skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it's a nice curiosity but you have to think how to get people to come back - you might want to create top lists based on multiple rivalries for example, like top list of cell phones etc.
yes for that we have all time favorite rivalries. and yes for getting people come back we need to implement some serious sticky features to our site. we are working on that, few of the features can be chat room, email notifications about their side losing, compare people feature where you can meet like minded people etc.

anything else comes to your mind ?/
ok but do you think people will be ready to sponsor the site whose traffic is not sufficient ?? we already have google ads in place but that is ofcourse not helping right now
No offense intended, but BRL does not appear to be a popular choice.
It may have existed, but so did other possibilities not mentioned too, the idea was to summarize what choices your average developer had.

I would also add that a lot of people chose PHP because they had been working in it since the late 90s and needed a big improvement in order to justify changing.
That is exactly right.
Ok, honest review coming. No hard feelings.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but what's the "start-up" part of this. This looks and feels like another comparator, this time with micro-communities built around it. A neat spin on an old idea maybe, but I'm not sure what benefit I get from joining. I hail from a big time "rival" area - Boston. I do not like the Yankees. Seriously, I think it's coded in my being to not like them. But, what's in it for me? Is there a pain that your soothing? I'm not seeing the point. And yes, the inconsistent margins bother me. I'd fix that no matter what. Your menu, header and body should be a consistent width.
argumentum ad verecundiam

An appeal to authority or argument by authority also known as argument from authority. If you say 50 or 5 billion scientists provide wieght to your argument your already falling under a logical falicy. Responding with an Ad hominem ad nauseam seems reasonable when at least one person that made the list had zero credibility.

PS: I see a lot of hand waving and use of vary specific data when more general studies have been done but I don't see any real theory. What model are they using to base their assumptions on and how well tested is it and or what specific flaws have they uncovered in existing research or thery?
I was quite touched by the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. Its central character, Atticus Finch, has become to me somewhat a role-model. If and when I raise children in my life, I'll be extremely contented if I manage to do it like he does in the story, and if my kids turn out like his.
Wow, thanks for all the suggestions and tips! I appreciate all the helpful advice!
Thanks Tom for really honest review. I see your point here. I need to see if a person from Boston can not see anything worthwhile in my concept then there is something seriously wrong.

Would you like to discuss your hatred for Yankees with other people ? If yes in which format would you like to do that ?

Would you like to share some good stuff about red sox with people like you ?

Would you like to meet like minded people like you ?

Is there any feature which looks ok to you ?
All the more reason.

Getting deep insight from half a dozen key people takes no more effort than many other kinds of "basic research". IMHO, it's an excellent expenditure of resources. Good feedback -> all the more reason to go gung-ho, bad feedback -> save yourself a lot of grief later.

How many excellent products never saw the light of day because of lack of demand? I'd do everything I could to prevent that from happening.
How to read a business book
I'm sorry I don't know what these "points" mean. Please don't take whatever points are shown with my comment seriously: it's just the default value.

I think Paul Dirac is insufficiently praised not only in the layman's world, but even in the scientific community. Although he was a contemporary of Albert Einstein and although his contributions were comparably important and various, Einstein enjoys a rock-star-like status, whereas Dirac is quite inadequately acknowledged.

The same would hold for Arnold Sommerfeld, Leonhard Euler and many others, some of whose names and contributions I perhaps don't know about.
What makes Ruby, Python and Perl more secure than PHP? Frameworks? PHP has plenty of options there.

PHP is popular because of how easy it was to get started and how available it was in every dirt cheap shared hosting plan on the market. Sure, it's not the most elegant language and it does have plenty of issues but quite a few of these are solved with quality planning and the use of quality tools such as CodeIgnitor or CakePHP.

The low barriers to entry are what made PHP popular and the fact that you can code something robust and maintainable are allowing it to sustain.
How to use Web 2.0 technologies to increase interaction
How is federal income redistribution based on income anything other than welfare supported by tax? And how is it anything other than an income tax?

PS: Given the choice I would give my SS benefits if I could avoid paying SS taxes.
Kind of a moot point now, but I always wonder if Pownce would have gained much more traction had it launched with a full API instead of/in addition to a mediocre AIR client.
I'm 24 and my parents seem to be supportive but I think a large part of that is that we came to the US in the late 80s so they may have the entire "risk" mindset.
So... worse is better? :)
It's been sort of a weird situation not just between myself and my parents, but between myself and my entire extended family. I come from a very conservative (in the life style sense, not the political one) family. No one, including Aunts, Uncles, Parents, Grandparents and cousins, has lived in a big city let alone start their own company.

