skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Oh, I'm not talking about your websites. =) I'm just referring to the problem in general.

The first moment the craziness of i18n that I experienced was almost 10 years ago, building software for Koreans (I think, not sure, was a long time ago) and after the UI team demoed the product, one of the partners who was pushing this for the Asian market remarked they had to remove the red. Apparently, red is a taboo color or something over in that region.
at least better than being alone :)

i guess, germany as a whole (maybe berlin being the exception) is not very much into y combinator like founding and munich might be especially adverse to this kind of company seeding.
The post is as much a reply to you as it is a reply to your commentors. "Stupid" was used a little more liberally in the comments, and my post just exaggerates that for humor's sake.

My main point is that it depends on your audience. For most things I would develop, my primary audience is probably going to be from the US, so I should take that into consideration. If my analytics show a higher percentage of international users than I'd expected, then I can go back and spend more time developing another form for outside the US. It's all a matter of priorities.
Personally I find April 1 to be one of my most productive days of the year. It's the one day I tend to stay away from tech-news sites since I cannot trust that the news is genuine.

It's only a happy coincidence that I even noticed this thread as I was switching to the "no news" version of my iGoogle page.

Enjoy your prank day guys (seriously. Have fun). I'll give it a few days for the joke stories to fall off the front pages of HN, /., etc.
Ask HN: Bootstrapping a Startup Alone
For reasons beyond the scope of this question, I must move to the Salt Lake City area within the next 3 months. I'm looking forward to this move, but it puts me in an interesting situation, and I feel the HN collective will have some interesting insight and advice to offer.

First, a little background about me so we have some context: I am not a US citizen. I will have a green card in about 18 months, but meanwhile if I work, the employer must sponsor me for a visa.

This makes me nearly unemployable. The number of employers willing to deal with the visa process is vanishingly small, consequently there are very few -- if any -- jobs available to me. An additional complication is that I am "too experienced" for many jobs. I have a Masters degree (Software Engineering) about 12 years experience working on commercial software products. In recent years my career has been focused on management/technical leadership roles. That's no accident. I wanted that experience because I have a strong entrepreneurial streak and want to involved in the business side of things. I love that stuff.

However, I'm also passionate about building web products. I code for fun. I'm a geek, and I get a kick out of building cool stuff. I have no interest in being a middle management drone. I'd much rather starve and build something cool with a group of passionate people. I think a lot of people on HN are like that.

I'm thinking my unemployable status might in fact be an opportunity. My wife will be making enough money that we can get by with just her salary. She is happy to support me if I decide to invest my time into building something that has the potential to be turned into a startup when I am legally permitted to.

I always have a few ideas that I'm thinking about, working on, etc and now is no exception. I'm thinking this might be an opportunity to iteratively build prototypes and get market/customer validation for something that I can then really launch once I have a green card.

My questions: Is this something that's viable to do, in your experience? I don't have a professional network in Utah, so at least initially I will be alone on this - and in fact will have to be, since I cannot legally start a business. Also, does anyone have any advice as to how I might build a professional network of like-minded people when I'm in a situation like this? I have the social side of things covered (I participate in a lot of outdoor sports).

I'm happy to elaborate further, I just wanted to keep this question short and to the point.
So, uhhh, did anyone play any jokes at MIT today?
I agree with you on all counts and have upvoted your comment and the submission accordingly. An interesting, crumb-spilling project to try at home.
April Fool's Day is a linkbait competition.

Lighten up! It's only 24 hours. I think we can all survive.
It's not an April Fool Joke per se, but http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/april-fool/ has to be the funniest thing I've seen in quite a few Aprils.
Do a Google search for anything and look at the stats for the search.

