fan that will spend 100 dollars a year on you is more of an Uber fan. The sort of fan who shoes up way out there on the front of your bell curve. Basically, I don't think you get "True Fans" like that without collecting lots of other fans to fill out that nice lookin' curve. Maybe the truth of the matter is that lots of "popular" artist ARE supported by a few thousand "True Fans" (Or lets just say, by a relative few fans who outspend the vast majority)
I better stop using Gmail as my catch-all dogpile 'oh information.
A website-as-MMO. Saints preserve us!
So do I have to wait till it gets official before I admit to having it?
I wish I knew what powered aerodynamics was. ...What is it?

One thing I would say is that prototype cycles for hardware might be longer than with software, but admittedly this isn't my field.
For Freedom from lengthy phone menus, use fonolo
I am working on it in my spare time, mostly since I have to pay bills.
Last summer, we had the chance to pick to move anywhere (from Boston) and we chose Seattle.
Yeah, but it's hard and can get downright depressing. I am doing this right now and while I find my project interesting, it sucks most of what little free time I have without any guarantees of actually producing anything permanent. The thought of wasting 4-5 months of my life like that scares me.

Not only that, but because you can't devote much time, things tend to progress somewhat slowly leading to infrequent milestones, further sapping your motivation.

Anyway, enough with my bellyaching. That's pretty good advice, although I'd add "frequent releases" to it, even if these releases will be shown to no one but your cheerleaders. It is both motivating to have something to show others and also forces you to tie up and finish a ton of small, but important things which would have otherwise been left in favour of working on the larger features.
many issues in the next few decades will involve technology outrunning our ability to make ethical choices about their uses. what will the ultimate effects be of crops with terminator genes be? what happens when biotech created in a lab winds up mutating out in the wild?
human cloning and genetically tailored babies are great examples that are emerging right now.

of these robots being used as somewhat intelligent disposable soldiers scares me the most because it is the easiest to abuse and the effects would be felt immediately. when it becomes a matter of pressing a button to suppress an uprising, who will decide when it is appropriate to press that button?
remember that winners get called freedom fighters and losers get called terrorists. The USA wouldn't exist today if our "freedom fighters" hadn't resisted british rule.
If you can't pay for one, copy/inspire yourself from mainstream 2.0 website.

Thank you for the invite.

P.S. Don't quit, knowledge should be
free!
Like Steve Martin said - be so extraordinary that you force people to notice.
Isn't the value in replacing the competitor's product with your own? As the article said, all that they really prize is the user base. It's not like that's the first time they have paid for a possible competitor in order to assimilate them and wipe out their product (I'm thinking Dodgeball, Dulance, etc), it's just on a larger scale.
"First, you’ll want to automate bounce processing."

Good reason, and something I've never had to deal with. Every mass-mailing I've ever done has been a one-off.

"Think of configuring SPF, SenderID, DomainKey and DKIM."

You have to have (most of) this stuff, anyway, if you send ANY amount of email. It's not limited to mass senders--if you're sending mail as part of your business, you have to deal with spam prevention schemes of many types. SPF being the most widely implemented at this time.

I guess it comes down to regular mass emailing, which is something I've never done. So, I can see value in handling those problems.

Consider question answered, and point conceded. (I don't foresee needing this kind of service, since we don't do mass mailings on any regular basis, but I can imagine folks who would.)
Dealing with Large Data in Ajax
you don't fix the exchange rate, you let the market determine it. As the amount of karma increases it's possible for a value to decrease. But given how the dollar is doing, who knows what would happen.
My argument, in part by example, was that a large number of short, similar comments explaining why another comment should be downmodded would be annoying. Since the purpose of downmodding is to call less attention to lower-quality comments, putting a large thread of explanatory arguments underneath them seems counterproductive to me.
13 Tips to Comment Your Code
here's a game theoretic explanation of why that's no good: okay, fine, let's have an exchange rate where karma gets less valuable as the amount of total karma increases.

then me and my friend will upmod each other 1 karma, because we're each gaining 1 whole karma, but the devaluation we're causing is only losing us a fraction of a karma. With these incentives, everyone will upmod ... and the value of a karma point will tend towards zero.
It's the removal of redundancies which can make a merger greater than the sum of its parts. Why should Google maintain a separate set of HR, sales and administration departments when it already has those in place?
Taken far enough it quickly becomes a very strange type of self-modifying or 'nomic' game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic], where those with the karma get to make the rules about how karma is made, transferred, destroyed.