Luckily, a few years ago, I was able to land an internship in Chicago for a few summers, which I think made my family realize I wanted something slightly more adventurous than middle class Ohio/Michigan. After graduating, I was able to obtain a full-time job in Washington DC, launch a successful micro business (less than 3k revenue in FY07) and launch a successful small business (revenue of around 85k in FY07).

For my parents and family, they've accepted that I'll be taking a very different path than the "family norm" and even though they don't understand exactly what I'm doing, they're happy because I'm happy. However, if I had decided to quit my "good" job, move to Boston and launch a startup with no experience running a previous business or living in a big city, I think they would have been extremely hesitant in their support.
Paypal used to give $5 to new users. I estimate that this is what put them on top, not (as Max Levchin guesses) that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on fraud.
Well, it looks like another one of my future startup ideas has been implemented...
Linux Lab #1: Intro to Linux | Tech Jaws
unfortunately, I have to agree with you. But even if you have some say in the matter - How can you really know what type of manager this one will be after a brief interview?
I also feel like asp was also super popular before php came around.
"The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change."

- Well said. I have read my share of business books, and wish I had stuck to this philosophy. I have begun to take a lot of notes on index cards, and attempted to apply at least one principle from each book that I read (think of it as "Deliberate Practice" [http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey]).

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of bad books out there, so its hard to know whether you are wasting your time with a bad book, or wasting your time because it happens to be a really good book but you don't happen to do anything with it. The problem that I face is separating the wheat from the chaff - most business books that hit the bestsellers normally have a huge marketing engine behind them, which does not necessarily make them great books. On the other hand, books like "Think and Grow Rich" which you can pick up at Half Price Books for $3 is something I read every year (once).

On a side note - "Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with everything they need to program a certain tool." I disagree. A lot of programming books I have read just don't cut it and provide little or no value. Mainly because a lot of authors are playing catch up with the latest and greatest technologies and invariably the book is rushed to the printers just so that they are not a version or two behind. The ones that provide real value are the ones that have proven to be timeless (SICP, PAIP which I am yet to read).
But of course it does matter. The "it doesn't matter" was specific to PHP because PHP has a good record of success.
I skimmed that post and didn't see any mention of a data export / dump feature. Color me disappointed but unsurprised.
it's not the same... I've seen ugly code in python and cpp and really great code in php using smarty and cakephp.

What does not allow you to write good code in php5, using unit testing and MVC framework?
The odd part about SS spending is it's vary low friction Income redistribution so it has little impact on the economy where Defense spending has a such a huge negative impact. However, such a large portion is put into the general fund the SS savings is basically just income tax.

http://carriedaway.blogs.com/carried_away/2005/04/us_governm...

PS: US GDP growth is slower than the rest of the world so it's hard to think why people think we are such a great example of growth..
A Detailed Five Step Twitter Scaling Plan
Tcl things have been around a long time too, like Rivet, which was faster than PHP, and utilized a much nicer language.
> php --it was quick and dirty and easy to get started

I think that's the key, right there. Sites go after quick and dirty solutions, then scale and perfect from there. It's that low barrier to entry that I think draws so many developers to PHP, in spite of its problems.
I don't buy the "it doesn't matter" part. A good language can effect your project's agility by an order of magnitude; and the gap widens exponentially after you've used it long enough to build up some custom libraries/tools.
Ask YC: What Linux Distro to choose?
Hi All,

I'm setting my web app on the VPS server and I need to choose Linux distro. I know Fedora best of all, but there can be distro that suits for this target better then Fedora, so if you have ideas, advices and experience, please do not hesitate to post :)

Thanks, Alex
Of course, lisp folk know that the parser overhead is unnecessary.
There is one more reason PHP is popular, not mentioned often: PHP is an embedded language and is designed to work well with HTTP servers. When you first hear that, you say "ah, go embed any language, then write your mod_x for Apache, what's the problem with it?".

The problem is that it's not that simple. PHP is "embeddable" specifically for markup languages by design, and it was also designed with Apache's modularity in mind (I supppose).

Perhaps Perl could have been a good candidate too, but it missed the train by not shipping the embedding feature in default installations.

Python, or any language that depends on newlines, sucks for embedding in markups.

So, PHP wins the battle because it was created with HTML and HTTP in mind. Could have been better, much better, much-much-much better. Okay. But that doesn't matter for now :)
so which is which?

and how samething be more flexible and more constraining at the same time?
ASK PG: hacker news website problems
I think this website has at least two serious problems:

1. It refuses loading long pages (pages with a lot of comments) at some point in the middle, maybe it's due to my slow connection to this website, but even on slow connection it should finish loading in a finite time period, not leave me an uncompleted page. Recently I had really a bad time in trying to read all comments at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192654 .

