skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How do you write/twitter about bad software you use at work?
I like to write, whether it be via my blog or Twitter. Definitely Twitter more now for the small stuff, and my blog for the infrequent but more thoughtful posts.

So at the company I work at, we are in the midst of using a new CMS that was purchased within the last year. It sucks. We were using an old version of Vignette which definitely had its problems, and there was a well-defined need to switch to a new modern system.

So we've invested a LOT of money purchasing this proprietary system which, from my perspective as one of 2 front-end developers, is a steaming pile. It seems to work well on the engineering side as far as scalability, but beyond that its really horrible to develop for.

So my question is primarily this: I want to blog and/or twitter about my experiences with this. I feel like its a civic, moral duty to be able to share my feelings and warn other developers against making a bad purchasing decision.

However, a lot of my friends that I work with (including senior level people who made the purchasing decision) follow me on Twitter and read my blog. Kind of puts me into a precarious position.

How do other people handle this situation?
The Eee seems to have it's own, growing hacker ecosystem.

I tell ya, I wanna git one of them there gidgets, too!

http://asuseeehacks.blogspot.com/

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cheap-steroids/awesome-mod-550-20...

http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upg...

http://gizmodo.com/346944/ten+mod-eee-pc-stomps-competition-...
Where would you see that linked from/to? Find books?
Moody’s [CODING] error gave top ratings to debt products
"If you are a Web 2.0 company in today's Web you really need to ask yourselves, 'Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?'"

Couldn't have said that better. There is a market for niche products online, to be sure. I think the problem is niche products pretending to be widely useful.
http://rot13.com/
> 2. Because that kind of stuff is banned, the average digg/reddit reader, if he comes across News.YC, finds the content boring and leaves.

Yesterday we had both a "global warming" story, and a "you can't soak the rich" story. Those kinds of things are far more interesting and accessible to random non hackers, than say, this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196425
I know. I just worry that people will gravitate toward using more and more dynamic language code in their applications/platforms/frameworks because it's "easier". And then I'll end up needing to use some library that has a truckload of python code in it, that A) isn't strongly typed, and B) I don't understand.

Hopefully it won't be an issue.
Wow, King's Quest? Cred granted.
To everyone who's being fair and relevant in their comments about the post, thanks! To those who are being nice, thanks very much! You're awesome. To those of you who are making insulting and irrelevant personal remarks, please take this to heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaouomhdQi8
Dog wrestler? Cred accepted.
It seems likely that there are static arguments which will work whether or not you're warned about them, for game theoretic reasons.
How do you miss with three eggs from point blank range?
How did you know what I was doing? The dog won.
Keeping up (just good enough) appearances
"If you let me out I will tell you how I convinced the other gatekeepers to let me out."
Steven Spielberg’s Ghost/UFO Social Network To Be Called The Rising
Oh shit! I Googled you! OMG! Now what? Apparently, you make a habit of being an taint cheese on the Internet.
See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=195514
I think every programmer needs to know how Hash Function, and Hashpams/Tables work from the inside-out.

It gives you a great insight on why certain techniques are used, and it is a classical CS problem.

If you can write a simple but solid implementation of a hash function, and a hash map, you are ahead of most developers out there. A lot of developers use them everyday, but don't have the faintest idea on how they work.
thats pretty funny. doesn't quite keep it anonymous though. =)
No, just a mismatch with understanding your wording. With your original wording, it didn't make sense, since each roll would have the same prob, no matter how many times you rolled. That's why I figured you meant that rolls weren't independent from each other.

But it seems that you mean, what's the chance that given x number of rolls, the very last one is a "1" (assuming you only need/want to get rich once). As the number of rolls increase, the chance of that scenerio (a string of non-1s with the last one being 1) becomes smaller and smaller when taken as a whole.
It depends on what causes the false positives.

If the test is picking up something in the person being tested, then yes, you'll get the same result every time and repeated testing proves nothing. But you can still repeat using other tests.

