skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would love to know exactly what group was surveyed and how the score is put together. Was it an opt-in kind of thing, so only passionate/angry people would chime in. What were the questions phrased as? etc...

Traditional questions like "How much value would you say Facebook brings you?", "How valuable is FB to you?", "If Facebook were to stop existing, how bad would that be for you?" etc..

Those are the kind of questions even your average airliner or insurance company would have at least somewhat positive responses from, but since people feel like they're possibly wasting their time, the score might seem low.

btw. more info and stats: http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&task...
One of the points that Charlie Munger makes in his talk on worldly wisdom (http://ycombinator.com/munger.html) is that good investors tend to bet heavily when the odds are grossly in their favor and not bet at all the rest of the time.

The teen in this story illustrates how consistent application of this principle yields good results.

This is also how Paul Graham operates YCombinator: he carefully evaluates all the investment opportunities that come his way and only bets on the few that seem to him to be particularly good deals.

More generally, the key to highly profitable business seems to be to focus on servicing profitable customers.
The spectrum of human sexuality that is accepted by society is narrower than the human biological spectrum of sexuality. Rightfully, we reject behaviour that can damage children.

Wrongfully, many modern societies (until recently) fiercely rejected homosexuality, with often tragic results.

The current methods of dealing with pedophilia - by suspecting everyone, every man in a park taking photos of his children - are a blight.

At some point, society will have to stop trying to drive pedophilia into the ocean and find a different way to deal with it. Nobody chooses to be a pedophile, they can just choose to repress their behaviour. We should find them and help them instead of victimizing the innocent.
Hahaha I love that sentence : In the process, I’m evaluating a bunch of J2EE portlet-enabled JSR-compliant MVC role-based CMS web service application container frameworks...

Just Wowwww :)
Why not? This article seems to be a bit too sure about that but I do think it’s a possibility.
The reason people hate what I'll call "utilities" - insurance, cable, phone - is because they're crap services. They're all either monopolies or oligopolies (small number of competitors that collude to a degree), so they can stay crappy without fear of economic resistance.

So in a way it's due to societal expectations, but not directly. I don't think people would hate an insurance company that they thought treated them fairly.
Much of the functionality they mention can be done with other Editors. We've used edit-in-place for the past several years, even with things like CKEditor. There's nothing that forces you to need to do a page-reload to load CKEditor or other editors, rather you need an omniscient wrapper that can deal with it. For example, we use edit-in-place all the time with CKEditor, but of course we created a NOLOH wrapper for it.

A live example of instantiating and changing CKEditors:
http://www.noloh.com/Demos/CKEditor/Example/index.php

Code for example: http://github.com/noloh/CKEditor/blob/master/Example/index.p...

From there, it's easy to create an Edit-In-Place object using CKEditor: http://noloh.diffpaste.com/#/667/, then wherever you would like edit-in-place functionality you simply instantiate an EditRegion.
Two hours later: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/croqe/i_gladly_d...

It's interesting seeing which opinions of outrage become popular on reddit. Before this it was Saydrah and that outrage was on and off before it turned into a virtual mobbing. I'm curious if a large population of reddit has this opinion, or if it originally cared for this opinion before the above post. Was this opinion bubbling within the threads when the donation request was announced? Of course cultural trends are difficult to measure, so I doubt I'll ever know.

Personally, raldi announced this subscriber service when he announced the donation, so I'm those reddit users whose not going against their subscription model at all (however, I am waiting on them to add Amazon payments). Still, when I compare their model to Ars Technica's, this comes to mind: Ars has paid writers while reddit has user contributions, their only service is the forum they have set up and maintained (duh). Good luck with them and I hope they have a subscription model that fairly monetizes their user's contributions without smoking them out.

EDIT: May I also add that there's the extra challenge of being under a larger company. It played a factor with Saydrah and its currently playing a factor with above.
grossly exaggerated? bro, i gave the raw numbers in a table above the graph. if i were trying to lie i wouldn't have given the numbers.

i took the graphs as-is from goog docs and put em in my blog post.

i just zero-based the vertical scale. you can close your book about lying with stats or whatever the shit.
I don't particularly agree with his definition of good dancing. Sounds to me like his pinnacle of dance is just "fitting in".
Good dancing IMO is about enjoying yourself, effectively translating the sound into movement and/or letting yourself go.
done, refresh page and you should see em.
I've discovered Kohana recently and it looks promising and the only HMVC Framework I know. As for the Symfony doc, I think it is wonderful ... offering free online books is one of the main reason for its popularity.
>function well in society

You are giving undeserved credit to Facebook by equating it to infrastructure. If facebook disappears tomorrow, people may miss it but they are not going to stop functioning well in society.
thanks man. i've also updated the graphs on my blog.
Yes it does. And I find myself re-searching in Google about 30% of the time. But for semi-common search terms you get the result right there on the page, instead of having to click through to another page - and sometime something interesting even pops up.

