skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Finding an OSS programming community?
I used to work on an OSS project I know a lot of you use, though it was in the bowels and not that sexy, don't want to overstate my contributions here.

I enjoyed the community aspect of it immensely, but work and other things slowly chipped away at my available time until it got to the point where I was no longer able to maintain my level of contribution, and at the end of the day I'd end up collapsing and vegetating, programming being the last thing I wanted to do.

Sanity has since returned, I'm working at a place that treats me well, and I have a decent balance of work to free time.

I know I have the capability to make good contributions to an OSS project.

I can hack C, pretty familiar with Ruby, Python, C#, etc. If I find some annoying bug on my Ubuntu box, I can and have tracked down what it is in the source, create a patch to fix it, and so on (used to be a Debian developer). I like to think I have a small amount of good taste, after several iterations of refactoring, though usually coming back after 6 months I think it's shit ;)

I'm sort of casting about for a project...A problem I'm having is just starting something. Programmmer's block, if you will.

I'm finding it tough going not having people to bounce ideas off or talk about tech with though. I actually think this is my biggest problem. I've been in the "wilderness" for the past 2-3 years.

New Zealand is tiny, and rather Microsoft-centric, which unfortunately sometimes means not much of an interest outside of what Redmond provides.

I like plumbing, infrastructure, networking, understanding how things fit together. Virtually everything interests me (perhaps that is a problem?).

My reading queue, to give you an idea of my interests:

* Beautiful Data

* 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

* Learning iPhone Programming

* Hello, Android

* Programming Clojure

* C# in Depth (when it's released)

So, HN:

Project Suggestions?

Has anyone else returned from a sojourn in the wilderness?

How did you do it?

How did you get back into the thick of it?

What got your juices going?

Are you hiring? ;)
When I first heard about DDG it was because of it's privacy. I couldn't care less for that.

Now, saying that it is good for programming questions made me set it as the default search engine without even testing.

Zero-click info is amazing for quick doc checks, the auto-extending page is sweet and actually displaying the page link and favicon is a lot more informative.

Two things though:

- It's slow. Maybe because I'm in South America, or the server is not that good, but speed is essential for a search engine.

- Special characters are not always handled correctly. A* work perfectly, but the situation is inverted when it comes to "@". Google's results for @override (http://www.google.com/search?q=@override) are better than DDG's (http://duckduckgo.com/?q=@override).
Article dates from 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schapelle_Corby

She got 20 years for carrying drugs - and claims it was put into her bags by corrupt Customs officials in Australia.
Fair enough, but in that sense, it's not clear that anyone was being coerced. I grew up in former USSR, and people in that part of the world are much more efficient utility-maximizing agents, and unfortunately things like social responsibility are considered of no utility. A girl might easily choose prostitution as a career path (so far so good), and when it suits her, make herself look like a victim to a bunch of pious Westerners.

I deleted my comments because on a closer look, what I object to is only slightly related to the topic. Namely, the idea that all prostitutes are victims, and all other people involved in prostitution are evildoers. My moral axioms probably aren't those of the HN majority, so I could get nothing out of this besides frustration.

Also, I didn't read the article. Also, thanks for the reassuring calm tone of your response. This is just the thing for bedtime :)
What about folder-like threads instead of sub-reddits that would group threads with identical keywords like Google, Apple, iPad, etc.
Those don't seem like categories to me. It looks more like you're talking about two continuous dimensions upon which all posts fall: ephemerality (or, conversely, timelessness), and community-orientation (or, conversely, xenophilia.)

A "learn" post is just a post that will still be good a while from now. A "discussion" post is just a post closely related to the goings-on around here, to the point where all the information related to it can be included and it doesn't need a link.

Couldn't these be separate voting axes? Voting on ephemerality would affect a post's time-factor in its calculated ranking (ephemeral posts would drop off the front page quickly, while timeless ones would last a while); and community-orientation would be a setting each user could have in their profile (a slider for "I like more/less community in my HN.")
I'm not familiar with this quantum algorithm for factorization, or the "standard" factorization algorithm. Are we talking about integer factorization? It doesn't seem obvious to me how factorization would even be phrased as a decision problem. I know that primality testing is known to be in P.

I don't know if any of this comment even makes since, considering I believe the complexity classes P and NP are formally defined in terms of Turing machines anyway. Any NPC problem along with some polynomial computation can be used to solve any other NPC problem. I don't think quantum computers aren't going to reveal a polynomial-time algorithm for a known NPC problem.
The most obvious problem is that the "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" clause in the guidelines is too broad and, therefore, impossible for certain people to internalize. That's why there are even long-time users who somehow believe that pictures of girls in t-shirts are appropriate (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1367047). That misconception creates a broken windows environment where people start racing downwards.

