skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Since I snapped at your previous comment, it's only fair I try to respond to this rather more thoughtful one.

I agree with your assessment that the story is about "about ambition, about art, about being misunderstood, and about greatness". No argument there.

The loneliness is all over the text, sometimes quite literally:

* "withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything, not even to the all-important striking of the clock that was the only piece of furniture in his cage, but merely staring into vacancy with half-shut eyes, now and then taking a sip from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips"

And of course the hunger artist is lonely because he stands apart from the world (quite literally - he lives in a cage, after all) and does something no one quite understands (not to mention that after a while he can't even find an audience for his art anymore).

It has nothing to do, I think, with winning or losing. The hunger artist wins, if you want, when he is at the height of his fame in the beginning of the story, but in the end he withers away in his cage, ignored by the public and ultimately is replaced by a panther, which if you want to put a label on it would be losing. So if Kafka is saying anything about winning or losing at all, it would seem to be that fortune is transient and has nothing to do with the drive to do something (the hunger artist is committed to his art regardless of the size of his audience).

And even his commitment to his art is ultimately questioned: he has no drive to excel at fasting but rather has simply never come across food that he liked to eat. The great artist in the end turns out to be nothing more than a victim of his circumstances.

Hardly an uplifting or inspiring message, I think.

Which is not to say I don't like this story: I do. I think it's, like a lot of Kafka's work, fantastic. I'm not sure whether it belongs on HN, but I enjoyed reading it again and thinking about it. So thanks for posting.
You mean be a leader of the first follower movement?
It seems to be getting to be quite a problem: people projecting their blue-law cultural values onto the community, and quite vociferously sure of the rightness of doing that.
I love their software, but am increasing concerned about their policies.
As written there is an ActiveRecord dependency, and it depends on code implementing the general contract of ActiveSupport::Cache::Store for proper operation. However, if you've got a day or two to kill, you could probably fix that. After that you'll have to rebuild the dashboard. I'm not sure how Sinatra handles the view layer typically but you may need to redo the syntax sugar for it, as I think my implementation probably depends on ActiveView magic.
and u dont know wtf u r writing seriously
Can you be more specific as to what you are looking to buy/sell? There are a lot of resources out there, but it really depends on what you are looking for specifically.

The best leads though come from your own marketing efforts. Just avoid spamming to obtain leads. Creating a blog, social media marketing (Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn), and your website are going to be your biggest drivers. Consider reaching out on LinkedIn for quality business leads. Join groups, respond to questions/answers, explore your contacts.

Paying for leads can be a recipe for disaster in my mind and is really just a waste of money. On the other hand, if you are looking to create a direct mail campaign to a specific group (i.e. realtors, doctors, etc...) in a specific region, you may explore sites like InfoUSA.
I think it is actually quite old. Seth Godin or somebody like that might have blogged about the dancing guy about a year ago? So definitely to late to become the "First Follower Guy".

OK not too late - but where is the fun in taking somebodies meme?
Tell HN: Sharing sakura, js datetime parser and calendar lib
Cool. Any particular things I need to know? e.g. which platform should I try this on?

Also, have you run valgrind against the test?
I think most of the features are irrelevant- you need to find some way to break the "network effect" (large number of buyers attract sellers, large number of sellers attract buyers) like Craigslist did.

A cautionary point is your idea also has to something that is not true for Amazon (else Amazon would have already crushed eBay). From what I have seen a big blocker is the rigidity of Amazon's catalogue versus eBays. For example an eBay seller selling obscure components to repair fishing reels doesn't need variable pricing and would be happier using Amazon for the payments (versus PayPall)- but has no idea how you would enter these unique items into Amazon.
"Honestly I don't think most people would mind getting taxed at a higher rate, as long as the money actually went somewhere positive."

I think I would feel better about it if there was a way to address the corruption and wastefulness that comes with how our tax dollars are spent.

I used to work civil service (part-time job while in college) and we had a lady named Peggy (sweet lady, great person) who spent every day on the phone resetting passwords for people who called in. Finally, I spoke with the supervisor and offered to add a forgot password link to the application and his response was: "what would Peggy do then?"

Furthermore, I have little faith in the government's ability to hire the smart people who can actually address some of this stuff. What bright kid out of college wants to work at a job that blocks youtube, gmail, blogs, and any other popular-but-useful service that arises.
Try http://tvgorge.com
Sheldon is the funny guy in the pair, and Leonard is the straight man. That dynamic was even in the first episode.