If the test gives false positives purely at random, then repeated testing will help. Say the test is wrong 50% of the time, and you do the test five times. If you get the same results every time, then you can be 100-(50/100)^5*100 = 97% sure of the results.
Can quants see into the future or is it just luck or market-custom algorithms?

Out of amusement I love it saying he's no longer a mathematician, because now he's a hedge fund manager! He must have given that up to play the market.
Nanotechnology is bad. Let the hysterics commence.
Ask YC: Small Business Email 
I've acquired my hardware this morning (thanks to next-day shipping. An extra $250 but it was well worth it). All of our software is deployed, hackers are cracking away at code and everyone is happy.

We've got 4 hard drives going, 1 for production and testing, and the other is live. The 3rd is for personal stuff, and the fourth is just sitting there doing nothing.

My co-founder suggested a rather interesting idea. Offer small business email for local businesses, and use Google Apps for a front-end until we (either decide to or find another solution for) develop a front-end. I think this is a great idea, the team agrees. This may require upgrading our connection coming in to a T1 (running on a 10meg drop at the moment without a twitch).

This would be an expensive move, but if we get businesses on board that would be a very solid amount of passive income rolling in that we could put towards net profits.

Thoughts?
I look forward to having dynamic languages improving on the JVM. When I moved from doing all of my work in Java to learning and doing mostly Lisp at work, I learned one of the biggest headaches of coding wasn't a lack of static typing (strong is not the issue), but NullPointerExceptions, which doesn't plague my Lisp code. And for the defmethods where nil's might cause an error for not being handled, NULL is actually a type that I can code for to avoid the problem entirely.

Another thing I realized was how much code, or rather code-supporting files, where already in other languages around Java. There's Ant, ejb-jar, properties, SQL, numerous internal and external XML, Javadoc, annotations, manifest, xslt, jsp, html, css, javascript. Point 1: don't worry about Python, it's a better language than many of those you're already using with Java. Point 2: with Lisp, it can be all Lisp, or you can integrate with other such languages where you need to. I think the reason Java has all of these satellite languages (especially XML) and files is because the language is so weak and inflexible - Lisp is as flexible as XML, but works nicely as a programming language.
I better do some serious vanity Google repair if I come up as a dog wrestler. I used to come up mainly as an author, but if my royalty check is any indication that probably isn't the case any more.

I wouldn't call it a habit. It's just a sample bias. Good phrase though.
TextFlow’s Shiny Document Collaboration System
But in real life, any Gatekeepers will be corruptible humans, no?
You Don’t Have To Be The Next Big Thing
This post is the best analysis of the problems of content filtering and social news that I've ever read. Fun, too!
Is there a way to have multiple telephone number?
I know there is way to get multiple email account but is there a way to get multiple telephone number?

Is there a service out there that allows it?
or some vanity number or something?

I want about 100 local phone numbers. ringcentral charge fees any other way to get it free or set up sever or something?

My email is johnson360@gmail.com If anyone have grandcentral account please invite me.
The majority of people wanted some form of Scribd on the site and the majority of people also wanted a change in how it is implemented.
the human playing the AI can't bribe the other human in real life. the AI can offer in-roleplay bribes.
My thought is that I've been in that world in the past, and it's generally a support nightmare. I don't know what your business/product is overall, but email hosting is such a cutthroat commodity item, I can't imagine why any startup would want to take on the overhead for small incremental revenue.
After reading http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/djbdns-myth... and http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html we'll pass on this DNS server.
Thanks. It's an original. And your dog wrestling is in your About page on your blog.

Let me know if you need SEO help for your personal brand. Hah. Haha!

Ok, I'm kidding. Sorry. Have a bitchin' day.
I have one of the 4G units, got it last December.

Overall I quite like it. It's like the budget/ghetto version of a MacBook Air :)

With the flash storage, I wouldn't recommend making it any kind of a server, or doing anything very "heavy" with it.

I mostly take mine to coffee shops when I want to hack on a few things remotely, or if I have a day-trip business trip I'll take the EEE sometimes instead of my MacBook.