Results 1 - 10 of about 397,000,000 for anything [definition]. (0.30 microfortnights)
Sorry to see Werner Vogels doing an April Fools column. Not to pick on him, but tech April Fools articles are lame.
PostgreSQL 9.1 will be NoSQL
Upvoted because with your comment the community can vote for both opinions. So far the no-jokes party is ahead 101-36.
guest@xkcd:/$ fuck

I have a headache.
Simon spoke at the Royal College of Science's Science Challenge dinner last week. I really enjoyed his speech. It's great that he's decided to take up this charge instead of standing down, as the vast majority of people in his position would have no choice. However, in his words, this verdict is simply the court's interpretation of the meaning of his article. The legal implication of the article, now that the meaning is decided, is to be decided later.
Apple featuring HTML5 sites
> a mobile phone with Bluetooth and support for third-party apps, or second generation (or later) iPod Touch

So...Android support or no?
The Wakemate doesn't seem as exciting as the Zeo. It's just an accelerometer that you strap to your wrist?

You can just use your phone for that: http://blog.smart-alarm-clock.com/
The Future Of On-Handset Advertising? Semantic SMS ads
Isn't this an April Fools post?
Sorry for breaking it, but you really should make sure you convert special characters to HTML entities.
If you're a startup junkie, you can follow me on twitter @dharmesh. Also, if you found this useful, please share it.

One thing that mainstream media has over blogs is that actual journalists tend not to inject this crap into their posts.
Speak for yourself. Clearly many people do find the jokes worthwhile or amusing, otherwise they wouldn't be voting for them. If you do not, then that's fine, but I don't see why this difference transcends the HN voting system more than any other.

I can understand how some might feel this is turning HN into reddit, but have a little faith - it's only for one day.
Personally I'm most excited about the paranormal romance "Unicorn School: The Sparkling". Start reading half-way down. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/psa-new-...
I agree that there have been many instances of self promoters and articles of low quality / cred on the homepage

BUT

>> "Today I see several front-page stories that don't interest me!"

Everyone has an opinion on an article and they clearly like articles which endup on the homepage.

I suggest: this rant of yours be turned into something more positive "how to keep HN clean" than a reflection of ur tastes.
Writing Windows desktop applications on Linux?
How can I make a programme that runs on Windows, but is developed on Linux?

I have an idea for a side project. It's a programme that would make certain kinds of images. It's something I could do on a website, and in fact I will be launching a web version. However I think it might also work, and might work better as a desktop application.

Most of my market is going to be mundane home users, everyone's sterotypical mother. Windows is the most popular OS here. I also don't want to complicate things by requiring software that the average user can't easily install.

However I run Ubuntu, and that ain't changing any time soon. So how can I develop it on Linux and have it run on windows without the user having to install a lot of stuff?

Java? What about native widgets? Is there anything I can do with Mono or .net? Or is this pretty impossible?
Am I the only one who hates April Fool's day on the web?
"In UTF-8, the BOM corresponds to the byte sequence <EF16 BB16 BF16>. Although there
are never any questions of byte order with UTF-8 text, this sequence can serve as signature
for UTF-8 encoded text where the character set is unmarked."

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch16.pdf
Many things went wrong:

- I understand delays, but we're now talking 6-7 month delays when the product was promised within 1-2 months.

- They should have told us there would be a monthly fee before we pre-ordered. I understand that there will be a free version as well but it will be a half-assed WakeMate. They led us to believe that all the features would be free once we buy the unit. If they plan to make money from the recurring fees, I'm fine with that, but tell me before I buy.

- They should give customers who have pre-ordered WakeMate a lifetime subscription to the "pro" version to apologize. That's the least they could have done in my opinion.

I don't feel they've been open and honest at all. But to be fair, I'm sure they didn't intend to be dishonest, they just lack biz dev experience. Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes.
I find it interesting that so many of the comments here are pro April Fools stories and yet on the site as a whole April Fools stories seem to be quickly flagged and killed.
Google Translate for Animals, this is just hilarious http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/
Поставки товаров оптом из Китая. Сопровождение сделок в Китае.
Наша небольшая компания Start of Smart предлагает услуги по сопровождению сделок с производителями Китая по самым низким ставкам. Оптовые поставки из Китая без посредников: оборудование Китай, одежда Китай, обувь Китай, мебель Китай. Товары оптом на заказ. производство в Китае под брендом клиента. Доставка грузов из Китая, карго из Китая. Выставки в Китае, переводчики Китай.
Etude's competition on the iPad: forScore
DNSSEC is drastically less secure than TLS is, and is itself a monolithic PKI. My guess, after looking at that link, is that the author of that post has never read the DNSSEC specs.
Don't expect too much from your employees, if you don't give them anything back
(re: sarcasm)
Netflix Streaming App Coming to iPad
Happy Birthday, Gmail
I humbly submit my own attempt at humor: http://blog.obsidianportal.com/?p=362

