skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not just that giving a voteworthy supportive response requires domain knowledge — you also need something to add to the original article. I've seen lots of good articles on topics I know about, but usually I'll just upvote rather than comment because the original article did a fine job by itself. If I do comment, a lot of the time it will just be a minor clarification or tangential thought rather than something that merits a lot of upvotes.

Skepticism, on the other hand, is automatically something meaningful you can add.
Never fear, a new "HN" that will satisfy you will pop up somewhere, sometime, if it really has degraded that much.

(and then that one will degrade too, and you will lament that too)

Comic relevant:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/20/
I tried using excanvas and it didn't turn out so well for my usage, actually. I can't remember why....I'll have to give it a go again, thanks.
I thought the same: "Oh, an unknown/hitherto unexplored variable - wait until the Creationists get a hold of this!"
You beat me to it.

I was thinking Feedburner, but they only raised $8m.
Definition of protest:

* a formal and solemn declaration of objection [check]

* express opposition through action or words [check]

* the act of making a strong public expression of disagreement and disapproval [check]

Maybe you are right in that I should have been doing that already but I didn't feel comfortable using the flag feature for anything that wasn't obviously off topic (like politics).

I've changed my mind -- I'm flagging any topic that is non-hacker science, politics, or random news. I'm also encouraging anyone who agrees to do the same. I flagged 8 posts on the homepage.
Your distinction between "description" and "explanation" is interesting. It seems like "explanation" is very much what you describe in your second sentence: describing how an observation is a consequence of a broader array of forces from which other, diverse phenomena also emerge.

So you can explain a theory in much the same way by embedding it in a yet broader basis that explains multiple theories. For example, the theory of magnetism was long ago explained as a special case of electromagnetism, and now of the electroweak force. In the same way, gravity could be explained by quantum field theory or string theory, but more work needs to be done to do so.

Your feeling of disappointment might come from the issue of "intuition," which can make explanations feel satisfying.
Many explanations for everyday things feel intuitive; they "make sense" because they fit patterns that we're familiar with. Many physics theories are deeply unintuitive unless you spend time with the detailed math. That doesn't mean the explanations aren't explanations; it just means that they don't feel satisfying (without intense studying).
How much karma do you need to flag stuff as non-relevant?
"You don't need a lot of stuff" really resonated with me. I'm currently taking this mindset and applying it to my startup lifestyle. That, and learning how to connect with many different kinds of people, were two of the biggest takeaways from my six months of traveling.

I personally wouldn't try to run a startup while abroad, since living in a foreign city takes up so much energy (both to enjoy my surroundings and to figure out how to do day-to-day things).
Link to patent http://www.patentvest.com/console/reports/docs/app/201002077...
which is why the Library of congress exists to begin with

Interesting, I was not aware of this. Can you cite evidence?

I sometimes wonder how you can bring yourself to use the internet

Exaggerate much?

In any case, the Internet's underlying technology was developed by the DoD. Today, the infrastructure is private. To be honest, I'm not clear on where bodies like ICANN fall, in the public/private space. Can someone enlighten me?
Presumably, someone has already checked this, but... it seems like temperature might be the primary influence. As the temperature increases, the heavier radioactive gases, like radon, as distributed more evenly, and higher up in the atmosphere. Was this tracked?

The signal appears seriously weak relative to the noise...
In my experience this isn't a problem. By and large, I don't communicate with my girlfriend about intellectual shit. However, we try very hard to communicate with each other about serious life issues, including the death of my mother, her medical problems, whether we want to have kids and if so how many, how to match our career and life goals so we can spend our lives together, and so forth. Communicating about that stuff and sharing intellectual observations are two entirely different ballgames.
The only repeatable processes you should implement are:

1. Identifying your customer
2. Creating a fulfilling customer experience

Now there's a ton of ways to support #2, but if you've truly understood #1 you know which ways to follow with. The hard part is making the experience consistent yet unique for each customer/customer type you have. Measure everything, or create proxy measures and plan before acting.
There are many, but this one is lengthy

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/01/22...

and another

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/07/25/megan-mcardle-is-jus...

It's not her reasoning -- usually it's her "facts".
Social Media marketing is the child with ADHD of Marketing
Regarding point 1), it's even worse than that. College students live in an environment where "do-gooder" behavior objectively harms them.

