skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1) There is the problem of identification, which seems to be the object of this exercise. TheSixtyOne wants to have a program that can red flag certain correlated behaviors that they might not otherwise notice or be able to quantify. You can't really go undercover if you can't spot the criminals in the first place.

2) There is the question of labor. I doubt TheSixtyOne has a large enough staff to devote one or more employees to the task of infiltration. Infiltration is not the easiest skill to just pick up. Nor are voting rings actually made up of multiple people. As the test prompt states, it could just be one person with multiple sockpuppets. How do you infiltrate a one-person voting ring?
I thought this article was going to make me happy within a few seconds of clicking this link. It didn't :)
I used the word "teach" pretty loosely. "move the pointer on top of the Mail picture and press the button on the mouse twice."

Do you really think that's hard? Do you take the majority of humans to be complete and total simpletons?

Give my grandma an iPhone that's powered up but with nothing on the screen and tell her "This is a telephone. Go ahead and call your neighbor on it." without any help. She won't get it. I guarantee it. Someone will have to demonstrate it. And as you said, people like her are not a small minority. And the iPhone doesn't solve any problems.

It's just a different UI. Then you start getting into gestures. Hey grandma if you have trouble seeing that picture, just do a "spread" or "pinch" on the screen. Do you know what her reply would be? It's go something like "lolwut?"

She'd eventually chuck it across the room, because while it's not HARD, people learn by demonstration. People have been learning by demonstration for tens of thousands of years. Why do you think trade skills such as carpentry needed to be handed down?
Strange decision, his blog is a real asset that gave him tons of free marketing when launching StackOverflow and would probably serve him well in the future. Can't imagine how it would make sense for him to quit now, but then again I'm not in his shoes.
Ask HN: What are you working on tonight?
What's everybody working on right now? I'll start:

I'm putting together a quick custom todo list app to organize my main project, because I'm not happy with the vanilla one in Basecamp.

What about you?
Btw, these are the types of links I am looking for:

http://particletree.com/notebook/the-underbelly-of-a-web-app...

http://particletree.com/notebook/the-underbelly-of-a-web-app...
So what's a good idea?

I value very much these articles and talks but i end up with the same problem.

How to motivate investors, cofounders, employees, anybody?
That's an interesting difference ... with casual games we have a really short window of opportunity to execute significant change.

On ratings-focused sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds we might literally only have hours to measure, judge and react to feedback and bugs before our game slips off the new games page or the ratings-damage is too great to recover from. And that's if we're lucky enough to be given a reason why "this game sucks 1/5" heh.

On the rest of the internet we have the issue of games being distributed beyond our control, once a game goes 'wild' it gets to 100s of sites and there's really only a couple of options for pushing out updates - hot load an x megabyte swf to millions, or Mochi's LiveUpdate system which requires their ads (sometimes we're not allowed to use ads).
Just updated the credentials required to submit, care to try it out?? :) http://tothewho.com/submitform.php
That's because you didn't think about how much worse your life would have been if you hadn't clicked the link.
I was struck by the reference to RFC 2119

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119

I guess there really does need to be a standards specification for everything
Just think about how your life would have been if you hadn't read that link!
English - Internet - Language and Mutation
Dude is all kinds of confused. It looks to me like he's trying to create an intellectual justification for his emotional dislike of big websites. I can't fathom a legitimately rational explanation for why EC2 is right and proper and good, but YouTube et al are evil and should be hounded out of business by force of law. They both provide essentially the same service, it's just that YouTube make it accessible to everyone.

Sounds like fairly straightforward neo-luddite snobbery to me, the same kind of thinking that made all those Whole Foods customers so angry at Wal-Mart for selling organic vegetables. I think his real agenda is that he wants to turn back the clock to before the Eternal September and take us back to a geek-only internet. I think he resents all of the ordinary people and their cat videos.

