skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN:  Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?
Sometimes when I start reading HN comments I get the overwhelming feeling that I am not even a tiny drop in the giant ocean of talent, knowledge, drive, determination, skill, and genius that collectively contributes to this site. I have my own ideas that I love dearly and work on, the first of which will be released for you all to play around with and break at the end of the week, but I never leave HN without feeling that no matter what I do, it will never be as good as what I've just read about. I have my own skills, I got a BS degree from a decent school in Comp Sci a few years ago, and still I barely work with anything other than LAMP and frontend stuff and frequently find myself having no clue as to what some of the submissions and discussions on this site are about.

It affects me on a more personal level than I'd like to admit, but I'll do anyway as a way to get it out of my system and see what you all think. I'm a lone "founder" of several websites that I finished up to 80%, then left to collect dust, and am now tidying up to display on a resume since I'm essentially out of money. Whenever I come here and read the articles and discussions I feel like my ideas, and myself by extension are absolute shit for several reasons.

1) So many talented people here. I don't know the slightest thing about any other language besides Javascript, PHP, Java (from school), and MySQL. I'm 25. I work on a Windows XP box and use an IDE because I like the code completion. I consider myself damn good at the languages I listed, but I get the impression that people here are damn good at way more than this.

2) HN shows me all these people and ideas that are succeeding. It used to be inspirational, but now it's frightening. I've always been told I'm a smart kid, and that I'll be a millionaire some day, and all of that shit. I see these ideas gaining traction, some of which I could never be able to do myself, some of which I could have done overnight, and I see myself staying still. It's overwhelming.

3) There are people that post here that are so smart. There are people here that can express their ideas so clearly. There are people here that know so much about so many things. And there's me... I'm not really able to contribute much. How am I to believe I'm any good at anything? If you all are to be my competitors, I should just give up now.

At any rate, I'm just curious to see if anybody gets the same feelings of being overwhelmed by the amount of awesomeness that's on this site. Thanks.
The Not-So-Casual Journey To Mainstream Entertainment
I'm probably atypical but I got my first two cell phones at Radio Shack yet I still think of them as the place to get LEDs for weird projects or a sterio to mono headphone jack converter. I should take a trip and check out the North Bay store from the article. Sounds like my kind of place.
Facebook Didn't Sign Contract Surrendering Ownership, CEO Zuckerberg Says
Previous appearance on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1336052
I also think that your main page is a lil visually busy, which if we're contrasting against Dropbox, is a major difference that made me less inclined to proceed with the free tour. Also, at the bottom of the page you introduce the founders, which I think is better left til after you've proved the product worth the attention in the first place.
I'm up to about $15k out of pocket on mine... it costs me about $1800 every time the patent comes back from the examiner and the lawyers need to change something. This has happened 3 times so far. I'm 4 1/2 years into the process and still no patent :(
Absolutely right. I was sued over trademark (see TalentZoo vs WorkZoo) in 2005 and it was just my wife and I running the startup. Thankfully 2 acquisition offers came in which became more distracting and resulted in a happy exit. From the moment the cease and desist notice was hand delivered up until we sold the business almost all work on the product stopped.

I tell myself these days that legal wranglings are simply a cost of doing business, but unless you're a large org with layers to abstract you away from the lawsuit, getting sued is paralysis for startups. So if you do get sued I'd recommend you settle it if possible, be mad for a few days and then just move on.
There's just no real alternative to generics in Java. It's either that, casting (terminally insecure) or a more modern type system, which would be a huuuge change for the language (and in which case, you might as well use Scala).

If you want to complain about things that make code harder to understand, I wonder why the author doesn't rant about annotations.
Or rather, the little pieces you need are usually libraries or frameworks or freely available software. The open source ecosystem and Google is a developer's Radio Shack.
| ...It means something good has happened on something I care about.

Or you're not logged in...
I apologize for the bad comparison, doing so is not something I enjoy, like flossing cats.

I shouldn't have used the crutch of analogy and should have spent more time writing a thoughtful reply, like you did.

I when I joined Microsoft late last year, it seemed to me that everyone I talked to knew that the Kin was going to be dead on arrival. It was well known that the team working on the phone was discouraged and that the phone was going to be nothing like the one they set out to build.

People didn't like the Kin, but they all seemed to make the excuse that they weren't in the target demograph for the phone.

To be honest, I think you are being overly generous in your comments about the Kin.

