skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Couple things:

1. I logged in with Facebook.It now shows my location as Toronto. I am in California.

2. Couple display issues. In Firefox (I haven't tested other browsers) a long link (i.e. to an article on Yahoo News) runs over the side and looks really bad.

3. Others have said it but why would I need this over something like Digg? I don't like Digg (mainly because I remember when it first launched and I don't like what it has become) so I don't see why I would use this. This is more like sharing links on Facebook so why wouldn't I do that?
Nexus One Availability Shows a Shift for Google to Retail Stores?
The Tragedy of the Commons
hmm, i'm clearly wrong, but it doesn't seem like there's any reason memcached couldn't be implemented completely locklessly... can't most of everything be done with CAS operations instead of taking out locks?
BP should pay for the damage caused by the spill, including the cleanup efforts, no?
Getting that money would have freaked me out :)) making it impossible to do anything very productive under the glare of such media attention. If I were them here is what I would do:

1. Get organised.

2. Code for 3 months and then stop for some time and keep 10,000$ for the effort.

3. Start an Americal Idol/The Apprentice like program to create actual code in phases.

4. Setup a Jury with 3 luminaries like Bruce Schneier as judges.

5. Opensource projects can participate for bounties to create various pieces of the jig saw puzzle. The entire contest would not involve any actual travel. Just a mob of coders checking into GitHub and Google code and so on. Their own code also gets to participate in the contest ;-).

6. Try get guys like Larry Page involved... LOT of people apart from the poor geek on the street want to see FB dead ;-).

Note: These guys are celebrities now. They can easily become notorious. They are young. The best thing for them to do to themselves is to not get a bad name by blowing away the dough. If they keep the money away/use it as a catalyst for the FB killer, they will earn goodwill worth millions.

They can "encash that goodwill" over time. With their skills+goodwill they can at a future date start a real startup through a program like YC maybe even in an entirely different domain, and earn fortunes. Their greatest asset right now is that a LOT people will now listen to them for a short time. If they manage to pull it off, even more people who matter will LISTEN to them. That would translate to a lot more than the millions they may raise right now.

Wishing them luck. Hope they will be billionares some day. but not from donations, but from a real startup they create in either social networking or another area that really brings value to its customers.

Sudarshan.P
Well, would you want your real name to be associated with the "Vampire Facts" iPhone app? On the other hand, I am curious, too. It does seem like he could have invented just one false identity instead of three, or just have had no names associated with the company at all.
How do you plan to make a living on this website? (And if the answer is "we'll generate revenue with x after we get traction", then how do you plan to make a living in the meantime?)

Why would I use this instead of just sharing links on Facebook or Twitter?

PS - Great domain name. Care to share how you got it?
Ditto. We're too interconnected to just not have a rotting stench. More like a keystone specie die, everybody else die.
> "If we rebuild 60% of the oil and gas infrastructure globally, it would probably cost at least $100 trillion."

I don't think that many people would count 'suburban housing' as 'oil and gas infrastructure.' The point being that he probably inflated that number by widening his definition of 'oil and gas infrastructure' in order for it to be more shocking.
Hi Bones, you're right, we're the same as a lot of services, we looked at the way Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Delicious, Facebook Links, Tumblr, etc., work and we decided to focus on an area none of them focus on.

I like sharing links, I post funny videos on my Facebook account all the time. I like the way its quick and easy. But sometimes I don't get comments because my friend circle is small. I don't mind if its public. I read reddit everyday, I love their sense of community. But I don't post on Reddit because I would never get upvoted enough to make it matter. Yet still, I have a desire to share content in a public way thats is quick and easy.

We call them "link blogs", kinda like Facebook Links + Twitter. We could then link posts by different people (to the same source) to a unified discussion page, like the way Reddit comment pages work. So I post an Obama article, you post the exact same article, but our followers get to discuss it in the same comment page.

Just a little taste of what we're thinking about. Thanks!
I see this argument about Disapora a fair bit:

>Diaspora apparently requires you to run your own set of web hosting services in preserve your privacy, which no one really cares about

To me, this reads the same as "having an email address requires you to run your own email server". If Diaspora takes off, I'm sure it will be another check-box on ISP features lists.
Wolfram Alpha Examples - Mathematics
http://stackoverflow.com/

http://codeproject.com/
funny! :)

however, being a software engineer doesn't preclude one from being right or having useful insight within any other realm of human activity.
This is actually something we've been juggling with for the past few days. We like how it is quick and easy (1 click) to post a link, but as you mentioned, requires more work if the user is not happy with it.

What are your guys' thoughts on this?
The name for this is an "Unrolled linked list," in the same semantic fashion as an unrolled loop. Congratulations!
I guess spreading rumors about politicians isn't exactly socially approved around here, neither do deflecting the questions.

