skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Python and Ruby are great first languages; they'll let you do all kinds of things, from quick scripts to web programming to GUI's. There are some things for which they're not ideal, but they're still probably 'good enough'.
This looks oddly familiar.... That's it - YouTube comments.
Stop Piping Cats
Which it doesn't for things like access to audio/video inputs (i.e. microphones and webcams). Though I have to admit that I find the prospect of configuring those through a Chrome or Firefox preferences interface more compelling than doing so through Flash.
Everybody except one guy that said "Looking good". In all seriousness I feel bad for them.
The truth about conversion ratios for downloadable software
It's a trap!

If Apple rejects it's application, Opera will complain about a monopoly to the EU with some words about a closed system intentionally preventing competition and... Stop me if you've heard this before.

Theoretically, if they got in bed with Adobe and included flash support, Apple is going to have a real problem on it's hands.
Because Europeans knew that there were civilizations other than their own in the world, Europe had things it needed from the rest of the world, and Islam was in the way (and if you think the Muslims are bad now, you know nothing about the 15th century). Columbus wasn't trying to discover the Americas any more than Da Gama was; he was trying to get to China.

The American Indians, meanwhile, were basically unaware of worlds other than their own. When Columbus arrived, there were at least five distinct civilizations in the New World (the North American Indians; the Mesoamerican civilizational group, which included the Mexica; the Maya; the Peruvians; the Amazon River civilization), none of which had significant contact with, or knowledge of, any of the others -- while the West had known about China and India since the days of Darius, at the very least, and so was accustomed to the concept that there were very different, but accessible, peoples in the world.

I mentioned _1491_ in the parent post; again, read it for more information.
I think there must be some keyword combination containing the words "facebook" and "login" that these people are putting into google to get to Facebook. That's how a lot of people seem to surf these days; if you want to go somewhere, type into the magical Google box.

edit: the best I can find is "facebook true login", I bet there's another combo that RWW is listing first for.
It was not a case of "not mentioning" the problem. They actually hid the truth and lied.
This is pretty cool. If you're afraid you can't compete with HOAR, maybe you could aim for a specific niche?

I'd work on scanability on the home page. I'd make the unordered lists larger, with a bolder font to draw my attention to them. I'm having trouble coming up with good copy for those areas, but you should see if you can reduce the text. There's that rule from "Don't Make me Think" that goes "Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left."

I think it would be nice to have some more categories and/or subcategories. I see that I can subscribe to requests for "Technology", but I know nothing about hardware, or phones. It would be nice to only get requests for "Web Design" or "Web Sites".

The UI is pretty plain at the moment. Nothing really wrong with that, but it looks a certain professional polish.
Ask HN: KISSMetrics for Retention, Revenue and Referral?
I'm loving KM so far as I'm using it to track AARRR metrics. I have Acquisition and Activation figured out as far as how to use KM to track them but I'm not seeing an easy way to use KM for Retention or Referral (or Revenue for that matter). Can anyone shed some insight as to whether or not it's possible to measure these things with KM or am I going to need to build a custom dashboard?
The Pidgin instructions are incorrect. The "Local Alias" field should be set to your name, not "Facebook Chat", as this field controls what name is printed next to your messages in your local chat window.

Unless your name is actually "Facebook Chat", of course.
The page has been updated:

"Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here to become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook, please type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or type "facebook" into Google and click on the first result."
Nasir: live ruby music coding
No, this one is:
http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/post/more-photos-and-memora...
http://abstrusegoose.com/98

enough said.
Thanks so much for the feedback! I really appreciate it. I do plan on adding keyword alerts at some point, so that you can just follow super targeted stuff, as well as search. I may add some more granularity in the categories, but I don't want it to get too overwhelming to post or subscribe.