2. "Unknown or expired link."
Or if 33% remained the same weight. And the other 33% lost 10lbs.
Lessons from the Debian/OpenSSL Fiasco
> First of all, force isn't violence. Nobody beats you for failing to pay your taxes.

Oh really? We put people in jail for failing to pay taxes. People get killed in jail. They get beat and raped.

> Second of all, you do consent. You have freedom of speech to express your displeasure, and a vote to rid yourself of unjust leaders.

If five guys vote that a woman should put out, she consents because she's free to say no and can vote against their proposal.

> Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. They build our roads and pay our soldiers, and I'm sick and tired of some people acting like they're a form of theft.

Note that they also pay for a lot of other things; things that simply don't work.

SDurkin suggests a social contract. In every other contract, you can refuse the deal. You can also get out of the contract if the other side doesn't live up to its obligations. The "social contract" in reality is neither social nor a contract.
I think it is also helpful to understand one's own motivation for picking up a given business book. For example, Kawasaki's Art of the Start is very useful for most startups, but invaluable for those chasing external funding. But Porter's Competitive Strategy is less useful (note: not necessarily <i>useless</i>) for a startup than it is for an established player looking to compete effectively in an established marketplace. The point being that if you understand the problem / context you have that requires resolution or action, then you can better judge whether reading a book is more or less likely to be a productive use of your time.

I do very much agree with Seth's second point: markup the book with tags and pencil as you read. I find this essential if I am to retain both the content and how I think/feel about implementing it in my own situation.
SS is mildly redistributionist (for the rich) but mostly time-shifting.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160288

.. and I still recommend Debian or Ubuntu Server. Running the later at my VPS. It's neat.
Though ASk YC are my favorite type of post, this is far too specific type of question to ask in YC forums. :)
I'm not keen on PHP, but in its defense it is much less headache inducing than perl or as tedious as the Java/.NET world
Solving spaghetti PHP in spaghetti SQL in spaghetti HTML:

1. Learn how MVC works.

2. Write a basic MVC framework.

3. Zip it up, put it aside, and learn Symfony, CodeIgniter, etc.

(Writing your own framework is an incredibly good learning experience.)

Spaghetti code is solved (mostly) by structured organization, ORM, views that simply display data, and the separation of the MVC parts.
"I used to be a minimalist and I feel like I have seen the light, but I respect those who disagree."

so youa re not a minimalist now you mean?
"The constitutional structure protects minorities from the tyranny of the majority, and as such, when it is in the good of society, that force can be used, including to collect taxes."

You just said: 'the minorities are protected, and that means force can be used on them.' It's a clear contradiction.

What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning? Why doesn't the government start controlling or "guaranteeing" super markets, car dealerships, or house construction?

You take an unprincipled approach that scales to tyranny.

"For example, asserting a right to health care provides more output for the society, as it takes away from the costs of untreated illnesses"

That is complete unvalidated. Where is the evidence? Keep in mind, the comparison is to health with government management and with individual decision making (and not government coverage vs. none). One huge fallacy specific to health care is that health does not equal medical treatment. So you can't equate a dollar paid for medical treatment and a dollar improved in value of health.

"Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism."

And some sex is necessary to keep your virginity. Corporations that accumulate government power usually do so because of unprincipled approaches to what the government should and shouldn't be doing. Look up the history of railroads in the US, and specifically the rise of the Interstate Commerce Commission. A government entity went out of it's bounds to "protect" the people, and the new power was taken over by the rail companies. It's exactly what I mentioned before: What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning? And then who do you think is going to control it? Our benevolent senators? Or the people with a $$$ interest?

For health coverage, lots of policy decisions make much more sense if you just consider the AMA the largest and most powerful union in the US. They act for the benefit of themselves, and not their patients, often doing so with government force. One example, two words: drug war.
Zen Mind, Programmer’s Mind
Am I the only one who thinks that Fedora/RedHat/Suse all have terrible package management? I just love the deb-based package system of Debian and Ubuntu. It's fast, there are hundreds of mirrors and it never ever fails me.
This has been solved many times, many years ago. It's not a hard problem.
A one step scaling plan would be "write it properly this time".
Well, it doesn't really matter. If my competitors want to use inferior tools, that's fine with me.
You may like this: http://www.squeezedbooks.com

("Business Knowledge - Extracted, Compressed, Discussed")
i like it where it shows it as an element in the page. but for large-screen viewing pdf viewer is better. maybe the autoscribding could show a link to the scribd page (eg http://www.scribd.com/doc/1469514/TOM-JERRY-dibuixos-per-pin...) instead of the full-screen thingie
many things are easier said than done.
Zombo.com
I was thinking that if they could only celebrate their birthday every four years, they would only age at 1/4 the rate. Their 80th birthday would happen 320 years after being born.