What I'm trying to say is that the Kin had almost nothing in common with the Windows Phone. But I think you get that.
Ubuntu. I could be wrong though - I read it somewhere and never tested it out.
Interesting idea, but how are you going to support "functions" like getc() that are actually macros?
Thanks :) I'm glad I could make a difference. Maybe I should edit this into a blog post.
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If I were you, I'd advise that person to get some contract jobs programming, and maybe find some for them. Talent shouldn't go to waste.
There is a lot to say about this, depending on your product and your market (which I haven't seen). Here are a couple key thoughts:

* Adwords are great, but spending money before you know what kind of conversion you are able to get from natural SEO isn't a good idea. You can always buy traffic, make sure you have the right funnel first - image it is a pipe you are trying to make as wide and friction-free as possible. I think Adwords works great if you are selling a product similar to something already in the market

* forums, blogs, etc. have a very short lifespan so you should expect you will get peaks from high buzz items (like a post doing well here on HN) and it will trail off after that, if you can retain 5-10% that's great. You have to consistently crank out new relevant content.
This is like saying it's okay to steal from rich people because they have a lot of money.
I had a similar realization recently. I was in the toilet and was preoccupied by thoughts about some trouble at the bank. Well I was having a host of issues and very less time to solve all of them. After having a turmoil for a few minutes, I told myself that I can take more and suddenly my mind was calm. My mind was no more centred around the issues and the topic had changed to something else.

I believe the process of thoughts is quite usual; but the process of meta-thoughts could be more powerful.
Why is no one considering the fact that Zuckerberg signed it (if its not a fake) and then never bothered to share it with anyone else? Isn't that legally/morally criminal?
1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble
Initially, I wanted to just temporarily block sites. But I found out after completely blocking them (just for a few days!) that the quality of my time had actually gone up dramatically. I guess your mileage may vary, though.
These are really good points. I suppose the only problem I see is when the C modules develop their own hierarchy of types and then they have to interface with Python's hierarchy of types. That's really the only issue.

If what you're doing in C is numerical or computational in a functional way that doesn't need a hierarchy of types -- then keeping all your types in Python and calling into C for IO, computation, etc., makes a lot of sense.

Where I've run into problems is if the C modules themselves get sophisticated and start having scene graphs or hierarchies of shapes, etc. Because then it makes sense to mirror the hierarchy in Python -- but then you get real performance issues.

So I guess if you can ensure that your C modules have a clear functional interface (or at least one whose side effects are clearly defined) and doesn't involve anything but a shallow type hierarchy, then Python + C is all good for that. I.e., the C modules have to be very well-defined or have just about no 'code smell' (at least near their interface with Python). Arguably you can always do this if you make an effort to refactor your C modules. But yeah, because Python must always be at the root node, one is sort of constrained to serve the 'top', so to speak. And that may encourage a sort of top-down design which is less amenable to bottom-up programming (as mentioned in On Lisp), etc.
Mutual benefit certainly helps. I just wonder if you have to have it.

The people I referred I actually never work out with. It was just a trivial way to get $25 or whatever the bonus was at the time.

I believe Zecco (brokerage) also has a referral system going. Again, using it is beneficial monetarily - I could care less though if my friends use it.

One thing that is probably true: If there is no 'network effect', you probably need a much larger reward to get referrals.
Also you forget point 3:

It has to have incentives for _both_ parties. I specifically didn't send my mother an invite to dropbox because I didn't want to seem to do it so I could gain something at her expense.

Dropbox actually does give something to both sides, but if I miss that how many others do you think does too?
The review did not explain how to summon Nath Jones for a photo shoot. Aside from that, excellent!
Try the proxy switchy extension - it should at least make it very fast to switch proxies.
It very well could. Consider that "real use cases" includes every website in existence. Some of the have utterly horrifying URL schemes.
Chrome Nanny
Hopefully, no woodchippers will be involved in this story.
Hah, I like Amon Amarth. :(

I usually go between post rock, noise, grindcore, techgrind, chillout and lounge.
Pi Approximation Day – July 22
Hilarious is not a word I would use to describe any of those. Plus the band-aid solution turned into a real business.

Has it even been long enough to warrant these articles? To offer up this article would suggest that the issue has been solved sufficiently and a few months have passed at least and I don't think either have been fulfilled. .
" ... as well as some explanation of why that should matter."

It doesn't.

I've heard the same thing, or some variation ("It's executable pseudo-code!"), and thought it a useful indicator of some intangible but important goodness, but it doesn't hold up.

