skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Help me beta TConsolidate.com
Hi All,

I’m hoping a few of you can take the time to help beta test a Twitter app I have been tinkering with. The purpose of this application is to prevent direct message spam.

This is achieved by allowing users to set up custom spam filters. YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE YOUR OWN SPAM FILTER UPON REGISTRATION! Any message that does not pass this spam filter is stopped from hitting your Twitter inbox (though it does not do a constant fetch) but a local copy will be kept by the script in your ‘Spam’ folder for review incase it was important. The script will also send you e-mails (at your choice of interval) telling you which messages were blocked that it thought were spam for your review. While there are other functions in the script itself (i.e. create folders, save local copies of DM’s) the main use of this script should be to setup a DM filter and let the e-mails tell you what was blocked.

The website to join up is Tconsolidate.com and signup should safely link with your Twitter account via Oauth. Keep in mind this has simply been a hobby project of mine in my spare time. I am aware most links do not work on the website but they should within the script itslf. Any feedback is appreciated.

What this script should do for you (the two big ones are key): • Send you daily, weekly or monthly reports on all of your received direct messages • Allow you to create custom SPAM filters to filter some messages into SPAM (let me know if you need help setting this up) o Spam messages should never hit your Twitter.com inbox • Allow you to create folders and move DM's to easily categorize and save the good ones • Easy and fast maintenance / cleaning of your inbox • Blacklist some users so you never get their DM's

Issues I already know about: • I know graphically this is ugly right now • Server response time might at times be slow • Broken links (ie Help, WTF) Things I'd love for you to especially look for: • Is the signup process clean and simple? • When joining were you forced to put in your e-mail address? • Are you receiving the correct reports (ignore formatting) • Is the SPAM filter you established workign and stopping messages from hitting your Twitter.com inbox? • Folders etc working cleanly for you?

Cheers, Alex
GetDeb.net V2 Beta - Software for Ubuntu Linux - Information for Gitso
> your landlord/agent has the right to enter your house for an inspection

You should demand that your rental agreement stipulates that your landlord must give at least 24 hours notice before entering your home. This is pretty standard, but in cases where it's not yet in the contract make sure to have it added.

> and they can sell or occupy it, requiring you to move

Depends where you live. In California (at least in SF and LA; don't know about elsewhere), landlords can only do this if they or a family member will be moving in. In SF in particular tenant rights are strong and it's practically impossible to evict tenants.

Though in my opinion they go too far there; non-paying tenants can linger for months, and creepy d-bags who sexually harass other tenants can't be kicked out even if the landlord and everyone in the building wants them gone (true story).
http://www.kongregate.com/games/GameTap/street-fighter-2-ce
I'm not sure how likely it is that they're actually paying him money; seems like a bit risky thing to do. It could simply be that incentives align: being the most prominent public Apple defender is a role that pays well, in ad-views/influence/etc., even if Apple isn't literally paying you. And he could, you know, just really like Apple; the company has a lot of pretty earnest fans, who, like fans everywhere, tend to be keen to defend their heroes.
I should mention, you can give me feedback here, through the feedback script on the website or get my contact details via Twitter (@AlexBlom).
Big detail missing here: a standard mortgage is the only way for the average person to make an investment with 5x (or more) in leverage. For a 20% down payment, you effectively get to invest 5x your money into a real estate investment of your choice. The real estate market as a whole is certainly less value-producing than something like tech or chemicals, but Joe Salaried can't easily go out and ask his 401(k) plan to leverage him out at 5x his net worth.

It's not for everyone, and it's certainly a risk (like all leveraged investments), but it does provide an opportunity that very few other common financial instruments provide.
i think one's capacity for self delusion/rationalization vastly outweighs whatever one's moral compass is telling them to do.

before you went applying this to folks' brains, you could poll convicted criminals to determine what sort of morality they're operating off of, and see if it even differs statistically from the population as a whole. i'd be surprised if it did. perhaps someone has already studied this? any ideas?
there was quite a bit of discussion on this a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1263512
See link to Apple child labor use:

Right, but that child labor was discovered as a result of an Apple audit: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/apple-reports...
Perhaps those links provide a starting point:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1196944/can-i-replace-a-l...

http://www.faqs.org/docs/kernel/x1206.html
Google’s approach to scalable engineering
Are those available? I've only seen Basic and Scheme/Lisp interpreters so far. But I'd be more interested in a Clojure, ruby, or python version.
It's becoming a bit easier for the retail investor to do other kinds of leveraged investments, since a lot are now packaged up into ETFs. For example, NYSE:ROM is a 2x-leveraged basket of technology stocks, and NYSE:TNA is a 3x-leveraged derivative of the Russell 2000 small-cap index. Of course, these are not necessarily a better idea than buying a house.
I've had a few things from my sites hit the top of HN. In fact, that's how I found HN (so, big thanks to those who've submitted my stuff on helping me find this awesome community)

Still, I get an order of magnitude more traffic from a good day on StumbleUpon than from hitting the top of the page here at HN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
Since women aren't making it into the industry in the first place, the assertive bitch phenomenon probably isn't the cause. It's an important phenomenon to recognize in general so it can be avoided, but the reason discussions about this go nowhere and never have much of an effect is because the causes are less identifiable and harder to constructively assign blame for.
"You should demand that your rental agreement stipulates that your landlord must give at least 24 hours notice before entering your home. This is pretty standard, but in cases where it's not yet in the contract make sure to have it added."