What made Leonard more interested before was his quest for girls/Penny. Now he has Penny, he is a less interesting character because he has no point of view driving stories.
Google Buzz Abandons Auto-Following Amid Privacy Concerns
Ask HN: Relationship between HN and Scribd?
I recently submitted a link to a PDF paper. It first appeared as I submitted it, but after some time the title had been changed to include a Scribd link. I found this off-putting: it implied either that I was encouraging the use of Scribd, or that the author had already chosen to use Scribd as a publisher.

What is the relationship between Hacker News and Scribd? Are all PDF links modified to link to Scribd automatically, or is this done by hand on a case-by-case basis? And why is the use of Scribd officially encouraged, while primary non-framed links are preferable for HTML content?
I find all of the news coverage on Greece to be a "red herring." The real story is that England and the USA have no chance of avoiding economic collapse (most likely large devaluation of currency) - sort of like they are caught near the event horizon of a black hole, and will eventually get sucked in. The sooner this happens, the sooner we can "recover."
Hi all, some time ago I've spent some time on building JavaScript date formatter, parser and an extensible and flexible calendar widget, now I'm sharing it in hope that it can be useful for someone.
My father's become hooked and has tried to "sell" me on it, a few times. I think some of the description here of season 1 echoes some of my concerns and a principal hesitation against following the show, myself. Without even having seen much of it, based on the overall treatment of "geeks" in commercial media, I assumed I would most likely be quickly put off.

Also, I didn't really want to get hooked on another TV show. Thoughts of (intellectual and social) "empty calories."

But maybe this is worth a go. Although one other comment here

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124594

gives me concern that the show may be trending down -- something that seems to happen to many good shows by season 2 or 3. (In some specific cases I'm familiar with, this seems to correspond with studio and network executives involving themselves in the creative aspects in attempts to increase marketshare and optimize demographics, and/or with initial principals and writers moving on.)
mostly they have more stuff that needs protecting.

I have a modest house, the fire department only protects a modest amount of value.

I've got a nice computer, and some art on the wall, but nothing worth millions.

Does the owner of an NFL team derive more benefit from a tax subsidized stadium than the people who go to watch the game? If you take all the fans together, no. If you compare the owner to any single fan, probably yes (the fan could be the opposing team owner ;)

Cheap gas benifits everyone because food gets cheaper, and the distance you can drive to work farther. Expensive gas is tough on me, but it's 100x tougher on someone that employs a hundred people, the cost to employ those same people either goes up, or the pool of talent you choose from goes down.

So, does 10 trillion for wars benefit me? ... sure. Does it benefit someone wealth more? sure.
Lol, what? another biased article from dailymail... it can't be... on hacker news? weird...
I think Scribd is a Y-combinator funded startup (hence the Hacker News connection) and some of the Hacker News admins by-hand edit other people's posts. I am very against copying PDFs into a walled-garden like Scribd, but this isn't my website.
my contact list was not leaked. i think at most the list of people you were auto-following was made public if/when you created a public profile and did not set this information to private
How do subsidies for stadiums, roads and public works 'overwhelmingly' benefit the affluent. A poor person with no car benefits from roads, unless they never leave the house and somehow grow all their food and produce all their goods.
It is just not that funny.
No, your reformulation is also incorrect. A correct formulation might be "The source is biased; therefore I would be wise to be skeptical and subject any claims to greater scrutiny."

A nice thought, but naive and impractical in application. Engaging in a proper skeptical analysis for a technical subject requires a thorough knowledge of the subject being discussed and a great deal of time and dedication. In short, it means acquiring personal expertise.

Most people don't have time to become an expert in everything; relying on other people's opinions is the only practical policy, and heuristics for deciding whose opinions are most likely to be trustworthy are valuable--even though said heuristics tend to sound an awful lot like logical fallacies.

It's crazy to claim that those skeptical of AGW may be biased, but those backing the notion -- like the British scientists who found themselves in hot water last year -- are somehow above it all.

Did I claim that?

Everyone in this game is biased. Why would they have become involved if they didn't have some passion for the subject? Thus, we're left with needing to subject the ideas of all to great scrutiny, on both sides.

Well, I wasn't talking about the one topic specifically. But, generally speaking, everyone in the entire world is biased, crazy, and wrong about most things. So it goes.