Also, no fully peer-to-peer architecture can serve content with low enough latency for web browsing (as Freenet so ably demonstrates) and none ever will because of Parkinson's Law, but that's largely beside the point.
Actual headline: It’s a Wonderful Life: Mentally Subtracting Positive Events Improves People’s Affective States, Contrary to Their Affective Forecasts
No, the author is saying that it's hard to use a modern computer. It's not. In fact, with shakes, gestures, and other non-obvious input methods, I'd say the iPhone is anything BUT a perfect UI for "retards"
IPhone Plants vs. Zombies: sales top $1M mark in under 10 days
Ask HN: We got an invite to TechStars for a day, should we go?
I created a new account for obvious reasons.

In light of this:

http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/04/06/what-we-did-to-not-get-into-techstars/

I think that we have about a 5% chance of getting in even if we go. Would it be better for us to just stay home and work on our product?
I think this is a good and interesting analogy. I think it should be noted though that developers most likely came to Playstation not entirely because of the looser content restrictions (though that probably helped) but because of the superior, CD-ROM based hardware of the Playstation and its higher market share.

If Apple ever ends up without a device that doesn't support what's universally understood to be The Next Big Thing (Nintendo didn't like the disc format mostly because it was easy to pirate) while the Android vendors do have it, the analogy would be much more apt.
So they basically patented the "rip off what twitter/flickr are doing" business model?
What tends to be the biggest contributor to angel success? Knowledge, instinct, network, luck? Or impossible to tell?

I'm assuming it largely comes down to the type of people (smart, hardworking, get 'er done) in the startup and the angel's network.
cdixon is #1 & in nyc
I would never work at a startup without 1 or more of the following:

1.) Same pay as big-corp + much more interesting problem domain.

2.) More pay than big-corp scaled by the extra hours (not a 1:1 scaling)

3.) Large amount of equity. Enough that if the founders become tens of millionaires, I become a millionaire.
You miss that the point is to get a clickthrough. Bs publishing tactic
Fixing independent programmers' no-win scenario
There's other interesting omissions in that list. Most glaring of all, where's Vinod Khosla?
ATI Eyefinity on six screens
Apple: iPad will beat netbooks with "magic"
The study results certainly seem to point to the neurological reasons for the success of Frank Capra's classic referenced in the headline.
I completely gave up caffeine two weeks ago, I have never felt better. I was one of those guys who relied on coffee everyday, a day without coffee was unimaginable. But it also used to make me cranky, lazy (when the caffeine wore off), screw up my sleep pattern; high anxiety and sometimes depressed.

I figured if I could stop drinking coffee and try to find alternatives of the benefits of coffee (alertness), I could get rid of the disadvantages. The first few days were tough, I had intense headaches without coffee. But after I fixed my sleep pattern, started doing more workouts and replaced coffee with mint (decafienated) tea in the morning to help me wake up. I felt more alert and overall my mood has been better. I can say that I am happier because I stopped drinking coffee. :)

YMMV.
Think about what would happen if you didn't have the sugar and caffeine for an extra boost :)
EnhanceJS: A library to progressively enhance
From what I understood, many of the banned apps did not contain explicit nudity - so they basically fall into the "99%" category. They still got banned because they too are presumably not considered family-friendly
The cynic in me is thinking that it's because BusinessWeek is based out of NYC. Don't get me wrong though, cdixon's blog is pretty insightful, and it sounds like he's got a good rep.
Uh, lol. Facebook didn't invent the idea of aggregation, it just made it easy to aggregate your friends' photos and quips, mostly by virtue of getting a lot of people to use it, even people up to a few generations older than the people that usually used this kind of stuff.

Facebook didn't invent anything. The whole point of it is that it's an "RSS feed of friends' lives".

