skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
OK, I really need a reality check here. First, let me make it clear - on every reddit discussion about math and about Khan Academy that's I've been involved in, I heartily recommend it. I think what he's doing makes him one of the education heroes of the 21st century, and I'm a public school math teacher! But..."eloquent speaker"??? Khan drives me UP THE GODDAM WALL with his palsy-mousing and repetition while he's thinking on-the-fly. I mean, what amazes me about him is he's able to just sit down and do these videos without any script beforehand, which you can tell because he just starts making up examples while he's explaining things!!! But as a teacher - and professional speaker - and former theatre major - he makes me crazy. EVERY video I've seen goes like this:

"OK, we're going to cover (insert topic here). Now suppose we want to solve 2X=5, that's, uh, 2x, uh twoooo, (wiggles stylus, then writes 2), uh X (wiggles stylus, then writes X, eeeeequals, (wiggles stylus, then writes the equals sign), equals (wiggles stylus, writes 5) five..." Ad nauseum.

I have heard literally NO ONE mention this in any discussion about Khan Academy. Why? I haven't hallucinated this behavior - it's on EVERY video, because, well, it's his STYLE. And I've never seen this behavior at a blackboard by any instructor, no matter how crummy they were (and, whoo, have I seen some crummy ones!).

Please, someone tell me that I've fallen into some universe where I've become the character Monk, and I'm the only one who's bothered by Khan's presentation!
I did not finish, the sentence....

What this guy describes is the stuff RIM is selling years before the iPhone; form over function sindrome?
Don't automatically submit each article to HN. Have your hypothetical reader click a "comment" link which, if the article is not submitted, prompts them to submit it (and then leave their comment), or if it has been submitted, goes directly to the existing discussion.
Looks like social gaming really is the "big thing" this year.
At least that's what Google seems to think.
That's very pretty and pretty creepy. I like their interface a lot.
> You do need to root it, but on the Galaxy S that's a one-click process.

Does it void your warranty like it does on the Nexus One?
Source is open, yes?
If someone blatantly misrepresents your relationship, why would you want to make the relationship official on your end (option 1)? Maybe I'm not understanding the scenarios correctly, but it seems like you would want to push those people away rather than pull them closer.
I think his advice on outsourcing marketing, sales and support to an off-shore virtual personal assistant is profoundly dangerous.

When you've just launched, you have no idea what parts of your product are truly helpful to your customers and which have been a waste of time to build. Before my company launched I was completely off-base as to what we should be directing attention to, and it was only through talking with early customers that we identified where the focus of effort should be directed.

That direction wasn't obvious, either. It was only through speaking with many customers over many weeks that a vague idea of what just might be the best thing to focus upon emerged.

The author states that: "If you do not outsource these tasks, they will get in the way of work that's truly productive for your business.". However, without talking directly with customers, you are unlikely to know which activities are 'truly productive for your business'.

Outsource support at your peril.
Pricing a breakthrough product
Yes. Despite having a truly fantastic product, we're struggling to stay in business. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to say that there have been times that I would consider robbing convenience stores to make payroll.

I love making a great product, but hate the constant pressure to compromise my ideals to stay afloat. Every day I keep this business going, I fear that I'm turning into someone that I don't want to be, that I can't respect.

But maybe my ideals are wrong, maybe workshops are win-win, maybe we need to consider them even if I don't personally care for them. They're certainly better than some other options!

I also don't really hold it against bands when they 'sell out' --- they know their situation better than I do. :)
For anyone who's looking here before watching and wondering "WTF is a song being submitted?" it hints at topics like cognitive surplus, how people spend their time, feminism, and making a mark on the world.. all popular topics here from time to time ;-)
It's his job to figure out how he can help. He's supposed be a self-starting entrepreneurial animal right?

There's absolutely always something that can be done. Even if it only moves you forward 0.01% it's still worth doing. Even if he needs to learn a new skill so he can help more that's what he should be doing.

That said, it can be hard. The early days are usually very tech heavy. It's not reasonable to expect that he's really creating 50% of the value right now. But he can put in a roughly equal amount of effort.
I think people who would use the words "film critic" know that Roger Ebert isn't one. Most people would call him a "movie reviewer."
Tell me about it. I used to always read those .plan files religiously.
SF man selling jellyfish as household pets
For the San Diego Hacker News meetup announcements, we generally post the HN link on the SDHN mailing list and invite people to upvote so there's a realistic chance new potential attendees will read about it. Would this constitute a voting ring?
Yes and no; news.arc is open but the exact code running the site isn't public.
No, I'm simply pointing out that it's not at all informative to show that some people choose one beer over an almost identical beer because of marketing (everyone already knew that) nor is it fair to extrapolate the results to all beers (but Guinness).
Then I delete it from Ultrabook - it was embarrassing. Goodbook still has it stored. You can have a good-faith "please delete this" but that doesn't stop another party from keeping it.

How's this different from Facebook and someone saving an embarrassing photo that you deleted?
It'll be interesting to see some statistics on this.
Not worth a hacker news post.
I haven't really tried calling US phone numbers. I called maybe twice and it went fine.

