skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Brazil tends to reciprocate the behavior of the other country. IIRC, they only fingerprint US citizens, because that's what the US does to Brazilians."

Good for them. I wish the Indian government (and every government on the planet) would have the cojones to do this. The USA treats visitors very badly.
Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (aka utah2000 or utah2k)

By Rob Pike - August 05th 2000, 23:59 EST

http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/
Why Google TV is fundamentally flawed
>>If you hold your breath, your lungs are still filled with air

Just let me note -- don't hold your breath when there are pressure differences between your lungs and the surroundings!!

You can find that in any scuba diving manual.

(Edit: I do realize the parent poster probably knows this.)
The hacker news unwritten rule for humor seems to be:

Laugh at something you can find anywhere else ---> flag
Laugh at something that makes you think, too ---> upvote

I love a good joke as much as the next guy, but I really love "hacker humor", something that makes you think, too. Something that non-hackers may not even understand, not because it's an inside joke, but because they haven't bothered to raise their level of thinking to "get it".

About once a day, I read something here that really makes me laugh out loud. Usually something very clever coming in from left field. Something I would never find anywhere else.

I have often typed "humorous" responses myself, but I usually think better and just close my browser before submitting. Then again, I often just let 'er rip.

You got me to thinking so I went to searchyc.com and listed my comments sorted by descending points, looking for "humorous" responses that did get upvoted. Here are a few examples of what others seem to have appreciated:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025798

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926644

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202154

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829338
You don't offer any free accounts, besides the free 30-day trial. Right?

In the absence of any long-term free accounts, doesn't your low percent of paid accounts to free accounts mean that you're seeing rapidly increasing growth? Or are you including expired accounts?

It would seem that roughly between 6.8% and 3.8% of your accounts are "stored" from more than a month ago, and between 1% and 4% of your accounts are from new signups. Splitting the difference, I get 2.5% from new accounts and 4.3% from old accounts. Now, that sounds like pretty fast growth, or high turnover. I'm curious how many people allow the first payment to go through, but wind up giving up on accurately tracking time (it's often hard to start work habits) and quitting.

I've had a job at a SaaS company, that had a 30-day trial, and no free option. I remember a larger % of paid accounts to total active accounts. I'm pretty sure it was over 20%. Growth was a bit slow, though. The cancellation mechanism was also different. The trial signup didn't require a credit card (bad idea, since one feature allowed customers to send custom emails), so people didn't have to do anything to cancel within a month. People did have to talk to customer service to cancel once they started paying, though. I think, especially with the email at the end of the trial, before they get charge, that your cancellation mechanism is much more ethical, because you let people quit painlessly (except for the pain of giving up on tracking time). :)
Facebook Clickjacking Attack Spreading Through News Feed
Yay, Ireland ... I'm in Cork

have you thought about advertising to hostels?, this could be very useful to travellers looking for rides ...

p.s. The bus eireann site is a completely ridiculous joke!!!, how did you get around that issue?
#2 sounds much better - it gives you safety, and the job description doesn't sound different. The amount of potentially negative variables in #1 would make me shy away - unless you have serious faith in the product/business/team.
When starting a business, if the idea is even reasonably good in a decent sized market and you stick to it, getting to $1M per year in revenue is not the hard part. In fact, after two companies of my own, it was almost too easy to get that far in each one. The hard part is making a decent amount of money at that revenue level because realistically you are going to have at least a few employees in the company to get there. ie: $1M isn't what it used to be.

In my experience, getting to $10M dollars should be the real goal and that proves to be quite a bit more challenging because this takes some real scale and the skills from 0 to $1M are quite a bit different that say the skills from $5M to $10M range....the job of CEO is completely different between the two and most people don't prove to be good at both types of the "jobs".....so the company hits a ceiling and never quite gets there.
Feasibility and Real-World Implications of Web Browser History Detection [pdf]
New Internet Media Tablet from Archos
I worked out of the CIC (cambridge innovation center - outside of boston) for close to a year. Great co-working space, gave me resources I never would have had on my own (conference rooms etc.). Would certainly recommend to others!
Liar's Poker was great, and I'm enjoying reading 'The Big Short' at the moment.

