skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just one?

For two players: Scrabble or Carcassonne.
For three or four players: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico

If you can find them: Titan Talisman 2nd Edition and Illuminati are also totally awesome.
I've never liked the auto zooming of the dock. Unless you have incredibly small icons I don't see a point. Most people I've seen get sick of it pretty soon and turn it off.

This is a really nice demo of doing this in Javascript (I just hope nobody actually uses this on a site).
I can't speak for everyone, but finding a girl has never caused a considerable drop off in my site usage.
Where does everyone play at? ICC? FICS? Yahoo?
Sounds a bit too much like The Game. If the only way to win is not to play, I don't think there's much fun to be had.
It's not that it's controversial, just that it's badly placed. Hacker news was originally targetted at News for Startups, and has expanded to cover the rest of the tech world.

It loses it's usefullness if it expands to become Digg/Reddit, and covers general topics of Interest.
The problem here is that when Feeney made his money, he had a good idea of what people wanted -- it was what they were willing to pay for. He's basically saying that after a lifetime of listening to what people want, he's going to second-guess them and decide for himself. This may be charitable, but it's also arrogant.
That would be cool! e.g. at rescuetime my efficiency is at 83%. Yawn.

How much cooler would it be if I was a Zen Monk in the Order of Time wielding a Staff of the Moon. With pretty graphics of course (and a widget for on my blog).

I mean, people have already succeeded in turning MMORPGs into work (farming, selling virtual stuff on ebay), why not turn work into an RPG?
Or Redcode?
Chess
Go
RISK
From a marketing standpoint, this is very interesting. The same thing is/was happening in gaming. Games that effectively target females (i.e. nintendogs) do surprisingly well.
Way to scare 'em back to using bottled water again, AP! Yes I know bottled may not be any better, but it will certainly feel safer to people who want to Just Do Something in response to that FUD article.
Very true. That's a lot more accurate.
I love Bohnanza. Anybody played that? I know the premise of the game seems silly, but I've taught it to many (adult) friends, and it is pretty universally liked. I'm going to check out Puerto Rico based on some recommendations here...it has gone under my radar until now.
BBC's free, wavelet-based Dirac codec released
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132451

or

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/03/human-data-as-...
A Simple Strategy for Start-Ups to Kick Fortune-500-Butt
"Would you like to outsell your worst competitors and build a life-long relationship with your customers?"
A marketing article for entrepreneurs and start-ups explaining niching with text, video and examples.
Wikipedia running out of money - resists selling ads
Interesting, but I have also read it is more difficult to code for OSX than it is for Windows, but then again, I am not a programmer, so maybe I'm not qualified to even comment. I'm just a happy OSX user, and reluctant Windows user.
Monopoly is great, unless your friends refuse any sort of trading/negotiation not explicitly laid out in the rules.

None of my friends would hear anything along the lines of "Ok, I'll trade you this, and in return, you'll be immune from paying for this long, or you'll only have to pay 30% forever, plus you'll receive this property that you can use to trade Tim for that property so that you can get a monopoly too."

My friends didn't like to think that hard. "You pay what's on the card. If you get this then you'll have a monopoly and that's bad. Boardwalk is the best one."

I always liked thinking a little bit beyond the basics of that game. The railways have the highest yield out of anything, plus there are 4. Monopolies of only 2 more valuable properties are not really as valuable as a monopoly of 3 "average" properties. Utilities are crap.

I'm hoping that in the real world people are a bit more susceptible to "negotiating."
We use it too. Personally, this is one of the last of my worries. Worry about being successful first – no one sues those that are unsuccessful. When you succeed and by some chance they come after you (and even that's a really remote possibility since they'd go after Red5 itself and not some site that's using it), you'll have plenty of money to license the FMS.
Apparently the author thinks that "event-driven" means "multi-process", which it doesn't. This mistake made the article pretty unreadable for me.