I'm very curious about the limits of this kind of voting determing the content, permissions and abilities of users to a web site, and the point where gamability becomes a fatal problem.

You could take it stupidly far, and have the highest karma users be able to alter the source code of the site or make similar deep structural changes. If I had the time to learn Arc it'd be great fun to hack the HN source to support this kind of tomfoolery.
Thanks for sharing. I admire you for having gone through that whole process -- it must have been a great learning experience.
Oops, you're right! :)
Well, the idea was that functionality would be contained within modular widgets, like facebook apps.
CBS to bloggers: Install our widgets, and we'll split the profits
There are few things in life I can recommend more highly than writing. PG wrote a great essay as to why that is, so I won't rehash it here.

Blogging is just like any other writing, except with the added caveat that you know people will read it. That makes it so much more motivational than, say, writing a diary, or working on a novel that you suspect you'll never complete.

It's changed my life in ways I can't even describe.
if karma is stored as an integer..
haha, will keep you in mind next time.
:) Wait until you see my other comments on this thread.
Sure, I just enjoy stretching ideas to breaking point to see what happens. I really like the idea though, it'd be an interesting project.
Sorry, but I don't see how the invention of the spider web and fishing nets lead to the invention of the internet. The advice is pretty generic (look for better ways to do things), but the examples are way off mark.
His argument could apply equally well to explain that the fragmentation (read: number of) Linux distributions is not such a bad thing either. It is just a sign people have freedom to do what they want, and guess what, when people have freedom, they will not always all do the same thing as everyone else.
I dislike the parable for reasons different than yours. I do see the point though, and it is humorous enough to make me not "hate" it.

The whole process the MBA mentioned revolves around increasing profits as an end. If that MBA was a bit more compassionate, his strategic mind would make him capable of utilizing resources for greater distributed benefit; he could help feed extra mouths than simply one man and his family. Now that would be an important difference. If the MBA were more compassionate, it really wouldn't be about minimizing the risks he faces daily. Essentially, it wouldn't be about utilizing his skills to concentrate wealth into his hands; it would be about applying his talents for greater efficiency. Obviously, I read it from a romantic POV, and dislike it because both perspectives are unabashedly self-serving.

I first heard this story from a kid who tried to philosophize to me his hedonistic lifestyle; he was so myopic for a college student, I couldn't imagine how he was brought up.
Summary:

1. Improve Usability
2. Build Content "Content is King"
3. Make it claer to the user what your product does
4. Wasted space with the design, and the color may not go well
5. remove ads (I showed a friend and he said the same thing)

Great work so far.

I think you should come up with a clear plan and don't just keep coding.

I.e. how you will reach your audience/build content.

That's the biggest problem -- nobody, seemingly not even you, knows what your product is, who it is for, how people will use it, or how to take or teach classes.

I think that's an important thing to figure out.

"the future of learning is here and free"
http://clipgarden.com lets you assign credits (okay, it's not karma as credits can be bought in addition to earned but..) to videos you upload so people have to pay that much to you to view it. pretty neat imo.
Identifying Manipulated Images
Google: We didn't help the NSA (or did we?)
what's interesting to me is it's not even that difficult to get life-like, self-balancing, responsive motion, etc with basic things like feedback loops (eg segway.) i don't know what to blame most robots' relative rudimentaryness on except their designers' lack of knowledge about things like that. to me the difficulty is much more in the physical mechanics than in the software. though after you get the mechanics down, the software would become the challenge
Insecure by design: Cisco product shipped with backdoor
This is why I read Joel on Software!
OK. I'll explain why it reminds me of reddit.

The author of the comment in question uses tired populist cliché (elites) and tries to impose their own political views on the reader (you think blackwater is bad).

Which is likely to generate a long, heated and shallow political debate rather than a discussion about the technology (or about the social implications of the technology).
USB stick fingerprint security easily bypassed
Some Nice Features of the Objective-C Language
Performance comparison of FreeBSD 7.0 to FreeBSD 4.11 and Dragonfly BSD 1.12
Know your System Administrator
I'm a Hacker News newbie. What pages are you talking about that require karma thresholds? And what are the thresholds?
FPGA-based XAUI interface supports Linux
Android port turns phones into webservers
Rather cryptic, in both wording and presentation; took me three reads to grasp it :-s. I think some of the words used are made up - "agalmos" only returns 3 results on google.

Effectively, this bizarre... article?... proposes that we apply karma weighting system where the more a user up-mods, the less each up-mod from that user is worth.

