skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, of course...taken from the broadest possible perspective, it's obviously amazing that we can engineer living things to do our bidding. Whoopty-doo.

From that perspective, it's also freaking amazing that we can keep our food fresh in mechanical ice boxes, that we can flush our onesies and twosies into oblivion at the flick of a lever, and that we can fly around the sky in our giant metal birds.

I don't think it's particularly unreasonable to expect people to be familiar with a technology that is almost old enough to drink.
The linked article refers to the board game version rather than the gliders version.
Are you a management consultant? Because at least those guys figured out how to get paid for their inconsequential opinions on how OTHER people should run THEIR businesses ... remind us all again what makes you the definative expert on OTHER people's prospects for success?
Methinks you protest too much ...
The real facebook apocalypse will come when they let users theme their profiles. Suddenly there will be animated gifs and marquee text everywhere... and tons of pink and neon green text on black and purple backgrounds.
But, I really was not asking for feedback this time!

Was sincerely looking for a UI designer/consultant...
Can hot girls pass turing tests?

I have anecdotal evidence that they can't, but then again, there are a lot of sororities on the campus I attended...
A complete add would be better. More != Better.
pretty cool experiment. the books at the very left might cause some controversy..
You are correct about the sarcasm. I'm surprised the author of the article didn't realize that a domainer could easily redirect traffic from the tasted domains.
eww. people are so confused. "i want to lose weight, but also i don't want to take steps to lose weight. i know! i'll just hurt myself every time i gain weight. i'll make it really embarrassing and painful. that will resolve my contradictory preferences!"
he made a bunch of money playing poker and his current startup has obvious money making potential
what do you mean by 'work for hire'?
People experience the "Aha" feeling when they are not consciously monitoring what they are thinking
Hackers Post YouTube Video Declaring War on Scientology
Please link to one-paged print version: http://www.cio.com/article/print/175950
>> he made a bunch of money playing poker

Well! I take back what I said. Obviously "making a bunch of money playing poker" qualifies one as an expert in rapidly assigning probabilities of success to ventures undertaken in an increasingly complex world where the law of unintended consequences seems to be trumping everything else.

>> and his current startup has obvious money making potential

And is worth $0. Contrasted with, say, Google ... which until year 3 had no clue as to what their business model would be and therefore had, using your logic, no "obvious money making potential" ... but is now worth ... like, a lot - or so I hear.

If ideas are a dime a dozen then "potential" must be the stuff they use for shipping filler to make sure the ideas don't get damaged during transport.

In other words, he is no more proven than the people whose startups he belittles ...
yeah, those fascist pigs will really get what is coming to them when Indonesia is underwater
Bill Gates @ World Economic Forum: A new view for entrepreneurship
I agree with grusome

I don't know who's the bigger idiot the new guy or the author... and when I think about it I think it's the author. I can understand having a script that recreates the tables from scratch, but why include the drop table line?
You might talk to the guys at New Idea Engineering about their xpump technology http://www.ideaeng.com/ds/xpump.html
I used it a few years ago to process all of the hardware data sheets on the Cisco website and extract 13 parameters such as height, width, depth, weight, power consumption (AC and DC), etc...Because Cisco's products come from many different acquisitions the datasheets were in many different formats, which sounds similar to your problem.

One point I would make is that a fast crawler is not always the best for this type of application: crawling at about the speed a user would click on pages is more friendly to a site and less likely to have them take steps to block your access.
Full Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql-Mtlx31e8

Text of Speech: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2008/...

Why you should watch/read:
"The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives."
I like the concept, but I'd recommend that you allow people to browse all submitted errors and provide solutions. And, you'll need to give an incentive for people to help. For example, have a list of "Top Problem Solves" or karma points.
Because I believe I can create much greater value (through programming) than I'm allowed to at my current day job. In a very pasionate way I need to do this. I'm tired of wasting my time and efforts in a corporate environment.

I can get more done in a day on my code than I can in a month of day job work. Also, (at least in the initial stages) I can structure my work in efficient manner so that I'm accomplishing more and more every hour I spend working.
Fair enough. He also disabled run permissions on the script. But my point isn't really about "just comments", it's that good programmers take responsibility for failures that arise from their work. In this case, printing "DO NOT EVER RUN THIS SCRIPT" and exiting without doing anything led to misunderstanding and problems in the hands of a curious and inexperienced successor. Here the author had a choice to make. He could look at how his rather hokey strategy contributed to the failure or he could hype up the stupidity of the other guy.
If they went that route, they would probably lose out on a bunch of answers that people figured out on their own, which is kind of the whole point of the site. Otherwise you have a ton of error messages and problems, and no way to fix them.
that's a good point

It does remind me of an old study of alcoholics in the military (I can't reference it), specifically a study of the best way to treat them. In this study some of the patients were 'forced' to take pills that would make them feel really uncomfortable when they drank any alcohol. I could be wrong, but I think these patients were the only ones who recovered or came closest to recovering...
there's a drug out there now that does it... it makes your body not digest fat, so if you eat fat, it comes right out at inopportune times.
I remember reading somewhere that drinking Yerba Mate naturally causes one to release some excess calories as heat instead of storing them as fat. Sadly Wikipedia doesn't have the cite.
That logic is bad because Jobs and Dell were sorta competitors. This guy has well-meaning noncompetitors telling him to switch directions, which is a much different thing.
Ripping on someone's idea in this type of forum is a clear sign that you are an asshole. Period.