But on the other hand, I still think the whole issue is that fisheries are not exactly owned by fishermen, thus the whole lack of lawsuit threats against oilmen for polluting their properties. This mean we have a tragedy of the common in the ocean. (Overfishing issues could properly get resolved too, but how do you own schools of fish?)

Regardless, BP will have to pay a big cleanup bill when this is all over. It's a disincentive in itself.

Also, isn't there's a danger of regulators being brought off? Fishermen don't have much of incentive to ruin their livelhood by accepting bride from oilmen. So maybe they'll be able to agree on inspectors agreed upon by oilmen and fishermen. It won't eliminate the whole issue of bridling probably, must probably raise the price of corruption higher?
I would have a big link-sharing box on the top along with a tagline, then use the bottom to show recently shared items.

This way a small percentage of users may find a few articles they like.
I've been published (in physics) while outside of academia. It was with a research team I'd previously worked with while in college, which says to me that it probably helps if you can find some co-authors that are still publishing, if for no other reason than to show you the ropes of the process.
What the fuck have you built?
I've got two part timers who work remotely from suburbia. (one in Louisiana, one in the central valley of California)

I think that this idea of hiring Americans in cheap parts of the country to work remotely will at some point be a fad as big as 'offshoreing' or 'nearshoring'
If I read this right it sounds intriguing. One of the problems with Reddit for example is tons of people compete for the exact same link with clever(read:usually horrifically melodramatic overstatements of truth) titles and only the one guy makes it to the front page.

So you are saying that exact same links will be somehow connected - like on the Obama article - everyone will see whoever also linked the same thing?
Spoken like Humpty Dumpty.
I value my time and believe in improving things. What more can I say?
Look at your University.

I was involved in Grid Computing research, which didn't involve any development, but meant I had to go around to different Universities and private companies, and help them understand the benefits of getting into Grid Computing. It was mainly dealing with Management and Administrators, getting them to understand the benefits of using all those spare computing cycles, they have on their desks and in their computing labs.

It was a great job, and I got to meet amazing people and see lots of different places. This way you get to use your knowledge of computers, but aren't stuck at your desk programming away.
A cooling trend
Interesting idea. Can people can use delicious to sort of do the same thing? I think at least for now, you should have it post-through to a person's twitter/delicious/facebook. I have followers on twitter that might be interested in my links, but if I post them on howl, no one will see it (because you just started and there aren't too many users). It's also better than twitter because it pulls images and text like Facebook does. Pownce also did this type of thing, so learn from their experience. Good luck!
typing in all small letters is a movement though
Bug: When the first letter in the URL is uppercase, e.g. Http://news.ycombinator.com I get a Url not valid error.
How is this better than delicious?
Hi paradox95.

1) Yep, still a really early version of our product and we havn't implemented the location yet.

2) Thanks, will look into that now.

3) Our service is more personal than Digg. Digg is all about getting voted up by the community to be seen. Ours is more of a personal sharing thing, where you'd follow people that interest you, and post things that interest you to build your own followers (twitter). You'd get new posts from your stream. We are highly influenced by facebook links, but FB links is limited because its only reaches your friend circle, and can disasppear in the feed stream. And link sharing isn't FB's main focus, but it will be ours.
Agreed. But even if their total bill comes out to say $10 billion, it can come out of their profits earned from only the last 1-3 quarters. Since those profits already came from us, arguably, we the consumers of BP's product have prepayed for the cost of this disaster. In one sense, BP is not going to pay anything.

Plus, due to the nature of the incident, it is unlikely that the true "total cost" is going to be charged to BP. How do you come up with a dollar figure for the total short and long term impact to the environment and economy? Very hard to measure, at best you can only estimate.
What I find more interesting than this piece itself is the fact that it appears to be the first in a newly-launched NYT philosophy blog: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/introducing-...

Not sure what I think about the idea of an NYT philosophy blog. Maybe a good idea? And why now? We'll see, I suppose.
The first thing I would do is hire someone to take care of PR so I could focus on coding.
There's also the issue of the leak being under 5000 feet of water. The deepest-diving military submarines can only go down to about 2000 feet; any more than that, and you need specialized deep submergence vehicles. Very few of these can dive to 5000 feet; those that can are usually oceanographic research vessels that can't carry the payloads needed to repair things. And you can forget about sending a human out in a diving suit; the pressure (or more specifically, the decompression process) would kill them.
Delicious is less social and more work to post (you have to insert your own titles, descriptions, tags). They also do not embed content like videos and images directly into the site. You also can't comment on bookmarks, or discuss them.

Its just not social, but thats ok because thats not their focus.
Wind farms actually lead to a lot of bird deaths, similar to the way skyscrapers do. It's no giant underwater oil spill, but alternative energy is not all roses and sunshine.
Social isn't a binary. I choose to share things with specific people and if Facebook then chooses to share this with more people this is a violation of the implicit pact I have when using their system -- that they will do what they say they will do.