I don't have a precise solution. In my experience, zero tolerance for off-topic subjects like political discussions is the best way to keep online communities healthy. As the saying goes, give an inch and they'll take a mile. Somehow making the "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" clause stricter would go a long way to improving quality overall.
The look had already been critiqued, and I agreed with what had been said about it.

Aside from the design of the page (and presumably, the site), I judge code quality at almost the same level of importance.

In this case, both are severely sub-standard. I'd never hire this guy, and I'd never use a service he was involved with. Why should I believe he'd be any more careful with my private information than he was with his design or code?

In the end, it's a trust thing. His page does not generate any trust with me.
I'm presuming you don't have any reliable research to back up what "the users" care about in regards to their privacy. (Sounds a bit close to a politician talking about what Americans want, too.)

Its doubtful that most even realize.
There's a pretty strong Silicon Valley culture of "work should be fun, therefore you shouldn't mind spending a lot of time at it." And for many people, that's true. If it isn't, then Silicon Valley culture generally holds that you should find another job where it is fun, and you can feel proud and excited about the work you're doing.

This can clash with cultures in many other parts of the world. In many places, a job is something you do for money, you're not expected to like it, you're just expected to put up with it, go home, and use the money you earn to do the stuff you actually enjoy. Job hopping is discouraged, because it shows you're a disloyal employee and not holding up your end of the bargain. Here, the employer-employee relation is less "you do work for us and we give you money" and more "we're all in this together, and if you're not in this together with us, get your damn ass off the boat".
The author misses a large point, and it sort of confounds his other arguments. While form and representation are absolutely important, so is context. People cared about his facebook visualization because the subject matter was of immediate interest to us, given the current news cycle. A visualization has to be part of a compelling story.

Not all visualizations are great, and not all well-made visualizations express a compelling narrative. And not all visualizations, regardless of how well-made and compelling, are right for a target audience. Relevance is different than form; let's not confuse them.
You're right. P and NP are formally defined specifically to Turing machines, but the Church-Turing thesis says that all models of general computation are equivalent. If quantum computers can solve any (which means all) NPC problems in polynomial time, then they're something entirely separate from all the models of general computation we currently know of. I can't even fathom what that even means. Wikipedia mentions some "non-Turing models" of computing, but most seem to be either jokes or highly theoretical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation
That car data plot is an example of a multidimensional parallel graph. Too bad he didn't go into more depth on this since he showcased this visual representation in his blog post. Some more info you get your feet wet is here:
http://filer.case.edu/~dbh10/eecs466/report.html

Parallel graphs were a starting point on multidimensional al visualization. They are useful only to a certain point of complexity, then they are counterproductive as it takes more time to analyze the graphs than to view a number of simpler graphs side by side or in series. Newer techniques involve radial visualization, such as

http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php?title=Radial_Hierarchi...

Something to consider with your animations is the cognitive load of animations of complex visualizations. See the following paper:

http://geoanalytics.net/GeoVisualAnalytics08/a15.pdf
My biggest concern at 32 is being too old.

After losing most my money and tech skills working on a small business, it's going to take at least another year or two to get anything near the programming skills a start-up would take. And even at that point, how many founders in their young 20s would want a bald guy in his mid-30s for a co-founder, regardless of his drive?

That said, I have little fear of going it alone without funding. Some entrepreneurs featured on Mixergy did just that.
"they don't seem to have much of a plan"

Considering Evan William's success with Blogger and Jack Dorsey's early success with Square I think it would be disingenuous to think that they don't have plan just because they're not broadcasting it.
May I ask what apps you are missing?

I've been using Android for awhile, and at least at this point, I've hardly ever found a lack of apps to be a problem. The only problems I've found are slowness (I have a sprint hero).

The main benefits I found to the iPhone (for me) are its speed and smoothness (esp. in the browser). The drawbacks thoug (for me) didn't make up for the gains (terrible notification system, lack of task switching, and lack of linux support).
I'll also summarize the advantage of equal temperament:

Regardless of what key the song is in, a certain interval is always the same exact ratio. A major third in the key of F is the same as a major third in the key of Bb. This is good for instruments like the guitar and piano, which aren't made or tuned for a single immovable key. Contrast that with harmonicas, for examples, each of which is made for only a certain key.
Oh, "Java Virtual Machine" is a scripting language now... (Page 6 of the Court's decision in German)

To understand the technical aspect, have a look at (14) in the court's decision - at first I got a heart attack since it talked about running Java Beans on a frigging micro controller, but in the second part it's made clear it will be run on a modified runtime environment for resource constrained computers (this is the innovation) while still allowing the same JSP document as on a normal Java runtime.

