skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If a site has an FAQ page, I'll read that first because it (perhaps oddly) usually gives me the best detailed overview of what the site is. I will just read the FAQ top-to-bottom. A recent example was for NearlyFreeSpeech.net -- somebody linked it on HN a couple weeks ago, and I got that it was hosting but I didn't understand their philosophy or business, really, until I discovered and read their FAQ. This is a frequent experience, although some sites do a good enough job of explaining what they do that I don't need their FAQ.

I said it was odd, but it actually makes sense: even if the questions are made-up, the format encourages the author to think about what questions will be relevant to people -- it makes them address "what do we do" in a people-centric rather than feature-centric way. (And we all know that's good business.)
Checking in from PAX East: new location, same love
Looks a lot like another go at 'data balkanization' by Google to shield themselves from governmental intervention. Ironically the fourth item ("better protect against bulk data requests") could be an attempt to preempt the class action lawsuit over Buzz.

Making a lot of missteps these days...
This was my thinking too... pick (or have users submit) some option A or option B news stories and then give then let people post debate comments/points for either choice.

Upvotes should hopefully drag good comments to the top - then perhaps a "show of hands" to decide the issue

Fighting trolls would be hard.
It's not nice to downvote a factual statement (that there is some advice that just doesn't work) without providing a counter-argument.

Seriously, vim doesn't handle maps for ctrl-1, ctrl-2, etc. or ctrl-shift-[, etc. because terminals don't have a way to represent them to running programs. (Technically, xterm has a mode, but no programs understand it.) And gui vim doesn't handle them (though, it could) because that would be too different from what terminal vim can do.
Who, me? NetBSD and OpenBSD are the worst. FreeBSD is a bit better, and Dragonfly is the least broken of the ones I've had to deal with. It's hard to keep track of all the BSDs, though, with the number of BSD developers and the number of BSD forks steadily converging.
> If school really was invented for the sole purpose of creating a generation of unthinking worker drones, then this means that everything that we believe in - capitalism, the economies of scale, marketing - hinges on the creation of a dumb populace.

Actually, our system was originally created to produce unthinking worker drones. It's built directly on the Prussian education system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

"The Prussian education system was a system of mandatory education dating to the early 19th century. Parts of the Prussian education system have served as models for the education systems in a number of other countries, including Japan and the United States."

"Seeking to replace the controlling functions of the local aristocracy, the Prussian court attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his being, that the King was just, his decisions always right, and the need for obedience paramount."

"The schools imposed an official language to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy. As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, "If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."

But - no, I firmly reject that the Prussian system with its heavy importance on obedience is necessary for a healthy society. I think if they announced today that they're going to dump the entire U.S. education system at the end of 2011, no transition, no new programs, nothing - a better system would emerge by 2012.

> He observes that you couldn't get many employees back in the day, before the Civil War - because they were all equally entrepreneurial - meaning that they'll only stick with you for a year or two before striking it out on their own.

People should move in and out of entrepreneurship and employment under others, based on what their preferences are at the time. The fact that starting your own business or working for yourself for a little while is seen as this huge deal in the States is a problem. People are in awe - "you run your own business? wow..." It shouldn't be such a big deal. You work for someone else if they've got a good thing going and you want to learn from them, or want more stability for a while. You save up some cash, and strike it on your own for a while. If you sell or close the business, maybe you get into working for someone else because you can make a meaningful contribution in their organization and the pace of work is slower and more enjoyable, or you want stability again. That's a more natural state of affairs. The current educational system with its focus on doing exactly what you're told to do is no good. We need something better.
The current college generation has been trained by years of thumb based cell phone typing. It's a whole new game out there...
It is a widely-established general trend for both public and private colleges and universities - details may differ -, to which this university is no exception:

"Published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose at an average annual rate of 4.9% per year beyond general inflation from 1999-2000 to 2009-10, more rapidly than in either of the previous two decades"
http://www.trends-collegeboard.com/college_pricing/highlight...
http://www.50states.com/college/detail/pa/215947.htm

Edit: There is obviously no direct causal connection between tuition increases and this specific iPad giveaway. It's still being paid for indirectly by students' money, obviously.
massivedebate.com:

One big 72pt bold, binary question at the top (i.e. "Should the US healthcare reform bill have been passed?)

Two columns.

You can scroll down the page and read the top-rated arguments on both sides, then choose to type into either the "for" or "against" column field, and once you've made your argument, you can go back up the column (and into the "new arguments" view) and vote up and down only the side that you chose.