It really is that simple.
Here's a starter list with links, the history of some of these places is pretty cool as well:

This is a good list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFRDC also look at the managing organizations.

Non/Not Profit Companies

Battelle Memorial Institute - https://www.battelle.org/
Noblis - http://www.noblis.org/
Mitre - http://www.mitre.org/
Aerospace Corporation - http://www.aero.org/
Rand Corporation - http://www.rand.org/
CNA - http://www.cna.org/

Some for-profit Government Contractors (I've tried to pick ones that don't make stuff like planes and tanks, they focus more on thinkery)

SAIC - http://www.saic.com
Bechtel - http://www.bechtel.com
Mantech - http://www.mantech.com
CACI - http://www.caci.com
TASC - http://www.tasc.com

there's actually a whole ton of smaller ones like Blackbird Technologies ( http://www.blackbirdtech.com/ ) that you can make a good home in also.

Labs (don't let their Manhattan Project backgrounds fool you, they do tons and tons of R&D outside of nukes, great places with lots of smart people)

Lawrence Livermore - http://www.llnl.gov/
Pacific Northwest - http://www.pnl.gov/
Los Alamos - http://www.lanl.gov/
Brookhaven National Laboratory - http://www.bnl.gov/
National Renewable Energy Laboratory - http://www.nrel.gov/
Sandia National Laboratories - http://www.sandia.gov
etc.

I've worked at some of these places in my career. If you want to be surrounded by smart people all the time, pick the labs. Note: if you don't have a PhD you will be made to feel inferior to everybody else you work with, it just comes with the territory. The Non/Not-Profits can be friendlier places to work. Go for an analyst job or something similar. Most of those are also full of really smart folks, and making $$$ isn't the most important thing in the world for them. Many labs are managed by these non-profits. I listed the Contractors because it's easier to get analyst type positions with them, but I've found the general caliber of the people there (in terms of pure "smartness") to be lower. It can be tough to go from a Lab like environment, where your next cube co-worker speaks three languages fluently, can fly six kinds of aircraft, holds two PhDs and built a small-scale particle accelerator in his garage to relax to a contractor where your next cube co-worker debates, heatedly, between diet-coke and diet-pepsi, and how to score that cute waitress in the happy hour bar without his wife noticing.
Yep, the technicals would have to be hammered out, but imagine the comments page that also shows, "People who also posted this", and lists the users. Also the ability to 1 click repost to your account to repost it on your blog.
The nice thing about it though is that you have to think and do. If you just think, or just do, you're hosed.
Really, the most important things are:

- Where is the company located?

- Is remote work a possibility?

- Is remote work only available in-country (or a select list of countries -- e.g. USA and Canada only)?

- A reminder to people to make sure they have contact info somewhere (there are always a couple of posts that say 'email me' with no email address in the post or profile).

These only seem to be loosely followed. If we could cement these as constant reminders / rules to the people posting jobs in the threads it would go a long way.

[ It could also help to have a standard format for location. It's annoying when someone only says their company is in 'Canada' but you have to hunt down the information (i.e. company site) to realize they are not in the part of 'Canada' that you are looking for. ]
In my microcontroller classes the professor has referred to this as interrupt driven, as opposed to a polling loop.
It's a general rule about most people. Almost all problems look simple from 5000 feet up; it's only when you try and work out the details and get it actually working that the difficulty becomes obvious.
But would you be OK if google allowed the public to peruse people's inboxes?

Just like email, Facebook was initially about sharing updates, pictures, etc. with your family and friends (i.e. people you know). Now they seem to be trying to trick people into having all this information public.

This is analogous to gmail defaulting to usenet posting, unless you configure obscure and fluid privacy settings.
Another wordpress blog hosted on godaddy that got hacked. Luckily, I caught it when it started redirecting and was able to restore the hosting account to a week prior. Coincidently I was moving my hosting over to media temple that weekend and fortunately didn't move the virus over.

After the headache that godaddya vulnerability caused, they sent me the exact same bullshit about updating wordpress. I have and always have updated wordpress and plugins within days of a new release.

Godaddy is for registering domains only, I learned that the hard way last weekend...

Also, I was in contact with a couple of people making money off of the base64 vulnerability: they have packages specifically for cleaning and securing the install. What's funny is that they have no way of securing it, just temporarily cleaning it until it gets hacked again. The article has some advice and you check out their services:

http://www.wpsecuritylock.com/cechriecom-com-script-wordpres...
Do you mind explaining how email is not social?
You had me at "how to score that cute waitress..."
Delicious is less social and has a different focus, so no, they don't do the same thing.

