skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you're a programmer I recommend you (try to) create your own console like Webmin. I learned everything I've ever needed to know about various mail servers, web servers, databases, various configuration files and system level stuff. You don't have to use it or go very far with the actual project in terms of polishing, but it makes for an excellent educational project.
Actually, they do -- and that's how movie theatres operated for a lot of years until the multiplex cinema came on scene. When I was a kid, there was usually a feature, a "B" movie, a serial and one or more cartoons. You paid an entry fee and stayed until you'd had your fill, and most people stayed for more than just the feature. You could wander in just about whenever you wanted, and if you came in halfway through a film, you could watch the first half later if it seemed worthwhile. Then somebody figured out that you could make a lot more money by clearing the theatre between shows and segmenting the package -- chasing the "B" movie first into smaller shoebox viewing rooms, then into oblivion before the direct-to-video market emerged. And no, I don't go back to the early talkies or anything -- the market worked that way well into the '70s.
In Firefox you can also right-click on a form field and choose "Add a keyword for this search..."
If you are in favor of the capitalist system you have to respect Job's attitude of: "I think we have the best products. If you don't think so please return it for a full refund, and buy a competitor's. Thanks, bye"
I disagree. If any job asks for degree etc I just ignore it. I don't think I'd enjoy working at a place where they value that sort of thing.
If the movies you snuck into to see were ones that you would have otherwise paid for, then yes you are ripping them off.

Also, even if that's not the case, your presence and use of the facility imposes costs on them, even if "only" small/marginal ones, due to causing further wear-and-tear on the floors and seats, dirt, possibly trash that needs to be cleaned up, and you occupy space (incrementally contributing to crowding), and also (especially in the case of teenagers) may be causing additional noise and immature behavior which annoys or repels adult patrons and those who paid money to see the movie the ethical way.

Are all these additional factors gigantic? Probably not. But to say there's no additional burden or impact on the business or on the community is inaccurate.

Imagine 1000 people all showing up to a movie theater one night, all saying, "We have no intent on paying to watch this movie, and in fact, if you do not let us in free now to watch one, we guarantee we will not pay now or later, anyway. Therefore, you might as well just let all 1000 of us in to watch the movie." No theatre could stay in business for long allowing that to happen. Why? Because the business has to PAY MONEY for rent, wages (to sell tickets, clean theatres, operate the projectors, etc.), supplies, taxes, legal compliance, etc. Where does that money come from? Paying patrons. Therefore, instead, it is more likely that the manager would indignantly call the police on their asses. In essence, those folks are unethical parasites, regardless of what excuse they come up with.
I'm heterosexual and preferred the women on the right too, and I agree they look more engaging and happy.

I'm fairly surprised that the actual results were so skewed. And my wife's feelings are hurt because I tell her she's attractive and now she knows my taste is abnormal.
The proliferation of web design jobs is beginning to make me wonder if I should, on the side, finally learn advanced page design.

My aesthetic skills are weak, and I am pursuing other goals long-term (much closer to the hardware), but do people think it would be a worthwhile tool to help prop myself up in the short-term?
The name can be changed, what I want is the technology.

Show me the code and let me develop on it. Let me change the interface, add features, and do analysis on my social graph. Depending on the license they release the code under, there could potentially be other services that use the technology and have a nicer name than Diaspora.

Facebook users might even take notice if Diaspora has a "dislike" button and access to their Facebook data via Diaspora.
compete is CRAZY.

Check their quantcast figures and you see a drastically different picture, with box.net way ahead. But in any event, page views probably are a very bad measure of these sorts of companies.
Guys should check out Xero - quality piece of software.
What grinder will you be using with this? Without the right grinder, the machine is basically meaningless, so you will want to spend money on that first.
From CEO to Senate: Why Some Executives Make Better Politicians Than Others
I'm arguing for support for victims, and that people should quit separating them by sex / race / etc once they're identified as such. The greater the separation, the more likely we'll get "separate but equal", which never is, instead of progress. Someone who needs support is someone who needs support, what else really matters? If the mindset were closer to this, people who needed help would get it, real statistical data could be extracted, and systemic problems exposed instead of everyone (rightfully) doubting any study that goes against what they currently think because there's so much wiggle room.

edit: but as I've said elsewhere, I'm an idealist, and I recognize that such a thing isn't ever going to actually happen to total equality. I just think it's something which should be aimed for, explicitly, instead of using the "but there aren't as many <group X>es with <problem Y>" ethical crutch. Especially for something like this, where the only wall is purely a cultural one, not one where there isn't enough funding to do more.
It's not broken, it's just the way it works in js. Maybe it should be called something else, but then maybe people should read the language specs better to see how things work in js...
This is a sincere question: have you ever been on the other side of the hiring process before?