Complaining about how every participant in a debate is biased is technically correct but useless, and tends to obfuscate clues about who might actually be worth listening to.
Programming is a way to Procrastinate
"they have more stuff that needs protecting"

Yes, but only up to a certain point, especially in a nation where 70% or so of the assets are financial instruments (ones tied to quasi-tangible stuff, plus government bonds which are tied to their power to tax). Beyond that point you're redistributing wealth, not protecting the taxpayer who's so generously providing it.
I don't like Scribd, but I also don't like it when I click on a link and a file appears on my filesystem, which is what happens when I click PDF links in NetNewsWire.
Economic analysis from the "mail" - erm - that's like software design analysis from Hana Montana. Possible an entertaining read but...
Don't forget the 5th type, "incorrect known knowns" - things you think you know that are wrong. For example, you could know there's a dictator somewhere, he's got a lot of WMDs and his country's in a bad way, and you have a foolproof plan to quickly go in and fix the place up without much hassle.
When Gmail ads get too intimate
The Simple Genius of Google Buzz
Yes, I read the article too. The cost of the twitterer's salary is just a minor part of this maneuver. It is unavoidable that this person will be supported by public resources, just as public resources are used for anything else which involves the president.

His vacation to Hawaii, for example was estimated to cost $100MM source: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/12/21/the-cost-of-ob...
this topic came up not long ago, in a discussion related to php. i will stress it again: in programming and programming languages today, there aren't any bad tools - there are just bad workmen who can't (or simply refuse to) make do with the tools at hand.

the comparisons of "you can't cut a cake with a fork" et al. just doesn't apply here.
If you stop posting for n days then you drop out of the leader list.

Having said that you are right - to some extent, the leader list is a reflection of time rather than someone's current contributions. Most of my stuff seems to fail to catch an audience these days but I am still up there on the score board.
Ask HN:  How to know if hard disk failure is imminent on a Mac?
I've started getting beeping from my Mac Mini, which apparently means that the hard disk is about to fail.

Is there a way to get a rough estimate on how much longer it will last?
I was surprised at how fast the article came up, even with Sivers being HN gold. But I submitted it because I wanted to see how HN would expand on the topic of leading and following.
ThoughtCrime.
But they're starting out by quoting the analysis of a Société Générale strategist; that firm has 1.3 trillion Euros in assets and he is perhaps worth listening to.

Lots of other quotes as well, in fact this looks be a news rather than analysis piece.
Halmos talks a lot about learning tactics in the book.. he's an enthusiastic supporter of the Moore method, too.

"I wish I had read the first 10 pages of many more books -- a splendid mathematical education can be acquired that way."

"Another way I keep active as I read is by changing the notation; if there is nothing else I can do, I can at least change (improve?) the choice of letters. Some of my friends think that's silly, but it works for me... Finally, a small point, but one with some psychological validity: as I keep changing the notation to my own, I get a feeling of being creative, tiny but non-zero..."

And the part that reminded me of your advice:

"Learning a language is different from learning a mathematical subject; in one the problem is to acquire a habit, in the other to understand a structure. The difference has some important implications. In learning a language from a textbook, you might as well go through the book as it stands and work all the exercises in it; what matters is to keep practising the use of the language. If, however, you want to learn group theory, it is not a good idea to open a book on page 1 and read it, working all the problems in order, till you come to the last page. It's a bad idea. The material is arranged in the book so that its linear reading is logically defensible, to be sure, but we readers are human, all different from one another and from the author, and each of us is likely to find something difficult that is easy for someone else. My advice is to read till you come to a definition new to you, and then stop and try to think of examples and non-examples, or till you come to a theorem new to you, and then stop and try to understand it and prove it for yourself -- and, most important, when you come to an obstacle, a mysterious passage, an unsolvable problem, just skip it. Jump ahead, try the next problem, turn the page, go to the next chapter, or even abandon the book and start another one. Books may be linearly ordered, but our minds are not."
I wouldn't be worried that the "Ruling Party" deems something obscene or not. Instead, I would be worried about what the "average person" thinks.

It's easy enough for the ruling party to create opinions among average people. There's not much of a difference here if the ruling party is compelled enough.
This is awesome, I can read books, watch videos in my backyard under the sun. I want this tablet
While that's a new definition of the phrase economic collapse I wasn't previously acquainted with, if you're part of the Eurozone (which doesn't include the US and U.K.) then it's anything but a "red herring". And if the Euro goes "poof" that's going to have significant effects on major trading and financial partners of the Eurozone, like the US and U.K.

And the path that Greece is taking might be instructive to us. You're arguing among other things that the US and U.K. can't be bailed out, right?
There's thousands of reputable management firms out in the world and they had to start by quoting the reputable one that agrees with them. Don't be daft. If they had an agenda and they were clever about it, it wouldn't be so obvious.

Now don't get me wrong, plenty of people are skeptical of what will happen to the Euro, but the outright failure of the said currency is an extreme position. If you entertain that idea, then you'd also have to entertain the idea that perhaps the Greeks will leave the Eurozone. As another prominent economist recently noted, the flight of money from Greek banks hints that this is not out of the question.
Corollary 1: A good workman uses tools that make it easier to diagnose his own mistakes, since that's what most problems are. Valgrind is a beautiful example.

