skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ahoyhere,

I have learned more about pricing stuff from you than I hoped! Thanks for the valuable insight. I have one more question that does not apply to you and Freckle directly now, but I was wondering if you could share some thoughts on it anyway. Before launching a product, how important is it to have a marketing page visible on our website?
What is a Ryu?
This submission asked: "Should I learn C?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523858

The Story of Mel is a reason why everyone should learn assembler. If you don't know assembler you won't really appreciate everything that goes on in this story. You'll get the basic idea, but the details and subtleties will almost certainly elude you.
Recruiters can't tell great programmers and flakes apart [comic]
He managed to write the entire post without pointing out a single thing he found fault with. Kind of a waste of time.
Second Life comes to mind, but its not exactly what you're describing here, but close being user created and all.
I have participated in a few AI programming competitions (where the AI control simple programs, robots, ants, etc) and they generally turn into a few weeks of wonderful ideas followed by discovery of a degenerate case in the rules set.

(For example, in a beautiful simulation where a single program had to control a colony of ants who did not have any room for state other than a current instruction pointer and the input of their senses, someone successfully identified an algorithm to have each ant figure out which ant they were, and then execute a pre-planned sequence of moves to wall in the entire enemy base, faster than any non-degenerate program could possibly counteract it. It was beauty to behold but it also crushed the life out of the community -- the best ant has been crowned, everyone else gets to play for second best.
Not saying it happened here, but one way this could happen is if the ad campaign alienated a large segment of the brand's existing consumer base.
That's a different use of the term politics you got there.

I think FSF failed was due more to development methodology rather than the feasibility of the goal in itself.

Take a look at emacs. Its release cycle is very long in between, survives forks, and generally being unpalatable to new users imitated by its keyboard configuration. It still lives. It still thrive. But it doesn't thrive as much as it should.
Safari giving away personal details as you browse
"You can write FORTRAN in any language." I wonder how much enlightenment the author has actually had in Lisp.

Every language has its zealots, Lisp is no exception.
Here's a Torrent with a tar.xz that contains all of them: http://v.nix.is/~leech/google-profiles.tar.xz.torrent

That's files sitemap-000 through sitemap-3278. They contain a total of 16,256,271 profile URLs.
Re facebook: really? I'd be interested in a hint here....
> I wish we could go back to when nobody wore the stuff.

Have you ever been on a crowded train?
When did they start running the ads? That increase could have been at the beginning of that year-long period.
Do you have any more documentation (other than http://smarkets.com/faq/#betting_matching) on your order matching?

I assume it's like any other call market with price (odds) and time precedence, but I'm still curious.
A Bust---I mean must---Read; Or, An Evolution in Bra Sizes
A Free Press: Run By The Government
My ground state is Hacker News. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
No. Even the kind of generics in Java vastly increased the documentary power of the collections. Being able to write thing like Map<Integer,Map<Integer,Double>> (a very crude sparse matrix) is a great boon in readability.
Ugh, what's with the "evolutionary vestige" and "instinctual idleness" crap? The lead researcher is a behavioral psychologist, not an evolutionary biologist. There's no basis for the conclusion that this behavior is genetic, let alone instinctive.
Interesting idea. Final Fantasy 12 is my favorite game that allows you to "script" your characters' moves, but you're only ever fighting against the computer. Incorporating this into a programmable MMO seems like it could be very fun, and somewhat parallel to the way stock markets work with everyone using algorithms to compete against each other.
"Myth #3: We are passing on debt to our grandchildren.
Reality: Payments on Treasury securities are a matter of
data entry, not a financial burden."

I don't even know where to start with this.

"These things are admittedly hard to value precisely-but there can be no doubt that our grandkids will be much better off having been born into a society that has modern infrastructure and services that our government policies can help to provide."

Not all debt goes to infrastructure that lasts 3 generations. In fact very little investment lasts that long. That's why we have depreciation, all capital wears outs (roads, bridges, etc).

When we make direct payments to individuals, financed by the tax payers and those individuals buy things made over seas, we are doing a indirect wealth transfer. That's why China holds so much of our debt. This money isn't just owed to citizens, much of it is owed to foreign nations that expect to be paid back.

See Charlie Munger's article: http://www.slate.com/id/2245328

We are performing a wealth transfer to Wall Street, Automakers and foreign governments. This money will have to be paid back (or defaulted on, which would be a mess) by tax payers at some point in time.
Why are you quitting without a (good) idea?
Perhaps if one of the games was a simple 'capture the flag' which could reset, it would avoid this problem? You wouldn't be competing against those awesome players all the time. A round would start, 10 players would be selected for each team (randomly or based on pre-organized teams). The actions could be as simple as, Look, Move, Shoot, Take Flag.
Anyone think that the text shadow destroyed the readability of the article?
Dup - lots of discussion here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523858
Aaannd done.