I don't have the problem you are having. With me, I never hear the mobile ring when calling and worse it charged me.
"Hot Mess"? Maybe if you're Arrington testing (and bragging about) a super beta feature (number porting). I've used Google Voice for over a year now. I haven't had call or text sync problems for probably 6 months. It's actually remarkably stable for what I imagine is at work.
Ruby documentation site for gems and github projects
The statistics thrown out seem silly. 95/5% ? Sure.. Maybe if you're really, really, really good.. But as you approach someone with similar skills, your chances of winning drop off.. Probably exponentially. Also, practice is far from everything. Are two people who've never played just as likely to win? Even if they're playing eachother? :). But seriously, there's all kinds of aptitudes and tendencies, and the specific effects of two players individual style/skills affecting the outcome. Winning is finding a way to take whatever odds you show up with and gaming your resources to tip them in your favor. This article ought to be titled "winning is boring because I'm better than, like, everyone."
I tried to make a call to my cell phone, it rang for 60 seconds but my cell never rang. Then I made a call to my Vonage phone, it rang right away. Then I made another call to my cell, it rang right away.

Not sure what this means, perhaps they have some kind of special SIP routing setup?
Glad to see your business is still afloat.
If an extension in your web browser, triggered by a webpage causes a kernel panic, you have something far more concerning going on. A browser extension is not at fault here, even if it's helping trigger.
The Mesh Potato - peer-to-peer telephone network
The workshops I've done have been free. They have not been low-effort. I did a Crypto for Penetration Testers workshop on a Saturday that sold out the room and involved a team at Matasano writing 9 lab servers, and 6+ hours of scripted lecture. I did not at any point before, during, or after the workshop feel like I had "sold out".

Again: my head is exploding over this. Exactly what part of getting interested people in a room and talking to them seems scammy to you? And: if you're creating value, why is it wrong to ask for money for it?
You have to configure your phone number to direct your VM to GV or else it goes to your carrier's VM box or limbo.
Clean conscience is also a common English phrase, though, 'dirty conscience' isn't - but people would understand what you meant.
I think user engagement with /new needs to be substantially improved to reduce the effect of this. I'm a heavy HN user but only remember to check out /new once or twice a day.

Hmm. I probably go to /new 10 times more than I go to the front page. I suspect the problem with /new is that there is so much of it (especially at those peak PST times) that stories don't have time to garner enough eyeballs before they are pushed off the page.

PS. Wish I could un-downvote - I just clicked the wrong arrow due to clumsiness, sorry... Upvoted another one of your agreeable comments to compensate :-)
No worries. I was at the office is all. I don't voluntarily use IE7 for the fun of it. ;-)
I think you mean: leverage synergies in the semantic cloud by monetizing innovative social media value configurations.
I didn't realize the muted caller issue was google voice related. I thought it was a hardware problem with my N1. Although it had happened repeatedly even after a factory reset. I ended up getting a new phone by warranty swap and the day the new phone came my N1 started working again. Haven't had any issues with the new one though so who knows.
While it might not be a cesspool, it is as corrupt and weak as many others. And it's only getting worse.

(Not to undermine the extremely racist original comment)
A post concerning how the site functions isn't relevant? Dang, picky crowd.
I wonder how many of these "call you or a friend and tell them something simple" apps there will be? I guess if these actually make money the possibilities are endless.
Sounds like a NP-hard problem, am I correct?
I have a few pet links I always post when this sort of radical refactoring of education is discussed. Khan is doing via the net something a lot like a 'tracks and clusters' concept David Gelernter pushed in the 2009 Edge essays:

http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter

Roger Schank's ideas about just-in-time, story-centric curricula may also be interesting:

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html#schank
Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders
The lower bounds might be two but probably not 2 out of 3 :)

Though that is a smart plan if it works out so well for the GP.
Finally all my hipster and music loving friends have a reason to switch to Chrome.
It says "Telecommuting is ok." so you should apply!
Check the reddit source code and check out the blog, there is a lot of work done to cut down on this type of spam. Obviously as an end user, without a lot of data mining it would be hard to determine, but I don't often think to myself "Ah, this must have been vote-ringed-up".
I'm guessing he chose pool because it's basically a solo sport (certainly the practice he talks about is). He doesn't seem to have a feel for the interpersonal dynamics that occur in a head-to-head game -- think McEnroe vs. Borg, Fisher/Spassky, etc.
Yeah, ELPA is a start, but it's nothing like CPAN. For one thing, every time you do a release, you have to involve a human other than yourself. This is way too much effort for me, so I don't bother.

(On CPAN, I even get bug reports from robots!)
There's also a counter-intuitive: some expression almost requires a lack of finesse. REM changed which instruments they played at some point because they were "sounding too professional" or something like that.

Punk Rock was not about practice.
I think first order of business might be to replace the examples on the landing page to realistic ones. Not only will it communicate the idea/value much more clearly, but i think constantly using realistic examples can help you flesh out realistic issues that might not be obvious otherwise.
A technical solution to a social problem. I am not confident that this will solve the root cause of the problem. Not that I understand the root cause.