I have, as a tech lead for a software company. I don't know how other places do it, but there's simply not enough time in the day to read every single resume/cover letter that you get.

You post a job-ad and you're drowning in resume`s and cover letters in less than 30 minutes. I also want to say that 80-90% were under-qualified and most of them didn't even follow simple instructions in the ad.

You won't believe the amount of cover letters saying things like "I have never used Linux, but I've been working on Windows for X-XX years", when the job title was "Senior Linux Systems Administrator".

When we put requirements, we really meant them. We never inflated the requirements or asked for the impossible (28+ years experience in PHP).

Our process went kind of like this:
1) Scan cover letter quickly to weed out incoherent applications
2) Scan resume (again quickly) and look for minimum-requirements
3) If 1 and 2 were met put resume/cover letter in the "good candidates" folder
4) If "inbox" is not empty, go to step one, otherwise:
5) Go back and read cover-letters/resumes in more detail

The one exception would be if something in the cover letter or resume caught our attention, we'd then read it in detail then and there.

For all I know, DropBox might have a serious need to have this position filled by a CS graduate. I doubt it, but it's a possibility. Another commenter here said something about planning to have this position evolve into something more "intense" in the future where a CS degree would be seriously needed. That's a legitimate "theory".

All I was criticizing was that the job requirements do not warrant a CS degree, and that they are probably turning away possible good/great candidates.
Overall, I strongly agree. I agree so strongly, I've been thinking about counter-examples, and I think I've found a few corner cases. ;)

Firstly, obviously, some aspects of programming are crafts-like. When we write conditionals as if(4 == x) instead of if(x==4) (for languages where variable assignment in a conditional is legal but not what you want), that's craftsmanship. Analogously, part of the process of designing a building is drafting, and that is a craft. A common error is to think that drafting is the primary task of architecture (at least, that's a common error about programming).

Less confidently, I would argue that the closer you get to the metal, the more craft aspects appear (without claiming that these aspects dominate), and that when we use a compiler, part of what we're getting is automated crafting. So we see three cases where we take back that crafting aspect into human hands...

First, for a new platform, sometimes some of the work is done by hand.

Second, many programmers _enjoy_ the craft of programming, and so practice it for fun. For example, code golf is craft.

Third, sometimes crafted is more appropriate. We usually prefer a cheap mass-manufactured physical object (high-quality, but not customized), but sometimes we want something handmade for the situation. I think that writing assembly by hand has some parallels with this (not to argue that writing assembler is more craft than design).
Did StackOverFlow just lose it to MetaOptimize? And is it good or bad?
Like the part at the end where I said "it sucks this is happening under a proprietary platform with absurd privacy policies"?
Well, i don't see it as a problem. All I say is try to adapt to the current situation, don't try to impose rules on people so that your way of seeing things continue. If people prefer to watch movies at their home w/out paying for it, what the movie industry should do is to find other ways of making money, becuase bannign things is not going to work.
But if someone takes money from your credit card then that amount is not there anymore, whereas if I download and watch a movie it does not diminish anyone's chance of watching it.

Now I might become less likely to pay for the movie after I downloaded it for free, but if that likelihood was zero already then where is the harm caused?
I think the saddest part in all of this is that the people who say 'no' are always vindicated. Could the Kin have been a hit? Who knows. But by cutting impassioned people from the project and gutting backing, it was doomed to fail.

And the skeptics get to say, "Look how much I saved by not investing any more in this product! God, imagine if we spent ten thousand more hours working on this, how much more we would have lost!"
The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption.
It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.
Keep me posted on the Swiss bank, also any offshore accounts in the Caymans. There's a couple offers coming out of Nigera that I'm about to move on.

:)

Congratulations on the launch, and cheering for your team!
It's more like the combo that's powerful: huge data, close tracking of effectiveness of recommendations and product quality, end result being open-ended subscription by user/consumers.
As someone who just cancelled a CC after 2 transactions done by scummers, I find your example silly. I'm responsible for keeping my CC with me and the bank is responsible for providing on-line security. If a CC info was stolen from a shop's database, and then shared on some website, it doesn't matter that you can take that website down. Just cancel the CC and let the numbers rest forever.
Are you interested in actually working on it? If you are, send me a resume.
You make a good point; and I know I am being a bit "breathy"...

But, I'm not in the US so I couldn't be a customer - anyone that found out about Live Meta must have found that out too.