It might be funny to anyone who has to deal with user-generated content.
HEY! I just noticed your comment is id 1234567. CONGRATULATIONS!!
And the real hacker is probably ok if (s)he has to recreate his own bayes-powered HN derivative anyway :)
Totally amazing, something designed to work for three-months is (possibly) still working after six years. Now if only my iPod was just as reliable.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you HN Comment ID 1234567
The problem is that if each CA makes its own list, it is very difficult to make a secure web mail service and I hope that no Susan Sladmin is working at your organization. If I want to make a Mailinator clone, which address should I reserve?

(For example webmaster@mailinator.com is working.
http://www.mailinator.com/maildir.jsp?email=webmaster)
Mozilla Plans Fix for CSS History Hack
Linux Foundation Speaks Out on BBC Proposal re: DRM
As a woman who has in the past dabbled a bit in online dating, if I had received that message from someone I didn't know, I would think he was an asshole. Context is hard in email, and some people are assholes online. If she's getting enough responses, her guard is way up. This was mis-communication on both parts. She's NOT necessarily a bad person.
YouTube.com’s New Design Kills Firefox Add-on
Sheldon, is that you?
uhm, they are offering a lifetime subscription to pro for pre-orders. http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/wakemate-delay/
Crazy that these actually work. There are a lot of them too:

http://code.google.com/p/gag/

@AnimalsHarmedDuringTheMaking
@CarbonFootprint
@NameCourtesyOfTranslationParty
@ProbablyIllegalIn
@SafeForSpeedsNotExceeding
@WrittenWhile
@ThisHadBetterBe
@ThisHadBetterNotBe
@Noop
@Roulette
@InfiniteImprobabilityDriveFactor
@Alliteration
@Haiku
@HapaxLegomenon
@Metaphor
@ThisWouldBeOneLineIn
@Magic
@ShoutOutTo
@ObligatoryQuote
@Hack
@WTF
@LOL
@Booyah
@Facepalm
Also, please flag anything you don't consider hacker news. The mods will do the rest. We won't be offended if an article we like is killed. If there are so many that the mods are offended, I'm sure they'll let us know.
Is this one of them? An April Fools item about April Fools items? I think the Y combinator (the mathematical abstraction, not the company) just became sentient and is recursing all over the place.

Oh fuck. Omega's here. (\x. x x) (\x. x x). (I advise you not to evaluate it.) I never should have mocked that mockingbird.
I can't resist speculating about what you get if it fails...

;-)
Topeka Google Perspective Fail
the images are a stream of hilarity
Not April Fools: New Zealand Proposing Software Patent Ban
This is not reddit.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/mobile/

As a runner-up...

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/
http://news.ypermutator.com/

Come on, at least fill in your WP template!
I agree that there is such a thing as a lame, formulaic April Fool's story. So, let's raise the bar. Only upvote April Fool's stories that have an interesting twist to them. Don't upvote lame April Fool's submissions.
Maybe you didn't get this email but the last pointis invalid for people that preordered:

We're very sorry for the delay and are committed to compensating you for the inconvenience. We plan to give you premium features for free, but our priority is to ship as soon as possible so we haven't finalized these details yet.
Is this an april fools entry? should we actually be submitting april fools stories? im confused!
Is Money the Main Consideration in Greening the Real Estate Market?
Hi- I'm Conrad, the author of "Casting SPELs". Two things:

1. This Clojure version is a "straight" translation of the Common Lisp version, which means it's very very far away from being idiomatic Clojure. Don't learn any bad habits!

