skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask PG: Sub-HNs as a solution to cluttering of HN front-page?
The quality of posts on the HN front page hasn't been the same off late (past 6+ mos?).

Why not have a sub-HN for the three main categories most posts seem to fall under?

- HN:news (all the FB, Apple, TC, Inc articles, soap opera stuff, and so forth) - news.ycombinator

- HN:discussion (Ask HNs, Review-my-site, advice, other general, somewhat casual talk) - talk.ycombinator

- HN:learn (probably the objective that HN started with - core, solid hacker stuff, tech learning, how to scale etc) - learn.ycombinator

I realize this takes away some of the simplicity of HN and goes down the Reddit route but perhaps a pivot (as beaten up as this word is) is in order? Also, at least from what I can see all posts on HN fall in one of these three categories.

There are more non-old-timer HNers now with up-voting capabilities and that seems to have had an effect on what makes it to the front page. At least with this model, if you're not interested in pointless Facebook hype articles, you don't have to see them pop up with alarming regularity on the front page.
To clarify, I'm definitely motivated to implement it. I just want it to move faster ;) I'm not really a developer so every time I start coding I feel like a swimmer who thrashes in the water and moves about 3 feet while the other guys are gliding :)
Hmm, interesting. My European relatives are all in Greece, where natural gas is still a fairly new thing, only available in major cities. For a while, electric was the only alternative to fuel oil, which many people preferred to avoid if they could (produces soot, requires you to get the oil delivered, etc.). Since there's a big difference in daytime/nighttime prices, the electric-heating units, unlike American ones, are big bulky things with a bunch of batteries, which they charge up at night at the cheap rates.
I don't think this is a fair comparison. While Google does make most of their money from ads that result in a purchase, that purchase is not always the sort of thing Amazon sells.

For instance one of the highest grossing per-click terms has consistently been mesothelioma. I'm guessing Amazon won't be selling legal services this year.

My suspicion is that much more of Google's revenue comes from purchased services (and I'm counting their #1 spender, eBay, as a service), digital or otherwise, than tangible, shippable, durable goods.
anecdote: friends and family have spent at least 20 thousand dollars on music in itunes. The people who even know alternatives exist are only tech people and they don't spend much money on music.
I agree completely. I think they few and far between though. I am young and experienced though so I could be very wrong. I just don't how great of a fit I am for it. I get bored very easily and I think that it was just the routine that bothered me more than anything. I think I am more of a burst worker. I need short breaks to be productive.
Partly a legacy: 'all electric' was a selling point in the middle of the century when lots of new houses were being built. Partly cost: if you already have a modern electric hookup, the equipment is cheaper. Also, I think a lot of subdivisions and rural areas in the US were built without gas hookups.

Whether it's less efficient depends on what metric you're using. In areas that have hydroelectric or nuclear generation for electricity, the CO2 emissions are less with electric heat. Cost varies: there are places where electric simply costs less, particularly if you can spot heat instead of using a central system.

Here's a couple links:

http://www.iwilltry.org/b/projects/comparing-natural-gas-vs-... (concludes that switching to electric makes cost sense in BC, Canada)

http://www.leonardo-energy.org/webfm_send/377 (European view concluding that from a CO2 perspective electric is a win in Austria and France)
I am borrowing this from many people but its just illogical to believe that every single person in the world is best suited to work 9-5 and that everyone needs those forty hours a week to get the same amount of work down.
Yeah, except all those hippies who can't afford their TV license fee also happen to have lava and fiberoptic lamps making that whole 'looking through your window to watch the reflected colour patterns' creepy shit kind of pointless.
I did use -e production, just didn't remember to mention it in the post above. I'll try thin though.
Humans Are From Earth, Financial Markets Might As Well Be From Mars
Togetherville, social networking for kids 6 - 10
I have a Verizon Eris now for few weeks. I just upgraded to 2.1 and it's been better, but the total feel is not as good as the 15 min I spent with iPhone (latest model).

Eris is cool phone but buttons respond slowly. I know it's not the Droid or Incredible but it shouldn't be so laggy.
I now have pinch/zoom but it's so NOT smooth. Feels like graphics stutter. The turn by turn NAV is the best part.
But I'm coming from Windows Mobile with Verizon Touch and it sucked!!! This touch keyboard is much better than WinMo but iPhone is still better.

The Eris has no help on the phone itself and it took me a while to figure it out. The iPhone I had
mastered in the store in 10 min.

I'm stuck for two years and depressed about it since I want the new iPhone, even though have not seen it.
That's really interesting because charging and discharging a battery costs 8 eurocents per KWh in wear on the battery alone.

The difference would have to be substantial to make up for that.

