skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually jfornear, yes it is visionary. To think otherwise means you have only skimmed their material.

Based on their posts, they appear to be positioning themselves as a "Facebook Killer" solely to take advantage of the current backlash against Facebook (considering their current funding, I would say it's working). What they are attempting to create transcends anything we currently have; the closest you might come would be if you hosted a cryptographically secured peer-to-peer server only your friends could access (once you have that, now make it easily replicable and spread it across the net).
Yes, but where does it say Apple does sub-pixel positioning? From what I remember last time I checked, I'm 99% sure it doesn't.

My overall point is that calling ClearType "old-skool" is an injustice when it's more technically advanced than Apple's rendering.
Then how was it possible to read this story on the heise.DE website?
It's also ironic that he builds his case (that Digg should follow its own path, ignoring the wisdom of the crowd) around a couple of folk sayings, and an internet meme about the iPhone.
I just asked this yesterday.. scroll down 'ask' a bit further.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338911
Wouldn't the better solution be for Dropbox to cache those trivial updates to limit bandwidth? It's not as if code is the only thing that might have multiple small updates. Seems an optimization they'd want to solve for themselves, rather than relying on user behavior.

And if there's a limit to the version history, isn't the storage concern moot?
google.de works
Jupiter loses a stripe
Its observed Jupiter has lost a stripe
And now scientists have a new gripe
Conservatives may have much to say
Why the stripe has lost its way
and MSM will be blessed with new type
GoDaddy sites hacked all over again
I do the same thing, except with C# instead. I've never had any issues with compilation.
Ask HN: "Startup Weekend" experiences?
I searched through the archives a bit, and it seems like some people have participated in them, and enjoyed themselves.

Was it worth it? How'd it go for you? What sort of people were there?

I don't believe in this sort of thing for making an actual startup, but it might be a fun time and a good way to network.
There goes the rest of my morning...
Goldman Sachs Has Zero Trading Loss Days in Last Quarter
We often get so immersed in detail that we tend to forget that it's not about the ones and zeros. It's all about other people. Thanks for the reminder, Jacques. RIP Rene.
Perhaps the key is "ASAP" -- he waited until the last minute, then realized he was in trouble with a deadline.

Programming takes time as well as understanding and effort.

[I always finished my assignments early. I learned not to mention this, because I was beset with demands of the "help me with this" nature, where the people needing help really just needed to do the work.

Of course, towards the end of the semester, with a week left and three projects remaining and a /really/ loaded mainframe -- a Univac 1108 in my case -- with turnarond time measured in hours, well, this was beyond pathetic or poignant, it was simple stupidity for them to expect that they could do that much work in so little time.]
I am a C programmer and could work through that code with a bit more effort than code I have maintained. However, I have seen some C++ code that baffled me more than this ever would.

C++ != trivially obfuscated C.
Sort of. You still need support materials if you were making something hollow.

But anyway, this is pedantic details. We both get where each other is coming from.
That was the most efficient start to a flamewar ever.
Of Function Scope and Lexical Scoping
The one I'm interested, of course, is this:

http://venice.startupweekend.org/

Anyone else happen to be going?
My comments on this launch here: http://friendlyrank.com/okstupid.html
tl;dr -> I build a version of this a year and a half ago - they looked at it and said they weren't interested in it, then went off and cloned it. I'm not happy.
The problem is presumably being solved right now, some sites still don’t work, though. Try http://www.sueddeutsche.de/
Exactly. Same for the system as a whole.

It should be a nice boost for Apps/games available in the market though. Weird that they didn't have JIT until now.
He's a bit of an attention whore. He's sometime more interested in saying something than what the content of that message is.

As far as I'm concerned he seems like decent-enough guy and I'd cut off a finger to work with him.

Edit: If you'd cut off a finger to work for anyone, I'm a bit concerned for you.

If you're not in the game for at least a finger, get off the court, because you're in my way.
My life is going from using a Google that used to give me useful results to one where "tar up website" returns the top result:

"Deep-sea ice crystals stymie Gulf oil leak fix - Yahoo! News
8 May 2010 ... thick blobs of tar began washing up on Alabama's white sand beaches. ... platform at the Deep Sea Horizon oil spill site in the Gulf"

At least a result from 4 days ago is an improvement on when I'd get usenet or mailing list results from 1999-2004 whenever I searched for anything linuxy.

:/
Video Miley Cyrus -hace una Lap Dance con un hombre de 44 años y ella con 16
You know, when you boil it all down, most things in life are about the approval process. Money has become the defacto standard for approval. If the FDA requires millions of dollars to be approved, then the people, law, and pharmacies believe that organization getting approval must be approve worthy.