After a few days, the question rotates, and it starts all over again.
.Hah! Awesome. If only I could be on the other end when someone first discovers what it really means to 'dateahipster'.
This dark blue area that ended in '03 made me wonder what it is was and I see that the label text is "Productivity".

Okay, I thought that misinterpretation was initially funny. A picture says a 1000 words, but which they are depends on the viewer.
How to Set Up Effective RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are a useful tool for people who want to keep tabs on websites, blogs and membership sites without having to surf and visit the websites individually. RSS feeds essentially send information to the visitor.
It's hard to keep track of all the Linux distributions, though, with the number of Linux developers and the number of Linux distributions steadily converging.

OK, so maybe it's better now that Ubuntu has conquered all, but writing software on a BSD and then attempting to make it work on "Linux" is a nightmare. Every single distribution does something different, and it's a nightmare to work around. Whereas the BSDs tend to be very consistent.
What was "Erlang Day"?
April Fool SMS and Jokes, New April Fool Text Messages
Not very much until I know the source of the data and whether I can actually trust it. However, it's certainly not inconceivable that such a correlation might be highly misleading. Here are two simple thought experiments to illustrate this.

1. Suppose that in every country, in every year GDP growth is exactly proportional to government spending the previous year. In other words, spending more produces immediate GDP gains. And suppose that government spending generally changes quite slowly, within certain limits.

Then low spending at the start of a decade will correlate with increasing spending over the decade (because of regression to the mean) and therefore with increasing GDP growth over the decade (because of the assumed relationship between spending and GDP growth). So we'll get a graph rather like that one despite the fact that the real relationship between spending and GDP growth is positive.

2. Suppose that GDP growth is entirely independent of government spending, and that it depends on some other characteristics of a country; that high-growth countries tend also to be rich ones (as they would, having grown faster in the past); that all countries would (with equal patterns of taxation and government spending) have roughly equal levels of inequality, so that poorer countries have more really poor people; and that government spending is dominated by attempts to give the poorest people a decent life.

Then the poorer countries will spend more, because they have more people who need government assistance to keep out of severe poverty; they will also have less growth (by our assumptions); so we'll see a correlation like the one in the graph, even though there is (by assumption) no causal relationship between government spending and GDP growth.

Of course these are both likely to be much simpler than the truth. But then, so is the model you're implicitly relying on if you point to the graph and say "see, government spending inhibits growth" without further analysis. (That model would be something like: GDP growth is purely a function of government spending over the previous decade, and nothing else.)
Essential Mobile News You May Have Missed
It’s no secret that the mobile space is exploding. Smart phones are becoming a common sight everywhere, no longer reserved for geeks or tech junkies, there’s a smart phone for everyone. When I first got my iPhone 3G a year and a half ago, I was still early enough to be one of the cool kids. Now I see 40 something mom’s in the airport with them, fifteen year old kids are carrying around $700 phones, even my dad has a smart phone.
The Acronym School of What NOT To Do:

NIY - (Not Invented Here) - Only use your own libraries because nothing else can be trusted.

CYA - (Cover Your Ass) - Instead of fixing it, just document that someone else wrote it.

FUBAR - (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition) - Whine about it instead of fixing it.

RTFM - (Read the Fucking Manual) - Make it so complicated that you need a manual to use it.

JIT - (Just in Time) - Hit your deadlines and clean up your mess later.

SDLC - (Systems Development Life Cycle) - Only 6 more months of analysis before the first line of code is written.

FTF - (First Things First) - Make it scale before you write it.

WWTS - (Who Wrote This Shit?) - See FUBAR.
The main factor is probably being in central Edinburgh - which has a combination of nice homes, offices and good schools in a fairly compact area.
The question and answer format of a FAQ has some advantages over general exposition as a means of explaining some things to users even not when addressing specific user questions.

Sometimes, as a user, I don't know what questions I should be asking. A FAQ allows one to explain something in a sort of dialectic, giving me not only the information I would have received just by reading the site, but also helping me to better understand the mind of the author. It acts as a summary of what the author sees as the most relevant points, or essential knowledge and is arranged (usually) in a more readable format for me at least, than of the large paragraphs elsewhere on a site.

In fact, the OP demonstrates this value by writing his post in the format. He, likely meant to be ironic, but I was much better able to understand the intent of each segment of the article because it's title was in the form of a question. I knew going in, what I was supposed to learn from each segment.