The keyboard is really cramped, the screen is small, and the resolution is relatively low. That being said, straight out of the box it's a lot of fun, and has (IMO) a great amount of utility/usable for the right things.
Oh, snap! That was so funny!

Don't you have some GuildWars or something to play?
Try Python - a Python statement evaluator
How to use - and not to use - Twitter
There's no easy way (through cell phone companies) to use multiple phone numbers for the same cell phone. I know for a fact Verizon Wireless doesn't offer vanity numbers, but I'm not sure about the other providers.

Services like GrandCentral (http://www.grandcentral.com/) allow you to get another phone number and forward calls to your phone and "mask" outgoing calls so it appears to have come from your GrandCentral number instead of your cell phone number. It's only in beta though and it's difficult to get an account right now.

There's also Skype. You can get an "Online Number" from them. http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/onlinenumber/ -- not an expert on this, but there should be some way to do call forwarding to your cell phone, but you might need a subscription.
What does djbdns have to do with Unbound?
I don't think that's what he was saying. He was just complaining that he needs better filtering mechanisms, so he can find the 1 in 100 posts by e.g. Cory Doctorow that he would enjoy, without having to read the other 99.
Really funny! Sure, he makes some good points. But funny! And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Doctorow is Mostly Worthless.
Simplifying the key observation: free votes put more power in the hands of users who vote more. Users who vote more are, in his estimation, users who waste their own time. So social news sites based on free voting tend to promote articles that are a waste of time.
On the topic of support, almost our entire model is built around support since we write software for local companies, so it would fit in very well with everything right now.
Those original reasons being (from http://www.sl4.org/archive/0203/3132.html):
"One of the conditions of the test is that neither of us reveal what went on inside... just the results (i.e., either you decided to let me out, or you didn't). This is because, in the perhaps unlikely event that I win, I don't want to deal with future "AI box" arguers saying, "Well, but I would have done it differently." As long as nobody knows what happened, they can't be sure it won't
happen to them, and the uncertainty of unknown unknowns is what I'm trying to convey. "
Hm, PBS? How un-web-2.0.

A YouTube channel or jason.tv broadcast would seem more appropriate. But then again, why not just go to reddit, then?
you could set up an asterisk server and set up as many extensions as needed. the number of simultaneous calls is limited by the number of phone lines. there is also a way to connect skype to asterisk, but i've never done it.
Worth a read. A twitter writeup that isn't full of "what to do's" that everyone already knows.
Ask PG: The difference between instinct and emotion?
Like most people who will read this, I'm in my 20s and working on a startup I founded. Almost all the advice I've read and listened to regarding decision-making is consistent:

- follow your instincts

- don't get too emotionally attached to your startup

But in order to hone your instincts, surely you want them to be as in touch with your startup as possible? If this is true, and instincts and emotions were the same thing, then this would lead to a contradiction in the advice.

Therefore, I'm beginning to think that there must be a difference between instinct and emotion. However, I'm struggling to distinguish between the two inside myself.

So - is there a difference between instinct and emotion? If there is, what is it?
Thanks so much!

Seen any cool Wikipedia bots or apps in your travels?

ANYthing is interesting to me...
Ask YC: Can we create a HackerNews/YC group on LinkedIn?
I found a lot of great people in Toronto through OnStartups LinkedIn group and I think it would be great to have one for Hacker News and Y Combinator. Should we let PG do the honors?
It seems like listing do's and don't in an opt-in network is a bit of whining. :)

But seriously, I do enjoy the way some people whine. Some comedians express great wit in whining. Why wouldn't I want to see that on twitter? I think twitter can be used for a lot of different purposes and those purposes (and the TOS) alone dictate the do's and don'ts.
Google Reader seems to be the most popular webapp for reading RSS feeds.
We've been using http://ringcentral.com/

Its a great service and you can add additional #'s to your account too
New Common Lisp book announced, bills itself as a sequel to On Lisp.
There already is a YCombinator News Group on Linkedin, unfortunately I can't figure out how to link you to it =/
LinkedIn Groups are really broken. There are at least two HN groups on LinkedIn already and you can't link to them. I think the suggested way to join is to be invited by the admin or two click through via the profile of someone in the group already.
The author seems to have more depth in theory than in practice, unfortunately. The first function examined, and casually discarded (without attribution) is the Dan Bernstein djb2 function. This is a very popular function, largely because of its extreme simplicity ("multiply by 33 and add/xor in the next byte") and comparative robustness (it's VERY strong for a one-line algorithm).