But for all of those that hate this concept, notice that Seth Godin posted the same idea on his blog, twice.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/09/alarm-clocks...
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/10/todays_free_...
Seth Godin's improved alarm clock has nothing in common with sleep.fm, except they both have to do with alarm clocks.

Sleep.fm is an alarm clock where your friends can send you wake-ups with messages at any time they choose.
Yerba Mate is just caffeine, and caffeine increases your metabolism like any other stimulant. It is a good dieting tactic to drink lots of sugar-free coffee. This is why amphetamines are prescribed for weight loss.
Kraus also gave the following story about the beta in a public forum: JotSpot signed up over 3,000 people for the beta and let it run for more than nine months.

Every Beta user had free access to the application and the developers were happy because they were getting a lot of testing. When it came time to convert to paid they had an extremely low yield (either less than 2% or less than 0.5% I can't remember) and they had to re-tool completely to figure out how to find paying customers. They ultimately revamped their signup process so that you had to give a credit card to start your 15 day free trial: this cut way down on their trails but boosted their conversion rate significantly and allowed them to focus on what kind of trial users converted at the high frequency.

Steve Blank makes a related point in "Four Steps to the Epiphany" when he cautions startup teams to distinguish between beta for product development and customer development. You need to test your product, but you also need to test your product conceptXwill people pay for it, how many people and how much will they pay. He observes that many startups fail because they can't find a market, few fail because they can't get their product to function.

Beta for test and beta for market exploration have two different goals. The number of early product testers you need may be two or three orders of magnitude less than the number you need to refine your product concept to the point you find market acceptance.
Love your domain name.
I wasn't going to mod any of your posts down... but then you made this one... which honestly just confused the shit out of me. You had the moral high ground (defending a guy for taking a chance on an idea), and then you squandered it by jumping the shark and insulting everyone on YC News, all of our ideas/projects/skills, and then to top it off, throwing down a completely random gauntlet to pg himself, as if he had anything to do with any of this.

I suggest you close the browser and chill out a bit. No flame war is ever worth sounding that crazy.

(PS. I still didn't mod you down, but only because I stick by my '-1 is enough bad karma' rule.)
To make the world a more fun place, and hopefully make a boatload in the process.
We want to do scientific research. We need to make a bunch of money to be able to run a private research lab and cure AIDS, and working for the man will never pay off well enough.

(to cure AIDS, midway through this post) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751
Did you click through to the second post? What makes you think that sleep FM wouldn't grow to include videos from your friends, weather reports, to do lists or overnight tweets?
Sure, it could, and I hope Ryan looks at that post.
Thanks for the notes, guys. I cleared out the two crap links. I'll try to stay on top of it as much as I can. It's easier with the help, so that's been good.

I want to add a ranking to the outgoing links, like a number by each link that's how many times it's been clicked. Anyone have any tips on how to proceed?
news.YC readers might find it interesting that this is some of the View3 team (from the Winter Founders Program last year).
I would never want to allow someone the power to wake me up when they want to. That would be so annoying!

The only difference from a regular boring alarm clock to Sleep.FM's Social Alarm Clock, is the tone that wakes you. You set the clock and when it goes off your alarm message(s) is the tone that wakes you. Whether it's Happy Birthday, wake up old lady dont forget to take your medicine, the meeting has moved to a different location, good morning girlfriend/boyfriend/best friend i wanted to share this new song with you( you hear it), hey X i'll meet you for breakfast at denny's before work, im sorry i wont be in the carpool today, dont take i95 huge traffic jam, it's snowing go back to bed, etc, etc....

I wonder rms did you happen to view a promo vid of ours? Knowing that is helpful...
I love UI design and I am a Photoshop/css pro.

stuff I made:
webdevelopersfieldguide.com (currently the top story ;-P)
poptakeout.com <--mobile safari web-app.
stanleymusic.com

contact me through wademeredith.com if you'd like.
thanks - it really helps =D

by source - you mean code or author?
Some People Never Learn  - genetic factor affects our ability to learn from our errors
Seems like this video has been removed from Google. Does any one have access to it ? A download'able version perhaps ?
New insights into vaccination for HIV
People believe in weird things. This could succeed.
The Entrepreneurship Myth
It's sad to say that in the span of 31 comments, Wade Meredith was the only UI designer that offered a hand.