My impression why large parts of the States like electric heat are closely related to your Greek relatives, America is huge compared with the number of people that live in the inner portion of the continent, so the only places where adding a natural gas delivery system would make sense would be the densely populated ones.

Then there are large areas that have only a short heating season, there is the convenience issue (very little maintenance compared to heating oil or natural gas), and the perceived risk (which I think is largely misplaced).

The recent changes in the electricity prices have made people more conscious about this and there seems to be a trend towards more natural gas for heating purposes.
Key graf:

The recent "flash crash" might have a simple, understandable explanation, or it might not, but it, and every other large-scale financial phenomenon, has to be studied with the same analytical care and lack of anthropomorphizing expectations with which you would study any other large and complex non-human phenomenon. We only understand the broadest strokes of the global climate system, are just beginning to map the precise way in which everything fits together in cells, and although we know almost every atom of every chip, developing, debugging and deploying software is equal parts science, black art, and disaster management. The global financial markets are probably not much less complex than any of those, and certainly not more human. With just a few years of experience with them, one of the few things we can say with certainty is this: we don’t understand them, and when we do, the explanation probably won’t make sense to most of us, and it won’t fit neatly in a newspaper column.
Nuclear weapons are simply a shortcut, genocide and scorched earth tactics have always been prevalent in warfare - you just couldn't do both at once on such a grand scale.

The game changer that was nuclear weapons likely saved the planet. Instead of dropping real bombs, causing real fires, spreading real land mines and chemical agents, etc, that we had been building for a half-century . . . suddenly we stopped. There weren't any grand wars and there hasn't been since the end of WW2, the planet is truly quiet.

Nuclear weapons was almost like someone pulling a knife in a brawl and everyone backing away. We saw what the end result was and we didn't want it.

I love all the doomsday stuff, but really nuclear weapons are the greatest invention because by and large they ended warfare on the global scale.
I've got two kids under 10 and I've got mixed feelings on networking sites for kids this young. On the one hand, they will have the opportunity to get familiar with the technology they will spend the rest of their lives using. On the other hand, why rush into it when they are happy without it (really, regardless of happy or not).

I'm a programmer (developer/engineer/whatever), been programming since I was about 10, but I've not encourages nor discouraged computer use for my kids. I figure the computer is there and they will pretty much decide how much they are into it.

I have to also confess that I've thought of developing a kids website that my kids can play with. What are your experiences or thoughts here?
That's a very interesting solution to the problem. I wasn't aware of that, really neat. Thanks!
The parts about how this generates an emp pulse, as well as what a real life emp pulse would do are really fascinating
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1361543
Yes, but it's also useful to compare similar levels of effort. Using 4 threads with Snap is a similar level of effort to using thin. Setting up 4 separate processes with passenger requires quite a bit more effort, especially if you haven't done it before.
I know it's not what you're talking about, but the way you've written that has just given me a rush of nostalgia for OS2, the awesome OS stabbed in the back by MS. My first encounter with the BOFH was in a friends OS2 magazine.

*removes rose tinted glasses :)
You and others on HN are probably not the target for the iPod Touch. Just spend some time with my sister and her friends and you'll quickly see that a bunch of them have iPod Touches and most of them are just used for playing music (with a few games here and there)

My sister also has an iPhone, but she's not really tech savvy enough to download apps and actually use them. She's downloaded a few apps, but most of the time she just uses her iPhone as .... a phone.
Yes. No (or yes and no, depends on how thorough Apple gets about their new TOS).

But bikes have infinite gas mikage so they should always be better, right? Or perhaps that's just the wrong axis of comparison.
> You seem to be forgetting that the tax money is take by threat of force.

That's a fairly extremist position, there are lots of people that would voluntarily give a portion of their income up for taxes if it would lead to a better society.

I'm one of those, and I'm fairly happy to give up my 40+% in return for a relatively safe society, subsidized health care and reasonably good public roads and free education, as well as a catchnet for people that are down on their luck, even if I personally probably have a bit less expendable income because of that because I produce more that goes in to the system than I consume. But maybe next week I'll have a car accident and a half a million dollar bill will result and I will still have a house to go back to.

Now I realize that not all of that money is spent wisely, and maybe we could make things more efficient, but societies cost money to operate, and societies that are 'social' (as opposed to socialist, it seems to be a common mistake to think of them as identical) cost a bit more.
Oh, cool. Sorry. :O
Thanks, getting in sync with everything coming out from I/O turned out to be very hard.
I moved into a beautiful Ohio wood miles from the shrieking metropolis and its gruesomely boring suburbanites, who oddly resemble the plodding conventionalists who inhabit the hills and vales of Appleland.

The planet is home to a diversity of mind spaces, most of which seem readily content to exchange the excitement and unpredictability of independence for a sliver of security.