If I slack off and you study hard, the professor is comparing my 40/100 to your 85/100. This results in me getting a lower letter grade.
From their data (companydata.csv):

name	founded_year	zip_code	raised_amount
Invenergy	2001	60606	$459,000,000.00
Groupon	2008	60654	$172,800,000.00
Hostway	1998	60606	$110,000,000.00
HighTower	60661	$100,000,000.00
Affinity.com	2006	60606	$85,000,000.00
NeuroTherapeutic2006	60631	$43,000,000.00
MediaBank	60654	$40,500,000.00
Initiate Systems1994	60606	$31,000,000.00
ACTIV Financial 2002	60606	$25,000,000.00
Firm58	2005	60661	$22,680,000.00
Echo Global Logi	60654	$17,400,000.00
Vibes Media	1998	60606	$15,000,000.00
Arroweye Solutio1999	60661	$14,000,000.00
BridgePort Netwo2002	60601	$13,000,000.00
Mirage Networks	60602	$12,000,000.00
SAVO	1999	60607	$10,000,000.00
Open Kernel Labs2006	60606	$9,750,000.00
InXpo	60642	$9,000,000.00
Manifest Digital2001	60654	$9,000,000.00
Info	60601	$8,400,000.00
FeedBurner	2004	60610	$8,000,000.00
Sittercity	60654	$8,000,000.00
The Point	60622	$7,300,000.00
Allen Brothers	60609	$7,100,000.00
TetraVitae Biosc	60606	$6,300,000.00
Compliance11	2005	60606	$6,178,766.00
tvCompass	2003	60631	$5,100,000.00
Cleversafe	2004	60661	$5,000,000.00
Viewpoints	2007	60610	$5,000,000.00
GrubHub	2004	60614	$3,100,000.00

edit: There are a few more but I truncated the list for brevity ;)
The points and comment sorting system discourages thoughtful posts in favor of quickly formulated quips which capture the mainstream view and are posted soon after the article is submitted. Like this one.
I have been wondering if others were noticing what the OP is saying. I noticed it on the last article about weight gain where I posted links to research and people whose job it is to understand and comment on that research showing that insulin is not some magic weight gainer or the boogey man. I simply got down voted, I'm guessing because the research conflicted their view regardless if they were based in fact or not.

I still like HN and just understand that every group at some point solidifies its own social mores.
The business case for social intranets
Blackhat 2010 Videos
New Numbers Reveal: Cord Cutting Is Real
(I voted you back up from zero).

Please: stop overthinking it. Use the button in good faith. I'm guessing it takes about 4 keystrokes for Graham to change the flag thresholds (either karma or flag-count) if this becomes a problem.

It is a much bigger problem that people don't use the flag button at all than the fact that some people might flag otherwise good stories.
Ed Weissman on B2B Opportunities for Startups
Ask HN: Review my web app Availablefordating.com
The idea is to find a partner only when he or she is available for dating.

Basically you post when you're available for dating at a particular day so that others can see your profile and contact you. If you aren't available for dating then you won't be on the search results and won't receive messages from other users.

Any feedback or suggestion on how to improve the site would be appreciated.
Thanks!

http://availablefordating.com
But it's very difficult to argue against reasoning if you don't believe the facts they are derived from. If you don't have time to do the research yourself, you tend to trust past behavior. She's been caught manipulating facts to support her point-of-view -- so, I can't accept her "givens" without research. I think pointing out that someone has been documented doing this in the past is enough to warrant not accepting the premise until verified.
Having grown up in the States and lived in London for nearly seven years, I have to agree.

It's not that UK supermarkets don't have choice, it's that US supermarkets are spoiled for choice. I mean, I went back home and saw a WALL of bread, and a long aisle where half was just cans of soup! For me, it's not just the difference between 10 different SKUs of peanut butter and 50+, but US stores seem to have much more stock of each SKU, too.

That said, YMMV.
Haystack:  A New Alternative to Tor
German billionaire: “The Donors Are Taking the Place of the State”
I see one of these posts every few months. Yawn.
Was going to mention that myself. I just finished both Down and Out in Paris and London and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Orwell's commentary on money is definitely worth checking out. A very different glimpse of capitalism than that often seen on HN.
Congrats to them for the exposure! Awesome example of someone taking an idea, bootstrapping it, and running with it.

I saw it on HN first :-)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1616154
Wow. Invenergy and HighTower so shouldn't count.
So you did not go to Europane on Colorado near Mentor for baked goods?
People don't like others who raise the bar.

How much don't they like others? Under what circumstances? Why? are all people like this? Is there a way to model this behavior?

The same thing can be said about co-workers that work harder. Sure others don't like them because during the performance review they will be compared to them.

What if the co-workers were good friends? What if the co-workers made the team look good? What if the co-workers were charismatic and sincere? What if the co-workers had done significant favors for each of the 'others' individually?

A lot of science is carefully proving and describing the obvious.

Now, I don't know if this study succeeded is doing so based on the article ... but in general, when common knowledge is distilled to precise facts it becomes something you can, e.g., use in software.
We use JRuby with a bit of Java. The JVM is a very interesting place to be, with relative safety in the language and runtime, C-ish performance, and access to lots of lovely libraries. And you don't have to program in Java to use it.