If you are a guy in a shed with a couple thousand bucks and a cancer cure, ... hmm... you're just a guy in a shed. If you were smart enough to cure cancer, obviously you'd have more than a couple thousand bucks -- right?

So that's how society works. A series of gate keepers who have become persuasive enough to acquire "convincing wealth". Wealth is all you need to convince others that whatever you have and whatever you may have in the future is worth buying into, either in thought, or as a product. Many times, this convincing is as easy as an advertisement on television or some clever lawyers who can figure out that all you have to do is change the name of your product and market it to another segment to extend your patent.
Actually when i said the above, I should have clarified - for _me_ its more powerful. Your other points are very true. Smart or experienced programmers develop a product using X language, average programmers come to maintain it and cannot understand it. But what is the solution ? Should a good programmer dumb down his program for the sake of average ones to come ?

And yes, a smart programmer is way more productive than the average: could be more intelligent, a faster learner, or reuses what's there rather than reinvent the wheel. Smart programmer _often_ write simpler and clearer code -- I've seen newbies and average types writing convoluted buggy code for what could be done simply.

Smart programmers also sometimes realize that they might have a problem understanding their own code a while later and so use clearer, simpler techniques. So it can work both ways. Often they use more portable calls, or methods that will be backward compatible.
I wasn't going to buy an iPad either. I'm a gadget geek, so I had all the same feelings about the iPad that are outlined in the article. "It's just a big iPhone," I thought. And I already had an iPhone, so why bother? Then release date went by and I was sitting around using my tiny iPhone when I finally realized: it sure would be cool if this thing had a bigger screen.

I went out and picked up an iPad, and I'm glad I did. People are wrong when they say "it doesn't do anything my PC won't do right now." Your PC doesn't fit in your hand. I owned a netbook for a short time as well. It's light, it's small, and in a lot of ways it's similar to the iPad, but it still follows the laptop format. By consequence, it's most comfortable on your lap. When I hold my iPad I hold it at right at my sternum; just like you would a book. When I used a netbook I'd try resting in the same location, but netbooks get pretty warm, and it quickly becomes uncomfortable. The laptop form factor just isn't built for casual consumption. They're built for a desk.

I agree with the assessment that the iPad won't go "mass market" any time soon, but Apple has a long history of not caring about "mainstream". They only care about making a good margin on a reasonable number of units. Mission accomplished.

I'm hoping that more companies will roll out touch-based devices in a tablet form factor. All Apple-fanboy-ism aside, I think the form-factor is incredible exciting for personal computing. I'm finally untethered from my desk, and most importantly, REALLY comfortable when using a computer in my comfy chair. Unlike Apple, I'm not principally opposed to Flash. I'm principally opposed to sacrificing good battery life, heat, and performance to Flash, but I think the recent spat with Apple has lit a fire under Adobe. I won't hesitate to jump ship when a better touch-tablet comes along.
The Readability bookmarklet is pretty handy in this case. Also works great if you need to cleanup a page from Google cache. http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
To pivot or not to pivot
They said they'll release Flash at Google I/O, and they already got their Froyo cast for the Google offices, so... yeah, I'm leaning on the 'yes' side for Android 2.2 available at Google I/O.
Nice try, Calacanis.
I don't know about everyone else, but based on the shady content stealing and black hat SEO tactics used by Mahalo, I think Calacanis is a major league douche.
Works for me. But then I'm in Warsaw, so it's not that far away ;)
a very one sided article there and fails to mention the algos used by your broker to minimize information leakage of your trades... if their large enough. what gets me is the amount of money HFT market makes make off your trade is tiny compared to the fist full of cash your broker is taking from you..
I know how you feel, and you should still be backing this horse. The better the iPad does, the more likely it is that other manufacturers will create a touch-based tablet. Android is probably the best hope for a geek-friendly touch-tablet in the near future. We just need a manufacturer with a commitment to quality to produce one. Most of what we've seen so far has been junk.
I'm guessing that the problem wasn't that all .de web sites were suddenly unavailable, but that there were DNS problems that affected some DNS requests for .de. Caching may have prevented a full blackout.
iirc, the Lisp guy did offer some proof. Like macros.

One aspect that should be remembered is availability of libraries to do your tasks. I've read that CL just did not have a good enough set to use. Reddit was written in Lisp and then moved to python. One reason was threads, the other was that py had a lot of stable libs that could be reused.
Hm, I’m in Germany and it doesn’t work for me. Seems to have something to do with provider caches lagging behind (as is alluded to in the article).
From while to fold (in F#)
Mozilla firms up Firefox 4 plans
Packers and Movers Korba
Packers Movers offers Packers Movers Service in Korba, Packers Movers in Korba, Household Shifting Servicesin Korba, Loading Unloading Services, Car Carrier Services, Relocation Services and Our Services in all over India
If you'd cut off a finger to work for anyone, I'm a bit concerned for you.
his site is the cancer of the web, whose sole goal is to trick Google users into clicking the ads.

if any other website owner did the shit he did, we'd get our asses banned from Google, yet he gets a free pass
I don't buy that this is real...the lack of response on the screen is suspicious. Wouldn't you want to show off the fancy new software too if you'd found a fully functional prototype?