But I also want to give another search engine a shot and since it's hard to get people to switch engines, I figured I didn't want to be like the old guy from Frasier who always needs to have his ugly-ass chair just because his brain is so used to it.
Since the post yesterday, 24 clicks through to the survey and 4 submissions.

Thus far the bulk has been seeded through my own contact lists. I did try to drive some traffic via AdWords but I didn't see great results (it's my first time using AdWords, so I'm still in the learning phase.)
The Failure of ROKR Seeded the iPhone (from Nov. '05)
I agree design is important...but wouldn't someone with a background in business or software make more sense?
Almost all of the complaints I've heard about Facebook from college students stem from the amount of time "wasted" on it. However, all of this time is spent interacting with other people on the service, actively or not. So, it is hard to see how one could make a Facebook-esque service where the problem of time being "wasted" is solved without destroying the very point of the service.
I wonder if it was entirely accidental that he left the DoD 4 days after the launch of Sputnik 1....
Great, I was just looking for something to watch.

Probably this (I get a redirect, so can't verify): Season 10 Episode 8 "Make Love, Not Warcraft". http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103797/
FWIW, the post titles are 1.1 em, and numbering 0.4em. I didn't want those to be distracting, but still wanted them to be there anyway.

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback and will think about how to tidy it up.
I interviewed (unsuccessfully) back in 2006 for an SRE job and initially didn't get any feedback, but after pressing the recruiter, got a description of my strengths and weaknesses.

I don't remember the conversation in detail, but I do remember having to pry a lot and ask specific questions rather than just asking over and over again.
> Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.

The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a respectable scientist would never make.

Using sentences like 'the plural of anecdote is not data' is an easy way to make it seem as though a discussion on a subject is not proper because, after all, all we have is anecdotes but the trick with such sentences is to apply them to the right subjects. This is not one of those subjects.

Being accused of child abuse, in the world that we live in is a thing with tons of consequences, the organizations are empowered by the laws that we've got. Reconsideration of those laws is a fine goal but for the time being very unlikely, unless there will be a dramatic shift in the politics of many countries.
To pick out one particular point: "3. We need more than just the imperative mood". The author states that all programming languages are in the imperative mood (which is pretty shaky, considering the long history of declarative languages), and that this is a problem because we need programs to be "art and literature". What? Can somebody explain that to me?

Besides, to parallel his later argument about games (which I disagree with, but... maybe some other time): when was the last time you executed a great piece of literature? What does Moby Dick print when you run it?

I agree that scholars and programmers should talk to each other about their studies, but I doubt that this article contributes much to the discussion.
IPhone Q2 2010: Market Share is Declining where All Big Rivals picking up
Wait its a surprise to you? What about... surprise your house is owned by the bank until you pay it off. Is that really a shock to people?

If america stops buying from china, trust me china will be hit hard. These relationships are pretty symbiotic. On the flip side: Did you know the very tycoons we are righting in iraq and the middle east own a big chunk of our debt as well?
Merchant Accounts and Payment Gateways
He wouldn't be the first person to quit his blog.
Self-hosted SVN
Funny. I remember one of the main reasons for the adoption of Facebook vs. Myspace was "Cleaner looks, better usability". Last thing I heard Myspace is still around, and I guess so will be Facebook, once someone else takes over their lead.
Oh certainly, I'm not claiming it's an easy fix. It's kind of an inherent quality/flaw of social tools.

That said, Facebook has aimed 180 degrees away from productivity. The whole site is designed to be addictive and encourage more pages / more time. (I mean, duh. That's how they make their money. It just ends up sucking for users.)
I've read your comment a couple times now but I'm struggling to think of an example that hasn't improved with the new layout. Not only does the new layout include a much more in-depth listing of properties and methods but it also has a much more dynamic categorization system. Perhaps you missed all the categories available on the sidebar of the site?

For example, all the method and properties relating to events:
http://api.jquery.com/category/events/

Detailed explanation and categorization of the event object properties:
http://api.jquery.com/category/events/event-object/

We studied how users were interacting with the jQuery documentation and overwhelmingly they were ignoring (and out-and-out confused by) the categorization and going straight to Google - because they wanted to find methods by name or functionality. For this reason we improved our search functionality and made the URLs super-intuitive (.html() is now just http://api.jquery.com/html, for example).

