skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You seem to be under the impression that I agree with Giles. Let me refresh your memory of how I opened this little discussion:

"I think he has an interesting point about why these types of sites don't work very well. But I think he's wrong to say that there isn't any technological solution - you just have to do away with the idea that everyone is equal."

You see? I think he's wrong! But he is correct to point out that current systems favour prolific posters, not quality posters. I used that idea as a jumping off point to perhaps find a solution, rather than doing a Giles, throwing my hands up and saying it's all too hard, and can't be done.

You also seem to feel that by definition anyone that spends time on these sorts of discussion is exactly the kind of person that you don't want to see comments from. Bizarre. I mean, take PG for example. He has effectively adopted the strategy that I am putting forward - he takes a lot of time crafting his essays, but he doesn't make a lot of them. We all find these posts interesting enough that we hang out on his site, and in particular on HN.

My strategy was to try and capture that idea of quality over quantity. As far as I am aware, no one has attempted to moderate a site this way yet (although maybe I have just not visited the right site yet).

Anyway, do you have anything more constructive to say other than 'but, but, you disagree with Giles!!!!!'? Because, as I've already said, I started this converstaion by stating that I thought Giles is wrong - that I disagree with him is a given.
I like checking out other peoples startups, but your post seems almost like a advertisement rather than a RFC. Are you looking to get feedback or just attention?
Dude. He was being ironic.
Upvoted for the obviously intentional meta-irony.
Five things humans no longer need
Banner Network Application- An Interesting Tool Indeed
David Brooks: And the geek shall inherit the earth
> Creating lots of branches takes a lot of time and energy,

bs. it just means that your version-control sucks at that.

> The history of a branch is hardly ever looked at.

bs. i am sure folks look at it all the time. at least i do

most of the other stuff seems reasonable though.
There's already lots of different types of "database systems" floating around. Map/Reduce approaches to large-scale data processing has been getting most of the hype in the F/OSS space and columnar approaches in the enterprise spaces.

An area that is finally starting to get some love are approaches like Mark Logic's "XML contentbase" approach -- native XML data store that's wicked fast. Of course, I'm biased but I think MarkMail (http://markmail.org/) is a pretty slick, public example of it in action.
I assume you have not been a victim of such attacks yourself yet?

What solution do you propose?
I had hoped to read a cracking debate about whether Twitter should be considered a service, a community, or merely a service around which loosely coupled communities had formed, and the obligations implied by each for Twitter inc.

I was (unsurprisingly?) disappointed.
You should read Greg Egan.
Our company has been using ThinkPads for years. In the past year standard issue has been T60p and T61p — and they're awful.

Crappy display drivers, a tendency to shut down when you plug them in or dock them, etc. etc.

We're switching to HPs now.

Me, I'm on my second MBP in 3 years and I'm happy. Another friend of mine just replaced his MacBook with a MBP, because it just wasn't quite keeping up.
Men?
I have a Thinkpad X41 Tablet that I really like. It was part of the very last product cycle to be branded IBM. Lots of people say that quality has gone downhill since then.
Brain Implants May Let 'Locked-In' Patients Speak
Speaking of power supplies... MAGSAFE. Nothing beats MagSafe.
"the web2.0 social elite circle"

Everybody is free to join, though - hardly the mark of an elite circle.
Why so much whining about american broadband recently? I have "only" 6MBit connection, but I almost never see these speeds: only a handful of top-dogs like google/yahoo are capable of responding quickly. Flickr, PicasaWeb, GMail, ESPN and BaseCamp are my bottlenecks - it's them who are slow, not my connection. Even GoogleMaps got more sluggish recently, even without StreetView turned on. Faster broadband won't help those laggy services.
Open CourseWare for Linux Geeks: 50+ Resources
Whether you’re just getting started or are an advanced developer, there’s something out there for you to learn. Here, this article has highlighted more than 50 of the best Linux courses you can take.
You should give a T-Shirt, instead of a chance at winning a T-Shirt, if you want feedback.
As a long-time Autodesk customer, I can see the problem from Autodesk's perspective. Standard procedure with Autodesk products is to upgrade to a higher version at a lower cost than buying a brand new copy every couple years. After the upgrade, the customer still has the old software sitting around, so if the customer were to sell the old version, and the new owner then upgrades, Autodesk is out the difference in cost between new and upgrade. Autodesk can control for this by tracking serial numbers of course, but the unknowledgeable new owner would be unable to upgrade the product through no fault of theirs and effectively have wasted some good money if they need to upgrade.
I see twitter as my window out of the office. It's that place where everybody is working, together, but not in the same room.