For the past few months, whenever I got stuck on a problem, I almost instantly stopped thinking about it and switched to a reddit tab, instinctively. I do not know why I did that, but it certainly slowed me down. Perhaps I'll become super productive and finish my thesis in the next week (unlikely :D).
Apple the new world leader in software insecurity
I've worked through some example problems in Prolog, and find logic programming to be an interesting way to think about a problem.

I have a problem switching thinking between Prolog clauses as logic relations and thinking of them as a problem solving process. The towers of Hanoi problem mystifies me, for example. I also have trouble seeing how to use logic programming in a larger system, to get more than example problems done. Can you recommend a good resource?
Those kinds of reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but I think they do a dis-service to the entire community.

This sort of design critique discourtesy isn't just from the last year, I was writing about it two years ago:

http://martincron.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/respect-for-peopl...
Would it be asking too much for posters to add a NSFW?
I haven't been to scribd in a while, I personally hate the thing, but they've apparently gone all NASCAR and jammed animated Flash ads into every little nook and cranny they can find.

Are they trying to be a test page for AdBlock?
How the Shorty Awards, made in two weekends, became the Oscars of social media
It seems like no time is good time to start startup. And it just getting delayed. Thats why leaning towards just quitting and starting something and overtime idea will get refined to make it something useful out of it.
I love the Old Spice Guy and I never picked up on a specific product he was pitching, just the brand itself.

On the other hand, in Terry Crews' commercials for Old Spice Odor Blocker (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tI4CbCniBI for instance), they're funny commercials but they're for a specific product - Odor Blocker Body Wash - and they make a specific claim - block B.O. for 1 hours. I loved the commercials so I tried it out, and it worked as claimed so it's now the one I buy every time. It was the most positive advertising experience I've had in as long as I can remember.
Around here, that would be Frys; they carry most popular items from the NTE catalog. I might hate their inventory control methods, but they're the only brick and mortar location I can go to get components anymore, aside from basics that Radio Shacks still carry.

There's also American Science and Surplus for motors and solenoids, but their inventory of used stuff is always a crapshoot.
Useful automation is going to lead to more wealth, which mean more free time for other stuff.

However, there come a point that automation approach the point where further investment will yield diminishing marginal returns. People are going to automate so much.

Just because you have a machine that produces 1,000,000 cokes in an hour doesn't mean you're going to make more money. What you will end up is a machine that actually cost a lot to maintain, and produce lot of cokes that will be thrown away due to the bottleneck in other parts of the production chain.
Wait, you restart your whole system anytime you edit /etc/hosts ?
I love generics in C# (well as well as one can love a language feature like that) but the generics in Java aren't the same apparently. I haven't used Java since this addition. Any opinions from regular Java users?
There are plenty of places in the world where your dream could become a reality.
You're confusing readability with capability. Yes without Generics trying to build such a collection in Java is insanely verbose and yes very hard to follow, but with generics, while it's less code to write to build the collection you do hit a mental Yield when you try to read that line:

"Ok, this is a Map, it keys on Integers to ... another Map, that keys on Integers and points to Doubles. Ok got it, lets continue"

Of course when you actually go to use this collection, you don't benefit that much (off the top of my head):

Map<Integer,Map<Integer,Double>> = myEntry;
myEntry.set(5, new Map<Integer, Double>(10, 30.0));
Map<Integer, Double> entry = myMap.get(5);
... etc

You are constantly having to restate the types and the generics. It's this constant repetition and "compiler pleasing" that the author is complaining about.
Lipfeed.com
I wonder - what could be some non-evil things to do with easy access to all of this information?
At the moment all our markets are closed, price-time priority markets and users can only place limit orders. So your order will be matched against the best odds available, unless those odds are worse than the limit on your order. A pair of orders are always matched at the price of the order which was placed first.

I should probably add some example markets to the docs.
It's possible to do without Existential Types, in fact they are only a language extension supported by GHC, not part of any standard. I think the obvious way to "simulate" existential types is with records like

data MyRec = MkMyRec { op1 :: Int -> (MkMyRec, Int); op2 :: MkMyRec }

Existential types just give you direct access to all methods in an existing typeclass, which may or may not be helpful.

Btw., OCaml is on my list of "things to do" right below "create something with more than 200 lines in Haskell" (which is hard because Haskell is so dense). ;-)
Good idea.
I like games where the rules are simple, but the strategies can be complex.
Like chess. Are there bot vs bot chess games around?
I won't use anything related to flattr. Mostly because the guys that created it are heavily involved in thepiratebay. They trample on the rights of copyright owners in the name of "freedom" and "good will" and charge 10% on top of all transactions for a donation service.