I took studying classes back in highschool and I remember that they taught me to read books in several passes. The first pass is to give you a general idea of what is being discussed to give you an opportunity to form questions which can be answered on the second pass. A third pass can be used to addr3ess any questions brought up by the second, and so on. This kind of learning is supported by FAQs in that they allow one to largely skip the first step.

IMHO
Is testing if "mkdir -p" is "thread-safe" practical? If you can trigger the failure in a configure test, fine, you know it's not. But if you don't manage to trigger the race condition after a few goes, what do you do?

You can't get ./configure to prove this platform's mkdir is safe so testing for versions of mkdir you know are safe having seen their source seems reasonable.
Monoprice.com. That is all.
It's rare to see even a $10 one at retail. Often the lowest priced one is $20-25, and there are a bunch of $40 options. And not even talking about Monster which this article is singling out.
We can test your assertion by counting the WTFs/min. generated by projects avoiding these acronyms.
MapQuest Brings Free Voice Navigation to the iPhone
The O'Reilly book on web apps for iPhone suggests Phonegap (http://phonegap.com/) for this job.

O'Reilly book at: http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch07.html
I developed a site similar to that for a friend of mine: http://nooges.com

Basically he posts a daily comment through a backend forum, and then people can agree or disagree or talk smack or whatever. You don't have to be registered to post, but if you're registered under the forums and logged in and post, it'll show your username.

I do like the name massivedebate.com, I'll suggest it to him to see if he's interested in it.
NetworkX - High Productivity Software for Complex Networks
Also known as the Lady Gaga method.
I've been following this matter closely over the past year. Words on the street is that Vietnam is in deep economic trouble with rising inflation and they need/got a bailout from China. Many high ranking officials voice their opposition but somehow China still won many mining contracts.

There has been a ramp up in suppressing free speech and government policy in Vietnam over the last few months. Many key activists were imprisoned and websites/blogs that criticize the Communist Party were hacked or ddos attacked. An admin from one of those forums told me at the peak during the trials of those activists they got 20k hits/s, the majority of those came from machines in Vietnam or China. Some sites that do not have the expertise or resource to counter the attacks were forced to completely shut down
http://sellout.woot.com/?ts=1270026281&sig=b28b38ff5dc15...

$9.99, shipped.
Basically, HN was spammed with nothing but Erlang articles, and they all got voted up, so the front page was nothing but Erlang-related posts.
Seems like a great argument for clear, modular, well-written code to me. Sometimes you get dead ends, but that's true of evolution too. If your base is sufficiently flexible that it can tolerate significant changes, the amount of refactoring you have to do further down the line is diminished.
I was deliberately not including it, because I was thinking the employer's contribution is quite a bit smaller than the employee's. But I was wrong; they're about the same size.
"Why HN is slow lately" -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145
the gamma distribution is often used (for example, in neuroscience for spiking rates for the refactory period) to capture the case where you do not wish to give support to zero plus some short period after zero.

the exponential distribution is a kind of gamma distribution: Gamma(1,lambda) = Exp(lambda)
Why would I want that?
My two hats are conflicted:

As a technology lead and entrepreneur, this is a disaster, and I'd have to ask serious questions if anyone on my team were to go anywhere near it.

As a developer, LOL.
My girlfriend has a 5530. It uses the same browser as shown in the video and doesn't have any of that stuttering. Best of all it cost £100 outright. It is a really solid little phone for what I paid for it. It even comes with a stylus tucked away which she uses all the time (not just for nerds apparently).
How Kayak got traction; my interview with Paul English [video/mp3]
Why must everything be a JQuery plugin for the love of god?

function crashIE6() {
for(x in document.open);
}
The undo button fades out slowly - but it stays there so you can undo multiple notes :)
The key word was "retail". Like if I need a cable today.
Yeh that surprised me too. I found a nifty tool to help work it all out actually: http://listentotaxman.com/
This part really hit me:

"With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction."
There's usually a lot more smart-but-unproven people with hazy unproven ideas that want financing than there is venture money to go around. Hence, bad terms.

Right, but bad VC terms shouldn't even exist. There are a lot of bad ideas out there and a few good ones. VCs are "supposed" to be the ones who can pick out the good deals; that's why they get paid their high salaries. If the deal is good, the terms should be good because the VC wants the founders to have high morale and a successful company. If the deal is bad, the VC shouldn't fund it at all.

I wouldn't be insulted or offended if a VC rejected me. I'd expect quite a few rejections. Multiple liquidation preferences are an insult; it says "we think you're fucking pathetic; here are some scraps".
Absolutely! At best it saves me a google search here and there, but only if there is a hard and true answer.