In terms of a niche, I haven't spent much time thinking about it, but when it comes down to it, this is essentially a general anonymous message board like Craigslist, so I'm sure there are tons of niche applications. I'd love to hear more ideas from folks.
True. I've seen it way to many times - instead of just typing facebook.com (no http or www required!) they just type "facebook" in Google search in Firefox
From me to You Budu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLsHP94bvXs :)
These are people who installed IE from a disk their ISP gave them. Their homepage is comcast.net or something similar. And that homepage must have featured a headline for several hours that linked to this article. I bet the headline was truncated to "Facebook Log-in..." or something. I'm just waiting for my mom to call to ask what's wrong with Facebook.
Forget 5 minutes for a full feature film. If you are getting 1gb/sec., you will be able to download a BlueRay movie in 30-60 sec.
After The Rapture Pet Care
"In order to truly understand macro trends, it seems like one needs to be familiar with the most granular aspects of the trade."
Well maybe not. Professional services companies in other sectors don't always have sales people - think law and accounting firms, and other types of consultancies (if the comparison seems odd, see my earlier question about partnership firms). I guess it depends whom you cater to.
why the flat rate? i can see how it works for the business (people pay a regular, fixed amount; fees are less obvious), but i don't think it will be attractive to users - if i want to give something to someone i want to decide how much to give / know how much i am giving.
As someone who has worked in the Intel Community for 10 years now I can tell you it is much worse then it seems. So much could be done to improve it but, large companies control the bidding processes and it is very hard to bring in a new idea even if you offer to do it for a fraction of the price. I think the best approach could be to start a small company that focuses on gathering intelligence and reporting it to the main stream media. Could be some big money in that and at the same time prove that you dont need to spend (as an example) three million bucks to set up a database to keep track of plain text reports.
What aspect of the 'tribal' spirit, as I noted above and as discussed on historyexplained.com, do you object to? I'm sufficiently fond of freedom, and sufficiently disgusted by cringing, fawning, and gossip magazines, that I find such a social structure admirable, although, on the other hand, I'm also fond of not dying over a point of honor, so there's that too. (And note, part of my premise above is that "tribal" doesn't have to mean "primitive.")

Also, please explain why you think it's important for parents to push children when they run into difficulties. I agree that there is a certain amount of basic knowledge, which everyone should acquire whether they want to or not (I've even found benefit from statistics classes). But we're talking about passions -- that is, recreations, not basic knowledge. I agree that encouraging someone to get through difficult spots -- to reassure them if they fear failure, to provide superior knowledge and skills on an as-needed basis -- is a good thing, but the whole point of a passion is that it's something that the person in question _wants_ to do.
Turn 100 developers loose and amazing things happen to your "source code" repository. I used to find entire images of Microsoft CDs in ours. The developers wanted to be able to get to known state for compiling, Visual Studio and anything else they were using went in to CVS, and later subversion. Then because they had so much trouble with different versions of the Visual tools making different output they started checking in all the built DLLs and executables.

The developers should have been soundly thrashed with a cane, but if it is possible to check in a binary. They will do it.
That's a good point. When I left they didn't even ask why.
Gmail Banned By Iran; Is Twitter Next?
Waiting for the Google Buzz Privacy Outcry
Cognitive Bias Spotted in the Wild: Halo Effect
We used Coverity at ACCESS (who make ALP and the First Else, neither of which you've heard of).

If you're using C and/or C++, it's a truly amazing tool, and chases down some very weird bugs.

As our upgrade method, we basically enabled serious tests a few at a time, fixed most of the problems that showed up as a result, and then later enabled a few more checks on slightly less serious bugs.

But I can see how it's hard to sell that in general. ACCESS was actually a pretty good, sophisticated user of Coverity in most ways, and it paid us back handsomely in code quality.
We've determined it's people searching for "facebook login" on Google, according to our traffic stats.

Author Mike Melanson, Inadvertent SEO Superstar
yeah I remember when taking my intro programming class that the instructor said something like 2/3rds of people can't get over the basic hurdle of how variable assignment works. I think that's because its a concept that has essentially nothing in common with an average person's every-day life, so they can't relate.
Programming has a lot of hurdles like that when just learning the basics. God forbid she actually get into the "fundamentals" and learn assembly.
this is why: http://skitch.com/kingsley2/nwa3p/facebook-login-google-sear...
Russia’s Quintura Says Google Infringing Visual Search Patent
...and we thought our readers were so intellectual. ;)
Jason Calacanis: Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value.
REPRINTED FROM JASON'S NEWSLETTER:

BREAKING: Google Buzz is brilliant. Like ground-breaking, game-changing brilliant.

You can follow me here: http://www.google.com/buzz/jasoncalacanis/

My 30 second review of Google Buzz:

1. Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.

2. Facebook's history is one filled with stealing other people's innovations and doing them better (i.e. Zuckerberg has stolen every idea Evan Williams and the Twitter team have released). How ironic now that Google has out "Facebooked" Facebook. Google

3. Google has excellent privacy record and Facebook is a disaster.
Most folks do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook any more because of their privacy record (filled with lawsuits) and because they steal every good idea they see (i.e. Twitter's innovations and FourSquare's checking in).

4. Google Buzz auto generates your network--this is MUCH better process than Facebook's.

5. Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook--this is a HUGE advantage.

6. Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as threads--this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.

Facebook is going to see their traffic get cut in half by Google Buzz.

This really is game over for Facebook because you know Microsoft and Aol are going to copy Google Buzz as quick as they can. In fact, Aol would have a HUGE renaissance if they simply knocked off Google Buzz's exact feature set. You would than have a reason to keep your @aol email address.

