skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Expectations are too high

Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate. Diaspora would have to turn this into something positive (Internet users for privacy!) as opposed to just letting the anti-FB vibe run its course.

PS: not related, but here's a thought: why is it necessary to have a special node system? Won't a super-simple, super-private social network work just as well? Facebook's problems isn't so much with the tech as it is with the company philosophy - they seem to want to do everything in their power to screw you over for their benefit. Change the philosophy and Facebook becomes a much harder target to hit.
Another thumbs up for the Economist from me. Definitely my preferred source for just about all news.
Isn't that crazy, but they were aiming for 10k. At least that was official, maybe it was just a teaser, on purpose. Sad is, that they aren't even started and there's already lots of hype and I hope people don't get to the hate phase even before they launch.

I'm totally positive about the concept, but I always thought one should get motivated on his own, start the project, and beg for money to go further. This seems it's done the opposite way - give us the cheese so we start coding - and donating a video with a chalkboard I feel is a bit too much, for the moment.

Still, I'm very curious about this project and wish them best.
LOL

Given that Diaspora has yet to be written, I doubt that J. Fried is particularly quaking in his boots regarding the hypothetical creation of a hypothetical plugin using a hypothetical API to provide a hypothetical service that would hypothetically be so great as to kill Basecamp.

Disclaimer: I dont use basecamp, have never used basecamp and have absolutely no idea why someone would want to kill it.
Why are they screwed? Where is it written that four probably smart and dedicated guys must fail? Because they will have a few month without financial problems? Because they have momentum and support? really.

It's a nasty post to kill the finance momentum.

Please: J. Fried JUST FIGHTS FUTURE COMPETITION. Facebook is a central hub. Basecamp is a central hub. That's the whole story. A project management plug-in to Diaspora that can freely connect people is a threat to Basecamp.

When Google introduced their free chat client, a full product ready to use, he complained about "evil" (and forced us to pay for campfire).
Now they are not evil, than it's the product.
Have to agree with the author. Recently got an iPhone 3GS and been trawling the AppStore. Some are gems, most are sucky and lastly are the copies of either gems or sucky.

As for Steve's "no porn" policy, why is "Adult Sex Strip" by InterWizard appearing in my top 50 free apps?
>A first approach is to simply filter out tweets by keyword. I think of this as anti-search: specify a keyword, and never see any updates containing that word.

>Keyword filtering alone could probably solve 1/3 of the Twitter garbage problem

This sounds like an old problem, reiterated to me, with working solutions: [kill files](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file) in news reader programs, especially [score files](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_file).
The Right Way to Cancel a Meeting
The closing commentary is the key: it's not like TWC cares about subscribers, but it wants to protect itself from being arbitrarily overworked for no obvious reasons.

This should be a fun case to watch.
I didn't read the previous thread as against programming per se- he mentions working in a cafe, which is a pretty good example of a job that requires rote repetitive tasks and very little thinking...

In my opinion the wonderful thing about programming is that it is the job with the lowest barrier of entry, to which your thinking, your thoughts, have the most direct and lasting effect on your employer's business.

As it's been pointed out on this thread already, the jobs in which you have the most effect and the most amount of thinking have very high barriers to entry, i.e., the corporate executive, or aren't well paid, e.g. the artist or writer, or don't have any real effect in the world, e.g., the romance language professor (humanities academic)... that is to say, there are trade-offs.

In general the thing that bothers me the most about non-programming thinking jobs, being a professor, thinking about policy, business strategy, or whatever seems to be the way you qualify or train yourself for the job- most of the time it means thinking or doing things that don't relate to your interest- business school, law school, MFA, whatever- but what do you do to become a better programmer? Program.
Slashdot does Futurama quotes:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_perl/1.31-rc4
X-Bender: I'm one of those lazy, homeless bums I've been hearing about.

and

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Fry: Hooray, we don't have to do anything!

and

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Fry: But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world.

etc.
Shoot [pictures] first, then ask questions online
Those photos, I believe, honour your privacy settings.
The reasoning for my guesses:
C and D are said to only have interest in the Palm patents.
This makes sense for Google, which may have no patents at all in this area, and HTC, which may have not as much as the competition (and with the background of the Apple lawsuit).