Look at Haskell. (No, really, you won't go blind. ) Few people are going to claim it's generally readable to the uninitiated, but so what? So is French, for a lot of people. The thing is, if you think it would be useful, you learn it, and at that point the value of "readable to people who haven't learned it" goes to nil.

You could argue that some languages (maybe Haskell) maintain a level of inscrutability for a long time as you are learning; you continue to spend too much time decoding text when you could be zipping along with some reads-just-like-English language.

But that's a different issue. "Difficult to obtain proficiency" is not the same as "intelligible to outsiders", and concerns different value to the programmer. Plus, the cost of proficiency needs to be weighed against the return on effort. (Consider Vim or Emacs. Worth the effort to learn? An awful lot of people seem to think so.)

It may take longer to become proficient in (say) Haskell than in Ruby, but the long term payoff may be that you become far more efficient, with your code being far more concise.

There's a difference between BASIC and Brainfuck, and some language comparisons are just apples and oranges, but the value of being easy or readable to newbies or outsiders is largely tied to the value of being a newbie or an outsider. Once you are neither you really need your language to have other strengths.

(Which certainly Ruby has, and its those strengths people should use to sell it.)
Except it does have a lot in common with the Windows Phone, as I already said, plus a lot more.

Sure, the 7 phone has a different UI, and apps you can download, and higher specs for the phone. I can't think of much else that is different.

Do you guys really think that people are excited about Windows 7, much more than they were excited about the kin? At least the kin had its special niche, W7 phone is trying to take on giants like the iPhone, Android, whatever Nokia can pull out, revitablised Palm, Blackberry.
Whoops, forgot that HN doesn't have search. >.<

You know what you're talking about, so I'll agree that you're right, but the simple action of searching titles of submissions on Reddit didn't work. That makes it seem like that there's something wrong with their code or database setup. Reddit's source code is pretty disgusting.
I know your name, where you work, and live (Safari v4 & v5)
Agree, there is no need to put the founders pics on the main page - seems distracting and off putting.

Especially as none of them are Asian, and the whole point of the site is to learn Chinese Japanese characters (it lowers my trust in the site)
ATS (ats-lang.org)

1. Can embed and call C code with no overhead, uses C representation internally

2. Embedded C can use CPP, otherwise the language has macros

3. GC is optional

4. No "system" thread

5. Optional standard library

6. Static typing, linear types, types as propositions, programs as proof.

7. ML-style exceptions, not insane

8. Examples from K&R C translated into ATS http://www.ats-lang.org/EXAMPLE/KernighanRitchie/
Great - now we just need to raise the price so _nobody_ can afford to file a patent (on software at least).

How does a trillion dollars sound?
(Title sic).

Short summary: Safari autocompletes forms from your private address book, and can be tricked into doing that by Javascript events on form fields named in ways Safari would want to autocomplete; worse, once autocompleted, that data can be read out of the form by the same JS that triggered the event.

Long story short, if you browse to a site with Safari and you have autocomplete on, that site can slurp some stuff out of your address book.
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Forget Radio Shack, anyone remember Heathkit?

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/30/business/plug-is-pulled-on...

http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/5103/h100cat851.jpg

I remember puzzling over everything in the store as a kid, it was fascinating and I couldn't afford anything but the free catalogs. I knew those super-dooper expensive computers were the future. (Eventually built a Heathkit AM radio).
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Jesus. For that price I can get a solid 35mm film SLR in good condition. As an avid photographer (both film and digital, moreso film) I've never understood the point behind Holgas, especially given how much they cost.
Ditch the biz plan, Buy a Lottery ticket
Digikey is the new Radio Shack. Nicer selection, but you can't just drive there since they're online.
No, and so far from what I see monads seem to be a way to make your functional code imperative again.
I like the Holga concept, although I doubt it can be manufactured cheaply enough, being not a mass-market product.

What I really would like to see, is a micro four-third format camera with slim, simple, retro-style body equipped with built-in hi-res EVF and only essential controls through physical knobs (aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc). No LCD, no menus, no face detection. In other words, take Panasonic GF1 or Olympus PEN E-P2 and strip them down to absolutely minimum.
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This exists: http://www.lifeat.com

Has done for some time: http://techcrunch.com/2007/10/16/does-your-building-need-a-s...