Why are people such retards? This kind of stuff makes me angry and I have a hard time dealing with it.
Improving HN's performance. Voting is horribly expensive. That wasn't a problem originally but it's starting to become one now that there are so many users.
.NET OSS dependency hell
That's silly: if it's an open standard, I can migrate off of it. If it's a single-vendor closed alternative to open web protocols, I'd be worried. Now that at least one very popular browser has no Flash support, I'd also worry about that.
How Books Are Made
Agile Project Management for Non-Profits Workshop on April 7 at NTC 2010
That's a darned good point, but I think we might already be there.

First, a (very) slight correction. Piracy was a factor, but the N64 also didn't support CD-ROM because Nintendo was addicted to the control and revenue that the cartridge system gave them. The N64 cartridges had lockout chips preventing unlicensed software, similar to the NES carts. They even strengthened the system with a checksum calculated at boot.

I think Apple might be approaching a similar tipping point with things like Flash and Google Voice. These are obviously features that consumers want, but Apple is too addicted to their control over the platform.
If I'm reading it correctly, it looks like it also makes a difference how you approach the things you do have. They found that thinking about what it'd be like if you'd never met your significant other, for example, made you more happy than reminiscing about how you did meet him/her.
>Our reaction to Imperial Japan's aggression was necessarily not a simple thing.

You might even say full, unabashed praise of it isn't possible without several caveats, while still praising it on the whole.
I was going to write about his donations to SIAI and MF/SENS.

You beat me to it, but I'm leaving this comment to encourage people who aren't familiar with these organizations to look them up.
> But neither of those points has anything to do with the argument that deportation is synonymous with losing position, authority and likely control.

Deportation is not syonymous with any of those things.

Those things are decided by the folks who control the biz. They're free to keep the person on after deportation. They're free to do those things even if the person isn't deported.

Yes, deportation may be a good reason for them to make certain decisions, but since they're free to ignore that reason, it isn't synonymous.

As to "nothing to do", the only reasons to discuss this are (1) if we let someone in on a startup visa, we shouldn't deport them if they fail, (2) folks who succeed on a startup visa might be deported, and (3) random cussedness.

Regardless, it's simply not true that being deported necessarily has the effects claimed.
(doc,ppt)->pdf->flash ?
Got an email from Microsoft -- I discovered a new bug in their F# compiler that breaks my startup app. I'm the first to find this fairly significant bug. I should be so proud.

So now I'm deciding how best to hack up my code to get around the bug.

Can't say I'm very happy about where I am, but I'll get it fixed soon enough.

It's very cool being on the cutting edge, as long as you don't bleed too much!
Magic Shows and Puppet Shows
Professional entertainer based in essex providing entertainment for young, old and children, including puppet shows, magic shows, mobile discos, fancy dress costumes and bouncy castles.
Ah, I thought it was like the Pigeon Protocol, or IPoAC.
>Forming a union has the problem that it violates the rights of others (unlike buying insurance).

Yeah, and if you want to be that simple-minded about it, banning unions violates the right of individuals to associate to protect their collective interests.

I don't personally find it very interesting to have yet another discussion about libertarianism. I am not a libertarian. I am aware of the arguments for that position and do not find them persuasive. But it's kind of tedious that every argument about every political issue on this site seems to come back to this one discussion. Obviously if you are a libertarian, you will be opposed to unionization in general; I'm sure all of us here take that as read. Perhaps the rest of us can actually be allowed to discuss the issue at hand -- I have a feeling that any minute now someone is going to start copy/pasting Locke quotes.
It's worse -- they have an incentive to bargain against the long-term public interest in order to win good-will with unions, which can lead to votes.
got any evidence on that one?
Working on a new website for a client to help pay for the bootstrapping of my own startup. Getting to mess around with a custom mootools carousel with some nice UX stuff goin on.
On first pass, I thought you were being satirical by just using big terms. Now I see that it's a legitimate question. Carry on.
You can migrate off a closed platform as well. There's nothing to stop them moving to an open technology or another closed technology or not moving at all in the future, as long as their needs are met.