For the curious, the Flash paper provides a good overview of this topic: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~vivek/flash_usenix_99/
Agreed. I feel like everyone has a green and white deck that rocks. A well-crafted blue deck can destroy green/white, though.
Samurai Swords, which was formally called Shogun. You battle for control over feudal Japan. Unlike Risk, you don't have armies on every territory. Rather, you have three armies that you decide the composition of, and you leave garrisons in the rest of your conquered land. Also, there is a set of interaction that isn't just army v. army, like killing an enemy general with a ninja, hiring Ronin to run surprise attacks, and building castles.
"payment details"

i am a paying customer of s3 and ec2. are you suggesting i should have a simpleDB account?
20 Websites That Made Me A Better Web Developer
It's good of you to warn me. But even if you never reply (or even read it) I'll be glad to have thought about something interesting to me, and (hopefully) to have written something good. If it turns out well enough, I can even reuse it elsewhere. There's no risk of wasted time. That said, there is a chance I won't get to this today, but I will sometime.

Please consider yourself to have no obligations to me, and continue things only if you want to.
MySQL InnoDB Clustered Indexes and Rails (or How RescueTime Avoided Buying More Hardware)
If you like Clue, check out Mystery of the Abby from Days of Wonder. It's the deepest mystery board game I've ever seen.
What does it say that about 5% of the folks building the products, at least here, are women?
Entrepreneurial Personality Test
The MS-centric press does seem a little insular sometimes -- more Mount Athos than United States in some occasions. All the recent Silverlight hype ("the Internet has just been rebooted by Microsoft!"). Or the articles trying to convince people to upgrade their PCs to MS's latest OS -- I have been reading those since Windows 95.

(I'm sure there were magazine articles pushing DOS v5.1 back in the day, but I didn't have money to buy computer magazines at the time.)
Reminds me Google X.
Hoo, boy. Where to begin?

C#(.NET)

Convoluting C# and .NET is a bad idea. C# is a programming language and .NET is a platform. If someone writes a compiler that translates your favorite language into CIL, your language can then be used to create .NET assemblies (modules) and interface with every other .NET assembly. In other words, write your program using any syntax you like and use any library you want. Someone even wrote a LOLCode .NET compiler ( http://code.google.com/p/lolcode-dot-net/ ).

It stopped looking elegant and fun and started looking like the schematic to build the HVAC system for a skyscraper. Ditto for C#.

Are you referring to the C# programming language or the .NET platform? C# 3.0 includes implicit typing and lambda functions ( http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/7/0/4703eba2-78c4-4... ), which are both elegant and fun. .NET 3.0 still includes every bit of functionality from .NET 1.1, so at what point did the platform become inelegant?

When I wanted to figure out how bittorrent works, I just went and read the spec published by Bram Cohen. I didn't have to call up his company and ask for a Certified Bittorrent Engineer to come out and train me onsite in a three day session that costs $8000.

When I wanted to figure out how .NET worked, I just read its free and extremely comprehensive documentation ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a4t23ktk.aspx ). Also, high-quality documentation is one area where Microsoft whips almost everyone in, and documentation is really important for popularity. Apple has also nailed it with their iPhone SDK docs ( http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ ). If you're trying to grow a platform, you'll want to take notes.

Let's also not forget the extremely powerful WYSIWYG GUI editor ( http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/315/designer.PNG ).

Garbage collected languages can sometimes outperform other languages (read: C++) because of the design of a moving garbage collector. Every .NET language uses a moving garbage collector.

That said, it does have many flaws. The biggest one is probably the Windows lock-in. Mono is nice, but not quite complete.
Got your email. Your super-secret identity is safe with me.

You were a few points away from the 10K mark when I submitted this, and passed it before my submission got its first upvote.

I have definitely made good use of the links and comments on this site. Haven't found a direct use for karma yet, but I'm hoping. Do you suppose if I catch up to Paul Buchheit's karma that he'll read drafts of my essays? :-)
It is pretty tough to see why Microsoft wants Digg. It already has an exclusive on advertising. Plus it isn't clear how they would grow it any faster than Rose and Co. Plus while, I don't believe 90% of the we would leave threats I think some of its core users would want to look elsewhere.
What microloans miss
...and then they rejected it. Lovely idea to spend years making software that only one business can use.