A and B are said to be interested in both, technology and patents. Lenovo only recently started to get into this business with android phones. It could make sense for them to switch to WebOS. Samsung does Windows Mobile, Android and recently Bada, a linux based operating system. I think, it makes sense for them to build on the existing huge knowledge in this sector and the already existing apps/customers/developers, as Bada just recently launched and didn't get traction yet.
Huawei would make sense too, but they are not as deep into the mobile phone business as the rest, i think.
Or simple observant of how other people might look at this.
(EDIT: I didn't mean to make the above sound mean or anything—your description is both precise and accurate.

"Decadence", in the sociopolitical usage, is simply the word which also refers exactly to the concept you have described—perfection that "is precariously hanging on the edge of destruction": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence, and specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence#Leninism, for the sense in which this city was created while striving to "win" a game like SimCity, which keeps score through profit from taxes.)
The first album was written during colonial times and reflects the consideration European people had towards natives at this time (ie. they would be savages waiting to be "enlightened"). This is considered a racist behavior today and some people are offended by it being still available for young children without any censorship, while others see it as an historical document that should remain intact.
You seems to think most computers are complicated, with huge amount of memory needing dedicated and scalable components.

This is not the case. Most computers are tiny; the kind of "you've only got 1kB built-in and non-expandable memory" tiny (yet only if you're lucky). And most of those computers are indeed programmed correctly, despite using a number of classical trick like xor linked-lists (the program is small, so really checking it, even if it contains tricks, is doable).
In "Python", period. Implementation details don't affect statements about the language!
http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/

It's quite humbling to see the hardware he is using (9" display) just because it's all that runs entirely on free software.

In almost every other article people seem to love gadgets and have a lot of cool ones, but they only measure the convenience of owning one (hence all the Apple gear I'd say).

Stallman is the only one that looked at the implications of owning non-free software and he's showing that all his campaign isn't just talk.
The Seer-Sucker Theory: The [lack of] Value of Experts in Forecasting
Gas was already expensive a few years ago. The consequences were GM was screwed because they sold big cars. People will buy more fuel efficient cars as gas gets more expensive. That is already proven. We could also fund mass transit with the gas tax. We don't need a large tax. Start of with 25 cents and let's take it from there.
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Does anyone think they were destined to succeed had they not been unexpectedly shoved into the spotlight and showered with cash?
Another factor was how exclusive it was - first Harvard only, then just US colleges. People were anxious to get an invite, for Facebook to open up globally. When it did happen, it was massive.

Creating exclusivity can create publicity in its own right and increase expectation. It can also fail though - look at Google Wave.
If you asked MySpace/Friendster few years ago what they think about this student Zuck hacking something in the Harvard dorms, they would probably respond: LOL.

What matters is the trend, and Fried is smart enough to see it.

What unfair here is that he spoils it in the middle of the finance period. They got traction, they look like smart and honest guys. He can bash them one day after the finance is done.

Disclaimer: I use Basecamp and I love it
Hey Dani, you're one of the few HN users that I specifically check the threads page for. I respect that you want to tackle big, important problems -- not just build Another Social Thingy -- and that you've moved beyond the "YC way" and forged ahead, and so far have continued to be successful more-or-less on your own.

Just a kudos to let you know there are at least a couple of people that are interested in what you're doing.

As for your comment:

> I'm saying that I've noticed that people seem look upon them either positively or negatively based upon their size, rather than their deeds.

There is a certain natural distrust of anything which becomes overwhelmingly powerful.

> ...how rapidly Google went from being perceived as the do-gooder saviors of the new economy to being called Evil. Viewed on the balance I haven't detected much of a change in their behavior, and I am very happy about having Google in my world.

On the balance, maybe, but Google did set some very high standards for itself, and it's impossible to argue that they've met those standards in all cases. I do think they're a hell of an improvement over the megacorporations of the past, but I also think that people have good reasons at this point to regard them somewhat warily. A lot of people are beginning to realize for example that Google is not really a technology company, they are an advertising company that uses technology very effectively.

> ...accused of, alternately, conjuring government support through climate lies, or using the latest craze to aid a power-grab.

The CRU leak brought the crazy out on HN in spades. I, for one, lost a terrible amount of respect for the site in general during that whole episode, and I don't think that's going to really ever change. On the plus side, now it's easier to keep the site at arm's length, and not get too involved in whatever the latest frenzy is.