This could actually derail the Facebook IPO. It's that serious.
Facebook usage is going to plummet in the next year or two because of this. There really is no reason for non-game playing people who use GMAIL to log into Facebook.

If Google Ads social gaming to Google Buzz Facebook is 2012's Pointcast.

Wow.... this is just stunning.

OK, questions to the smart folks on the list:

1. Have you used Google Buzz?
2. How is Google Buzz better than Facebook?
3. What advantages does Google Buzz have over Facebook?
4. What advantages does Facebook have over Google?
5. Did you see this coming?
6. What do you attribute Google's recent string of AMAZING products
including: Chrome, Android, Nexus One and Buzz?

all the best,

Jason
I think maybe you forget a time when programming was hard for you.

She's comparing learning Chinese as someone that knows English to learning programing as someone that is non-technical.

Both require people to learn fundamentals before they can go on to do "the fun stuff" (for Chinese, ordering food and for Programming, your own twitter client). This is because what you're learning is so alien to what you know, both as an english speaker and as a non-technical person. A lot of people stop learning at this point, at the fundamentals. She's saying don't stop there--power through it. There's light on the other side.
We also just added a link directly to Facebook.com. I'm not sure how some of these people had the wherewithal to sign up for Facebook accounts in the first place.
OK, I'm listening to the interview. And confirming that everyone now knows about "the muffins."

Andrew, I love what you're doing at Mixergy, but you weren't giving enough credit to Steve. I hope I didn't say in our interview that there was something in me that made YC call us back or something in me that they saw. If I did (sorry, it's late here and I'm too lazy to relisten to our interview) I'm taking this comment field to correct myself and stress that for whatever reason we got called back (evidently it's a muffin-ness thing, that is, who we were - not our idea) was at the very least because of Steve and me and at most because of Steve alone.

Keep in mind, I was the only non-technical co-founder during that first round of YC. If only I (or me and my clone) had applied to YC, I can guarantee I/we wouldn't have even gotten invited for an interview.
A newspaper starts exiting the Web
He mentioned Matt in that context but also said that he was so impressed with how tough he thought Matt was and was glad to see it was true.
Jeez... I'm just saying it's not the drivers screwing up. You actually can't stop the car.
It shows up as a "News Result" above the actual web links. http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+login
You've got the right ideas. (And I've been there WRT to the "users of convenience", not fun but one of the less harmful attacks ... unless they use you to spam.)

There's the usual set of things to do with your less sensitive user information: salt and hash passwords appropriately, make your password reset system sane (non-obvious security questions if you go that route), and then as a first step I'd just harden the data on-line. Perhaps encrypt the disk copies so that simply grabbing files won't be sufficient, raise the bar sorts of things.

Simson's book very quickly goes into policies: risk assessments, trade-offs, all that. Get minimally organized there and you can then do something like this:

What's the threat level?

What's the cost of compromise?

How much effort should I put into this?

Then what you should do will be more obvious.

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to add, in relation to Travis and my suggestions about recovery: have some minimal automated intrusion/modification checks, so you'll have a chance of knowing your system has been compromised.
You start the open source project at your day job, then two years later when there is a critical mass of potential customers you start the startup.
The simplicity shift: surviving complex code
I'll start using Google adwords when they let me pay only for clicks that result in a conversion. They have the technology, put it to use. I'll come write it myself and then pay for the adwords, but I won't pay for adwords until they enable pay for performance for adwords.
My point is that those founders didn't draw a salary until well after they had a value proposition for investors.

Or to put it another way, Stephen and I have put > $400,000 of hours into Gridspy, but our costs are limited to board prototyping, outsourced layout and web hosting. For most internet startups, costs are perhaps $10,000 per founder for 3 months + hosting (perhaps $100/mo until there is enough traffic to drive ads).

It only gets expensive when you need to bring in contracting help. That is why it pays to be a switched on hacker in this game.

Remember, the giants weren't always giants. As they transitioned to giants, there were doing it with VC money - not founder's cash.

Don't look at the destination and get put off. Take it one step at a time. You can probably get to traction with $10k.
remembered me of Bloodnet. one of the characters used to say "I had to learn Chinese to debug this. I'm not giving it to you for free"
Exactly -- commonly called selection bias.
Beat me to it. That is precisely what it reminded me of. Most comments ever does not equal best comment thread ever. Of course, by the end of it, I'm pretty sure people were just trolling.
Yes. You make an interesting point about how the research doesn't clearly isolate the cause of the changes. What it does highlight is that you can change the environment to effect performance improvements.
$2000? citation needed.
I also have a Prius, and though I haven't tried it, I've read that you can in fact turn it off while accelerating by holding down the power button for three seconds.