Ryan's post: "I am seeking a UI designer/consultant for my startup" that no one wanted to answer.
"The MBA is pretty hard...challenging-the-way-you-view-business hard"
24 Ways to Achieve a Deep, Uninterrupted Sleep
The Wonderful World of Early Computing
Nanotechnology can be used for oil and gas recovery
Top 30 Tips for Staying Productive and Sane While Working From Home
First MacBook Air Benchmarks
Steve Jobs lost $219 million since Macworld
> I would never want to allow someone the power to wake me up when they want to. That would be so annoying!

It's like having... a spouse! THE HORROR. (Seriously, I can imagine the use for people that specifically need to get someone else out of bed--it's like a pager that's really, really loud. But again, that's all it is--an Internet-to-audio-pager gateway.)
How to Stay Awake at Work
A positive one, I hope! ;)
It's brilliant!

Squeeze recurring revenues right out of people's egos! :D
I have the Firefox keyword 'w' set to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

So it really is at my fingertips :)
Is there a Dark Side of the Rails? And is that in any way similar to the Wrong Side of the Tracks?
It will be very, very, very hard for you to compete with google. If there is a problem, and it is more or less common, there are going to be message boards, IRC logs and various blog entries talking about it. Google finds them all. You, on the other end, rely only on your own DB. Sounds like "one man vs army" kind of deal to me.

Sorry. You asked what I think and this is it.
Turn Caps Lock to Underscore(Python programmers may like it:)
To speed up the coming singularity.
Your mkcd script breaks for directories with spaces in their names; you've got to put $1 in quotes. Also, never heard of a tar bomb? =)
So how many times has the sound of your alarm clock informed you of something pertinent to your day, made you laugh or allowed you to remotely share a moment with someone close to you? It hasn't...

For those who want to continue to wake up to just some meaningless noise can continue to do so...
But, hey it's the 21st century and now through Sleep.FM
we can wake up to personal pieces of communication from those closet to us or those we allow!
Why would we ever need such a list; PowerShell is so tightly integrated with Clippy that you can always rely on him to give you the appropriate wizard for your task.
Can Photo Clues Lead to Digital Camera's Owner
The 247 lb. Vegan
Google could be their best source of incoming traffic. The various answers sites seem to make a living that way.
Ah, didn't realize you needed to be that close to Silicon Valley. Some other people have mentioned downtown Mountain View around Castro Street (try Dana Street Cafe) which is pretty cool and close to a lot of software and hardware shops. There are some nice places in downtown Palo Alto but I don't know the prices there anymore. Back up near SF you may want to look at the Mission district, specifically between Valencia and Dolores south of 16th Street. It's a transitional neighborhood, great food, lots of walking distance small shops, but you may find your car broken into if you leave anything inside.

We are paying $3000/month for a nice old 3bdrm Craftsman in Rockridge that is about 5min walking from the BART station and about 2min from the College Ave strip.
> I had no idea it would spawn such discussion.

There's a good indicator that something will spawn a heated debate, and you pointed it out yourself:

> and most readers here, even the juniors, could understand it.

It's a bikeshed.
Okay, I wasn't going to mention it before because it only seemed to cover the ejecta (no pun intended) of a certain web phenomenon, but now it's getting ridiculous.

N Xs M Y(s) is now a snowclone.
I believe that Silicon Valley will be a startup hub for at least another ten years. I believe that many successful technology startups will thrive in other parts of the world. I don't think these two statements are contradictory. Silicon Valley doesn't have to fail for you to succeed somewhere else. Especially if you are bootstrapping.

As far as I can tell, Bollywood formed around India's domestic market, a market that Hollywood was doing very little to serve. I think the primary barrier to establishing other Silicon Valley equivalent hubs around the world is finding a local culture that doesn't punish failure. It needs not just to tolerate but to celebrate the level of prudent risk taking defines entrepreneurship.
Guy Kawasaki once said that the number one goal of any startup (or any organization for that matter) should be to "make meaning."

I wholeheartedly agree

He also goes on to say that you should be able to fill out this blank with your company.

If ___________________ did not exist, the world would be a little worse off.
> What happens if you want to upgrade the monitor? Or if you want to put CPU on the ground?