Depending on what state you live in, that doesn't have to be part of the rental agreement--it's part of the law. I believe that's part of the right to "quiet enjoyment".
Ask HN:  A Yep-like app for PC?
Does anyone know of an app like Yep for the PC? http://yepthat.com/yep/index.html

From their site: "Photos have iPhoto. Music has iTunes. But when it comes to PDFs and other office documents, you're on your own. That is, until now. Now there is Yep and there's no looking back."

I tried Calibre but it didn't cut it and bogged down my system.
Your viewpoint is valid, and a more constructive presentation of it would have been valuable.
I use cdto, which is a nice simple script that opens up the current Finder location in Terminal.

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

DTerm is more feature-rich, of course. Slick, too. I'll give it a try.
These ETFs you talk about are usually leveraged through some combination of options which means they have significant time-value decay, making them an unsuitable long-term investment.
Yup. The types of sites that run on the Deck (design, culture, etc.) find the cleanliness a plus anyway. Another thing to consider is the people reading those sites aren't your "everyday surfer" and probably completely tune out Adsense and other ads, which hurts conversions massively. I ended up removing Adsense from my site completely, because the small amount of money didn't justify making the site uglier (I made up for it with increased donations).
I feel so liberated. All this time, I thought the problem was me.
A subjective comparison of a Mondrian and computer generated picture (1966, pdf)
Farmville succeeded through the hyper-fast and skillful
application of the A/B-testing 'lean startup' techniques

From what I've seen of it. It looks to me that Farmville succeeded through being an online MLM scheme.
http://www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info:doi/10.1371/jour...
I'm curious if the 8% number is related to the fact that only a small percentage of women start tech starups in the first place? There was an interview with Jessica Livingston a year ago in which she stated that 7% of YC founders are female, and it corresponds very well to the application pool (citetation: http://thenextwomen.com/2009/05/01/interview-y-combinator-fo...)

It's possible the 7% and 8% numbers are a coincidence, but I'm hoping that as the number of women creating tech companies increases, so will the 8%...
it doesn't really matter how much the actual figure is. Yes $4,000 is a good amount...but if the company claims to offer the lowest CPM in the business, then that means that the publisher is losing out on the total money they could be earning by using other networks.

if you have enough traffic to make $4,000 with the lowest CPM in the business...then you have enough traffic to making $4,000+X with companies that have better CPM
I didn't know that...

It's probably always a good idea to study up on your rights as a tenant in the state and city you live. That ought to be a factor in the buy vs. rent decision.
More accurate title:

IPad taken apart then, in under four minutes, re-assembled

Which shouldn't be too surprising - it was designed to be quick to assemble - AKA manufacture.
Leveraged ETFs seek to provide the expected return on a daily basis. They do not provide the returns that you might expect over periods longer than a day, and therefore are only useful for day traders.

http://www.etfbase.com/leveraged-etf-decay/
What philosophy? You read 3 of my sentences and extrapolate a philosophy? Intimidated Ph.D's? You still haven't addressed the fact that a powerful magnet is being pointed at an extremely complicated, interconnected, biological system in order to hamper its functions. Ya, I understand that on some tests people are going to perform worse because a powerful magnet is messing with their brain. Is that surprising? No. I would even expect it. Any layman would.

I believe in clearly delineated research objectives backed by solid scientific theory and not some toy project that messes with electrical currents in the brain jazzed up by moral and ethical philosophy.
Just my 2 cents - I help run a company that sell products to middle America (soccer moms, dads, kids etc) and the only advertising that has paid off for us has been timely relevant advertising (Google, Yahoo, etc). We tried Facebook, banner ads, etc with no luck.

We also started our own affiliate program (every customer automatically becomes an affiliate) and trained our customers how to refer their friends and family to us. That has paid off better than buying ads space on blogs or news sites.