Though make sure you can go straight for awhile, as it will also disable power steering.
Comment 72: "The new facebook is ok"
They do (of sorts), see:

http://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/07/a-test-of-cost-per-...
Costa Rica's Generational and Gender Changes
I worked for a client that used this exact method, plus comments in the source to indicate who changed the code, with old code commented out. I was one of several developers working remotely. It was a mess.

When I suggested version control, the reply was "We're not big enough."

Sigh.
I think I would approach that with a game or something very visual (see Processing?), and work with them in defining what things they want to see happen in terms of instructions or pseudo-code.

For example, you could start with the idea of a game like a simplified OutRun and brainstorm about what should happen. Well, you want to be able to change lanes, right? You would want to have cars coming your way, the speed increases as you go, etc. so that you end up with a list of things to happen that can be translated into code that does what they wanted to do.

I'm not sure this is a great example, but in principle, it would be to make them walk through the idea of defining what should happen in a program. To me, I don't think that the language matters, I don't even think that they really have to interact with the language at all or a very simple and specific language. What's important is to understand the process of: this happens ("I press the left arrow") so that happens ("the car moves to the left"), from which you can introduce conditions, loops and more.

As a starting point, you could also ask them about what software they use often and see if you can build something very simple around the same core concept.
I'd be fine with a wireless last mile to avoid cable messiness.
Aha, thanks (cool tool, btw, Skitch). For some reason, when I search Google, the News results are halfway down the page, not at the top.
I would imagine that non-uniformity of population (i.e., cities are high-density, backwater rural states are not) is exacerbated by the greater land area of the U.S.
Is Yelp Cloning the Wrong Company?
I'd be curious to know about other new ways to support payments.
I guess people said the same thing when pictures were first being used on the net.

I'd say that it was still a net benefit not to be text only, wouldn't you agree? Ads can be annoying, but they also pay for a lot of what we're using online every day.
It's always good for us designers to get a reminder of the computer skills of the general public. People do not read: headers, urls, titles, or much of anything for that matter.
It is clear that she is not just sitting around on the couch watching soap operas with the time she frees up via outsourcing. She's hustling and making money (and presumably having fun). She can always learn to cook later if it strikes her fancy.

The idea of outsourcing your life makes a lot of sense if you spend a lot of time on petty outsourceable tasks and are a driven sort of person who can use every extra minute.

A lot of us don't fit that profile, and outsourcing more of our lives would just mean more time spent sitting on the couch or parked in front of the computer. I'm probably better off mowing my own lawn and only watching five episodes of Breaking Bad this week instead of six.
I thought the "download" part was funny too. 1g is as fast as many people's laptop hard drives anyway, so local storage is pretty much pointless.
I dont see any point in blocking Gmail unless they have some issues with Google like China. People will start using Yahoo or Hotmail or some mail other service.
as an amateur psychologist, she probably is so immersed in one face of her life (running a business) that when she got depressed by the lack of another (having friends) she focused back on her safe harbor (running a business) to compensate for it. Just saying.
Online games
Free online flash games
Sorry about that, I didn't know the Gulf states had actual pegs (they were omitted from a list I'd recently read) and therefore misread your starting sentence.

However if the US$ started a sharp secular decline unrelated to anything happening in the Gulf (suppose the Fed uses QE to fund the Federal deficit for too long), they could change their pegs and I would imagine that in and of itself wouldn't be viewed negatively.

(Of course in such an event there would be so much financial chaos... well, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.")
Awesome. :) I bet the author would appreciate knowing that.
This route (learn to code it yourself) is the one I took. I now have a pretty technically credible* product with actual paying customers and everything.

The language I learned first was JavaScript because it's ubiquitous. There are a million tutorials to get you going.

A lot of JS tutorials suck, which is a disadvantage, but it gives you a pretty big confidence boost to be able to read a tutorial and think "that's moronic, I know 6 other ways to do that which will work better". Python tutorials tend to break out advanced/elegant/clever stuff really quickly which has the opposite effect.

I wrote a couple of little apps, then a prototype, then it felt like I knew enough to really get going.

I then picked up Python (actually Django) because the relative maturity of server side JS platforms isn't as good. Switching languages was easy.

The total time to get to that point was about 4 months (whilst working full time), but I had the advantage of living in a place where everything shut when it went dark at 7pm.

*Except for the bugs, and the scaling issues, and the bad design decisions I made early on. As far as I can tell I'm not the only person to have problems like this though, and refactoring is a good way to spend a plane ride.
GM didn't just "get loans". It went bankrupt and is now majority-owned by the government.

The $7 billion "loan" GM received, and plans to pay back, is a tiny fraction of the $50 billion in assistance it's received. And GM is still losing money. So GM is really just paying back the loan with other subsidies it's received.
I think this situation illustrates perfectly that there's nothing you can do for some people. As they say, "Make it foolproof, and the world will come up with a better fool."