Note that the rest of the "old" documentation is still in place - this includes all the tutorials and other getting started guides - the only thing that was "moved" was the API documentation. Undeniably the browsability of the API docs has improved with this revision.
How to be a Genius at Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Ask HN: What are the technologies behind startup websites?
I want to know what are the technologies/ frameworks that are behind startup sites?
"Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus have a sword fight."
YCombinator's strategy is better described by Nassim Taleb's "Extremistan" parable. In Extremistan, most of your gains from stock investing happen from the few investments that make you a lot of money. So it's wise to distribute your investments over a large number of small investments, counting on the fact that your winners cover your expenses for your losers.

This is the opposite of the small number of large investment strategy.
Oh my. I like node, but that's a bunch of weird arguments. Most of them contain a kernel of truth, but jumping from that to node comes as some kind of non sequitur.

1) Version hell: No up-to-date packages on Linux distributions? As compared to the packages they have for a fictional stable node version?

2) Rails 3: I thought you were talking about sinatra? Where did Rails come into this?

3) Again with the versions. It would be nice to give a good reason why for him the push to 1.9 would be so important.

4) Speed: Yes, the V8 engine is quite fast. This won't matter for most of your work, though. Most of the heavy lifting for Node's event system is done by libev (written in C), the same that's underneath Eventmachine. Compared to I/O, it will hardly matter. And if it will, then moving to a compiled or JVM language will probably still be better.

5) Mobile: What's wrong with JRuby? It's closer to Dalvik than anything else. And again, what's the connection to node? You're not much better of there, never mind that it uses the same engine as in the (Froyo) browser.

6) Familiar frameworks: Not that familiar, as event-driven code has to be a bit different. But yeah, you've got a sinatra clone...

7) Javascript: Finally a good point. A single implementation language is usally quite nice, and not everyone wants to go the Seaside/Parenscript route.

Don't get me wrong, it might as well be a good decision, but these arguments are a bit immature, especially all the blabbing about Ruby 1.9, which isn't exactly the complete and utter miraculous revolutionary step.
Yeah, but he was writing frequent updates about his startup, then it just ended abruptly. I was curious how the project worked out and also hope he is ok.
This "article" is hilarious -- all of the interesting information in the article is contained in the headline.
lack of creativity, lack of motivation, lack of focus - all of these things are to be expected after giving up drugs, I didn't specifically just mean creativity. The longer you are dependent on the drugs, the longer the comedown will be. I have experimented in the past, and I say this from personal experiences.

Having said that, it could well have been something else entirely that prevented him from producing as many or as good results and I'm not saying that the drugs didn't really improve his ability - I am saying that we don't have enough information to know for sure and that a month may not have been long enough to be conclusive.
It's amazing that the iPad's first full quarter sales nearly matches the entire mac lineup's best quarter all time.

(In terms of number of units)
How the new Times paywall is doing (unofficial numbers)
Hi...we are actually looking for someone like you. We are a startup in San Francisco in the mobile app space. We have technical people but are looking for a Product Manager like you. If you are interested, please email me at antoniovitti@gmail.com
Cheers!
Steve Jobs is, more than anything else, a designer. He studied calligraphy in college and has said an understanding that gave him was the most important lesson he got from school. He has arguably made much better business decisions than the business experts (e.g., Scully) Apple replaced him with. It's reasonable to think Ive might replace Jobs.
How is this different than Math Overflow (http://mathoverflow.net/) which is another Stack Exchange site?
Facebook Lawyer ‘Unsure’ Zuckerberg Signed Contract
I wouldn't worry about him. According to his resume, he is still working at Charles River:

http://benjismith.net/resume.php
I tend to play mind games with the people who do nothing but complain. Ask slightly "off" questions, agree with them on the wrong points, etc. It's slightly more entertaining, at least!
E-mail me: daniel@abigfisch.com - I don't have time to work on anything myself but I can forward you to a few people.
"The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer." - Thomas J. Watson

"A problem well-defined is half solved." - John Dewey
Google’s Firefox start page contains (invalid) font and center tags
That's true of any job: if it's their hardware they can do what they want with it. Tons of jobs have similar monitoring policies.
Why that? Apple is as much about hardware as they are about software.

Business doesn’t make all that much sense to me. A MBA as Job’s replacement? Doesn’t sound right at all.
I don't have any respect for people that use Windows-based attack tools, not that I respected 4chan anyways. Windows limits parallel connections, making it pretty much useless for "packeting".

4chan is full of a bunch of 12 year old script kiddies. They don't even know what a buffer overflow is and they think HTML is a programming language.
The funny thing is that Slashdot had this problem and solved it a decade ago with their moderation system.
Looks like it's been HN'd. My connections are timing out.
Apple is an industrial design company. The one thing they make, that they can't outsource or rely on anyone else to provide for them, is the pieces of metal, plastic and and glass that slot in the chips and run the software. Everything else they do is an extension of that—they're only a software company at all so they can guarantee their hardware will provide a streamlined, unified experience.