From a comment on my blog it appears they are just using Google (props to that!). In which case I am guessing they got me via a HN (a HN post is on the first page for searches on my email) and, so, there is a tentative argument that they are pitching for this coverage right here now.

You know what; I don't begrudge them if that really is the case. It's not hard to go from Google to HN to my site and then read about Live Meta but it is still valuable time.

Certainly my current bank, who does know I am worth a "lot" of money to them doesn't go personal in that way. It is all auto generated personalisation.....

Find me another company that actually does this
I had a 2 Megabyte RAM expansion for my Amiga 1000. This was so much RAM that I could put a bootable floppy into it and boot from RAM. The RAM-Disk survived reboots and some crashes.

Crashes happened quite often because the OS had preemptive multitasking but no memory protection.
Matt,

You need to launch - now. I was in a similar position a few years ago with one of my first startups. We spent months on development even though we had a usable product done very quickly. We analyzed our competitors, and constantly tried to one-up them while hiding in stealth mode. We were never completely happy with the product, as it seemed to always be missing some feature. Feature creep hit, and we spent another few months developing.

This proved to be a big mistake. The problem here is that we tried to predict how our users would use our product, wasting tons of time developing features we thought potential users would like (we didn't have any actual users at this point). This took our product in the wrong direction - when we launched it seemed users didn't use it the way we intended - most of the features were never used.

In hindsight, instead of spending time predicting and implementing features that would never be used, we should have just launched the product and evolved the way users ACTUALLY use it.
New Seed Stage Fund Focused Exclusively on Video Game Startups
ITA Software - Puzzle Archive
Still have my Amiga 500 with 3rd party add on Hard Drive/RAM in a box plus 1080 monitor, extra floppy drive, modem, and lots of disks.....
This bit from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shares more details on the case:

"From June 2004 to December 2008, United Directories deposited about $425 million into bank accounts -- all of the money from businesses submitting payments for ads, Johnson said. The company did in fact publish an advertising directory. In 2008, the company received payments from about 162,000 businesses, yet its directory contained only about 55,000 business names, Johnson said.

According to the criminal complaint, United Directories also misled businesses into thinking they were paying to renew advertisements in the actual Yellow Pages directory."
OLED hack saves juice on Nexus One
What pisses me off the most about mainstream banks is how they automatically will start sending you all kinds of up selling crap once you reach a threshold of monthly income. No personalization whatsoever, just a barrage of paper junk mail for the same offers over and over again.
Probably not given that precious, precious StackOverFlow karma is nontransferable :p
Wow. If the association with Hashrocket continues, Hashrocket's name is toast. I feel sorry for Obie.

The scale of the operation is impressive, though. If some of those accounts were personal, they made some serious bank.
I like the phrase "One of [the] History's" -- it is as if recommendation engines have existed for thousands of years! Don't they go back no more than a decade or two?
Every time there is a compromise, both sides are given ammunition to claim credit for eventual success and give blame for eventual failure.
I'm inclined to agree with you (and I certainly don't care about Zed's current job), but Zed made a huge (and very public) fuss about his job hunt. Curiosity about the consequences of that job search seems only natural.
yeah, that would be a good way to prove/disprove his worth for sure. he should put himself up against someone who charges even $50/hour with the same budget, then have the work judged by an impartial panel of experts.
I've been using 1.9.1 with sinatra / datamapper for a few months with no problems.
obs: the comment I replied to was deleted :(

I might be unkind, but I'm definitely not wrong. Do you believe any company would, on purpose, do something that will make them lose money? (either on the short or long term)

It's unusual because the vast mass of people's wallets are not worth the effort. Heck, poor scammers from Nigeria have this one figured out. "Dear Sir/Madam"...

I didn't mean to say it's something "not cool". It's just mundane. You got a personalized email because someone in their customer acquisition thought it was worth. Happens all the time.
Maybe I go to an unusually good theater or maybe I am an unusually bad cook, but here I disagree: half or so of my enjoyment in going out to a movie is getting the popcorn.
The difference in the space between lower lip in chin is great, also, the one on the right seems to have a squarer jaw, and less-highly-arched eyebrows, along with paler lips. Wider neck too.

In summary, the one on the right looks more like a man. Personal opinion, but I think I've provided some evidence to support it.
I'm not sure what Slava's goal was when he started Weblocks.

I had a lot of ideas about web development I wanted to try out because I believed (and still do) that given the right development environment we could make web applications responsive and interactive in a way that isn't manageable now because of complexity. I wanted a language that could support these ideas, and I picked Common Lisp. I think in practice Weblocks failed to make any of these ideas a reality because the design didn't account for a lot of complexity I didn't realize existed. I am still convinced that the original ideas were solid, and that someone, some day, will make them work in some form or another.