Although I'm not sure that the guys making money from Credit Default Swap agreements on CDOs are on morally safe ground, I disagree with Yves that Steve Eisman, Mike Burry et al were "the moving force behind otherwise inexplicable, superheated demand for the very worst sort of mortgages." Ultimately, irresponsible mortgage lending was the root cause of the crisis: it was a superheated supply scenario.

It was only when the rate of defaults on home loans dramatically increased that the CDOs dropped in value, and the Credit Default Swaps could be redeemed.

For example, in addition to the high number of defaults that occurred after an initial two year, fixed-interest period, (when the interest rate jumped in some cases from 6% to 12%) some of the loans even defaulted on their very first payment. Lewis makes the point in the book that the question is not "who defaults on their first loan repayment?", but rather "who lends to someone who can't even make a single repayment?"

As for Magnetar being undocumented, Chicago Public Radio did a great podcast about it a couple weeks ago, which was where I got the recommendation for 'The Big Short'. It's well worth a listen:
http://www.propublica.org/ion/podcast/item/bernstein-and-eis...
Well I think this is pretty easy. Create a budget for living - the essentials to live comfortably. Just subtract that from the payment, and the rest for the startup.
I like the comment idea, but focused on the user posting. For example, I'd like to put up a page in my blog that aggregates pretty much everything I've ever written online, ever. That way, I could have a "collected writings" page that will show my comments on various blogs, on HN, on reddit, maybe reviews I've written for Amazon, etc.

There are some technical difficulties with doing this automatically (how will you find every comment I ever post on any old blog?). But this would definitely be a cool way to aggregate all my writing into one place. It could also have controls letting me exclude certain writings, etc.
Can't remember signup percentage, but on Feed Digest 2005-2006ish, about 5% of free users became paid users. At the time I understood this was "pretty good", though not stellar.
We have free accounts, Ben!

They are severely limited, though, and I'm trying to decide what to do with them -- improve them, or not. I don't think they give a real idea of what Freckle is like because they are so limited. But I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of them altogether, now.

So, I don't believe our turnover is very high and the numbers are trending quite rapidly upwards.

But the whole "we do have free accounts" thing definitely makes your math incorrect :)
There have been a couple of cases where crews on business jets were very quickly incapacitated after a loss of cabin pressure most famously the aircraft of golfer Paine Stewart. Unfortunately, unconsciousness does seem to occur pretty fast. Supplemental O2 wasn't used in that case, despite it likely being close to hand.
I've heard good things about fresh oranges. They're tasty, too.
Well I work from 7am-5pm, commute home takes about an hour. From 6-7:30 I cook/eat. From 7:45-9 I lift weights, from 9-10 I box. From 10-11:30 I work on whichever web project is capitalizing my time. Then I go to sleep and start all over the next day.
Insurance billing collection
Using the world class technology software called Kareo.
That medical billing software (Toll free 1-877-323-4707)
offers convenient tools to track the flow of encounters through each stage of the
process and each department within your organization
How to Write victorious Business Research Papers
Writing business research papers provides students with the opportunity to showcase their critical thinking skills. Writing a successful business paper is vital for a good grade. Therefore, in order to produce a good paper, you should know the process of writing a good paper which will get a good grade.
Steve Jobs email: Unimpressed with Google's offer of open source video codec
Wow, when the community wants alternatives, they really don't waste time.

I wonder if the $100 TV boxes out there (WD TV, etc.) could ever be programmed to support VP8 or if it needs hardware support, just firmware won't do?
Web Publishing, Design & Dynamic Content
Most stuff that people think is funny isn't that funny for most other people. So a humor-tolerating, polite community will most likely end up with lots of trying-to-be-funny stuff that's just tired, and signal-to-noise goes down. An option is to drop the politeness and harbor a culture where people vocally heckle things they find unfunny. Third solution is to discourage humor.