Since reading that article almost 3 years ago, I've not heard another thing about it. I guess it's pretty hard for hyper-local networks to spread like the wildfire of Facebook et. al.
Forensic identification using bacteria
Just an FYI -- your page hung on loading "Waiting for dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com..." for at least a good 60-75 seconds.
I believe homotonic refers to the intonation when pronouncing the character (there are 4 intonations in Chinese, with a fifth "blank" tone). In this case, it is referring to words that are pronounced with the same sound, in the same intonation.
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The truly scary thing? There's a lot of money to be made in determining who the "customers who will call in and cancel it" and "the customers who won't notice or care". My cable company has now twice added a "premium bonus" $15/month for a little more bandwidth, without having been asked.
It seems the site mentioned in the article, http://www.korekt.me/, suffered from the same problem. It looks like they have given up. To build a successful service is a lot of work, and takes quite some time.
Things are OK. Thanks for asking. I'm too disorganized, trying to get a half dozen projects going at the same time, so I am planning on hiring a life coach.

How are things with you?
I can still smell the solder from the one heath kit I put together - a pair of intercoms.
Yes, but I don't care.

Please come to the video game industry :) There is always need of someone that knows MySQL, LAMP, etc.
It requires the ability to write, spell, and sit for a few minutes in front of a computer screen that's not showing tweets, lolcatz, or breasts.

It also requires access to a computer, which severely underprivileged are unlikely to have.

Look at how many arts students fail the compulsorily "Intro to programming" courses that a few unis spring on them. I bet that's because (in part) they lack the logic-problem-solving (i.e. IQ) skills to cope with it.

I'd say that programmers in general have a higher general intelligence, and a much higher IQ, than the population in general.
This Year’s Vampires Are Zombies
You have to consider the number of users. HN now gets 60k unique visitors on weekdays. That's a decent sized stadium full of people. Of course they seem overwhelming collectively, but most individuals are only experts in a few areas.

If it makes you feel any better, my biggest worry about this site is the opposite: that the median awesomeness is decreasing as the number of users increases.

If you want to feel less overwhelmed, try reading the comments starting at the bottom of the page instead of the top.
Yeah but instead of a hook, more like a suitcase handle that you can slip your entire hand through.
Nominations for the 2010 Pwnie Awards
Since no GC is a given, a lambda with a closure maps nicely to the C idiom of a function pointer and a void* user data parameter.
That would be in Singapore. http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-30-highest-p...
Flash works but it uses the default system connection and not your browsers proxy connection. So in cases of site that have IP based restriction, flash based sites will still see your original IP
I will prefer having co-founders instead of advisors in that case. I have advisers only because I need some one to always think about what we are doing and how we are doing it in a very objective and third-party sense. Once some one gets their hand dirty in doing it, it becomes very difficult to remain objective about it.
What do other browsers do differently to prevent this from being a problem?
I get this to but I think sometimes we are getting overwhelmed by the collective knowledge of hacker news rather than individuals. Granted there are a lot of exceptionally talented people posting here but you will probably find that the really great technical comments are coming from people who spend a lot of time on what specific topic they are commenting on and would have areas your great at but they have little knowledge or experience.

Also there are people that have been in the area a lot longer, so me being 21 wasn't around programming during the late 90's tech bubble or before. They have had a lot more time to try a lot of different things.

It's good though to have the median above your own level, allowing you to learn but faster then if you were one of the smartest people here.
Most C libraries already implement those as both functions and macros. The macro definition usually shadows the function definition, but you can access the function version if you want, e.g. in glibc, getc() will call the macro, while (getc)() will call the function. The macro is just a wrapper for a function anyway in glibc (the internal _IO_getc), so there's no real reason to retain it except for historical reasons. If macros were eliminated in user code, you'd just use the function versions. I think having them as macros at all is an efficiency hack dating back to the days when compilers didn't do function inlining.
> A mere claim that something is a deriviative work doesn't make it so

Obviously. But there is no way to tell from the OP's story. The way the OP presented the facts, the interpretation is that it's a derivative work. Someone took his text and shuffled it around just enough to make it not word for word identical. How the dice will roll in court is always tricky to say, and impossible in a case where you only have a general description of the facts, and only from one party at that.

The point is that a derivative work is protected just like the original. The evidence is a whole other matter, one that nobody, in this particular case, can judge from the information given.
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This whole thing started as a joke a couple years ago, but now it's as good a cross-section of what's going on in software security as any. If you don't pay attention to vulnerability research (and most of you don't), skip to "Pwnie for Most Epic Fail" --- there's some pretty funny stuff there. McAfee is a mortal lock for that award this year.

Cringing with embarassment at the whole "best song award" thing? That's a nice synecdoche for all that's weird about this thing we "security researchers" do. Re-read the bit about Tavis Ormandy's #GP trap handler bug right after the songs and see if your head doesn't explode.