Of course, this is all rather silly.
I know this website has been around for a while, but it is very funny.
Part 2 drives me crazy.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=151663
Right, I'm saying it wasn't popular.

It isn't that people tried BRL and decided its superiority in speed of development, speed of execution, security and learnability weren't big enough. It's that people didn't try it.
Me not American, so your tipping culture does not apply to me.
only if you start out with the idealogical position that government is always the wrong answer.

Such an ideology is simply the naive opposite of communism.
yes, until .net was released, then it was droped overnight by the developers (well, within a couple of years).
I used it, while in school (around 2001) and remember doing anything with databases was a real pain. PHP felt like a step up.
Another Way to Measure Electoral Clout: Watch the Widgets
Work experience is CRITICAL! How can you start a business when you don't know how one works? Why make mistakes when 6 months in a company will already point out most of the mistakes? How do you expect to make your employees happy when you do not know how it feels to be an employee? How can you manage properly if you have never had a terrible manager?

Get a job, save the money, then quit the job and start your business. This is a sensible and clever solution, and trying to start a business by depending on your parents and bootstrapping and hunting for capital is frankly...stupid.
"But no country had freedom of religion (in the modern sense) until 1787"

So there was no country in the world prior to 1787 that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice? Are you sure about that?

edit: you do realize that the US primarily had private schools in the early days. The idea that no one ever tried private education is simply false. So is the idea that America is the first country that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice.
The ubuntu server edition is relatively small for all it packages, and sets up most services for you.

Very easy to use. All services are started/stopped via:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/servicename start|stop|restart|status

Typing $ sudo /etc/init.d/servicename without any argument will list the possible args. Couldn't be easier.
Hmm, well I wouldn't call it hatred ... at least not out loud. The thing is, for these fans, for Sports fans in the US there generally are places to do this sort of thing. Most of it happens via blogs or blog-like sites (http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/, http://www.bostondirtdogs.com/). I think that sort of format works well for this (threaded comments or not). Most of the Red Sox / Yankees stuff is "around the water cooler" talk. There's no challenge finding discussion (save maybe finding a Yankees fan around here, but I'm not sure I want to talk to Yankees fans about this rivalry). Also, you really need to clean up your navigation. There are 5 horizontal levels of navigation and that's a lot of work to try to find what I'm looking for. You might be trying to do too much. Also, the "passion room" might have different connotations here than you expect...
Well both Python and Ruby can be easily hosted without ANY need for specialized hosting. Heroku isnt just a host. Neither is GooglesAppEngine or AWS.
ia gree, 2 is very annoying.
"You just said: 'the minorities are protected, and that means force can be used on them.' It's a clear contradiction."

This is the basis of constitutional government. Just holding a minority opinion doesn't necessarily mean the majority can't constrain your behavior with force.

For example, if I hold the minority opinion that "killing people for no reason is fine," then it isn't a violation of my freedom for the non-homicidal majority to arrest me.

Constitutional government includes a series of guarantees about what can't be done to minorities, and also usually includes checks and balances on the majority's power to prevent rash action.

"What kind of government program isn't justified by that reasoning?"

The answer is that all governmental programs are justified as long as they improve the public welfare. Those you have listed would not.

The fundamental difference is that in the progressive model the market is not the be-all-end-all of politics, it is just a means used to accomplish an end. The economy exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

""Some socialism is necessary to stave off communism."
And some sex is necessary to keep your virginity."

Pretty much everyone on either side of the left-ride divide agrees about the need for the modern welfare state, even if they disagree about the extent. Communist orators used to draw crowds of tens of thousands before the New Deal.

"You take an unprincipled approach that scales to tyranny."

Your pure libertarianism scales to a far more direct form of tyranny, and doesn't come with the niceties of constitutional protections. What's the market rate on a police force? An army? A life?
Arch Linux. It's supported by Slicehost
Please do a similar comparison between Pylons and RoR. And you will see the light. :)
I used VPS lately. I used Fedora just because I have been using Redhat since 1996. I met some admins who are used to Debian while I need to take a week to adapt.

Another reason for me to use Fedora/Centos/Redhat is I need to use some close source, and those close source is target at Fedora. So if you are using open source software only, then you just need to use the tools that you are most familiar with.

For me, I just want to spemd more time to work on the product and reduce the time that I need to admin the system.
Upmoded for point number 2, really PG it makes no sense.
Why would mobile users respond to ads at a higher rate than internet users?
There is no debate between ViM and emacs. Only one between emacs and disfigured fingers+convoluted thinking. ;)
Just remembered, Python benefits from the WSGI 'standard'.
Am I blind, or where is the link to the website created by Nishimura?