I like low humor tolerance more than having a low signal-to-noise ratio or low community politeness.
Surely, Google saw this coming. What I want to know is what is Google's strategy here? They are not indemnifying VP8 adopters. Technology flaws aside, how do they expect anyone to take up VP8? I feel like it's a sacrificial pawn in some other strategy.
I think the relationship between the content of hacker news and the userbase is like an ecosystem and maintaining the fidelity of this system is necessary to preserve the mission of the community. People are attracted to hacker news because of the content and they in turn become a new source of similar content. If hacker news were to allow more lightweight material to the site then we may see users joining for that type of content and the repercussions of this I would would be undesirable. So while the perceived authoritarian nature of HN may be a bother sometimes I think it's a small price to pay to keep it the way it is meant to be.
I have filters for idiots who send me jokes by email

* I don't think of HN users as "Spock like" at all fwiw*

Ah, the irony.
Don't forget that there are likely a great many people who are neither. Most of them will claim to be street smart as cover because there are no credentials to prove one way or the other.
Ask HN: Getting started with graphic design for the web
So I'm still looking up ways to do a self-study in graphic design for the web (and iphone apps, etc).

This could be an online study course that's basically just a website where you move sequentially through the site.

Here's kind of what I want, but not really.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/teach-yourself-graphic-design-a-self-study-course-outline/

Here's basically want I want:

1. Principles of Design (contrast, etc)

2. Typography - what you can do with just fonts in an entirely colorless design.

3. Color Theory (what do colors mean? picking color schemes? what background colors are readable with fonts and how does that influence choosing a color scheme for a mildly text-heavy page? Lots of examples

4. Layouts and grids - how to use a grid layout, where to put the color, box model. Lots of examples

5. Logos

6. Quick photoshop tutorial

7. Photoshop workbook i.e. do it yourself, possibly with pre-supplied images i.e. here some images, make this poster with the end result shown to you.

8. Now revise the end result to do something that you think looks better.

9. Post revision for peer review

10. Assignment where you have to come up with your own photoshop re-design of a shitty website.

11. Post design for peer review.

12. Quick html/css tutorial

13. Take this photoshop mockup and turn it into html/css. Html/css made available if you have trouble.

14. Revise design straight in html/css and post for peer review.
The Laugh Track
Interesting. Can you elaborate how exactly job changes from 0 to $1 M as compared to $5 M or $10 M range?
Who Was The VC Who Screwed Steve Blank?
There is (so far as I know) no no-humour policy. There is a humour-isn't-enough policy.

Example: That paper on the dynamics of cows. 32 points, a reasonable amount of discussion. HN-worthy because as well as being funny, it had some actual interest for, at least, a subset of HN readers.

And yes, there is a not-lame-and-trivial* policy. If some lame and trivial things make it to the front page anyway, that's a bug not a feature, and it isn't a reason to abandon attempts to keep lame and trivial stuff away.

No, HN is mostly not a source of things that will make you laugh for an hour. It's also mostly not a place to get laid, or a good place to vent about an annoying co-worker, or a good place to get constructive advice on a SF book you're writing. Not because there is anything wrong with laughing, sex, being annoyed, or writing SF, but because a community that tries to do too many divergent things at once is likely to end up doing none of them very well.

And (do I repeat myself? very well, I repeat myself) that doesn't mean that HN has a no-sex or no-annoyance or no-SF policy. If you find or create something that's genuinely interesting to hackers and posting it happens to get you laid, express exactly what's wrong with one of your colleagues, or help polish your writing, no one is likely to mind at all. But it needs some HN-relevance to belong here, and those things don't give it that.
Yes, the rumour is out and people have started to question. And it's actually a good thing if people become more cautious about what to share and where.