You could never pile enough shackles on your willing and compliant users, Jobs.
The support will come in only if one of android running phones leap frogs the existing mobiles by a huge margin. That would compel google to shift to a strategy that would include 'marriage' with a device and less chaotic market presence.

Google is better at dealing with uncertain or probabilistic business strategies. They have more faith in fragmented strategies.

Apple is linear because it can afford to be. And it has paid off so far.

Learning from other consumer markets like cars makes me believe android powered phones will offer consumers choice.

However I do believe the Rolls Royce of the mobile market will be the iPhone for sometime to come.
I disagree. I really don't see what is broken with Hacker News (and I've been here for a while too).
Valuing code and valuing a business are two different things. The value of code relates to its utility to its intended purchaser, its quality, and the difficulty of reproducing the same code from scratch.

The value of a business is directly related to the bottom line. Companies with no sales are a dime a dozen. They're one step ahead of "ideas", and may even be worse off. A company with no sales is a idea that has proven its ability to fail.

$50k is a pipe dream.
Why Nobody Understands Your Visualization
I hate categories, hn is perfectly fine as a "surprise me" portal

where else I can post an article on Caligula's giant ships
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1370063

or piping cats
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1116085
I'd say, if you are not very comfortable with the command line, sockets, ENV variables and that kind of unix-y stuff do yourself a favor and grab MAMP or XAMPP and start programming PHP right away.
That's my European background getting the better of me, I'm linking to 'driving while black' elsewhere in this thread to offset my innate response which is that you can rely on the police to be even-handed.

Racial profiling exists here too but to a much lesser extent.

If I were black and living in the US it would change my attitude completely, but I'm not black and live in Europe, hence my 'rose coloured glasses'.

Apologies.
I am utterly confused by the turn of events. The first trilogy convinced me Lucas was amazingly talented. The dialog was good, but funny. The characters were characters. I feel like the criticisms here are pretty valid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

I'm at a loss as to why what he produced in his 50's would be so much worse. Shouldn't Lucas be the old wizened sage--the Obi Wan of films by now? What happened?
For rational actors, nuclear weapons are great. The problem is, the irrational actors are starting to get them, and then mutually assured destruction doesn't buy us anything. There is no enemy to destroy.
Thank you for the "Chrome to Phone" link, I wasn't sure this was available yet!

I tried it, and it works instantly here.
Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating
Well, that's what you get for doing business with a company that's out to fuck you. You get fucked.

Android is a tool like any other -- it can be used for good, and it can be used for evil.

(Why not return your phone as defective? It worked for people when Sony remotely disabled their Linux installs on the PS3.)
It's not the emotional reactions people have a problem with, it's the murders and death threats.
I think this goes hand in hand with the mantra, "Do a few things, and do them right."
if this were done, I'd suggest separate "learn" sub-HNs for geek stuff and business stuff. (github vs marketing)
I agree, for the most part. More and more webapps are providing APIs for 3rd party developer. And why not, right? It benefits everyone.

But I think Twitter understood from the beginning that they didn't need a super awesome native client. Why would they? We were blasting 140 character messages around, mimicking the way we text from our phones. Their core client device was, and still is, the mobile phone.

But consider Facebook, which is generally more complicated than Twitter. If we had to deal with competing, unpolished 3rd party clients from the beginning of Facebook, I don't think Facebook would have taken off. In this case, it's good that Facebook controls the experience; it's a complicated one.
I like the idea, but the reality is that I'd just read all three out of bordeom or inability to not click stuff. So it would end up being the same.

If you want to make a new site with categories, you are welcome to, of course. If people like it, they will find it. (Remember when there was only Slashdot? And then Reddit? I don't read either of those anymore...)
Unlike some other people, I agree with what you're saying about how HN has changed. I guess the fundamental question is whether to adapt HN to the userbase changes or to try to keep HN from changing at all (probably with stronger moderation). My preference is for the latter (of course, I'm not a mod, so that's easy for me to say), and I do think that's kind of how it's been handled so far...but I think the former isn't a terrible option if the mods become overwhelmed.
> I can see why that would seem funny from a random post on the internet.

Yes, I figured pointing it out would make you smile, but I take your word for the story, just wonder how they explained the missing drugs to their boss, who must have assumed they had sold it on the side.

That's a somewhat career limiting move in the drug trade.

Nice interaction with the police officer, if all of them were like that it would be good.