And you're looking at just one little layer of the vendor lock in, whether open or closed platforms you can be tied to a number of different vendors.
You also tend to be friends with people who are a lot like you, and to be related to people who are a lot like you, but your customers might not be like you at all. (I can't remember the last time I spent time socially with someone who hits my typical customer demographic.)
How can you call that hacking? He covered every angle like the engineer he was.
You're being a little too short-sighted. Nintendo came to dominance entirely because of their review process. They saw that Atari was killed off by the lack of consumer confidence that came from too many crappy games. The video games crash of 1983 was precipitated in large part by just three titles:

() Pac-Man 2600, considered by many to be the worst arcade conversion ever, sold 7 million units to unsuspecting customers who expected a faithful translation of the arcade game.

() E.T. was so hyped and so bad that several million copies were buried in the deserts of New Mexico.

() Custer's Revenge required the player to rape a native American woman.

Nintendo's Seal of Quality was in large part what revived the video games business, especially in the US. Parents who knew nothing about games could be assured that whatever they chose for their kids would be suitable and at least reasonably fun. Sony's ascendence could be just as readily explained by their use of CD-ROM media, the quality and innovation of their first-party titles and the phenomenal marketing effort that made PlayStation one of the coolest brands of the decade.

Personally, I think the success of the PlayStation is encapsulated in the masterful WipEout, the launch title that defined the console. Developed by the brilliant Psygnosis, the graphic design was handled from the start by The Designer's Republic, best known for their ultra-cool record covers for the Warp label. The music featured a careful selection of underground dance tracks. The game was so relentlessly cool that many European nightclubs begged Sony for demo systems for their chill-out rooms. In one fell stroke Sony divorced themselves from the child-friendly image of video games and in tandem with their brilliant advertising and promotion made video games seem almost dangerous and subversive. Genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA
First in the wild use of history sniffing
How Does Compete Get Its Web Traffic Data?
Give them something to love.
Far too many employees at early stage startups have completely unreasonable expectations for how much their options are worth. So even though they're getting shafted, there's a sizable chunk of the population willing to work for scraps on someone else's dream.

I don't quite understand it, but I'm not exactly worried the startup employee pool will shrink anytime soon. But they won't be getting me and a sizable pool of the top talent.
Unfortunately it made him look like a "data fool" and makes me wonder whether we should trust all the other recommendations he presents re form design.
> He openly addressed all of the customer's concerns, without immediately throwing one of his employees under the bus or being defensive. That's a delicate dance.

Yes, that's a delicate dance, but it assumes that not throwing an employee under the bus is appropriate.

If an employee does something wrong, throwing them under the bus may, or may not, be appropriate. Citi has made its decision, but that decision doesn't bind us. We're free to use that decision to judge Citi.

Citi is within its rights to make sure that we don't know what it did about this employee. However, that secrecy means we're free to assume what we'd like about what they did, or didn't, do.
Try this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8
Xoom stopped accepting Paypal for transactions to India due to RBI Guidelines
I'm working on a Flash game using Flixel for a contest on Newgrounds. There haven't been many submissions so I'm basically just trying to get it done by the deadline :)
... and he always uses such a colorful language:

Actually, the main reason for abandoning “is also” is that it turned the name lookup into a semantic pretzel retroactively.
you should probably go. you'll certainly meet some new smart people, get to talk to other entrepreneurs, and have some sort of experience. It's good to put yourself out there and experience new things. your product will still get done, don't worry.
Code Quarterly -- The Hackademic Journal
What's weird is that you can think back and realize how random almost everything in your life is. For example, if I had gotten the job I applied for at Arby's when I was 16, in 1982, I would very likely never have met my wife, though I didn't meet her until I was 21.
> Basically, I don't see how being employed by 'the public' means that contracts that you agreed to and signed can be ripped up at will by the other party.

Because "the public" can't take their money elsewhere if it doesn't like the decisions made by management. And, public employee unions can drive tax dollars into their members pockets.