There may be some types of ads that do very well as banners on general news sites (I'm thinking of those weight loss and bad breath ads) but it hasn't worked out for us at all. It all depends on your market, the people who visit the sites you advertise on as well the information contained in your actual ad.
How does one simulate the F13 key on a standard keyboard?
I disagree. All they have shown is that some higher level reasoning which factors in moral decisions is hampered when some part of the brain is not allowed to function properly. If you see evidence of localized morality from this then you need to take a closer look at the paper because the evidence does not say that.
Just to clarify? It's not a speed-assembly video. Four minutes just happens to be the length of a video that contains stop-motion animation of an iPad being "taken apart and then re-assembled".
Thanks for putting this together, really. I've been doing RoR programming for several years, but never got RSpec so much, even though I've tried off and on every now and then. But I took a quick run through the tutorial (what you have up so far) and, well, I get it now. So, thanks!
No, they shouldn't. They should be part of a sociology, communications, or (once the field starts having its own departments) HCI degree. You might think case studies of social experiments are important, and I might even agree, but they're not computer science (or "computing").
Yes, that sounds very familiar here as well. I don't know a single guy that plays it and that led me to search for male/female stats... but I only found that the average Farmville user is a 43-year-old woman (via http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010/02/this_aint...).
Nice. I like 'The Setup' and understand that he's looking for interesting people, not interesting setups, but all the same, I'm a little tired of seeing 'MacBook Pro with 30 inch cinema display'.
There are other species that are influenced by or rely upon the earth's magnetic field. I'm not a biologist and haven't heard of any evidence that humans are magnetically sensitive in some way, but knowing that the trait has evolved in multiple species suggests it could be found in some form in some humans.
Note to self: starting developing online collaborative planning tool for criminal activity that can be guaranteed secure from search warrants. High monetization potential.
Yes. The physics says there is more air lower down.

I don't really understand your question. Are you wondering if maybe staying high is better because you can fly longer?

That's true, although I assume as they went down they gained in speed, which also lets them fly longer.
Don't feel bad about using jQuery or any other library. These libraries have been built for re-use. Once you get more familiar with the basics and build a few apps, you can start looking into the actual libraries and figuring out how they work.

Think about it this way, you're driving a car but you have no idea how the engine works and that's OK!

As for asking questions on the various tech sites, you shouldn't feel bad about asking questions - these sites were created for that specific purpose. You're actually helping other programmers that might search for the same issue later on.

My only advice would be to hone your search techniques to be able to find answers faster. Mostly everything that involves basic web apps has been answered in one form or another. If you run into a problem with something, just note the issue and move on to the next part of the web app!
I assume you mean for the landlord to deduct his loss, correct?
I wasn't even aware stack overflow was trying to turn a profit.
Is it the baby doll?
Yes, I agree with you here. I would say that much of the causes of low numbers of females in tech jobs can be traced back to middle school/high school years. I don't think that sexism at work is a large part of the problem, but I do think it's out there to some extent.

This is actually a very touchy problem. On the one hand, it would make matters much worse if we all started walking on eggshells around female programmers. On the other hand, I don't think it's good to act like there isn't a problem. In some respects, discussing it makes it worse, because it brings the matter of gender to the forefront, when ultimately where we need to go is to make the gender aspect of this all less salient. sigh
The first link currently on Gruber's blog is about an iPad DHCP problem. The first long essay currently on his blog criticizes Apple's app store policies (something Gruber does on a regular basis - see also his recent posts on the rejected app by the Pulitzer winner). Then there's his criticism of the HTC lawsuit...

Certainly Gruber is a fan of Apple, but so are a lot of people if Apple's consistently increasing sales are any indication. I get sick of people labeling him a "shill" because he happens to like the company, and/or has developed an insight into what Apple's management is thinking. Throwing around those sorts of accusations is the paranoid style of tech punditry, and a disservice to rational discussion.
really? can't the same be said about any language with graphics support? it's not a consumer-facing product; it's a language. it's what you make of it.
'but since one of the google founders has ties to the CIA, you can be sure they have an official backdoor.'

Source? Never heard that...

So they are realtime STORING all that stuff, but not processing it? DOesn't this mean it's constantly growing and eventually will become impossible to process unless they really speed up the processing right?
Interactive Graph: Where does your tax money go?
The research itself isn't wrong to me but I do a danger in reporting these results as if they mean something. The results are interesting and could lead to some serious breakthroughs but we barely understand what this is actually doing inside the brain or what the long term affects could be. It's just dangerous to start making wild assumptions about how morality works and to start applying "patent" medicines on people.

In a few hundred years I'm sure we as a race look back horrified at the way we handled medical science.
Housing Crash Has Done Little to Change American Homeownership Attitudes
Create a Product-Driven Culture in 3 Easy Steps
Do any of these sound familiar?

“I just got hired as a product manager at XYZ, because the company wants to be more product-focused. Turns out I’m the first product manager they’ve ever had.”

“There used to be a product team here, but now the CEO just does daily drive-bys on the tech team, setting them off to work on her project du jour.”