Asian phone clone shops are really good, and if they already had a model to work from on the Giz post, I would posit it's entirely possible that it's a clone.
His "C: The Complete Reference" textbook?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339884

:)
Seriously? This is OK for Hacker News? Flagged.
Downsizing mobility: microcars, motorbikes & the myth of micro-EVs (video)
svpply.com?
The proposition that we should end a matter of opinion 'once and for all' makes absolutely no sense.

Submitter, you do realize human nature doesn't work this way, yes?
That depends on whether you take the 37 Signals view of VC and the startup industry. Jason encourages the popular model for startups, which uses VC money to grow and tries to get acquired. If you think that model is flawed and ultimately destroys value, then you would think Jason does a disservice.
The article isn't asserting that people won't like an iPad if you buy it for them. It is asserting that (most) people like your parents won't decide to go buy an iPad.

Were your parents planning to buy an iPad anyway, or did you buy it for them because you believed they wouldn't figure out that they wanted it?
Webfinger might help:

http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/
Another option that comes to mind is Thor by yehuda katz (took me ten minutes to recall the name!): http://yehudakatz.com/2008/05/12/by-thors-hammer/

otoh, there are some simple ones you could possible customize: i once studied and modified Choice (by Chris Wainstrath).

I'd really like to know if you find something that helps you, or what you did eventually.
Didn't work 10 min ago, works now for me.
Hmmm, yeah. I guess I agree that the dictator approach does in fact land more successful products. But, like Calcanus has recently spouted off "Facebook has overplayed their hand", and I think the same goes for Apple.

It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no longer talking about just the news.yc crowd.

When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer software and were in no position to prosecute them.

This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber and right into the nightly news.
Cringely's Problems Contacting Startups - Do You Know Who Your CEO Is?
Making Sense of Python Unicode
Yeah, that's been a bit of an issue for me as well. I'm coming to the conclusion that I got more done because I didn't know what I couldn't do. Well, to be fair, I never got anything done, I got a lot of things 80% done and got mired in bad design for the last 20%. Now, I tend to not even start because I don't have a good design.

I'm trying to correct that now, and I'm starting to see results, but it's slow, especially now that I just moved to a new city. One of the ways that I've used to force myself to get things done is to set up disincentives for failure, i.e. I will buy the hosting for a project as soon as I have the first prototype done, so the longer it takes me to finish, the more money I'm wasting having an unfinished project sitting around. Another way is to start releasing my code on CodePlex, which tends to force me to document things a lot better. Of course, those are things that are more suited to my personality: the perfectionist in me was what prevented me from releasing, so forcing myself to release brings out the completionist in me.

Really, what I need is my own personal secretary/intern to keep notes for me and finish the dirty work on my projects :D
Speaking of which:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340873

I'm curious to hear what people think of these things.
Engine Yard Cloud, New Relic and Hoptoad deploy notifications
For newbies, Kelly and Pohl's "A Book On C" has been excellent.
>But if they didn't have the resources to get JIT working before now, wouldn't gcj (or hell, write your own java-to-machine-code compiler, clearly Google isn't scared of writing compilers) have been better than using a non-JITed VM?

The Dalvik VM uses its own bytecode and all, so they would have to heavily modify anything existing.

Ultimately Android has been a work in progress. JIT is something that everyone has been asking for since day one, but there just aren't enough resources -- Apple is a $220 billion dollar company that is significantly hinged on the iPhone OS. The Android project, while relied upon by a lot of companies, is largely the work of Google that sees little to no revenue from it (their primary motivation, purportedly, was simply to ensure that there were options in the market).
It's fairly obvious that Apple use the same basic system as Adobe. This renders text on a grid that is far higher resolution than the screen then resamples it down. Anything that doesn't round to a pixel is pretty much by definition sub-pixel, and the colour fringes you see when zoomed in clearly show that they're using the individual sub-pixels independantly. I'm not really sure how you could achieve this without what Microsoft call "sub-pixel positioning". It only appears to be a feature with a distinct name because they left it out in their first few versions of cleartype.

Old-skool referred to a) the fact that it's subjectively more pleasing to those who are used to aliased, bitmap fonts hence the big demand for "terminal" or programmer fonts in that style, even today and b) the fact the rising DPIs have been on the cards for a long time and are now arriving, making cleartype technology, and the aesthetic philosophy behind it, basically redundant.