General concepts are still not patentable and any patent mustn't be based on conceptual thoughts, but on usage of technical instruments. (demand of technicality)

From a philosophical point of view, I think it's fair to grant patents like this (all usual requirements for patents persist, i.e. result of inventory activity, no prior art), but I fear what the original article describes: People using technical innovation as a back door to software patents.
But I have to agree that if you are not interested in facebook and apple, half the post are useless. Plus, if you already know 5% of linux, 1/4 of the post are useless since it's usually a blog post explaining how cat works. The rest is interesting to me (of course, not the How to start a startup repeating what as already been said 10 millions of time, and why block are cool in ruby)
sice CSS3 is still a work in progress browsers implement upcomig features using -webkit/-o/-moz there's nothing wrong with it (as long than you don't use the non-valid ie's filter crap)

If you take a look here: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work you can clearly see that pretty much everything is in Working Draft state so isn't really stable
Great question! I think the primary reason is the originals (4-6) were written/edited/produced by other people, while 1-3 were solely managed by Lucas. No one stands up to him now that he's established and revered.

There's a great review of Star Wars Episodes 1 & 2 on YouTube that are absolutely worth the time to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia#p/u/19/FxKtZmQgxr...

http://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia#p/u/0/CfBhi6qqFLA
You can do it friend. You don't need a cofounder in their 20's. I'm in my late 20's and this is my third time. I know another guy who just started in his early 30's. The point is that it's never too late. You control your destiny. Each minute is a new opportunity to start over. Plus, you have experience which is hard to find.

Good luck. Take care.
What It’s Like To Drive On A Dubai Highway
happy to see disjoint sets in there
Ask HN: Where to report bugs in HN?
I just noticed that one of the news items is appearing twice on the ask list (http://imgur.com/yVzSP.png). I'm guessing that this a bug, but couldn't find a Hacker News issue tracker.
There's nothing wrong with that. A lot of people have that mindset. But think of the damage that you could do if you would team up with a cofounder is business oriented??
>a way of solving the problem of the frontpage getting filled up with crap

add downvoting to submissions and the community will take care of it
http://imgur.com/yVzSP.png
Maybe it was a prediction, it's just when he said "our software" he also said patents really quietly.
terrible example, because he's using pure sine tones. What makes intervals sound in or out of tune are the harmonics, which clash if it's not just tuning. No one can hear the difference between just and tempered thirds on a tone with no harmonics -- our aural circuitry is just not that precise.
Take that phone back tomorrow. You have 60 days, I think. I had an Eris for about a week too. I just sent it back and bought a 3GS on Craigslist. You could even trade it in for the Incredible, which you'll be much happier with.
It's blurry, but the invoice says: "Ball, Bowling 'Candlepin' 4 1/2" ". So these are smaller 1.1 kg, 4.5 inch diameter balls used for the Candlepin variant of bowling, not the much larger balls used for ten-pin. They don't have finger holes.
What's really weird is that they have a point difference...
What's interesting is that other businesses have already started making money off the data Twitter is providing, like http://whatthetrend.com/. It would make sense for Twitter to monetize their immense data and boost revenue, although that would probably kill these competing businesses.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250032
182 points, 44 days ago
Sick!

How can you view the source (the headers, etc) of the email message? If not possible, then this should be added.
how many founders in their young 20s would want a bald guy in his mid-30s for a co-founder

If anything your age would be a benefit to a co-founder in his 20's -- the startup would be a good balance of experience/youth
You might want to put it on flippa.com
http://www.alsonkemp.com/programming/a-haml-parser-for-haske... is young (but not) but looks (pretty) hype.
If you "could never get" a girl's number, what would be the point in having it? The point isn't only to have someone's number, but for her to actually talk to you.
Ubuntu 9.10 on Acer Aspire One netbook and 10.04 on desktop
Emacs23 nox mode with starter kit from technonancy's fork.
Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1 on RVM
Rails/HAML/LESS
Prgmr 512mb vps for remote dev environment and testing
Chrome+Firefox
The interesting things here are (1) that microsoft isn't even mentioned as one of the protagonists in the main battle (that's clearly apple vs google, (2) that google has done to microsoft what microsoft did to netscape, give away the product the other party hopes to sell.
Nero files Anti-Trust suit againts MPEG-LA
I think thats the wrong direction, the community should be in a self-policing equilibrium with a demphasis on moderator action. If moderator action has to become frequent enough to have a news feed on it, then the community isn't being given enough opportunities to police itself.