Apple needs top-down control for their products in the same way movies need directors. That control is more central to making Apple money than any aspect of business. Thus, that control should be at the top of the executive pyramid; if Ive isn't a businessman, then he can rely on an advisor who is—but if he wasn't a designer, he probably wouldn't let one override his business ideas in the name of design.
A Guide to Meditation for the Rest of Us
I didn't realize Apple had invented magic as well!

> [Apple] has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

From the press release in TFA
This isn't really a fair comparison. More people use Facebook than they do any individual cable company.

I don't have an opinion on airlines that I've never flown or cable companies that only exist on the west coast. It would be more interesting to take a sample who use both Facebook and, say, Comcast, and see which was more hated.
Well, the iPad number is impressive, but they cost a whole lot less than Macs.
Parkour for Startups: Conserve Momentum
No data to support something?

How many times has social services taken kids away from parents who were actually bad? 100s of times a day? How many lives and/or psyches have they saved this week?

The problem is indeed the politics, because if you're looking for a campaign issue, you can just propose some ridiculous draconian system like "we'll take away kids immediately upon accusation". If your opponent predictably objects that that's unreasonable, he's SOFT ON CHILD ABUSERS. Bonus points if you accuse him of coddling criminals and put up posters with a scary looking black guy on it.

These social service workers have a tough job and if they don't follow policy to the letter, they'll get canned. They've also, as said upthread, probably dealt with a fair number of convincing liars and gone home from work knowing that those liars' kids are still being abused. Obviously the cases cited are out of control and obviously we have problems regarding sex offender laws in this country -- you can be haunted for years by taking a leak in public. But the majority of social workers are getting crap pay for a thankless job that at the end of the day, leads to less child abuse. Let's just remember that.
He hits mainly on the layers of complexity and abstraction, but the biggest problem I have using frameworks is the inversion of encapsulation and control. When I want a hammer to stick in my app, what I don't want is a big Hammering Framework that wants my app to go inside of it. It's particularly problematic if you want both hammers and saws, and both the Hammering Framework and the Sawing Framework want to be the top level.
This is going to be interesting. If this guy wins, facebook is going to have a hell of a time surviving with uncertainty at the top.
The Essential List of JavaScript, jQuery, HTML & CSS Books
Heroku actually published a really good blog post about this today.. it was on the frontpage earlier:

http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/7/20/nosql/

Riak's nice for redundancy and high availability stuff, and scales dynamically by adding instances.
No, it doesn't physically need a base license. Buy the DVD, install the OS and that's that. To clarify what I implied: if he really likes OS X so much, he can at least pay a small amount of money to keep using it with a somewhat clearer conscience. That's what I'd do at least.
I cannot imagine that Steve's eventual replacement will come from outside the company. It's just not in their DNA anymore to go outside for a leader.

So, who is there?

Tim Cook - COO. Ran the company while Steve was dealing with his pancreas issues. Not terribly inspiring, but a solid day-to-day sort of guy. I bet he stays in his current role for the next 20 years.

Peter Oppenheimer - CFO. Not a chance.

Phil Schiller - Head of marketing. Not a chance, again. He's just not a product guy.

Bertrand, Scott, Robert, or Mark? Maybe. Frankly, I don't think Robert is important enough. The other guys might be.

But Ive seems to most closely resemble Jobs. I've noticed that Ive has been making more appearances in keynotes than he used to, seemingly taking Schiller's place in a lot of product demos. The real test will be seeing if this sort of thing continues over the next couple years.

(names from http://www.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=AAPL)
I'm not entirely convinced. I have a number of actual, real-life friends who I communicate with almost exclusively via Facebook. I don't know their email address, and in some cases I don't know their phone numbers. If Facebook went poof tomorrow, I would be able to get new contact information via other mutual friends, but it would be a major pain.
They should hire Lisa's brother, Bart, as co-counsel.
There are quite a few people suggesting that the people who donated should be granted lifetime reddit-gold status...

Any thoughts on this? I mean...to be honest, when I donated, that's kindof what I thought it was. The whole "reddit gold" thing was kindof like the stickers they give out on election day that say "I voted".

It sounds like my reddit gold is now going to get taken away :(. That kindof sucks.
I'm sure NotifyWire violates CL's terms of service.
You will never look at WoW players again, if you have never seen it before!
Is it bad that that sentence made perfect sense to me?
China may not be the best example. They pirate almost as an institutional policy.
AT&T does not offer an unlimited data plan anymore.

On Sprint and T-Mobile, yeah, we have unlimited data plans.