It's a social thing and I love it.
Oh, the text in the middle is meant to be read? I read the cartoon only as "you should be more careful sdojdsa fosadf aösdpoifasdö fojahdsfösdaof sddfjjdsjdsjfsd föso fsdöfo sdfsd fuck that shit".
Twitter begins to communicate with their users
Global warming will be the death of this solar system I tell ya'.
exactly. almost nothing is a worthwhile venture without the "right people."

your statement suggests that you believe YOU are that type of person. ... instead of dis'ing your own city, i challenge you to do something about it.
I disagree. A company's website should be a marketing vehicle, and Aster Data's site is actually far more readable than most enterprise software vendors' sites. They do a good job of breaking down the specific reasons one needs such a scalable database, identifying failures of traditional databases in specific industry. I'm quite impressed with how understandably they present themselves, given the material and their target audience.
You should at least be using SFTP, since FTP isn't encrypted.
You can also set your webserver to ignore the .svn folders.
... but export can waste a lot of time and bandwidth if your project is large ;-)
I like that aspect of Twitter, you can just create an account for an event (lie a barcamp) or an interest group and aggregate messages of related people. It would be much easier if they would enable autofollow, but anyway - I like the simplicity, whereas FriendFeed now seems to have two different concepts to achieve the same thing (or so it sounds).
Here's the bash script I use with Mercurial to deploy:

hg qpop -a ;
hg pull ;
hg update $1 ;
hg qpush -a

The $1 is a branch or tag argument given to the Bash script. That way you can easily specify a particular version to update to (or rollback to!) on the command line.

The qpop and qpush will rebase any MQ patches you've made, e.g. local configuration changes, hacks, etc.

More on rebasing applied patches with Mercurial: http://hgbook.red-bean.com/hgbookch12.html#x16-28900012.8
Towards a Value-Added User Data Economy
I think the real reason is that Twitter looks so simple, that everyone thinks they can do better. Deep down, most of us think we're in the top 20%.

I've thought about how I would have made Twitter, but the truth is that the Twitter problem is probably not something that is easily fixed. The people at Twitter have had a lot of real world experience and have more data to base their development on.
Size matters: Yahoo claims 2-petabyte database is world's biggest, busiest
Yeah, those two were the main reason I posted it actually!

I don't think he was being intentionally inflammatory, and I was curious to see if any others actually agreed. Has anyone actually experimented with codeville (Bram's vc tool?)
5 Data Visualization Dissertations Worth a Look
> svn commit

> svn update
I was told that what the world needs now was love sweet love. Clearly, I was misinformed.
Probably depends on the country in question and their policies.
Cubit: Decentralized search plugin for BitTorrent
Welcome to Erlang :)
Which leads to the question.. What type of laptop will all the hackers buy if Lenovo doesn't pull things together soon?
VC investment in India small but steady
How to start a VoiceSite with Rs 100,000 (~2500 US$)
"bs."

There are a few people who I would never want to argue with on a few subjects.

On the subject of revision control systems, here's the list of people I would never want to argue with:

Linus Torvalds

Bram Cohen

Tom Lord

David Roundy

I'm sure there are others, but I don't know them by name...and that probably means something about the ones I do know by name given that I'm not a VCS geek and I don't use any DVCS system.

I'm not saying you shouldn't argue with them. I just think I know who I'm willing to take advice from merely on "authority". You'll need to be a more effective salesman of your ideas, if you're to argue successfully in this instance.
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Short Story: A Long Way Down
The point 1) is only partially true. For example, I don't have any friends on Twitter, but I use tweetscan to search twitter, when I want to see most current events about something...for example, I want to buy some newly announced gadget, so I do a search now and then to see links to new reviews, or short ideas from early users about how they like or dislike it.

I think this might by one reason why twitter is so popular - it can be used for many different purposes.
If you consider using ThinkPad, you can find the following specialized forum useful:
http://forum.thinkpads.com
My loved ones? Thank you for thinking of them!
Nobody here fucking gets it.

If Twitter moderates any legal content, they are no longer protected under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a communications service provider and are instead a publisher, which makes them directly liable for any user's libelous statements even if they didn't know about them.
What on earth would make you think this is the site to post this story?
Where? I don't see it?
The only reason to acquire such a TLD is to set up a spam page/site. No one here thinks seriously that you have bought that domain with the intent to brand/build a product lol.
I think Google could suggest such things. It just kills me when I see quick posts like this. Just go to Google, do your research, and then ask us specific questions. Do you like this CMS? Does anyone have experience using x?