I don't envy them their jobs at all, first responders get to see a lot of bad stuff in their time.
I've been thinking about this for some time but you put it into words very well. However, I'd like to suggest that Twitter is more than a protocol; Twitter is a decent protocol and a great, huge user base. It's more than the sum of its parts I'd say.
There isn't a media storm. All of the articles I've read have accurately stated that the passport was only temporarily confiscated while customs officials examined the passport because of wear and tear. The hysteria only exists on places like reddit where college students with mediocre educations don't bother reading articles, and have created a distorted image within their minds of Australia based on sensationalist headlines.

edit:
here's the actual interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXj72pNb6U0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbS4btirUE

here's the specific part where the passport is discussed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbS4btirUE#t=9m8s
Double-tab the home button to bring up music controls without unlocking your touch.
There are lots of finicky details to get right about entrance/exit from apps. Hacker news is an example of one important class of apps that we hope to make work well.
I'm not saying it's broken. Just saying some of the cracks could be fixed in time.
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They're not really equivalent. MRSA evolved in hospitals from whatever strains were resistant to drugs. Otherwise it's been in the environment for a while and there's not really an ecological risk. On the other hand, we have no idea how a completely synthetic life-form will end up in the environment. They could be just like other organisms, or we might unwittingly give them a huge advantage in some way that causes them to outcompete others.
Who Will Build the LAMP Cloud?
It sort of sounded like you were going to tell him why the page didn't make you want to sign up, but then you listed a bunch of (mostly) non-visual design considerations. What was it about the page that didn't make you want to sign up? (I'm just curious now.) By the way, the notes you did list were good and he should follow those guidelines.
To me, the thing that makes Hacker News, well, Hacker News is that the site is really simple, from a technology contraption point of view. It is controlled and shaped and molded (and whatever other verb you want to use) by us users (counting PG as, well, prime user?) and not shaped so much by arbitrary software constraints such as binning topics (putting in buckets). The touch to tuning this site has been light, with such adjustments as flagging and tuning the rise and fall of topics based on a variety of heuristics. Some tuning has been undone, such as color coding "most valued posters"

If anything, I would say if we were to change the site, the next experiment would be to put a greater collective downweight on titles or source sites if there is a strong local temporal grouping (glut within a timeframe) of those tags/keywords posted. Example: lots of facebook posts at one time then facebook posts drop off the front page a little faster than if there was only a small number of facebook posts. But even that, I'm not sold on this.
The problem isn't the organization, it's the depth. This site is based around news items and self-submissions that act like news items. 25-48 hours after submission, no one will bother commenting on an item.

There's no room for depth of discussion in the current format, and so it gets repetitive in both news items and comments. This leads to the perception HN quality is degrading.

I think there's room to innovate in the management and threading of discussions, but it's more complicated than splitting into categories.
The reason I resist doing something like this is that it's sort of like dealing with getting fat by buying bigger pants. I'd be willing to introduce categories to make HN a better site, but I wouldn't want to do it as a way of solving the problem of the frontpage getting filled up with crap. I'd rather attack that problem directly.

Also, it seems to me the problems with crap posts on the frontpage are not as old as 6 months. In fact they're so recent that I'm by no means sure that it's not just random variation. The frontpage was ok today.
That's goddamn right.
The platform fragmentation itself wouldn't be so bad if Google had some baseline quality standards on the Android Market. Google hides their own applications for 1.x users that are 2.x only. Why don't third party apps behave this way too? Even if they don't want to force developers to support phones that were brand new 6 months ago they could at least save the end user the frustration of blind luck compatibility.
Downloading the initial sync over 3g isn't something I'd do if I could avoid it, but incremental syncs would be just fine. Even adding an album or two wouldn't take -that- long, and if the network can't handle a few downloads now and then it's just plain broken. Besides, everyone over here in Sweden is selling mobile broadband like there's no tomorrow, so their networks should be up to it.
It's only blocked if you use https search, not if you use http. Most users don't use https and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Google is going to redirect http://www.google.com to https, so they seem to be doing what you suggest already.

On the https side, not passing the referrer is the correct behavior, and to do differently would break a great number of RFCs in all likelihood, as well as be unexpected/insecure behavior in an environment where the user has explicitly requested security. User preference trumps webmaster convenience, always.
This is awesome for anyone living in CA who wants to make a movie (me). Cheers!
Making a new site is the solution. There are too many people who like things the way they are here, for better or for worse. HN is frozen; it doesn't adapt.
I keep wondering what they did about the finger holes.
Data Liberation Front: Move data in and out of Google products
Account was knothing.
Google Wave: the beginner's guide
Good proof of concept, if its spreading like wildfire it means that... guess what... we got a good new medium to spread malware.
That's not necessarily true in the land of derivatives.
A derivative is a bet on the change in value of something. Essentially hedge funds would build a market for a crap asset and then use derivatives to bet that the value would go down. So while the position was short, assembling it drove the bubble up higher.