We thought about building the service directly around Twitter and Facebook like you suggested. We could integrate them so that whenever you post on Howl, it posts to your Twitter/FB through the API. You're right about how its better than twitter, after all, who wants a stinkin shortened bitly link and a description? Give em big images and embedded video! Thanks.
Isn't the problem the ever changing privacy policy. At one stage you are led to believe some information is private, just for you and your loved ones, then a with a change of Facebooks polices that information is shared with the whole internet.

It's the shifting sands thats uncool.
Some public university libraries can even be free, e.g. the University of California system allows free in-library use of materials and computers to visitors (you just walk in, and if you want to use electronic resources, login as guest).
Electric cars, mass transit, telecommuting. With minor changes (don't zone huge residential areas to forbid stores, offices, etc), current suburban areas could probably quickly become useful even with bicycles or walking for transportation on most days.
I agree with all of that, except I've found 2 to be the most useful, especially with regards to how I manage Reader. My time spent in feeds has been a lot less hurried since I learned to stop worrying and love the Mark as Read button.

I just feel like I personally get information in so many different ways, that if something is big enough, I'll see it in many places and am pretty much bound to read one of them. I can count on seeing any big tech story here on five different feeds, Google News (go to time-killer on my phone in the rare occasion my feeds are empty), several twitter accounts, and probably here on HN (more like 15 feeds if it has Apple in the title.)

I went to your site but you lost me with the lack of content--maybe at this stage that's important to weed out the laziest of the "testers." Have you thought of doing just a quick before/after screenshot to show default twitter vs. your application, or is it too early for that?

Edited to add: er, my fault. My brain skips over flash almost automatically. I didn't watch your video.
Most of us in our best clothes would not compare favourably to the richness on display by these average people in their best dress.

However, I wonder how much variety of style was worn in previous generations. Certainly within the span of living memory the current period is the most vividly variegated explosion of unrestrained style, but that is only compared to the monotone conformism of post-war industrialism.

Were there perhaps places and times before us with a similar or higher level of embracing stylistic inventiveness?
I've heard malthusian idiots espouse this bullshit every single year since I was in first grade - I'm amazed anyone listens to them any more
I applaud the effort you've put into this, and encourage you to keep building awesome stuff. However, this is not going to let you quit your day jobs any time soon.

There's no clear reason not to use Delicious, Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr to accomplish the same stuff. I can't imagine paying to use this when I already have all of those other services.

The domain is very valuable, however. You could get a LOT of money for it.
This service does look very similar to Delicious. Obviously Howl is displaying links per user, but the end result is the same.

You say that it isn't the focus of Facebook/Twitter and your right, but it doesn't need to be. Why not make your site plug into Facebook more? Allow people to like each post, or cross post all links onto Facebook. That way your integrating but still differentiating.

Good work on getting it all of the ground though, and good work on the domain name. Keep at it, something good will come from it.
Advertising, maybe a service like Viglink. We live at home with our parents right now :( We're applying to programs like YC, Techstars, etc.

As for the domain, we contacted the owner and bought it off him :D
Sounds like you invented something like a Bloom filter, kudos!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter
What, like "blackwoodHolt"?
No - there is always an exponential distribution of quality the same as everything else.
Couple ideas to add:

1) Being able to share links to a group of people. Often i'll share links with coworkers, and it'd be nice to have a record.

2) Custom lists. So I can make shareable lists of related links.

Yeah, definitely look more into unifying and integrating facebook and twitter.
I would think that any kind of analytics might fit your description. The problem is that you might end up tied to Excel.

Another one might be some sort of civil engineering or any job where you need to physically build something.

Also, any job that you have can require thinking if you want it to. Learn about the job and then think about you can do it better, faster, or cheaper.
That's true. It's gotten stricter once they busted all
the bidyshops in new jersey. However i think it's
best to ask a lawyer and make sure it's not possible.

This is a really difficult thing to do so you really
have to try all possible angles and this is one.
Thanks, we plan on more integration so that a post on howl automatically goes onto your FB/Twitter. We're also stealing Tumblr's reblog feature, so people can repost good links onto their blog from other people.
I'm sorry; I didn't mean that you couldn't replace the traditional college experience (I wouldn't want to try it, but I don't see any reason why someone with infinite time and money couldn't), but rather that I don't think any static FAQ, no matter how comprehensive, can replace the need for student–teacher interaction.

EDIT: Also, I whole-heartedly agree with your vision of universal accessibility of education.
In which area of interest? As for journal access, i suggest using public computers in a university library. Not tremendously practical but they're always subscribed.
Also if your on a j1 it's almost impossible to go directly
to a h1 without having to spend 2 years outside the
country. Consult a lawyer on this But that was
something I clearly remember. Things might have changed since then.
I agree. I want to add that I think it's unfare to expect people like my mum to understand the difference between something like Facebook and Hotmail. As far as she is concerned the are just different interfaces for the same thing. An address book, messaging, and photo sharing.