2. An improved version of "Casting SPELs" for Common Lisp is in my new book "Land of Lisp" along with a TON of other stuff. This book is past schedule, but WILL be out this Summer!
Unfortunately, some comics and a robotfindskitten game don't fit to my laptops' 1024x768 screen (I have all unnecessary toolbars removed)

But still, very nice for a one-off feature that will only be available for one day.
Poker Stars adding captcha to prevent from bots
Microsoft Expanding Its Retail Business: Next Stores In Denver And San Diego
Sophie Howard Topless In Nuts Magazine March 2010 issue
Sophie Howard is topless for Nuts Magazine. Sophie Howard is known for topless & baring poses for magazine like Maxim, Zoom Loaded, Playboy & Nuts magazine.
I'd argue the exact opposite. The fact that that what you write on your blog affects your reputation is what makes blogs so much better than MSM.
I think you're just annoyed at being exposed as a fool on this fine April morning. Get a sense of humor.
I hate April 1st. [shakes fist]
I guess it will depend on the amount of feedback.
I agree in general, but the internet April Fool's thing is beyond lame. It wasn't funny on slashdot in 2001 and it hasn't gotten better since.
Its true and I believe it
Ugh, April is the cruelest month for techies if only because of today.
The real hacker wouldn't call himself a 'hacker'.
I've found that the most consistent and prevalent thing about HN on April Fools' Day is the whining about April Fools' Day. It's like a rehearsed puppet show.
I can't believe the would lie about changing their name!

Don't be evil eh?
Please stop upvoting this story so I can see more front page stories I would enjoy reading. Thanks.
This. Without seeing someone's smile, their microgestures, we are disarmed from our ability to consistently detect sarcasm and jokes. For this reason, I am literally never sarcastic on the internet, unless I'm talking with a close friend I've known for 10 years, because it's just too easy to misinterpret things.
I like it. When is 9.1 coming out ?
because HN is a Very Serious Forum
i have to agree with you. they were completely misleading on initial availability date when we "preordered" then there was nothing but static for months until they got enough complaints (from me included) to have to write their first apology email.

This company needs to get it's shit together...
Do you have any tips or tutorials that you used to become competent in this?
You don't need a world-class art department to make something people will buy -- you need a clean, usable interface, an original idea that fills a need, and well written code. If you're a one-person shop, you're writing niche applications, anyway. You're not competing directly with Apple, and you most likely don't need any fancy photoshop skills, just the basics... if you're writing an app that requires stunning graphics, then you're either over your head in terms of your project's goals and you need to expand your team to 1+N, or you're already proficient.

edit - and it should go without saying, BUT: don't build another twitter app. Please.

One more edit: this is a good rebuttal to the "awesome design is necessary!!!" school of thought http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/21/iphone-apps-desig...

Overdesign is not good, either.
Oopps.

I should have read this article before submitting: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
I prefer April Fool's jokes that are just plausible enough to fool me for a few seconds.
> DNSSEC is drastically less secure than TLS is .... My guess, after looking at that link, is that the author of that post has never read the DNSSEC specs.

How so? The purpose of DNSSEC is to prevent the data from being tampered with (say, by a MitM or an evil caching resolver), does it not manage to do this?

> DNSSEC ... is itself a monolithic PKI.

It is many times better than a PKI with 128 independently and fully trusted CAs, since Evilco can't just go shopping for the most subvertible CA.
No. You are making the site worse. When someone asks you to stop you say, “Lighten up! You'll live. It's only 24 hours.”

This dodges the core issue: most people don't want that bullshit here. If you want that bullshit, there are many other news sites that will cater to your need for bullshit.
How to repossess an airliner
If somebody actually pulls off a great MIT-style April Fool's hack, then a news story talking about it or an explanation of how they did it would be a great submission.

But there's nothing hack-like about unfunny people trying their hand at being The Onion. If that sort of story belong on HN, then I suggest that we also start voting up LOL cats since they use the clever hack of overlaying macro text on top of an image file.
Yes. More Erlang, please.
Are Jeff and Joel cashing out?
Ask HN: Can we get a "hide story" button?
Maybe an "unhide all" button in the event we hide something unintentionally?
Clojurian Fogus has had the same for a while: http://blog.fogus.me/index.php?wptheme=CLI
Good point. Actually Alan Kay does mention this on his interview on ACM queue (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523) when he says: "and in fact we know how to do it in a meta-way". And this has been the goal of Rubinius guys (Ruby written in Ruby). Somehow, not being "Turtles all the way down" does bother me, but, in pratical terms, it does not affect as much right now.