Corollary 2: Tools that don't help you catch your mistakes are, in fact, bad tools, and shouldn't be used.
Have you heard of appswell? It is a voting system for iPhone app development.
For a different point of view.

Coming from an engineering background, I sat in on an entrepreneurship class at UChicago Booth and I was totally blown away.

The angle was completely different. The previous class the students were all given the details about hypothetical ventures with some background on the market and they were asked to say whether they would invest or not invest should such a proposal cross their desk.

Then the class I was in, the big twist was that a lot of the ventures were real, and the founders were there that day.

The experience of being there when a room full of really bright and really accomplished kids learned that the company that 9/10 had passed on became a multi-million dollar success was priceless (and vice-versa). The message was unmistakeable.

Regarding the student body: I struck up a conversation with an enrolled student next to me, and it turns out the guy was one of the first 10 employees at ICQ. Pretty cool.

Take which anecdote (mine or the author's) you will. Also consider that the author's program was an undergraduate program and try to remember how experienced or useful you were at 18-21.
Do you think Google are going to fail, and if so, for how long?
Wish there were something like this for finding good business development/marketing cofounders. I want someone else to do the nuts and bolts of biz dev so I can focus on the product dev side.
We don't need "miracles". We simply need steady investment and development. If you are going to depend upon the private sector for this, then you need a marketplace that has some predictability and consistency, so that investors can make some reasonable predictions (reasonable, not guaranteed) about risk and return.

I make the argument in such circumstances that THIS is what effective regulation is about, as much if not more than "fairness" for its own sake and adhering to existing laws. It creates enough stability and security for private investment to function. As some economists have noted, regulation is most effective not in micromanagement but in drawing the boundaries of the "box" within which private investors are free to compete -- on a "level playing field" -- to the best of their ability.

One reason that countries with greater energy taxes and/or subsidies are surpassing us in developing renewable energy technologies and marketplaces. The companies operating in those environments have enough predictability to build a working business model.

The U.S. has continued to benefit from a legacy of unparalleled innovation. How much longer will that continue in the U.S. without the economic support of a broader marketplace both to fund it and to drive the educational development of future generations? (Pure research rests on top of a lot of supporting social and economic infrastructure. The former is not sustainable without the latter.)
The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden
To your first paragraph, that's why I read a variety of sources.

To your second: I basically hold that "extreme position", the arguments in its favor have always seemed to be strong to me. And the current situation with Greece is exactly the sort of thing that was predicted by those who's arguments I found to be convincing (basically, that a one size fits all monetary policy wasn't likely to work, since it would impose the same thing on countries with different situations).

Will a Greek exit from the Eurozone trigger the failure of the Euro? I don't know, it'll certainly stress it.

That said, the Euro has lasted a lot longer than most of those skeptics expected.
Apparently in the writer's world, people who make things are "lazy...mindless...procrastinators." On the other hand, people who sell things that have already been made are "thinking, and doing hard work in areas [they] barely understand. It's real work compared to programming."

Pure troll.
Interview with Notion Ink Adam Tablet makers (video)
If true, that seems downright unethical to me. I've actually met (and possibly drank with) some of the Scribd founders and they seem like really nice, smart fellows, but this practice really shouldn't be encouraged (unless there is a good reason behind it other than to promote Scribd).
This has been the first time that I have really felt that Google betrayed my trust. Trust is something that is neigh impossible to get back once it is lost.

It's interesting because I've rationally understood how scary it is that they have all of this data about me. Now I can finally see that there are places where it may come out, or they get hacked and someone steals it etc.

Just a wake up call really, which is something that Google should be scared about, because they have a scary amount of data bout all of us.
"I keep wondering why so few people on this site are interested in ideas like signaling and game theory, given their obvious implications for social software, simplicity, explanatory and predictive power."

What gives you the impression that few people on this site are interested in those ideas?
Install SmartReporter. It will give SMART diagnostics which can indicate if (and how quickly) your disk is trending towards mechanical failure.
This show is like watching 2 and a Half Men. It's the same joke over and over with zero depth. Sure, they throw in more obvious geeky references, but that doesn't change the obviousness and blandness of the humor. This show would have so much potential if the jokes had a shred of cleverness to them.
Wait so you're saying that in programming languages today not only does every single tool do its job perfectly, it does every other tools job perfectly too? Am I misunderstanding your meaning here?
It's all about what you do when class is out.
Paying for Bad Teachers to Quit (in LA)
I think Sivers is trying to prove the point that his idea will only become a movement after the first follower joins him. Tricky.
Out-marketing is where all the battles are won. You have to make people aware of what you're doing, not sit there and wait for them to do it.
Paul Rand - Failure by Design