“Somebody got the job description wrong: I signed up for product manager but it turns out that what they really meant was project manager.”
Why would you want to leverage up an investment whose expected returns are barely above inflation, though? It's a fairly good bet that the appreciation on your home will be less than the interest you're paying on your mortgage, which makes this a net loss. (Particularly now, right after home prices have seen the most spectacular run-up and bubble in nearly a century.)
Felix Salmon on American home ownership attitudes:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/04/06/the-nationa...
all things being equal though if you have to descend faster than 'best glide speed' the speed gain isn't worth the altitude loss. but not passing out due to oxygen deprivation is...
I'd say they're anonymized not because they are horrible, but because they are probably rather typical.

Look at your own post: the culture here in startup-land is so vehemently anti-anti-sexist* that you feel a need to express worries (however tongue-in-cheek) about retaliation.

* Yes, this is an odd double negative, but also the best way I can think of to express the phenomenon. It's also not the same thing as sexism, but it sure does create an extremely friendly environment for bigots.
That's not quite as disconcerting as someone five years younger than me referring to music I liked from the late 90s as "oldies."
How to Make a Tiny Terrarium in a Light Bulb
I also carry the ultraslim AC/DC combo adapter that works with every airplane power outlet I’ve seen to date.

I only travel via plane a couple times a year and mostly try to sleep, but I had no clue that some seats offered power outlets. Now I do! That could come in handy one day.

http://www.seatguru.com/articles/in-seat_laptop_power.php
This makes me think that if you speak nonsense you have a random chance of getting something brilliant out. My brother is like that, it's damn annoying most of that time.
And that is exactly why I found the whole fiasco amusing :-) What I don't understand is why Apple didn't leave an 4g option open for other carriers (clear, etc).
Given a market that is in any way sensible, shouldn't buying wind up cheaper than renting over the long run? Landlords don't buy investment property out of the goodness of their heart, they buy investment property because they think that the money they make in rent, plus the capital gain on the property, minus the various maintenance costs etc, should be sufficient to compensate them for tying up hundreds of thousands of dollars in the asset.
I suspect that getting criminals to pay you might be difficult - and blackmailing them sounds dangerous ;)
>It is kind of sickening to think about how much time is lost to crap like this.

That's rather judgmental re: leisure time. Are you sickened by the time "lost" by people following or playing sports, or reading novels, or watching movies?
Indeed, concise it wasn't. So much filler text such as "With this in mind," "To illustrate,"

This:

"One might speculate that people play Farmville precisely because they invest physical effort and in-game profit into each harvest."

could have been:

"People may play Farmville because they invest effort and in-game profit into each harvest."

It is a horribly written article. Those extra adjectives all over the place offer absolutely nothing. One might speculate that if the comments here on this site - Hacker News - were written deliberately with such very many adjectives, punctuated through out each paragraph and sentence, you may imagine that perhaps one would precisely spend an entire laborious day completing in the end simply a singular article within that languishing timeframe.
Gluster, Parascale, Data Direct Networks, Scaleout Software, Virsto, Falconstor, Quantum's StorNext, plus a number of early stage startups that aren't public and another group, like Isilon, that are publicly traded and therefore aren't startups anymore.

There is a LOT of activity in this space as everyone tries to to handle new technologies such as flash and massive data creation and retention.

Robin Harris
StorageMojo.com
What you're saying is a simplification. Not eating from McDonalds is not enough. Cancer was linked to specific diets, so don't think you're safe just because you're no a fastfood fan. Also significant number of accidents on the roads happen because people are drowsy - a result of a huge sleep debt, which might not be as obvious (you may sleep 8 hours the night before and steel be drowsy at the wheel).
What on earth goes into a stylesheet to make it that big? Are they bundling an entire media package, complete with high-res images as data: URIs?
You'd do it because you expect that the return on this particular property at this particular time will be significantly above inflation.

I think this would be a reasonable bet in cities which have had particularly strong post-bubble deflation but which nonetheless have strong long-term growth prospects. If I had lots of spare money I think I'd be buying up five-figure houses in suburban Sacramento right now.
I've written a library for the generation of SVG.

Code: http://github.com/ajstarks/svgo
Examples: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajstarks/sets/72157623441699483...
More on Zynga testing (build it if people seem
to want it):

> So I say to the marketing person or the product manager, “Describe it in five words. It’s built. If six months from now we built every dream you have, how are you going to market it? Give me the five words.”

We’ll put that up. We’ll put up a link for five minutes saying, ” Hey! Do you ever fantasize about running your own hospital?” (laughter) And, well, maybe you have! In this economy, it’s the only growth area...

So first you try to get the heat around it, you see how much do people like it, then

http://grattisfaction.com/2010/01/how-zynga-does-customer-de...
I suppose behaving morally is two problems, then:

a) Deciding what is moral, and

b) Doing it even if you don't want to.

A machine which helped you do (b) would be useful even if it couldn't do (a).