No thanks!
Is hn the best place to spend a lot of time doing nothing?
I find a lot of people in hn speaking a lot and doing nothing, is this the best place for loosing time and dreaming with being a millionaire?
Tried as in used it once and then threw it away because I got a rash. I sometimes get it when I don't have deodorant and am in a new location and the convenience store only carries Old Spice for some reason and I'm in too much of a rush to care.
It seems to be the default for developing webapps (coming from the Ruby world) and is just a nice little DBMS to use in any desktop app your happening to write.

I wrote a simple ATS and bug database app the otherday using Ruby Shoes, SQLite, and DataMapper. I just wanted a simple UI for entering bugs, there's only me (at the moment), and I wanted it as a single exe, and I only want Ruby (essentially I'm lazy).

Worked a treat. I think SQLites neato,dead handy for data persistence thats cross platform.
I'm not sure what else to add. Windows/Firefox on one network, Mac/Firefox and my iPhone on another and there's just no widget displaying. Can you verify this from another point of presence? It seems like it may environmental...
If that's bad, try doing closures without garbage collection.
Brands have cash to spend and want to spend it with FourSquare but can't get FourSquare to call them back.

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i637...

Just about everything a brand wants to do can be accomplished through the API. Traditional ad agencies can create websites, micro-sites, forums, etc; but don't know what to do with a raw API -- sounds like a little bit of an opportunity...
Yeah, some examples would be nice. I haven't used Ubuntu in a while but when I did I found the UX pretty good. My wife used it, really didn't notice it was linux, just wanted to know where the web browser was. Since then I've moved on to Windows 7. I should install Ubuntu again to compare.
Ok, here's a first pass... http://jsfiddle.net/cowboy/FB9Nd/show/
What if the bank is very innovative one and makes frequent changes to their web pages?
You are comparing yourself to the entire HN community: a young man against thousands of years of collective experience.

I suspect the reason why you do this is because you give your "talent" more value than you should.

You wrote this:

> 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.

You can snap out of it, but you need to change your mindset about intelligence, learning, and mastering a trade.

Please consider reading this essay of mine. I think it may be helpful: http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/04/the-pursuit-of-excellen...
Some responses (these all assume that this whole contract is not a forgery, and Mr. Zuckerberg entered into it knowingly)

a) It seems to me that the work to be performed is adequately spelled out and vagueness is not an issue. (even by name 'The Facebook') I'd be inclined to agree with you if Mr Ceglia hired Mr. Zuckerberg to develop something totally unrelated and then claimed ownership over a product developed later, but there seems to be little question that the site started there @ Harvard morphed over time into the Facebook we know today.

b) I don't see how this penalty is unenforceable. There is a good chance the whole venture was viewed to be worth 1000->2000 at the time of the contract. Not only was Zuckerberg content to sign this contract, he was sufficiently disinterested in maintaining 50% ownership at the time that he took an additional 34 days to finish the project. A contract isn't invalid just because, years later, it seems one of the parties agreed to a bad deal. At the time, the deal probably seemed quite fair.

c) As far as I know, in America - unlike England - the clock on the statute of limitations starts upon discovery of the breach by Mr. Ceglia. It is very easy for him to claim that he didn't discover a breach until 2005 or 2006.

As an additional point, I believe there is no way the claimant will be able to claw back equity from those who have received it without knowledge of Mr. Zuckerberg's breach. I can't be certain about NYC but in almost all states they are protected. (You seem to know what you are talking about so perhaps you could clarify this?)

I don't understand what is weird about this claim. There is a word for a perpetual stake in a business: Equity. Majority equity holders choose how or when to dilute their stake. Ceglia gave Zuckerberg $1000 and he got equity in return. If I run a lemonade stand and you buy half for a grand and eventually I grow it into a lemonade empire, I don't get to divest you of your stake just because I agreed to a bad deal. I agree the suit is poorly put together, but I don't see anything at all weird about the claims.
SCVNGR seems to at least partially satisfy what he's wanting. From an end user perspective, I find SCVNGR a lot more interesting than Foursquare, too, but it doesn't have nearly the userbase.
No, harder. Your link would require you to crawl thousands of Google results pagea, while the OP's link gives you sitemap URLs of many profiles at once.
Came here to point out the same facts.

Score another one for the awesome, new media who can't be bothered to fact-check or research for even 5 minutes.

edit: Mod me down if you wish, but the sales statistics quoted were for a period BEFORE the damn commercials even started running. A simple 5 minute check would have caught that.
Ask HN: Is there a design equivalent for HN
Lots of people post sites on HN for review. Is there an equivalent that is for people to critique a design I have?
Ask HN: SaaS apps and email lists - double opt-in? opt-in? required?
I'm curious how folks running SaaS apps are handling email. I'd like to set up an autoresponder for my trial members and maybe even my paying customers. But how to get them on the list?