If you have it in your kitchen? If you give it to your ten-year-old daughter? I think that's where the majority of them ended up (also, I can recall the school systems in my area [of British Columbia] just getting iMacs as I was graduating). Think about places you'd use a laptop now, but don't really need to move it around all that much, because you have a single, set desk configuration.
that's mean. And quite frankly it is very low for anyone to attack people in such a manner. If you cannot say something that adds value maybe you can save the keystrokes to promoting your gambling site.
Man please
Dude, if I ever come down to the level you (which won't happen in this lifetime) I will say you are an idiot. But I will never be at that level, so I will never say it. But just so you know, a lot of people won't work at your startup for too long if they have to put it with your brains. Idiot.
Ask YC: Best computer components shop around Palo Alto?
Fry's is pretty good, but sometimes I need an alternative. For example, Fry's doesn't have the new Penryn (45nm) Intel processors even though a number of internet retailers have them in stock. GamePC on California Ave has a good selection but not so good prices. Is there a newegg-like retailer within driving distance (radius out to San Jose)?
It was pretty direct, and I think I might have chosen a softer way of saying it, but I don't like the idea much myself, either. Telling someone you respect the truth "adds value" in my opinion.

Who knows though, maybe Ryan will be able to repurpose it into something cool with just a little bit of effort, and come out ahead. I hope so.

What I think I would say to Ryan if I were talking about it over a beer, and trying to be a bit humorous about it, is that it really reminds me of something Kramer from Seinfeld would be trying to sell Jerry and Elaine on. "But Jerry, it's great, it's an alarm clock and it's social!". Later in the episode Kramer would be walking around in an obviously sleep deprived state.
And Larry Page and Sergey Brin lost a combined $10 billion in the past month, and a lot of other people have lost a lot of money too... so what?
Why would Kramer be walking around in a sleep deprived state?

Maybe I need to be more direct, as it looks like readers get the impression that your friends have the power to randomly wake you up with their messages? That is not the case and I dont want to use an alarm clock that allowed people to wake me up to messages when they want to. Uggh, that would stink, I want to sleep until the time on my alarm clock goes off!

What's different here is the sound of your alarm clock. INstead of just hearing only a buzzer you hear some sorta of buzzer and then audio messages left from those you allow. THis is only heard after the alarm time you set passes... same principle as a normal alarm clock.

If this is clear to you cool ... though I dont understand your statement, "Kramer would be sleep deprived"
I've been working on this for a little while now. You can definitely write a plug-in or pattern matching file for each site. Building a specific crawler for each website doesn't make sense.

The custom bits you need are then ones that fill the form and then extract the results. For scraping results ruby's Scrubyt is best as you can write templates for each type of page.
This might be slightly off topic but for harder to find parts you should check out Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale (it's close to Yahoo). The people are pretty friendly and it's generally just a fun place to go poke around.
Diigo: public annotations on the web
anyone using it?
So it makes sense that they'll singlehandedly take over 70% of the gasoline consumption of the US within 3 years? Without applying any mathematical tricks or bayesian reasoning or whatever, I'd say off the top of my head that that is very unlikely.
I know you were mostly kidding, but it made me think.

Yes -- the Dark Side of rails is the (obvious) realization that it's still just a framework (built on the ruby language), in which just as crappy code can be written as any PHP, Python, Java, C++, etc application.

There is no panacea. No escape 100% from the ability to shoot yourself in the foot. No silver bullet.

Nor has any rails fanboi (to my knowledge) said rails was ever any of that... but Yes, the Obies of the world really should just ignore the flameboys at this point in the RoR lifecycle.
It doesn't sound so revolutionary when they mention that current processes cost only 1,40$ a gallon. Also, to claim "it does not interfer with food production because it does not need corn" seems plain wrong. Whatever plant they'll be using will be taking away space that could otherwise have been used for growing food.
Understanding art for geeks #40
Tim Harford: Cash for answers
perhaps let each link have a counter, and use a javascript 'onclick' event to update that counter? How are you storing the links?
Well, it's Seinfeld, so it would have been hacked or otherwise malfunctioned to make the show entertaining. "Jerry, these kids won't leave me alone!" or "Jerry, this woman keeps leavin' me messages, and I get all wowwowah". Didn't mean to cast aspersions on how it actually works.

Maybe you should aim higher or broader...take the ability to leave messages for people and do something with that? I just don't find the idea very compelling - it's too narrow feeling. If I want to hear a friend, I want to hear from them whenever it is, not just in the morning. And if I want a fancy alarm clock thing, I simply want one that I can load ogg or mp3 files in. Messages from people might be loaded or automatically pulled in, but for me that's just not a central feature. Another thing that sort of limits its appeal is that you have to have your computer in your room with you, and on. Mine has an option to automatically wake up, but it's a fiddly bios thing that most people aren't going to want to use, and most people don't like sleeping with the things on, either - they're noisy.

So, beyond what I don't like, I wonder how you could take what you've created and tweak it to appeal to other audiences, or be useful in other ways? If you've got good tech behind it, perhaps it's just a matter of trying out a few other niches - maybe something else is what it's really destined to be.