I'm not saying that the code these guys made can't be used for other projects, there are probably lots of opportunities...but there should be a lesson here about considering your market before making any commitments.
The assumption is that keeping XP running smoothly requires little more than some basic common sense.

Put an antivirus on, stay away from questionable sites, don't use internet explorer and avoid mucking with the registry. I've been running a single version of XP for three years straight now and not once have I had an issue. That's just as good that my mac is.
It's fun to split these right down the middle into interface design and application design. They tend to fall almost completely into one of those categories.
What's thrilling is that the tide is beginning to turn among technical people. It's our responsibility to figure out what we're worth and what we can do. If we don't want to be project-managed and MBA'd for little in return, guess what - we don't have to be! To me, this is the essence of what pg's essays have been saying (and what YC is doing).
Nixon, pretending to be crazy, sent 18 planeloads of real nuclear bombs to USSR
Up-voted for webmonkey alone. That site was kick ass back in the day... glad to see it's still around, but I wonder how relevant it is.

They could definitely use a redesign though... the nostalgic shtick only lasts so long.
Ex-Googler Launches Search Engine Community, Topicle
The last thing NickB needs is more Karma by posting this ;-)
C++ Coder’s Newbie Guide to Lisp-style OO
I have a hard time believing that a platform that doesn't allow for beige boxes and software (ahem) sharing can become dominant. I can see the iPhone making a mint, defining the future mobile platform even -- kind of like the Apple II and the Mac back in the day. But to dominate, you need to have the cheapskates on board.
Story of the Mach 3.18 breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird
> the article did make me wonder if most developers view .net developers as lesser developers because of their chosen toolset.

At least part of it is that in many cases it's not their chosen toolset; it's what they were given.

> From a knowledge point of view .net requries a lot more traditional programming skills than ruby ever does.

How so?
Don't know if it's possible for anyone to edit posted links, but this is the correct link for this article: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/03/simple-metaprogramm...
Nothing quite as satisfying as having your 2 army country successfully defend against 10 or 15 attackers.

See also, frustration.
It's a fun game, but after a few (hundred) plays, you realize that the optimal allied strategy is a fairly unmovable thing--and when they adopt it, the axis stands a 10 percent chance of victory at best.
I was shocked when I tried this how easy it is to pick up. I got fast enough to IM comfortably after two or three sentences. I may break this out now and again when I'm too tired or messed up to type properly.

Apparantly you can train it on sample text, which I haven't yet tried. I wonder if this can work well for code.
Saving Face(book): When do you hire a pro CEO?
It says 95% of us have to make sure we seek out and pay attention to user feedback from females.

For a long time my wife wouldn't use ourdoings.com because it's always easier to just get me to put our photos up. But now that we have a wifi photo frame, she's become active so she can tweak which photos go to the frame and which don't. I have other female users, but this is the best feedback loop I've got.
I don't know much about InnoDB's clustered index, but if it is like Oracles IOT's, then normally its more expensive to do inserts (than for a heap table) as it has to put the data into a specific place, but cheaper to find related data when its queried due to all the data being stored together.

In this case, that extra 'expense' was easily off-set by the savings giving a great speed up. It does teach a good lesson though, which is index as little as possible by using composite indexes where you can!

In databases its amazing how 1 bad table/query/index can hose the performance of the either database - and once you find it, you get such a performance boost!
I wish karma represented something useful:-/ It doesn't.
Slightly informative. Mildly funny.
Why we disagree with Don Norman
> At least part of it is that in many cases it's not their chosen toolset; it's what they were given.

read my post I already said that.

> How so?
You can figure this out yourself by comparing C# to ruby
I specifically used C# so as not to convolute things. I couldn't very well compare .NET with Java/Ruby/Python, since that would be like comparing 'car' to 'blue/red/orange'. I put .NET in parens next to it so someone that didn't know the distinction would realize why the heck I was suddenly talking about C#, when the article had .NET in the title.