Check out the group discussion interface at http://braintrust.io, it caters to actual debate and discussion taking place.

Screenshot here:
http://braintrust.io/about/3.gif
It seems you can solve both by switching to the new Sassy CSS syntax: http://beta.sass-lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SCSS_FOR_SASS_USE...

Use sass-convert to convert your existing sass files to scss: http://beta.sass-lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_CHANGELOG.ht...
Most countries are more than happy to offer indefinite residency to people who can prove they're independently wealthy.
As has been said a billion times before, the idea is the easy bit.
I'll throw mine in also: sansvowels.com
I always thought that the "high end" cable market was a rip-off. Even as someone who loves high quality audio, its REALLY hard to tell the difference between a moderately priced cable and a high end one.
Except when you're buying a new TV and you're at the checkout, you realize you need a cable to finish your hookup. This is why you never see a $10 cable in a retail store, like the poster above mentioned.

It's all about the psychology of needing it now instead of being able to wait 4 more days.
The same text displays as the summary when I try to share this on Facebook. :-/
>I also feel the service provider should have the option of providing the data if they so choose on a case-by-case basis

That can be part of your contract with the provider -- in fact, some places have such things in their terms of service. If Google, for example, spelled out in their Terms of Service particular situations in which they might voluntarily choose to provide data (versus requiring a warrant), that would be fine.
How can companies still get away with not shipping these cables in the box with displays?
if you are a medium/high risk I'd say go for mutual funds. but don't get a US based funds. the fee is very high and pretty much not worth it. get an offshore funds instead. funds in developing countries do not charge yearly fee, only an entry/exit fee. Indonesian based funds, which I invested on, has recently gained over 100% return this year. Read: http://www.thestreet.com/story/10684590/indonesia-etf-up-146...
While we're at it, I want to recommend.. http://8bitcollective.com/

It's a chiptune media sharing/community site. Very clean design and everything on there is Creative Commons licensed (so you can use stuff from there in your non-commercial podcasts, videos, presentations, and so on). There are some really good tracks on there too (and some crap, naturally).
SimplyMepis 8.5 Review
The Difference between Nerd, Dork, and Geek in a Venn Diagram
(1) It's about freedom. It's the control of your data. The absence of vendor lock-in. We are more vulnerable when we are entrenched in a proprietary model. In the long run, it will be things like cloud computing, semantic analysis of your output, and even outright spying. Things are already pretty bad right now, and will be worse over time if we don't fight that lucrative model.

(2) In the case of popular software, where a popular alternative already exist, I do (although even if I am wrong, (1) is way more important). Also, I suspect you can't use OpenOffice because you are used to word. My brother, who is not so used to Word, actually prefer OpenOffice. It is a bit like 3DsMax vs Blender. I know no one who learned one first and liked the other.

Now, it should be clear why a non-tech person should be able to tell proprietary format from free ones: it is about a very basic, universal concept: freedom. So they'd better learn the necessary technical skills before they lose their freedom.

This has happened before. When most people didn't know how to read, those who did had a tremendous edge. They could access more ideas, and therefore have more choice, more freedom. The printing press magnified this effect, and ultimately lead to the generalization of democracy in the western world. The catch is, you have to learn to read before you benefit that. And until you do, you will have a hard time to see the need.
Why does anyone think comparing tax rates across countries makes any kind of point? The methods of taxation, and the benefits provided, are different across countries.

Europeans pay higher taxes. They also get a lot more in terms of government services. I'd gladly pay 7-10% more in taxes for cheap transporation, free healthcare, and free higher education in this country.

Few Europeans, except for rich right-wing assholes, seriously complain that they pay too much in taxes (aside from the nonspecific gripe that everyone has against taxes). If anything, we pay too much in taxes in the US when you consider how little we get and how much is squandered (e.g. the Iraq war).
Burstly got funded, here's Mark Suster's thesis
I am impressed that he did this in two hours, but at the same time, I am dismayed that I am impressed that he did it in two hours.

Why are 'simple' programming tasks often so hard?

For example: I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong with my oauth requests to twitter last night. Just kept getting "401 Unauthorized" over and over. Still haven't figured it out. (The worst part has to be that I was using a library and serious debugging ended with me following the instructions on the tutorial step-by-step; I still got the error...).

My question: Why should this app take 2 hours? Why shouldn't this take 2 minutes? All it is is a little form that stores the number of push-ups you did and the week. Why is everything so hard? Why is so much of my life painful library wrangling?
Continuing Professional Development - does your company do enough for you?