> I can't think of any major problem society faces that wouldn't be helped on the balance by better and easier communication, and I think Facebook aids that (as do cellphones, Skype, email, Twitter, etc.).

Hmm. I figured that IRC was actually one of the best developments in terms of free and easy international communication; unfortunately, it seems to be going the way of Usenet. Facebook however tends to try to associate users by pre-existing connections, so it's mostly local for most people. And Twitter -- well, it was kind of alright, but it got grabbed in a hurry by all the "social media networking gurus", and I just don't see much in the way of real social benefit there anymore.
µTorrent 2.2 gets an app store
Yay Bubble Bobble!

But seriously, what's with Firefox canvas being so much slower than Chrome?

It can't be javascript speed because Firefox is just as fast as Chrome for JIT JS performance.
Ubuntu Netbook Edition dropping Firefox for Chromium?
If they did fail miserably, I'd still hire them like a shot - they've shown they've had the chops to try and the initiative to think out of the box. The experience they would get through failure - whether the failure is technical. marketing or finance - would be an invaluable lesson for their future careers, far better than some internship at big company X.

An employer who would negatively judge a teenager on the failure of what is essentially a summer project would be very, very stupid.
I want to start or join an effort to come up with solutions and processes to help ensure this kind of spill never happens again. Or at least, is never again allowed to get this bad. Perfection may be impossible, but I'm confident we collectively have the brainpower, creativity, money and engineering/science knowledge to make a dramatic improvement. Does anyone know of any existing projects, grassroots or otherwise? I did some Googling but no luck so far. Ideally we'd take the best ideas from a variety of sources, draw on smart folks from various fields, and the ultimate deliverable is a recommendation of a set of tested processes and gadgets and a plan for fighting this. Ideally any money required is drawn from the oil industry, directly or indirectly, but if instead it comes from non-profit organizations or philanthropists, so be it.
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'Being a non-creator, the quote at the end of the article has hit me so hard, I cannot get it off my head for hours now:
"When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. so create."'

How so? How do "you become defined by your tastes rather than ability"? And why do [y]our tastes only narrow and exclude people"?

This sounds like one of those pop-psych quotes that have little intrinsic content but ill-defined assertions into which people read what they want to believe.

I know many people who are not "creators" by most definitions, yet I don't see them as defined by their tastes, but by their everyday words and actions. And when they do express their tastes I don't see that as narrow or excluding people. Their tastes often allow me to see associations among things, and value in places I hadn't expected.

If you want to then turn it around and claim, well, these people, through their words, actions, and expressions of taste are therefor in some way creating something, then I'm lost as to what "create" is supposed to mean, other than perhaps something too amazingly broad to bother with.

(I've also known creative people who are also narrow and exclusive and petty, so these qualities seem to be pretty orthogonal.)
I love that article; I just re-read it, and maybe it’s what made me put my point in terms of hours. And I as I said, those particular hours were probably not hiding a miracle, just more of whatever people would have done anyway. But it’s still a lot to waste.

At least people choose to watch House. It’s not actively sabotaging other shows and then shipping with glaring, time-wasting bugs.
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A philosopher is whatever you define it to be.

A scientist is, well, you'd have to come up with a theory, then a testable hypothesis, etc.

But for a philosopher, yeah, just go ahead and make something up. :)
nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce):
"Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much?
If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems you just raised. Otherwise, you’re just a hater, and you’re only making the problem worse."
Opting out of Facebook Connect
Not to be repetitive, but you make good points too, thanks. (And thx for the info.)
"Basically, the Ruby community decided that if his wish was to be gone, we'd respect that wish."

You make it sound as if there were a single monolithic Ruby community where some sort of consensus gets reached on things. That's completely imaginary.

Seems more like some folks, most most, who happen to be vocal in certain circles, decided to not try to dig shit up. But that's a reflection of those people, not _The_ Ruby Community.
What about a youg talented linux sysop guy :)
Ugh. I really enjoyed the happy feel of Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu (and also the music in the anime), so I bought a bunch of Negima (same author). I read through a few, and realized the sexual content was growing more explicit, while the girls seemed to be growing younger. I was like, what the hell? The worst is, I bought them on amazon, so even if I burn them, it's recorded that I bought them.

Aside from the sexual weirdness of the comic, it's really just not too interesting. I think there are too many characters, and way too much focus on magic. Love Hina was nice because it could focus on a few characters, and the fantasy bits were much less prevalent.
It's interesting to call it the decline of privacy. That's purely a product of this current hype.