I honestly can't speak to C# 3.0, because the little bit I did with C# was at an old job and we were using 2.0. I guess I would clarify that coming from C++, Java once seemed elegant and fun, but no longer does. C# never seemed elegant or fun to me, because I had already worked in a dozen other languages by the time I got to it, and frankly, it (2.0) seemed like a Java wannabe. (And I'm not exactly a Java fan either.)

As for garbage collection... not even sure what in my post made you mention that, but I wouldn't exactly consider a garbage collector to be an earth shattering feature. Many languages have had them for years.

I can't claim to be a .NET expert by any means, and, as I pointed out in my last sentence (and you pointed out with your links), the .NET ecosystem seems better than one would expect. I was trying to point out the problems as I saw them in the traditional Microsoft ecosystem (and the modern day Java one)... namely, the accumulation of cruft (Java) and the cost of tools/libraries/software (MS).
if I drink water today doesn't mean I will not need to drink tomorrow
uhm..

jquery.magnifier();
IPhone SDK: You must run Xcode in 32-bit mode
I'd like to make it as simple as possible, an S3 version sounds like a good start. Send me an email if you get a chance - johnwehr@gmail.com
Of course Apple doesn't use Objective-C 100% of the time. Microsoft doesn't use C# all of the time either. Doing so wouldn't make sense for either company.

The author's point is not that Objective-C will be the only language that matters, it is that Objective-C is about to matter a whole lot more, because it is the only way to write native apps for the iPhone. Secondarily, he's suggesting this is a good thing because the Cocoa frameworks (note I didn't say the language) have a proven track record of allowing small teams to ship big apps that are very successful.
I play at FICS, but I'm mostly interested in chess variants, specifically atomic and suicide.
http://games.asobrain.com will either be a blessing or a curse for you, then. (Play -> Xplorers, must register).

Also, I like resource scarcity - under your game, I have a high incentive to pick 'bad' locations because I stand to profit more. Initial deployment is a key part of the game--as is trading resources!
'Monstrous' robot going up on space station
Since money is fungible, the distinction you suggest is not meaningful. The money that a person saves by buying less expensive goods from a "first-order" business might very well be spent on training or other self-improvement.

If a "first-order" business is better at its business than it would be at a "second-order" business, then, due to comparative advantage, everyone will be better off with the "first-order" business saving people money that they can spend on "second-order" businesses, your admiration for the latter notwithstanding.
Comparing Objective-C (which actually is a gcc supported language, and can be compiled on any platform that supports GCC -- Cocoa is what only runs on "mac stuff") to Javascript isn't fair. The discussion is about native applications, not web applications -- a more apt comparison would be to C# which only runs on "windows stuff".
A lot of people seem to make the argument that Apple can never win this market because they aren't cheap enough. But saying that makes the fundamental assumption that there will never be a cheap version of the iPhone platform. Similarly, it ignores the story of the iPod, which started out as a $500 mac only toy, and is now the number one music player by far. Apple is not the company it was 20 years ago.
Kata and practice
That was an incredibly lucky pilot!
You can thank DHH for the dumbing down of Rails' databases. Everything should be in your app, don't you know?
There are a lot of optimization tricks you could do with an app like rescuetime.

1. Buffer inserts on two levels:
a. In-memory at the application level (if it crashes and you lose a few seconds' worth of data, it is not the end of the world). You can now do bulk inserts.
b. Use MySQL's delayed insert buffer.

2. Split the data into separate tables for each duration interval so that you don't have one massive table.
I don't follow the karma values much, but good god. 10k? That should warrant a +10k bonus to your YC funding amount.