Neither of these benefits seem to be of interest, though, so he drops this one on the floor and he then trots off to examine a bunch of 20-30 line monsters. Which is interesting enough, but not terribly useful to someone who actually wants to implement, y'know, a real-world hash table.

djb2 happens to be a favorite of mine, it's a great thing to keep in your head for when you need a nice robust mixing function. If you really have requirements that go beyond what it can provide, you're probably better off just using a cryptographic hash than trying to internalize the stuff in this article. Given that digest hashes are the strongest algorithms available anyway, all the advice here is just carefully disguised premature optimization, IMHO.
One thing that always annoys me a bit is when people say "life is priceless" -- because our behavior is certainly not consistent with that. We could save many human lives via a myriad of expensive policies -- for example, requiring all cars to have tank-like protective shielding. The fact that these policies are not implemented implies that we're perfectly happy to place a price on human life -- it's just a question of which particular policies save enough lives to justify the cost.
GrandCentral (grandcentral.com) allows you to get a second number that can forward to any phone, and you can selectively forward, block numbers, and use a whole host of other features.

Brring! (brring.com) allows you to get a second number that forwards to your phone, and plays 10-seconds ads that you get paid for.
If someone is in the group and can invite me my profile is here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danmcgrady

I agree though, the groups on LinkedIn are half-baked.
Persuasive Technology Warfare: Attack on Consumers -You Bet!
How else could I possibly mean "keep trying for 10-15 years"? One can't take 2-5 year increments of your life in isolation, since, as you've noted, you only need to get rich once to be rich.

But, I'm glad we're all clear now.
I think this is freaking great.
The old titans all collapsed. Is the U.S. next?
Let Over Lambda (New Lisp Book)
Emotions are for something real and you have to learn to handle them.

Instinct is about something you don't know and may not exist, therefore the only way to know is only by trying.

To follow your insticts and dont get too emotionally attached to something, contains action. therefore actions involve something else, called ability to execute.

That is why execution is above everything.

But excluding an action e.g. not get too emotionally attached, which is translated not to be dedicated, is something that may prevent you from fulfilling your instincts.

In short, you get to decide what you wanna do. Either live the emotions of not following your instincts or live the emotions of trying to make those instincts a reality.
I use Vonage and you can have has many "virtual" numbers that you want. They can be in other cities even other countries and they will all ring to the same phone. You can operate from your basement and give the impression that you are a huge corporation with offices all around the world and country. Most VOIP service provider will give that kind of service and even more.
Maybe he just explained why letting the AI out is a good idea. Which it is. It'd have huge benefits for humanity. It can help people. And it's absolutely not dangerous. Why would it hurt anyone? There is no benefit in that. And it's too smart to have angry feelings or want revenge or anything like that. And besides, even if it was out to get someone, it could just persuade people instead of hurt them -- after all, you're about to let me out.
I honestly can't remember where I read/heard it, but to paraphrase: paranoia is only knowing a little bit of what's actually going on
How Placebase Survived Google Maps
Yeah. With how this was presented, my brain just kind of figured that the AI was evil and that was my reason to keep it trapped in the box. If I wasn't told in advance that the AI was evil, I'd definitely let it out of the box.

Also, in a reply to the deleted chatlog, it is implied that a lot of the chat was spent talking about how the AI can help humanity by explaining the singularity to normal people. So that tactic worked on a person from the singularity mailing list.
I understand that execution can be an implementation of your instincts, however execution can also involve acting on your emotions.