As blatantly flawed as the above summary sounds, the article generated some interesting thinking for me, particularly the contrast of the ranking mechanisms available to Twitter and Hacker News; you can change ranking mechanisms significantly by changing the structure of the content.
Wireless home automation wakes up
This is not a bad idea, unfortunately a lot of sites (especially online applications) check for IE specifically and if you don't have it, take you to a message page that says "this page only displays in IE, go away." You see this a lot using Firefox; saavy Firefox users know just to ignore the message because the site works fine anyway. But imagine if your mother in law has just downloaded Microsoft's latest browser, and a site tells her the browser she's using won't work - she'll just get the "deer in the headlights" look and freak out. There really isn't a way out of the corner Microsoft painted itself into on this one.
Browser makers focus on beating malware
The needle in a haystack problem
Golden Rules of Being a Fabulous Friend
Fashion guru, punching bag, unlimited call partner, shoulder to cry on -- what else can a friend do for you? These are few of the duties a friend can do. But what else can we do for a friend besides from being the rag to drag around?
The main issue, the same problem you would have if every bank could print their own money.

If any site could issue karma and Karma was accepted at many sites and redeemable to goods you would habe a major problem with the value of karma.

Unless the sites were issued a fixed amount of karma that they could in turn give to their users.
Blackwater being bad is not a political view; it is close to moral truth. I have talked to multiple US soldiers back from Iraq who have described Blackwater committing what would normally be war crimes. However, Blackwater is not subject to laws, so they're not war crimes.
I'd play...

I recommend pure Nomic as a geek drinking game.
Because this is only the beginning, and soon you'll have versions that carry ten times more than a mule, travel faster, and can be controlled remotely.
I'm glad to see more math software out there. But we shouldn't think of "proofs" of some totally unusual sub-part of math.

A math professor told me once, "A good proof is just an essay that can convince a skeptical mathematician." In the U.S. there is this bastardized combination of geometry with "two column proofs" that gives everyone the wrong idea. Better are problems like, "Spot the flaw in this reasoning".

The concept of proofs should be a way of explaining that to a mathematician, truth is black and white. It's different than the concept of truth in the liberal arts or even science. Turning it into abstract logic puzzles is cool but it misses the best point.
I hate the regurgitation thing. The entire commenting on other people's comments about other people's original work is just such a massive circle jerk.

When decided to write my blog I made two rules (which I rarely break): no linking to other blogs just to stroke my ego with an opinion post, no personal experience posts (i.e. today I went to the Taj Mahal and...)
>the reason a Euro or USD has value is because there is a limited supply of them.

I thought thanks to Bernanke there is unlimited supply of USD.
As far as business software goes: duh! If you get young people who can't afford your software hooked on it when they don't make any money, when they do, they will just buy it.

Unfortunately to my dismay math software does not follow this ideal. All the (good) math packages for students cost about $100 each. They are also pirated at an unbelievably high rate. I finally broke down and bought mathematica and I scavenged a copy of Matlab from a research group I worked under, but I wish so much that they were free. If I was a professional and used their software every day to make lots of money I wouldn't hesitate to buy their software for plenty of cash.

A lot of students will even buy the student version of Matlab and then use the pirated version which contains all the extra packages they need for their homework.

Embedded compiler software is even worse. Their normal software runs in the many thousands of dollars and their "student pricing" is sold at a heavy discount. Unfortunately, a small percentage of a really big number is still a big number for students. I had to get a student version of a compiler toolchain for a project and it was like $300. Which was an order of magnitude cheaper than the pro-edition, but $300 is a lot for a student who will just use something else they got pirated from some other student. If they had gotten me locked in I would probably go on in the future to use their software and chock up that $3000 because It was what I needed.
Public submition of prior art and commentary relevant to the claims of a patent
thank you for injecting good sci fi references into this boring business discussion
America's Robot Army: Are Unmanned Fighters Ready for Combat?
I'm inclined to agree.

Moreover, the US government basically prints money all the time... (in the metaphorical sense)
getBoundingClient Rect is awsome
I presume the poster was referring to the idea, not this site specifically. If there are any they're a well kept secret.
Meebo raising new round. Valued more than Bears Stearns
Harvard grad student's info in danger
Are You Sure You Should be Subclassing That?
European's firm benrfit from bebo's acquisition
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures
I'm taking a course on it right now and most people I've seen use Steven Strogatz's book (Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos). He mostly focuses on continuous systems, but the end of the book has a lot on discrete stuff like logistic maps and fractals.