Downvoting above a certain karma on comments has worked wonders as Hacker news has great discussions. It gives an easy way for the community to state they value insight over snarky observation or trolling. I think the same feature needs to simply be added to submissions as well. It will allow the community to inform members that they do not value resubmissions of things already on the front page or linkbaiting to old topics, without requiring moderator action.
Another problem is that the "acceleration" slot actually describes the opposite of what one would think.
There's also an odd reversal near the middle; number of cylinders is roughly correlated w/ displacement, which is roughly correlated w/ weight, which is roughly correlated w/ horsepower, which is roughly... oops, inversely correlated w/ 0-60 acceleration time. Hence the lines looking like they got twisted in a bunch between the horsepower axis and the acceleration axis.

I think interaction is a very under-utilized aspect of visualization; if that car visualization hadn't had such abysmal performance, being able to play with it might have been very informative. I think interaction is more powerful than time (but probably harder to design effectively).

As it was, I noticed several interesting new (to me) points:

- Quantization of number of cylinders is obvious, but I didn't expect displacement turn out to be so quantized

- The highest acceleration cars didn't have the worst fuel efficiency

- The oldest cars (1970) appeared to include the ones with the worst fuel efficiency.

I've been trying to figure out a better way of laying out the weight/horsepower/acceleration axes, given that weight*acceleration=horsepower (with the addition of some noise due to different measurement techniques, etc.)
Ha, this is exactly the converse of what I've been craving :) Does anyone know if there's an OSX-native mail client designed specifically around Gmail's UI affordances (labels, archiving, etc.)?
The Myths of Innovation[Google Tech Talk]
Maybe decidability was the wrong word to use.

There are two separate questions:
1) Can model of computation X recognize language Y?
2) How fast can it do so?

When someone says quantum computers are "equivalent" to Turing machines, that's referring only to question 1. In other words, any given language can be recognized by a quantum computer if and only if it can be recognized by a Turing machine.

Just because they are equivalent in this sense doesn't imply anything about question 2. For a concrete example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shors_algorithm -- if factorization takes polynomial time on a quantum computer but exponential time on a Turing machine, it must be reasonable to ask whether quantum computers can be that much faster for a whole class of problems.

Edit: also note that a complexity class is just a set of languages. We can talk about those languages in different contexts, even if they are specified in terms of a particular model of computation.
I know it's long, but it's worth it. This isn't just about game design, but also history, rule-following, creative expression, and games as art.
Really? The aural difference was painfully obvious, especially with the thirds and fifths. With the actual songs it was less noticeable because any given chord didn't play for long before changing.
Because... Windows? Plenty of thumbdrive and portable harddrive manufactures make use of this 'feature' to show a splash menu/crapware launcher on insertion of the drive, so I guess they like the idea.
The Newest Craigslist Kevin Hoeffer Scam
Theres quitting for the right reasons and quitting for the wrong reasons. If you quit your project make sure you do it for the right reasons, otherwise you'll regret it later when your perspective is brighter.
This may be a situation where the business idea is a lost cause and its time to quit (the smart thing to do), or this might be a situation where if you pivoted and tried something smarter, you could have a breakthrough. (Notice I didn't say work harder - thats a fools game).
PaperG: An Ad Engine to Put 'Mad Men' Out of Business
I dunno. One of Apple's big innovations with the iPhone was to take the carriers out the loop when it came to software updates. This remains a big benefit of their plug it into a computer strategy (aka "digital hub").

Google appears to be aiming for the same thing, but OTA and with a more carrot and stick approach. Look here's a shiny new version of Android with new features and better speed. Oh, you can't have it for 6 months because your phone vendor wants to muck around with it to no great purpose, well that's a shame, but don't get suckered next time you upgrade.

You seem to be claiming it's all about hardware (apparently all phones released so far can do 2.1 if updates are available), when it's really all about carrier and phone vendor relationships.

Personally if the maps app gets updated once a week then that strikes me as good for the customer, they shouldn't really have to care.
I guess it'll turn out to be iTunes.com, your Mac will stop being the hub, and it'll move to the cloud.

Apple are building a new data centre which apparently will be built for the cloud, my guess it's going to be the backbone of iTunes.com and their other online services. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/apple-cloud/
I guess I'll believe that when we have evidence of irrational actors.
That is a problem (certainly in London anyway)... I say initial sync over wired, continuous over wireless.

I had some thoughts on it recently: http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/04/imagine-a-wireless-sync-w...
WallyCard business plan
I've seen this in action and it's way cool
I think it's a social phenomenon, not a technical one. Clay Shirky wrote the standard work on what happens when you try to fix social problems with technical ones: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

A better solution may be a new form of Erlang flood. Perhaps with some added technical incentive, say, a new list of users most hospitable to "classic" content.

That's a shit idea, but I'd much rather see PG work to better the community, than try throwing tech at it and watching the social forces mitigate his efforts.
Have you looked at mailplane http://mailplaneapp.com/ ?
We already have that - it's called mycoremediation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation

Oyster mushrooms (yep, the ones you can buy in the store) do a great job.