Here's how we went from Ruby to JRuby + Java: http://bens.me.uk/2010/jruby-in-practice
Social Steganography: Learning to Hide in Plain Sight
I found that criticism less than persuasive. If a person says that $1000 in medical bills is to low a threshold to declare a bankruptcy to be due to medical expenses, then the fact that the actual threshold the study used was even lower ($1000 in medical bills or A or B or C) doesn't detract from the argument and merely makes the critic look bad.

All the other specific criticisms seem to be either equally pedantic, or matters where there could be a reasonable difference of opinion expect for his proper criticism of her for getting the response rate of the survey wrong which does significantly effect one of the points Megan raised in the article that was being debunked.
There was another explanation that came up recently, called "emergent gravity". The author of the paper (linked below) believes that gravity is an entropic force (i.e., it is a result of entropy in the universe, but not a fundamental force in it's own right).

You can read the author's blog for more info -- specifically, the post titled "Essential points of the paper".

Blog:
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~erikv/page20/page18/page18.html

Paper (PDF):
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.0785v1.pdf
I agree with you, and I think it's because we spend our money on technology. When you buy the latest gadget immediately, it just becomes obsolete. When you save up to buy the latest gadget, a better one comes out before you're done saving. So you get a better a gadget and have more money for more gadgets.

I guess a lot of people want to have the "latest and greatest" for fashion reasons, and credit cards are appealing for that reason. I did that in college and it took me like a year of having a real job to pay it off. Sadly, other people never do pay it off.
Firefox Panorama: Tab Candy Evolved (now in Firefox 4 beta 4)
You can use it as a PHONE. On the Droid, calling people seems secondary.
maybe you are right but isn't it good that some rich out-of-touch people are at least attempting to try to understand the situation, instead of pretending the homeless don't exist like so many of us do?
I've been here from the beginning, and I disagree almost entirely. In my opinion, the quality of this community stayed remarkably high from the earliest days. While Reddit became a sad, sad place where dissenting opinions are quickly shut down by an angry mob, here we can actually have intelligent arguments without any name calling, where two sides seem to genuinely respect each other. I have not seen this in any other online community that got this big and existed for more than a couple of years.

It seems like most people here really do follow the "if you wouldn't say it to a person's face, don't type it", which is incredible.

As far as non-relevant links - yes, there's that. To me, most of those are still interesting, some of those are annoying. But - I've learned to just ignore the ones that I'm not interested in.

So - of course everyone is going to have their own opinion on this - but I think HN is still nowhere near "jumping the shark" point
Reminds me of this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/627/
>trivially turn uninhabitable areas of our own planet into earth-like enough places for human colonization.

What?

They're called "houses". See also, desert irrigation, slash/burn farming, terrace farming, and Lapplanders & Inuit peoples.

Edit: But yes, parent's comment that Mars is trivially terraformed is as bonkers as your post.
Zoombu opens up their flight search API
Or maybe he has Twitter on another screen :-)
The problem there is not with SLAs at all, but with how they are set. It is sadly common for SLAs to be dictated by marketing/bidding/sales, with no regard for reality.

Similarly, if you can't reply to every priority 1 ticket within 24 hours, that suggests that not every one is priority 1, rather than simply an issue with SLAs as a concept.
Plotting Doubted in WikiLeaks Case
This looks cool. I'm impressed it's under 10K (I do think it's funny that the 10K contest allows the inclusion of libraries that are much bigger).

I've bookmarked it to use in the future.
Hold a blanket up horizontally by four corners so it's flat parallel to the ground.

Drop a basketball in the middle.

See the sag? That represents gravity in this analogy.

Space/time is the blanket, the sag is gravity because of the mass of the basketball.

Gravity is the sag in space/time because mass came into existence.

(matter came from the energy @ big bang when it cooled)
You forgot part 3, where law enforcement compels Apple to activate this "feature" on whomever the suspect of the day is.

Most people don't realize that they are trading their privacy for a shiny GUI when they buy an iPhone, which is why the EFF tries to remind them.
Couldn't get sifflet installed:

~$ cabal fetch sifflet
Resolving dependencies...
cabal: cannot configure pango-0.11.2. It requires cairo >=0.11.1 && <0.12 and
glib >=0.11.1 && <0.12
For the dependency on cairo >=0.11.1 && <0.12 there are these packages:
cairo-0.11.1. However none of them are available.
cairo-0.11.1 was excluded because sifflet-lib-1.0 requires cairo ==0.11.0
cairo-0.11.1 was excluded because cairo-0.11.0 was selected instead
cairo-0.11.1 was excluded because sifflet-1.0 requires cairo ==0.11.0
For the dependency on glib >=0.11.1 && <0.12 there are these packages:
glib-0.11.1. However none of them are available.
glib-0.11.1 was excluded because sifflet-lib-1.0 requires glib ==0.11.0
glib-0.11.1 was excluded because glib-0.11.0 was selected instead
glib-0.11.1 was excluded because sifflet-1.0 requires glib ==0.11.0
I'll make a good bet they saw it on HN first too :). For better or for worse, many of the tech writers of mainstream pubs pay attention here.
We're writing our startup using Java and Google App Engine, so we're obviously stuck in the middle of something. But in the end, we're confident that Java is giving us the best performance for what we're doing (big data), and no matter what happens between Oracle and Google, there's still an Open Source programming language that can't be taken back.
Yeah, saw it here too. It's nice to see it's picking up...
The sad thing about homelessness is that some of them are mentally ill - which is why there are homeless. My friend tells me about the regular homeless men and woman who camp out near the Hospital ER where she works...hoping to be admitted, but never being taken in for treatment.
It's definitely intellectually lazy. But dismissing something because it was also made into a bunch of films? Utterly failing to think for yourself and just reacting via knee-jerk because it's past an arbitrary mental line of what's 'acceptable' to consider? Certainly falls under 'crazy' (i.e. high irrationality), just not what most people think of when they hear 'crazy'.

And I certainly wouldn't characterize singularitarians as advocating a human-less future without considering potential dangers. Anyone associated with the Singularity Institute for one will at least claim to consider potential dangers.
Most people have spent their lifetime watching people completely fail at predicting even the immediate future. Dismissing predictions of the singularity as scifi bullshit isn't a lack of sanity, it's basic extrapolation.
Ask HN: What kind of computer did you learn how to program on?
I was looking at this article on the old Commodore 64 and it brought back memories of cranking out Basic code in front of a TV-turned-monitor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 What kind of computer did you learn on?
Bing is now powering Yahoo in US & Canada
Thanks for your responses! I appreciate your thoughts on this. Seems like the consensus is that a side job is okay if it doesn't ever take over as the top priority.
Icons of the Web, by Nmap
People can create an account with just a username and password; we're already effectively allowing anonymous posting.
YCombinator is under the left-bottom corner of the MSN butterfly.
What I intended to say exactly is very simple. The post which I originally replied to states that the guy intends to basically copy journal articles behind pay walls and put them on some site where everyone can access them for free. I stated that such a thing would firstly be a breach of copyrights, secondly is unethical, thirdly there is no reason to do it and I tried to give my reasons which are summarised below.

It is nice for sure to get stuff for free, but I suggested that someone would have to pay for it. If it would not be the current institutions and professionals which pay for it, then the money would either come from the research funding, or professor's pay, or higher university fees for students as professionals who work in that field need not buy such articles, but to publish such articles requires money which universities would need to find from somewhere.

I do not know if an editor is paid for editing, or a peer reviewer for reviewing, but many of these journals are printed. You can find most of them online but even there there is much overhead, such as customer support, people to add the articles online, format them and all the rest.

Currently, professionals pay for this infrastructure. If you are a lawyer for example, you would probably need access to these journals as the law changes all the time. So too if you are a doctor I would think, or a psychologist, or historian...

Universities pay for it too, but students do not directly.

You can argue that they charge too much, you can argue that the system needs to be reformed, but I was trying to argue that the journals do not need to be free. That is so because any given journal interests a very small number of people and the general public would not understand them or have any interest in them. If one is doing computer science, ok they might be interested to read one article or two in the field of medicine which might be of a general interest, such as the article in point, but generally, they wouldn't be interested to read articles from a field in which they do not operate.

Therefore, to conclude, as the public would not really have any benefit from having all the journals for free, I would rather the professionals who have an interest in the journals provide the funding to support them.
Guys, I found a way to save $10 a month. I just tell other people that they're awesome, and due to some social stigma (or perhaps my intrinsic awesomeness, who knows), they tell me the same thing back. Now I have $10 extra every month... maybe I am awesome!
Some information at:

http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/2010/04/the_future_of_soft...

"The Future of Software Development"
I think the interesting thing about technical work is that the real productivity gains are not in working harder, but in using better methods. If your co-worker is way more effective at a technical job, you can usually learn from her and become more effective yourself, without working much or any harder...

I think this is an important distinction... if my co-worker raises the bar by working harder, then yeah, I'm expected to work harder. but if my co-worker brings more effective methods? suddenly I become very interested in learning from this co-worker.
I thought it was clear from my post when I said "Mars-like" that excluded Mars. (Since the subject of debate is extrasolar planets.)

And I was speaking in reference to traveling to that planet, which is virtually impossible with current technology.

And to expand a little more, I would say a generation ship of some sort would be required to get even to Alpha Centauri, so creating a self-sustaining ecosystem from whole cloth is a prerequisite for traveling to extrasolar planets.

Now, you could make an argument that some magic FTL technology will appear, but I still think that terraforming is a trivial problem by comparison.