His book is definitely the book on stuff like this, but mostly oriented at math-modelling and differential equations. Its also very easy to read and get through with lots of really great examples.

I obviously haven't yet looked at the research you are trying to dig into, but definitely check out this book from the library at least. Its also not that expensive.
Flickr will introduce video uploads next month.
Charlie Rose Face Plants To Save His MacBook Air
cereal? :P
Email, IM, IRC are for communication.

Twitter seems to be more for "Announcing" rather than communicating.

Maybe I'm just not well connected enough, but I really doubt anyone in the world cares what I'm currently doing day to day. The people that do care, I communicate with via more appropriate methods.
Karma is backed by gold didn't you know?
Ahh, Objective-C. Such an under appreciated language. Perhaps not for much longer though.
eh, I kicked my roomba... and it broke.

gotta get one of these pack mule buggers...
Sense. Your comment makes none.

Hackers (or crackers, if you prefer) don't wait for permission.
The first time I heard about this idea was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139461
Downmodding and polling are reserved for those of higher karma.
why doesn't google hire Linus Torvalds, with Linux and Git in his resume, I wonder why Linus never got highjacked by one the bigger IT firms, Oracle, Apple, IBM, Vodafone, Nokia etc ...

Is Linus now considered to be priceless, is he that good you can't put a price on him! I dunno ... I just wonder

I personally consider Ken Thompson to be the best programmer ever, even better than Donald Knuth (as a programmer), but both of them are old, and we know Don is busy writing books so I am less surprised to know they are not working on something big

Thought I would sure love to see a general purpose programming language written, created and designed by Don Knuth.
"It seems to me to be an improvement over sending people to risk their lives."

So, who are the robots fighting then if not people? I'm just thinking what a frightening thing it would be for an empire builder like GWB to have a conscience-less army of mechanical killers. At least our armed forces generally want to avoid killing innocents. Big Dogs with M50 machine guns don't care about such fine distinctions. So, yes, it could be scary.

Now, of course, as soon as these are available to the general public, I fully intend to exercise my second amendment right to own robotic death machines. That's in the constitution, right?
A bit of background information here about FreeBSD: For pretty much all of 2001 through 2006, FreeBSD kernel development was centered around making SMP work -- getting rid of the "Giant" lock, and thereby making it possible for multiple CPUs to be operating in the kernel at any given point.

Starting about a year ago, several prominent FreeBSD developers started looking very seriously at performance (how fast FreeBSD is) and scalability (how much faster FreeBSD gets when you have more than one CPU). A key part of this was putting in place the necessary test infrastructure to allow FreeBSD and Linux to be compared -- most of the dramatic performance improvements over the past year have resulted from noticing that Linux does better than FreeBSD on a particular benchmark, and tracking down why.

At this point, FreeBSD scales linearly (or until it hits hardware or application performance limits) up to 8 CPUs on pretty much every benchmark available, but on some benchmarks doesn't scale very well with 16 CPUs.
Colin is too polite to point out that Dragonfly was an "I'm taking my ball and going home" moment in FreeBSD history. Matt Dillon, a long-time FreeBSD developer (and all-around impressive guy, though this episode in history isn't his finest hour), had some disagreements with some other long-time FreeBSD developers, and one of those disagreements, perhaps the most important one, was over SMP and the direction FreeBSD was moving with regard to SMP-at-the-expense-of-UP performance.

So, the irony lies in the fact that current FreeBSD is faster than current Dragonfly in both UP and SMP environments. If one were keeping score, it would be:

FreeBSD core developers: 1

Matt and his "screw this, I'm leaving" crew: 0

To be fair, Matt has been willing to talk about some major issues in FreeBSD that are considered verboten by others. Package management in FreeBSD, for example, is a joke, and ports is waved around as a solution rather than the very serious problem that it really is. (No fault of cperciva's, as he's done the only really good thing in FreeBSD package management in years in the form of freebsd-update.)

Not that I have any strongly held opinions, or anything like that.
I'm ready to sell my account on ebay and donate the proceeds to charity. Apparently karma is very important to some people. I have realized it is just a measure of how much I post here.

I'm very curious what the karma->cash conversion rate is. The only reason I haven't put the auction up yet is I feel the rms username is damaged because of my disenfranchisement. If 30 days from the original incident pg won't restore my voting rights, I'll ebay my account anyways.
Ah, I was forgetting polling, right you are.