If Ford makes crap, for whatever reason, I can take my money elsewhere, so I don't care what stupidity it engages in.
I am a research associate at the Singularity Institute, and know several people involved in anti-aging research and seasteading. Utility-per-dollar calculations like http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html are indeed a large part of our motivation. (Please do ask if you have any questions, or feel free to email me at pphysics141@gmail.com.)
how many users are we up to?
Don't get angry, get a patent! That's probably the rationale Facebook is using with regards to IP rights ("We don't like the idea of patents, but we dislike even more the possibility of a patent troll extorting us for something that should be obvious, so lets act preemptively and file for a patent").
I agree with your observation (and Thiel's), but disagree on the reasoning. See my essay An Alternative Theory of Startups (http://www.rationalfuturist.com/writings/altstartups.html).
> In fact, this week Citi has announced the financing for the True Colors Residence, a housing facility for homeless GLBT youth in New York City.

Wait wat?

Citibank is sponsoring free motels?
This looks to be the first patent granted to Facebook.

From the references in the patent, there are many more in the pipeline:

U.S. Appl. No. 11/639,655, Mark Zuckerberg, Systems and Methods for Social Mapping, filed Dec. 14, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/646,206, Aaron Sittig, Systems and Methods for Generating a Social Timeline, filed Dec. 26, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/493,291, Mark Zuckerberg, Systems and Methods for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary, filed Jul. 25, 2006. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/701,698, Jed Stremel, System and Method for Digital File Distribution, Feb. 2, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/713,455, Jed Stremel, Systems and Methods for Automatically Locating Web-Based Social Network Members, filed Feb. 28, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/701,566, Jed Stremel, System and Method for Automatic Population of a Contact File with Contact Content and Expression, filed Feb. 2, 2007. cited by other .

U.S. Appl. No. 11/502,757, Andrew Bosworth, Systems and Methods for Generating Dynamic Relationship-Based Content Personalized for Members of a Web-Based Social Network, filed Aug. 11, 2006. cited by other .

[...]
Of course. Standards, of all things, should be written in a standard way.

And the standard way in which they're written should also be expressed in a standard way.
Reviewing the more esoteric Category Theory bits of Haskell.

A (commercial) Haskell + C project kicks off on March 4th.

I am looking forward to my first major project in Haskell but it will be hectic once it starts and I won't have too much time for lazing around or reading :-(.

Enjoying the last few days of peace :-)
Hehe, this is getting ridiculous...Wasn't friendfeed.com created before facebook? Even if it wasn't (or was) there is no way this could hold up.
It's funny that the company made that mistake, but it is really cool that the guy got his miles. I would have thought that they would have a 'Some Restriction may apply' clause and have put a maximum on the amount of miles you can receive.
Two Free In-Stream Advertising Startup Ideas - Part 1: The Competition
I finished up a lexical analyzer I was writing in Ruby for a pascal variant we're using throughout the semester in my Compilers class.
Now it's done and submitted, so time to relax and have a cup of tea before I start considering writing the parser.
Until you have tried it, don't knock it. They have actually done it and have demonstrable success.

You comment on blogs to engage the existing early adopters of the niche you are targeting to start the process of customer development.

You hit up friends to practice pitching (don't underestimate this) and getting some up front feedback on the cheap to help refine your idea.
Because it reminds me of that one dude from the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius who sent in all of the "No purchase necessary" contest forms.
I wonder if most projects would have a similar curve, and if parts of the curve had different properties (bug count, difficulty to change, etc.)
Creating marketing brochures with html, so that I can use css to create a consistent feel across all of them. There's probably a much better way to do this, but I need them for next week.

To do it, I'm using webkit2png to make a png from the html page, and prawn to automatically put the png into a pdf. The whole thing is 6 lines of ruby (which uses python, then prawn), and it's working well so far, but I've had to fuss with the scaling so that it prints without pixelating.
Trying to catch up on way too much Elance work while watching the Olympics... oh and watching Lost that I missed the other day.