I don't really believe it's more technically advanced, just a different style of rendering that worked with a different set of technological and user-defined constraints.

(For what it's worth, when I looked up what sub-pixel positioning was, it was listed next to Y-axis anti-aliasing with equal billing. Again this is just built into the Adobe and Apple approach from the start: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms749295.aspx#y-dire...)
DENIC explanation: http://www.denic.de/typo3temp/pics/i_64bbbffdb3.jpg
Ask HN: Paid Facebook apps for business
I am in process of doing R&D on paid business facebook app. I need help from you guys if you know any one.
And even within a group like news.yc, you don't always get a true representative sample of opinion. Yes, there've been many posts and comments about how Facebook sucks, but there are also lots that don't care.

And those minority are also less likely to post about it, too. I was pretty active on these discussions at first, but by now, I don't even read the comments section of a post with "Facebook" in the title. It's just turned into one big giant circlejerk, and it's boring.

It's easy to think that a site has a 'hivemind,' but there isn't really a consensus of opinion.
How is this 'forensics' and not 'hacking'?
How Internet Pioneer Larry Smarr Lost 20 Pounds by Becoming a “Quantified Self”
The Product looks nice enough. But if the samples are representative of the product it looks like you are paying for glorified studying cards with little in-depth content.

Maybe this is based on a widespread model I am not aware of, maybe they are selling their consultancy services and this is part of it, but as a stand alone product I wonder how useful it is.
Send it through AuthSMTP to avoid any EC2 related problems: http://www.authsmtp.com/ (and set SPF correctly). It does cost money though.

You can also send an email to this address and get a report on basic spam and deliverability issues: check-auth@verifier.port25.com
Saving the right to information miracle
Berlin Buzzwords 2010 scalability conference
I consider this to be one of the best books on programming ever written.

If you really want to know C, read this book.
What is your question, exactly?

Take a few minutes, figure out what you want to ask us, and edit your question appropriately. I promise that if you ask a coherent, focused question, you'll have a much better chance of an appropriate reply.
Is it just me, or are there more homophone mixups on HN lately?
I like how a ux site has a flash intro.
Doesn't exactly command respect.
bonus tip:

don't forget to add:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

also, if you're using vim, make sure your encoding as well as your fileencoding are correct (they're different):

set encoding=utf-8
set fileencoding=utf-8
after watching the video and clicking the links, im still confused as to what this is ? As a side note, it would be great if this were a service that could look at my website, and give me ux improvement suggestions.
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Shades of "Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over 'renegade' Linux maker": http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_centos/ (or Google centos oklahoma)
I keep tabs on most hn'ers that do more than just talk.

Neat to see its still going!
To Help Jaguars Survive, Ease Their Commute
Interesting. I do something with SVN (and haven't had a problem so far). I have my Visual Studio project directory located in my Dropbox so the current file saves end up backed up.

I also have a local SVN server binaries and configuration stored in my dropbox, aswell as the svnroot. It means whatever computer I go to, I instantly have a local SVN server running too.

Naturally I don't have 2 computers running svnserv at the same time. It was the lower barrier to entry than SVK and the VS Git Extensions aren't quite there yet.
I've noticed this as well, a sense of false modesty. I know for myself I'm not as good as I want to be, but I'm also better than most of my peers. That's kind of the key thing: I may not know what the right answer is, but I do know that so-and-so just gave a wrong one. Too many programmers espouse their crapness to be able to claim someone else's crapness and shoot down arguments against their ideas.

At a certain point, you have to stop thinking about what your skill level is and start just doing. Spolsky used the term Architecture Astronaut, which I definitely was going in to my first job out of college. Now, I rarely think about architecture up front, I think about requirements and the fastest path to them, with the post step of eliminating repetition. This ties into YAGNI and 7 Habits and OODA and all kinds of different decision making strategies that it just feels right through and through. Architecture seems to fall out from that and makes up for a lot of my own failings for design.

Point being: we're all at certain level X, and our relative level compared to other people isn't important, it's what we do with our personal level to develop and deploy projects. I've seen pure procedural code written in object oriented languages that got the project done and got it done well. I've seen object oriented systems with perfectly defined abstraction hierarchies fall over on itself. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against OOP with those examples, just saying "Code Elegance" be damned, you can't argue with "Shipped".

Where was I going with this? I forget... oh well.
Isn't tuning the LAMP stack would be good enough for many users?
Turkish student apologises for bringing down Twitter
It seems to be a hardware prototype only, with some boot check and no system rom.
New Lawyer Rating Site leveraging Facebook Open Graph
Wide versus Deep [prototyping]
Join the Campaign Tweet and Blog for Ed Tech
maybe there's no data avail, but I wonder what the median update lag is from the time Google pushes out an OS update.