You're wasting your time with this kind of post.
What warmed-over yestershite is that? Boo.
more from Lennon:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
OpenID: Does The World Really Need Yet Another Username and Password?
Soft-hyphens and inline-block; Subtleties in Firefox 3 RC 1
Ask YC: Best Linux distro to deploy as a Server
I am about moving my web application (which has a reasonably high traffic) from a shared hosting package to my own hardware and i will like to know the best Linux Distro to use as my server. There is alot of talk of Ubuntu on the desktop but i dont know how well it performs as a server.
rsync is usually configured to use ssh by default. no need for -e.
Google Unveils its Search Algorithm Secrets
The mystery behind the Google Algorithms is finally disclosed partly though. Google opens up its closely guarded search algorithm formula to the world.
Could someone please describe how a lot of different phone number help you run a business?

I guess there must be a benefit - I just do not see it right now.
Database anti-patterns
Tt
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I'm looking at MSI Winds with great interest. If you can handle the small display, you that might be good for you.

Price should be at $400-500ish
I understand your argument - news.ycombinator, and all crowd sources / aggregated news sites don't up-mod independent thinking by definition.

But from another users POV, even your posts can be seen as trolling and flame bait; you voice your opinion harshly without contributing to the overall discussion.

I mean, if you included the comments that led up to your outburst, you were just as much trolling as I was when I commented about you being down-modded.

Let me make it clear that, aggregated news sites - like you said - encourage trolls, and keep independent new ideas low on the upcoming/new stories. But this is not because trolls down-mod independent thinking, it's just that there is too many trolls UP-modding noise. The trolls themselves don't actively down-mod good/independent ideas.

So we are all left with what you call the "Cory Doctorow Problem".

But any comment (and I stress comment) thats down-modded below a certain point is usually spam, trolling or flamebait anyway, and I can usually rest assured skimming or skipping entirely that post because the crowd have deemed that post not worth my time.

Each individual has their own "Cory Doctorow Problem", as in your case; (many) other comments which you have made have interesting opinion and/or contain food for thought - that contribute to the discussion - are not down-modded (albeit, not up-modded either as if an opinion is genuinely independent not many people agree with it at that point).

As you said, Aggregated news sites get worse over time.

In my opinion, the easiest way to fix them is to create a private, invite only aggregated news site, with respected members of a community. If you keep the community the right size, the members will filter out trolls, and completely (as humanly possible), eradicate most noise.

I've detracted from my main point though, so I'll stop typing now.
Gale lacks the hype.
Totally agree. I've seen these situations arise mostly when managers task problems to be solved as they stumble into them, instead of actually knowing what needs to be done and who will be doing it when.

The result is everyone waiting on some guy to clear his MORE critical projects. In a lot of cases, the same projects end up needing a lot more support than they think, simply because they have no clue what development actually involves and didn't plan to train anyone on their own team on that (we'll do what we know how to do first...).

Anyway... your point is totally on. Can't say I sympathize much with the company though. This shouldn't be a problem with an empowered team. And blanket messages telling people to just "go and do it" sound like a meta-management problem. If you need to blog about it, your company is probably too big for that sort of approach to work.
Rrrrrrrrr
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Perhaps non-point penalties?
I've been waiting a month (!) to get Comcast cable broadband installed in an urban area. (Fios isn't available) The problem is the state and local cable franchise monopolies, which limit competition and choice. States that have opened up competition, like Texas, are seeing prices drop. It's also the local regulatory hurdles on rolling out new fiber...its hugely expensive to get the permits.
New Facebook layout available for developers.twitter like
I think he's serious. If he were intent on spamming, why post here? Just host the computers abroad and run with it.

I think the rule of thumb with ICANN is: (1) never, never, never, NEVER approach or try to sell the domain to the big company, and (2) don't do something easily confused with what they do.
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What about something like this?

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204814777&list...
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I have been using ff ever since the closed beta last fall/winter. Even though I have been careful to not follow too many people (currently 42) in order to not drown in a flurry of feed items, I have missed a feature such as rooms all along.

Being able to organize discussions on a certain topic in a separate feed should help reduce clutter and provide for "time-efficient" reading.

Right now, you end up doing doing a whole lot of browsing and context switching when filtering news, technical posts, tech talks from among "funny" YouTube videos shared or "liked" by your contacts.