The reality is that if you want it to be facebook is a lot more private now than it was in early 09.

I may have mentioned before that I have several fb profiles with which to do security research. Last year I could have picked up a whole load of information on just about anyone - today, it's either a lot more difficult or insanely easy (mostly the former).

And that "ease" is simply a product of Facebook hiding controls or encouraging people to be open. that is what we need to focus on.
I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get. Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting. Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700% of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before.

Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt silly when I read it again.
Have you gone back and ticked the correct option in the poll?
Didn't we go down this path with email? We had ISPs running SMTP servers, until consumers voted with their clicks (Hotmail, Gmail) that they'd much prefer a centralized solution and were happy to trade in privacy for a free almost-always-up, for-the-foreseeable-future permanent solution. Isn't that Facebook?
Noserub - A distributed social network
I thought "Bloom filter" too as soon as I read his description. They're used all over information retrieval. It's very common to need to hit the disk to say for sure whether an element satisfies your query, but the vast majority of elements don't. If you can eliminate those seeks entirely with a Bloom filter, your algorithm as a whole will run much faster.
This is reassuring, because for months now I've been searching and searching for a sort of "mathematician's introduction to computer science". Something precise, concise, with elegant and efficient constructions and rigorous argument... possibly in the style of Rudin's classic analysis textbook?

I recently discovered Knuth's TAOCP but the thing is overwhelmingly long and I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for.
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Disclaimer: I'm an F1 Intl. student in the US.

USCIS requires H1B petitions filed for an employee to be paid by the petitioner (employer). All those shady sweat shops who used to take poor Joe Schmoes' money for filing got raided big time in NJ and other areas.
I administer the mail for a local ISP, 10k domains.

I think the idea of a Balkanised Facebook is a good one, esp. if was business related. Keeping in touch with customers and aligned groups in a relaxed place but without the threat of one of your personal friends posting pictures of what you did on your drunken weekend away.
The reality check can be taken one day after the finance period is due. It's not a reality check, it's a deliberate attempt to stop the finance momentum.
They have basic specs, and it doesn't look like a rocket surgery (as Steve Krug calls it), certainly not for 4 dedicated CS grads working hard.

And although my comments are demoted here, the truth is that distributed "nodes" is a threat to the "central hub" owners, including J Fried, especially when your customers are geeks who can easily install and config the distributed thing. Paradigm shifts can wipe out other companies very quickly, and Fried knows it.
Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

Really? I am having a hard time imagining a fingernail winning against bone. Could anyone provide more detail?
There's no point applying ordinary reason to a witch hunt. You're right, of course, but no one cares about the finer distinctions. (Compare the ongoing depiction of Iraqi and Afghan guerrillas as "terrorists" even if they solely attack military targets.)
I think it's naive to think they weren't seeking attention. It's entirely possible they weren't seeking this level of attention, but they reached out to one person (at least) who wrote a story and caused the snowball to start rolling. If they wanted to be stealthy, they would not be giving interviews to the NYT.
I appreciate your point of view, but I disagree with your conclusions. Let me explain.

> If the idea is good you'll get the vote.

That's true of most submissions, but doesn't seem to be true of polls.

> Nobody is going to withhold the votes in order to not give you the karma.

I think there will be people who vote and move on without thinking to upvote it. Because of that, I wanted to remind people to up-vote the submission.

However, there are people who resent being asked for up-votes, and I wanted to make sure they weren't annoyed by that. I don't want to annoy people gratuitously, and this is the technique I have. People who don't care about karma, whatever, won't care (mostly). People who do care about karma, whatever, have a means of punishing me for asking.

> Polls usually don't get a lot of upvotes unless the poll subject is really good.

Exactly, that's why I wanted to ask for upmods - to buck that trend.

So here's a summary of my reasoning:

* Some people vote and move on without upmodding

* I want them to upmod so the item has a chance to get enough votes to be vaguely meaningful

* That means I need to ask for upmods

* Some people resent that, so I need some way they can punish me

* The "scapegoat comment" seems to satisfy that.
If you are paid $170K for this spec http://joindiaspora.com/project.html then it is easy to be rich. There are far too many better things that people can spend there money on. Cool things, even on kickstarter, are going underfunded. After all they just $10000 dollars, what is the need to give a 1730% funding to something.