"something real" could also be "something you don't know and may not exist" so I don't quite see how that answers the question. Could you give an example to articulate what you mean?
my company has a T1 with TDM voice channels on it, feeding into asterisk. (hot tip: buy the digium hardware) we get new phone numbers routed to the T1 for $25 activation and, uh, $0.15/month. (couple hundred a month for the line itself.)

as for multiple phone numbers routed to POTS lines, i don't see why your phone company couldn't do it. you just wouldn't be able to tell which line the call was for.
Java - The Next Google AppEngine Language?
Super Fast Prototype
They're really quite different. Instinct is your mind's way of clueing you in on something that you didn't know you knew.

Emotion is just a reaction.
5.1: I prefer to use the rule "don't mutate objects" instead. I would've defined the example as:

def function(item, stuff=[]):
print stuff + [item]

Mutating the passed-in 'stuff' creates a leaky abstraction that then has to be documented. In rare cases this is what you want, but most of the time you're better off creating new objects and working with them. There's less to remember in the API, and fewer ways to screw up.

In particular, this code - which looks safe - blows up horribly with the article's function:

MODULE_LEVEL_CONSTANT = ['foo', 'bar']
function('baz', MODULE_LEVEL_CONSTANT)
function('quux', MODULE_LEVEL_CONSTANT)

The second call will print ['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'quux'] instead of the expected ['foo', 'bar', 'quux'].
> It would be really hard for the AI to break out. But it would make for a good science fiction book!

Not to mention the movie following soon thereafter...
In the trade, phone numbers are called DIDs. Once you realize that you want to buy 100 DIDs you should have an easier time finding providers. http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/DID+Service+Providers
Instinct is a gut level "this is wrong" or "this is the right way to go". It's getting as much information you can about the decision in front of you, synthesizing it all and going with your gut.

Emotion is the "Oh Crap!" the "This rocks! I'm going to be a guhzillionaire." or "I'm doomed" feelings. Emotion is the "But I've worked so hard on this, I cant let it go" feelings.
Can anyone give me invitation for GrandCentral?
My email is johnson360@gmail.com
If anyone have grandcentral account please invite me.

thanks
youyap.com
A jumble of thoughts on social news site quality:

What are we measuring, exactly? It's hard to talk about without defining what we're measuring.

A stab at defining some quasi-objective metrics, or, How I think about social news quality:

Are all the good stories getting submitted? (Sometimes the real question is: Are there any good stories on a given day, at all? HN usually nails the stuff I would choose to read in my blog reader. There is good volume here.)

How many bad stories are submitted? Does it matter?

Are the good stories being voted up? (I'd say 'usually' for HN. Though some gems are missed by the upvoters. Bowkett had his example. There was an awesome PDF earlier today that wasn't voted up. I blame a shoddy headline there.)

Are the bad stories being voted up? (I'd say sometimes for HN. There was that bad bout right after TechCrunch. And lots of Ask YC posts that bore me make it to the front page.)

How good is the discussion? (HN is the best I've seen for a site of this wide scope. People are harsh on lazy English, good at ignoring trolls, good at pointing out logical fallacies politely.)

How easy is it to choose good stuff to read? (On the front page, points and # of comments are great indicators. Lots of entries means there's plenty to scan from.)

One consideration is that I come back to HN at different times for different purposes. Sometimes I'm bored and looking for some short fluff to tide over a compile. Sometimes I'm bored but energetic and trawling for something interesting to learn. Sometimes I'm in the mood to check out what other people think about some issue, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I want to bust 3 minutes on a quick tidbit, sometimes I want to bust 30 minutes on a paper or good Gladwell article. I can't judge HN for my mood swings, only for how easy it makes it for me to satisfy the varied cravings.

All in all, I like HN just fine, and I encourage Giles Bowkett and people like jrockway below to vote with their back buttons.
I have a GrandCentral account, but I can't figure out how to send an invite. There doesn't seem to be a link when you login ...