For IT professionals Internet can be a great opportunity to show our work. Equally anything you share can bite you in some future job interview, for example. Discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, family situation etc. is illegal, so you cannot really ask questions about those topics, but if all that info is easily available online... Now I'm not saying it would be a negative thing to be open about yourself, but I'm sure to monitor what my family is putting online.
Lakers tickets? Celtics? Trust the math
I think that what makes this case particularly special is that Facebook referring URLs share much more data about you than the average site. A typical Facebook URL can be something like:

http;//facebook.com/#!profile_id=123/reqs.php/456/v=photos&ref=pymk

This means "I am user 123 and I'm looking at the photos of user 456 after having clicked through to their profile. I found this user's profile through Facebook's friend recommendation page."

Why does Facebook have to put all that info in the URL in the first place?

The referring URL for an average site would simply share "I am an anonymous user that's looking at 456's photos".

An advertiser could use Facebook's Graph (where your name, picture and other information is forced to be public now and indexed via the above Ids) and you have extremely detailed info about someone and their Facebook activity.

Note: It looks like Facebook has stripped the part of the URL that needlessly self-identifies now, so that's good.
The article repeats itself a fair bit, doesn't it?
"I have filters for idiots who send me jokes by email

Ah, the irony."

Not really. Let me try again emphasizing some words. I don't like ---> idiots <---- mailing me lame jokes . Your "nerd girls in funny t-shirts" is ultra lame, for e.g. but there are some people who email such things to me without me ever asking for them, and in spite of requests not to send them to me. "Oh but this is so funny you have to read it .."

I do have filters for such people and posts. They get to send cheesy stuff , I get to ignore cheesy stuff, everyone is happy.

I know and interact with a lot of humorous people in real life and face to face. Being (genuinely) funny in real life (vs sending of something scraped off the Internet to a few dozen email addresses) takes some doing, or at least genuine insight.

Is "avoiding cheesy jokes in email and HackerNews" such a strange concept? I think you interpret "Spock like" to mean "people not like Daniel Markham", the lone human in a world of Vulcans ;-).

You might like getting lame jokes (sometimes with pretty girls wearing TShirts) in your email. Nothing wrong with that. Other people don't. Nothing wrong with that either.

But if that makes them "Spock like" in your world view, then so be it. :-)
Works smoothly in Safari on a macbook air.
I've got buyagoal, buymygoal, sellagoal and sellmygoal.com for sale if someone wants to start trading goals ...

E.g. 'If you can: make me lose X pounds in Y weeks, I'll pay you Z'

It's a better business model .... ;)
Researchers Mimic God Creating Living Cell
You know, almost everybody who reads Hacker News would benefit from knowing how Kleiner treats founders. This very much meshes with my experience with them at KnowNow, where I wasn't a founder but was a pre-funding employee. Ben's de-anonymization of Steve's story is a public service.
Google has stated that they are already using vp8 on youtube so I guess this may be part of their strategy. Youtube is a big target and if they don't have patent troubles then this may ease the concerns of other users. Alternatively if Youtube is taken to court then the ruling would settle the dispute once and for all.
> Does anything aggregate comments with respect to the thing being commented on?

http://co.mments.com
I've learned three things.

1) Most of the time stuff works itself out so long as you don't let it worry you too much.

2) Being sincerely polite, courteous and helpful will take you a long way

3) If you get trod on, snap their foot off and beat them into submission (metaphorically).
Spira: Breathing life into Linked Data with Ruby
My thought process would be, aside from the money, in which company would I enjoy working more, which means 2 things: coworkers, and the product. Productwise, is #1 exciting? Will you have the power to really develop it? How about #2. And how are the coworkers?
Thanks Ed. This is great feedback. On topic, with practical advice that can be followed.

I find that I edit myself with humor much more than other things, especially on HN. Interestingly enough, this seems to have carried over to real life, with not such good results. Sometimes you just need to be yourself.