Clojure is also criticize for not being fully implemented in Clojure, and I think this is a very pragmatic choice. It is always better when it is otherwise, but Jvm is portable enough that clojure does not need to be.
I was about to post this exact same topic, only more clumsily. Here here.
It looks like the XKCD is made from the same base code, but with a much nicer command interface. I'm going to have to move to their codebase.
Indeed. I keep thinking: if only there were some distributed way to determine which stories people thought should be voted up and which they thought should be voted down...
Joke all you want - this just may be the kind of turn one or other DB actor on the market will take.
You mean: "Do a Topeka search...."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-com...
Apocalypse Ciao: Let the End Times Roll
sorry, then this is not the thread for you :(
April hates developers
Which Business Class seat to grab?
I'm a little amazed (and somewhat disappointed) that no one has mentioned this related Penny Arcade comic yet:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

(Sure, arguably, dating sites are less anonymous and have less of an audience than the video game in question, but the gist is the same: "I don't need to take responsibility for my tomfoolery, so here goes nothing!")

By the way, I feel compelled to mention again--as I do on almost every post from sivers.org--that Derek Sivers is a total badass, and we should all endeavor to have our heads on as straight as he does. Thanks, Derek!
Given that the ones posted here are often programmer-related (ie, the UniXKCD), why not? Far more inane and less-geek-related things are posted year-round, and at higher rates, and they get attention too. I'm not saying this is good or bad for HN, but they're clearly interesting to the inhabitants, so there's definitely a valid argument that that's what's best. And arguments against. Bah, whatever.

I, however, wouldn't oppose a "[A1]" (or similar) tag prefixing April Fool's threads, and would happily modify my lonely submission if people would prefer.
Yes. There are hundreds of CA's and they all work differently. It's a security nightmare.
Amazon Kindle App and now Netflix Streaming App. iPad is just becoming sweeter and sweeter!!
I read the whole thing so you don't have to: "It's time for us to switch to something fresher. I personally would have preferred XSLT, but QUEL is almost as good."
"...output documents of the Office 2010 Beta are non-conformant, and that this is in large part due to glaring uncorrected problems in the text (e.g. contradictory provisions)."

That makes it seem a slightly larger issue than just the Office code.

Additionally, the comments mention that it's unreasonable for Office 2010 to support the Strict standard (timeframe), and the author then seems to agree somewhat.
The Importance of Being Earnest: Two Short Essays On Sincerity and Reputation
Protip: sudo rm -rf /
I haven't been to his blog in a while, but Raymond Chen has made various elucidating comments pertaining to Notepad, over the years.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3Ablog...
Just flagged this. Meta-meta discussions and talking about HN way? not to up vote April Fools related stories, and then get in to arguments about it? Not definitely worth it.
What sort of turn is that? Their joke talked about replacing SQL with a syntactic variant. Do you mean other elements of the lauded NoSQL? Guess what : We've had them for time eternal. SQL Server replication allows you to decouple from CAP. Lots of RDBMS solutions are shared nothing.
This one actually made me smile. Probably because I just woke up and it's the first one I saw.
I can honestly say Ars Technica's gets my vote. http://arstechnica.com/staff/nate/2010/04/tentacular-tentacu...
Juniper Networks Selects WANdisco to Support Development Between US & India
Too predictable...
Am I the only one that thought this, and then realized you could just look at the source code, and then realized that I'm too lazy?
Dharma Alarm Clock
Chatroulette: The Day the Web Turned Day-Glo
Would it be appropriate to flag such articles? We might be able to clean them off the front page effectively if so.
Survival analysis of rare events on chatroulette.com
LHC used to discover the Neutrinosaurus

http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2010/100401.html