I actually think Ruby on Rails is the worst thing that happened to web development, because it convinced almost everyone that web development is now a solved problem and this is as far we go. It isn't - we've only scratched the surface of what's possible. In terms of Weblocks though, Lisp is well known for insane expectations and few real world applications that satisfy them, so I think blaming it all on Weblocks is giving it too much credit :)
I just signed up. This looks amazing. I had been using mint but mint is full of annoying ads and is clearly not designed for businesses.
I'm a mobilebeat startup challenge finalist, and I have no idea what to expect
Around 3 months ago, I asked for a review of my application, BlogRadio. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1200506
I got some good comments and good direction on how to further enhance the service. I have been quietly working on this for some months now, and now we have made it to the finals of Mobilebeat.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/30/mobilebeat-2010-startup-competition/

This is by far the furthest I have ever gotten with any of my ideas or side projects. I am both excited and a bit nervous.

I plan to reach out to some of the other finalists and understand how they plan to approach it. I have not been very good about networking with other founders. I have been to a few meetups in San Diego, but it seems the 'scene' here is not as robust as Silicon Valley.

I'm looking for opinions on how you would approach this.
Paul Krugman's Efficient Suit Theory In Action
You don't need a bachelor's degree in computer science to do any job. The employing organization choosing to make that a requirement for hiring you is another matter entirely.
I read an interview with Dean Kamen a while back where he said the hardest thing about inventing things is knowing when to quit.
IPhone 3G (and 4)'s Misleading Signal Display - 2.1 Update
Looking at your demo, you definitely have a launch-worthy v1. Do it now!

I think you're sufficiently differentiated from Blippy and Swipely, and even if you aren't - so what? How many people outside of HN and the Valley know of these two startups? There's a ton of users to acquire and engage and you are by no means behind in the game.

I really liked your gallery implementation - did you build it from scratch?
> You got a personalized email because someone in their customer acquisition thought it was worth. Happens all the time.

Ok, I dislike talking about this but I am actually (and in a way Bank Simple could not know) worth a fair amount.

The companies that do know about this insist on inundating me with "personalised" crap. Im yet to recieve anything as personal as this email - and that is what impressed me. There is at least 5 minutes of effort put into this email.

I think you are being slightly unkind (though I take your point); because they have these interns and, from the responses I got, it appears their job is "take email X, google for email X, find something interesting to talk about, add that to email (or if not found just send mail)".

There is no way I could appear as anything more than a normally interested punter to them - hence the kudos.

I do honestly challenge you to find a company that makes the same effort for their main customer base.
Fake Steve Job's response on the Apple PR
If there's ever a situation where the majority of Americans are working as mere servants for the wealthy, I think simply taking the wealthy's money and redistributing it will be the more likely outcome, and that's if it's done peacefully. A situation like India's, where there's such huge income inequality that there's strongly differentiated classes, between the servants and the people who have lots of servants, isn't sustainable. People are only willing to protect the prerogatives of the wealthy if they think that overall the system is reasonably fair, supports opportunity and income mobility, has benefits trickle down substantially to everyone, etc.
How does this compare to say, cassandra, which also is a distributed key-value store?
Well, one way is to have a form input hidden by css, that is like spam catching 101.

I actually found a fairly interesting sort of captcha I am using for signing of rental agreements using jsignature which draws a canvas that people can sign using their mouse.

This updates a hidden form element with mouse x/y data to draw the signature again if you need to. You could potentially use something like this, but reCaptcha is incredibly easy to integrate.
Cybeerinfrastructure ... Nice slip on a friday night. I wish there'd be more committed open source devs funded by government ... Makes total sense for the infrastructure projects gov seems to be wanting to push.
Yea, had he simply quietly taken the money, put it in a bank account and gone back to work, he'd probably barely get a mention in the press.
> What are you claiming is the wrongly attributed cause here?

They offer a theory that explains their findings, but I am unconvinced their findings are accurate. The sample size of 60 is just too small to average out such subjective parameter as attractiveness, which among other things greatly depends on non-physiological parameters such as lighting during a photo shoot, or a facial expression.

For example, if the girl on the right were to pout just a bit, or had darker hair, or if her hair were darker, or if she was wearing a different color, the preferences might've fallen her way instead. There are other variable parameters affecting the selection that have nothing to do with the bone structure or hormones.
Parliamentary privilege varies from country to country, but I've never heard of there being any exceptions for copyright laws.

On the other hand, the abuse of parliamentary privilege to do something stupid is generally frowned upon.
Should browsers have an expiration date?