There is a principal-agent problem here as well. HN (or any other site) exists for some sort of narrow market segment. I know I came here because I wanted to go to one place to search and discuss items of interest to startups. From that idea the site has evolved into "stuff that interests hackers", mainly because there is only so much material you can mine using the narrower niche.

However, and this is interesting in terms of growth-for-content-sites, the reason I stayed wasn't because the topic area widened up, it was because then it became a place to hang out with other hackers in the startup community, which I _also_ found useful.

But once it became a place to hang out, my goals and the site's goals diverged. The site's goals is still to provide some kind of content niche that it does well. That, after all, is what makes it useful. My goals, however, are more like the goals anyone would have in a community: camaraderie, humor, exploration of common ideas and problems, understanding of motivations, discussion of mores.

There's not a lot of room between those two goals, but there is some, and I wonder if over time the effects add up.

(I don't know the answer. I was just wondering)
Depends of position.

If dealing with peer or higher-level "politicians" - I refuse to play their game, even if beneficiary to me at the time. While I simultaneously point out any transgressions of theirs. Sooner than later they screw up - since focusing on politics instead of your work is actually pretty hard work.

If dealing with subordinates. I perform "face thy accusor" ritual. It also helps not to get engaged into any of their schemes - thus preserving one's integrity.

Oh and both approaches require that you be valuable to the team - else you will get ground and ejected :)
#1 Coffee

#2 Get the kid out of the door

#3 Email and rss

# 4 Breakfast
Senate Passes Biggest Regulatory Overhaul of Wall Street Since Depression
Your assumption: HN readers only read HN.
Have compassion. Without compassion, I would not have saved someone very close to me from debilitating alcoholism, I would not have worked my life around to be able to work on a startup for the past six months (and know I will have the support to make it from those around me). All those 'smart' actions, words are only sustainable if they are the consequence of something deeper.
Alarm goes off at 8am, I hit snooze till 8:40 or 8:50, then realize there's no possible way to make it to work on time so I get out of bed. Take my morning pee, wash hands, put in contacts, brush teeth, wash face. Stop at gas station for a yummy breakfast of the largest red bulls (usually 2) I can find. Sometimes I get a large slim jim. If I'm running low of cancer sticks I get a pack there too. Now its time for work.

And that is my daily routine.
"I really don't think you're considering the whole effort, the economy, the resources, the externalities that are involved in all those things that "surpass" natural organisms."

No, I have, and that's precisely the point. Our technology doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's an integral part of our civilisation. Machines do require an enormous amount of resources to back them, but so what? It's the end result that matters.

Many cells in nature also require relatively vast resources to be of use. For example, a mammal sperm cell requires billions of cells and massive amounts of resources to be of use. Take the sperm cell out of the body, and it will die far quicker than your car will rust.

"And it's far from clear to me that logical deduction is more efficient than evolution. Evolution can certainly result in silly designs, that's for sure (the retina's layering, vas deferens' route, etc.); but evolution also has an appetite for complexity and resilience far exceeding anything the human mind can grasp today, aided or not."

Yes, but it has had a few billion years head start, whilst the scientific method is only a few hundred years old.

From a computer science perspective, evolution and science both involve accumulating information and processing this information to produce useful designs. The pace of change, therefore, is dictated by how fast information can be gathered, and how much processing power can be applied to it.

Bacteria are particularly successful in this area. They are continuously passing around information and testing new designs. There is no intelligence involved in this process, but they make up for it through sheer numbers. Bacteria are, essentially, an unimaginably vast distributed computing network, continuously sifting through information and applying genetic algorithms to it.

We have a far smaller computing network, made up of our own neurons and our manufactured microchips. However, despite being trillions of times smaller, our networks are vastly more efficient. If they weren't, then death rates from bacterial infection would remain constant, yet they've been falling globally, and in developed countries, dying of a bacterial infection is today extremely rare.