Do you force them to opt-in to receiving emails as a term and condition of the site?
Do you ask them to opt-in using a checkbox when they're registering/activating their account?
Do you ask them to double opt-in by using a checkbox on the site, mailing them and having them confirm by clicking the link.

For my trial users, I'm thinking simple things:
* thanks for signing up, here's a guide to help you get started
* 1/2 way through – how's the trial going, anything I can do to help
* -5 days – your trial is almost up, don't forget to fill out your CC details to keep using the service.

For existing users
* blog posts
* new features
* new whatever (questions in the FAQ, videos in help, etc, etc)
* limited to 1-2 times a month, max.

Appreciate any feedback/links/personal experiences running or using SaaS in relation to email marketing.
Considering the way recruiters are paid, I can understand that no matter how good this guy is, he is worthless to the recruiter to recommend him

Recruiters are paid based on salary of the guy and the fact he stays there for a certain period of time.
Data portability in the Credit Card industry
http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view-faceboo...
Best joke I heard all week!
scvngr has 0 penetration in my area, so for businesses its not as attractive as 4square, which is on the minds of lots of small businesses. none of them here know about gowalla either. (Miami area).
I have seen stickers for 4square on store windows here.
At first glance, I thought it was Dave Herman's blog (http://calculist.blogspot.com/), due to the similar styling. I would have found it pretty shocking coming from him, but no.
I often find myself wishing for a combination of the two languages. An S-Expression based Haskell-alike instead of an S-Expression based Python-alike (yes, yes I know - Lisp came first - whatever). Bonus points if I can drop into an S-Expression based Fortran-alike when bashing on a chunk of memory is the only way to do something fast.

I like macros, but, as a scientific programmer, I know the type of everything in my program (double-precision floating point numbers and aggregations thereof), and I don't want to play some guessing game where I figure out which types I have to declare to get something to run fast. Same with garbage collection (what! the GC might move this while LAPACK bashes on it? I need to explicitly tell it not to? Fuck!).

emacs + paredit is also the best structured editing tool I have used in any language.
The DataPortability Project has been at the forefront of addressing challenging data portability issues that affect all of us. We (Braintree) are really excited to see our Credit Card Data Portability initiative be adopted by them. This is their first initiative for B2B data portability. We were unsure what to expect from our efforts but are really excited to see that it's starting to get traction.

Original Credit Card Data Portability announcement: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/data-portabili...

Open Letter to the CEO's of Authorize.net and Paypal: Help End the Credit Card Data Hostage Situation http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/open-letter-to...
Coca-Cola seems to be doing fine though.
Here's a direct link to the first paper (haven't read it yet, just wanted to save people some searching).

http://www.prem-melville.com/publications/medical-mining-dmk...
This really is a poor article.

It's not stated if that's a new product or an established one they are talking about. Also, whilst they say one product is down, what about the others? If you dig into the bnet article (http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10007535/the-old-spice-...) you see that the sales figures are for the 52 weeks upto the 13 June - long before the online campaign started.

All the yahoo video links fail to load properly for me. The mention YouTube but don't link to it all. They link to their own previous coverage for no good reason.
Nature thinks we could safely wipe mosquitoes off the face of the earth.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
You could try to only have contentious opinions on topics that you are sure you are right about. On other topics take a listening role until you've heard differing opinions. You could of course offer an opinion you may have as a question:

What do you think of the opinion many people have..which is Do cats always land on their feet...even when they've been buttered e.t.c.
That can't be right; Rez was a compiler that took plain text symbolic input. Most likely the .rsrc file is just an actual resource fork, encoded maybe in MacBinary format.
Google is keyword-based (as in, 20th century technology)

That's my beef with AdWords, particularly for targeting the content network. Using keywords works for search, because someone looking for "los angeles web designers" makes their intentions clear. Using keywords to target specific websites is a flawed approach, because even someone who writes a blog specifically for and about "los angeles web designers" rarely uses those keywords on the page. I'm frankly surprised that Google hasn't come up with a better system of targeting.
It's interesting that the profiles list the public followers and following stats. With some deep crawling, you could build a huge social graph from this data.
Ask HN: Have a favourite Web Programing website?
hi,

I'm trying to find a better source of interesting thoughts on programming, my interests lean towards Native Web Apps: Javascript Server/Client etc, language design, tool development, and interaction design.

Anyone have any interesting sites they recommend. I don't read much more than whatever shows up on HN, Ajaxian, and Lambda-the-ultimate.org.

Thanks in advance,
Francois
The Dangling Carrot Rule (for Approaching a VC)
How Do You Judge Corporate Culture During Job Interview?
Maybe it's because you're older and is able to manage your time more maturely.

Maybe having people that depends on you makes you more responsible.
i always thought it was because both these companies are focused on traction and growing user base first. I think theres more money, in controlling the eco system, than allowing all kinds of junk to be put it into it.