Funding equation should be modified to be:

$5000 + $5000xN Founders + min(Karma, 10k)

edit: Alright, I suppose the red name is adequate.
A similar thingy for galleries:

http://en.gibney.org/scalable_gallery/
BioRuby and Ruby on Rails: Active BioRecords
When you go public.
i am good at chess... (thanks dad) but that does not make it fun to play.

i actually like "settlers" a lot right now.
"tides of iron" is pretty cool
"B5 CCG" is a blast to play twice a year

but my all time favorite is RISK
Notes On Using EC2 and S3
i have always wanted to write an AI for GO, maybe after this company i can play around with ideas like that.
i have a 4 player chess board.
where should we play?
unlike pg suggests that good hackers have good grammar, i can't spell, even though i was in advanced english. written language is not like code at all. i am finding it easier to learn Japanese than i did English.
Can’t help it but here’s another thought. He thought experiment is upside down! The subject of discussion is whether it makes sense to try to figure out person’s traits or abilities based on his/her gender. He is talking about how hard it is to figure out person’s gender based on the height (or a trait). Totally opposite! The right question should be: can you estimate person’s height based on gender? The result would be much more positive.
Anyone have any my.conf examples for a good InnoDB setup?
Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved?
You have to ask ask yourself, "why's that so" ? Why the so called day coders do Java, C# or COBOL and not Smalltalk, LISP or Ruby ? There's a reason for everything and in programming the reason to use language a instead of language b in a software "factory" is definitely effectivity. That is, how fast a product can be done using Java/C# or lisp ? How much is it gonna cost to maintain that product and add features ? How much is it going to cost to train new people ? And so on.

Those economists in management surely don't wake up one day and announce : "We will use C#".
I hope the number of page views per user per day is never shown. I'd be blushing. Congrats nickb.
haha monopoly is great, especially with friends who don't think outside the box. It requires very fine deal negotiation and value assessment skills.

My favorite move in monopoly is to come up with some trading deals that would give everyone monopolies in a single turn, but make it so that I had either a positional (read: my piece is either in jail or far, far away from their monopolies) or money advantage. Then, mortgage/sell all my other properties, build up as much as possible and hope to kill someone quickly. In monopoly, you have to play the 'do or die' strategy. There is no other way to play.

Unfortunately, now they no longer do any deals with me because they know my deals are deadly even though they look fair...
I went to a talk by DHH once, and he said that they consciously try to pick fights with the big boys, and hope they respond. This accomplishes two things:

1) They get a lot of attention, and thus brand recognition

2) They move up into a league of players, where they really don't belong if you look at their business in terms of turnover, employees, etc. Basically its 37signals vs. Don Norman, 37signals vs. Microsoft etc. As if they were equal.

This is an example of that. And its brilliant marketing.
This is huge, because it confirms what I've always thought about the Air and Silverlight technologies - that they're prime for being obsolesced before they ever even get a foothold. As time passes, they become more and more of crutch for desktop programmers, while the last thick desktop app will be the browser itself. We should work the future instead of fighting it.
IT labor shortage is a myth
(I obviously meant "Given enough eyes, ..." above. Not sure what my brain is doing today, but translating thoughts to keystrokes is definitely not working correctly.)
The real irony would be if he posted this himself, and got upvoted for it.
You can figure this out yourself by comparing C# to ruby

I was hoping for more specific examples, as I gathered the parent was. It's still not clear to me what "more traditional programming skills" means, or why it's a good thing, or why (C# - Ruby) yields traditional programming, while (Ruby - C#) should be... non-traditional programming?
I've seen a trend where people "Get it", and love a ton of board games, or they don't.

I play a lot of them, and can't pick a favorite.

I love chess. The first time I beat my Dad was an event. I love Go, but started to beat everyone around me, which actually sucks.

Risk 2210 is excellent. Settlers of Catan and it's variants are a delight.

Monopoly isn't worth the paper money it's printed on :)
Thanks, Joe. This post rocks.
It's easy to write horrific code in any language, high or low level. From what I've seen, both the Linux kernel and git are clean and very readable. In general, I'll take well-written C over poorly-written Python (I'm not implying anything about Mercurial here) or poorly-written OCaml.

Git has historically had a few bugs with some high-level commands not correctly reacting to errors in lower-level commands, but they have been largely squashed in recent releases. The low-level commands have always been pretty solid, and the git repository format has been stable for a long, long time now.

So in summary, I wouldn't be too concerned about the implementation language of choice. It's always about the maker, not about the tools.