Btw, my ff account http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon and a room I just set up http://friendfeed.com/rooms/electronic-gaming - feel free to join in.
The battle for the future of the social web
I've been using Ubuntu for a couple months on my server, and its been perfect (though its not too much traffic). I mainly used Ubuntu because thats what I have on my desktop, so I was comfortable with setup/installation/config/etc. If you use linux on your desktop, I'd stick with that, just because a production server isn't the best place to experiment. If you're new to Linux, Ubuntu is great to start with because theres lots more documentation for it than for other distros.
But their site says they are trying to patent their widgets.
I've had domains ending in ZAP and TIP, both grand.
I use Debian or Ubuntu (which is based on Debian anyway) since I prefer apt-get over the rpm tools for managing the system. But really, that's more preference than anything else. I've used Fedora and Red Hat before that for a long time.

They're all fairly similar and pretty much equally configurable as far as servers go. Just choose one, learn the tools you need, automate with shell scripts, and away you go :)

I find that the key for manageability is scripts. I have a repeatable mostly-automatic process for building new servers from a base install that I've been using and tweaking since my first server, now it handles everything from Apache and MySQL to iptables, backups over rsync+ssh, etc.
If your language allows both (+ 1 2) and (+ 2 1) then there's more than one way to do it. There's always more than one way to do it. That's just the nature of languages. Even in pure arithmetic, both 1.99999… and 2 represent the same number. It's inescapable. The point isn't "let's only have one way to do it." The point is to have One Obvious Way To Do It. And that's the Python motto. What this article is doing is showing the mappings between the way you might be used to from other languages to the preferred One Obvious Way of Python.

Decrying syntax is nuts. Humans work better if they can pick out visually what's going on. Even Lisp people indent their ifs and defuns. (And if Lisp doesn't have syntax, what the hell do ' or # or (in Arc) [] do?) Now, if we have to have at least a little syntax it's also nice if it's easy to pick out from the visual impression of the syntax what it is that the programmer is getting at. In my opinion, Python does a great job of this.
I dunno, the Python convention is "if you don't mutate, return a value; if you do mutate, return None." Since you wrote function('baz', MODULE_LEVEL_CONSTANT) without an assignment in front of it, I would assume that function must mutate something. Since strings are immutable, that just leaves either the display (print) or the second argument. I guess the real point is don't mutate your arguments and print them. Do one or the other, but not both.
"... i will like to know the best Linux Distro to use as my server ..."

The best Linux distro is probably a BSD variant.

Your OS choice for servers differs from desktops. Security, stability and available expertise is more important than ability to configure. The self compiled Linux distributions available for your desktop could expose your server to attack. You can read more here for reasons why ~ ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/unix-faq/faq/part6

think of BSD as an older, more conservative
and stable OS than the "open-all-doors" Linux ...

You can use Linux, but it takes a bit more work to secure than BSD. For the simple reason Linux is younger, more open and therefore less secure than BSD variants (unless hardened with patches like SE) ~ http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Unix/bsd.php OBSD and FreeBSD would be my choice. FreeBSD was also the choice of Viaweb. I suppose "Robert Morris" knows a thing or to about securing systems ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/vwfaq.html BSD OS's are safe, secure and have access to the source, support lots of hardware with caveats. Here is a quick choice guide ~ http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.phpr/10825_3393...

Of the Linux servers I'd stick with Debian variants which includes Ubuntu. Debian has their own way of doing things but it is stable, well understood. Maybe SE-Linux is worth a look ~ http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux

"... i will like to know the best Linux Distro to use as my server ..."

That also depends on what hardware you are using. Is it hosted, your own?? Check your hardware lists before you choose your OS.
I've been using Linux on Servers and Desktop for almost 10 years now, and I still think that's a hard question to answer.
On my desktop I use ubuntu, but I would definitely not use it on a server, it would require a hell of a lot of work to get it to be a decent server.
Some years ago I used to install Red Hat on the servers, and if you are a beginer on Linux that's what I would advise, the Fedora Core.
I usually install Gentoo on my servers, but if you don't have a steady Linux background that's probably not a good idea. When I say Gentoo I could be saying any other distro where you have full control of all the installation and administration process like slackware.
As for Debian, I hear a lot of people praising it but each time I installed it on a server I finished regreting it as they have some weird pre-configurations and configuration files tree for some things and are very purists in others. As an example I could refer vi and apache. Vim as been around forever, and comes with pretty usable pre-configurations in most distros since at leas when I started using Linux but debian still comes with an unconfigured vi for default, not vim. Oposed to that, apache comes with some strange configurations and some strange directory structure and files for the configuration files.
Ubuntu works great for me.

aptitude install foo baby
I think he meant domain names are dead. URIs are still very much alive and well.