Coming from a game development background ("real" games not "social" games), there are feedback issues with the voting system. Frankly, I don't vote a lot because I don't understand the system. I usually only up-vote one story a day.

Sometimes, if there is a "crap" story in the top 5 I will up-vote the other 4.

Look up the term "meaningful choice" in the book Rules of Play.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play
http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp...

The problem is that I don't have to choose between story A and B. I can up vote them both because there is no scarcity built into the system.

I don't even think there is a scarcity model with voting. How many up votes do I get in a day? If there is a model then I don't understand it. That implies the second issue with the system is that there is a lack of feedback.

This isn't only an HN problem. I see the same problems with other social sites that try to implement voting or other game mechanics.

Focus on improving the system for good players. Don't focus on squashing behaviour by bad players trying to game the system. The good players will police the bad players if the system is fairly balanced. No one reads the instruction manual, therefore the good behaviour has to be designed into the system. And feedback, feedback, feedback. There needs to be better feedback when there is good behaviour.
No, we're saying the same thing. Brand => perception => flavor. Brand => perception => willingness to buy it in front of your friends.

The mind works in interesting ways.
The Impact of Free vs Paid on the App Store
IMO, of the various videos & podcasts of his I've found, this is the most thought-provoking & in-depth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C7FH7El35w
This is partly why I've stayed away from GV. It seems like it could be useful but it also feels too good to be true. I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm sure they'll fix the reliability problems but I'm still paranoid about security/privacy. I decided to let other people handle the post-beta beta period this time around.
Me too. But the worst thing about commenting here is how all the context that you are replying to goes away and you can't re-read your comment within the context of the discussion, because all you can see is the immediate comment you are directly responding to. Interestingly, this is the only site I comment on that has that behavior.
This is how I feel about buying apps
Honestly, if you have to motivate him to do work why would you want him as a cofounder? He should be self motivated. All successful business people are.

I'm currently building a website with a designer. If he wants credit, he has to do some work. It should be the same way for your cofounder. In life it's 90% effort and 10% luck.
How does that compare to the overall number of Motorola devices?

The unhappy ones are the loudest but that doesn't mean they are the majority.
Yeah, I see that sort of thing a lot... "submit to digg' etc... It always seemed kinda funny to me, asking others to submit it rather than doing it yourself. But it does seem to be accepted practice.
Up votes instead of 'thanks' would seem to me to remove any kind of interaction that helps foster a community. If people knew who up voted their post then that would not be a problem.
A few issues:

1) The small icon bar below the tagline frustrated me because clicking on the icons just tells me that the feature will be active when the app launches. I would recommend not displaying a feature that you aren't ready to demo.

2) The arrow keys do not work. I'm using the latest version of Safari on Mac. Clicking the arrow icons manually does work however. Also, consider making the image carousel seamless, rather than ending abruptly. I clicked the right icon several times, wondering why it didn't continue scrolling right before I realized I was at the end. A seamless carousel usually makes for a slightly better user experience.

3) The footer text would look better if it was white text on the darker background of the notification sign up form. Currently it makes the page look broken because there is gray below the form.

4) I would consider putting a border below the tagline, like the border above it. Just an aesthetic preference on my part, so feel free to ignore me.

Also, I wonder about your definition of "shipped". Compversions doesn't look ready to use yet. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Hire a visual designer.
hm. What do you think of the other suggestion, a "submit this to hn/talk about it on hn" link that asked a user to do the submission for me? does that make it any more or less spammish, in your opinion?
So, once I figured out what it was, I think that the idea is worthwhile. I don't know how much of a market there is, given that all the designers I've worked with just use pseudo-versioned Basecamp links, and give me multiple things to click on in my email (e.g., v1.0, v1.1, v1.2) -- if it integrated with Basecamp, I think you've got a huge winner, otherwise, I'm seeing it as a rather tough sell. Of course, I don't know the market that well, and for your sake, I'm happy to be wrong.

The main thing I see though, is that the front page needs a LOT more explaining to do. I thought that I was looking at some tool that detected subtle differences between photos, and couldn't grasp the significance of the picture variations thinking that there was some code to the squares and circles.

Some copy should easily fix that.

Other miscellaneous comments that aren't nearly so important (to me):
- if you've shipped, then why do the links say 'will be active at launch'? Didn't you launch?
- I'd probably left align the logo, and maybe the text. I don't know that I'd left align it all the way over, but to where the left margin would be on a 960 grid feels right to me.
- I quite like the logo, but I hate the font in the teaser.

This tool doesn't serve me, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but overall I think it's a fairly solid offering in general. I can definitely see it being useful.
News story was probably a bad example, but how about say blind people using Japanese braille which appears to be completely phonetic? Or how about the fact that furigana are often printed to aid people (e.g children) in determining how to read the Kanji, even for standard Kanji? Certainly Kanji can help after you know them but is it actually necessary?
It's not strictly a Google Voice issue. It has to do with the way background applications handle sound on Android. Other apps can cause the problem too. It's also the same root cause of random music playback bug. For example if an audio app is paused in the background plugging in a USB cable, which would normally generate a sound, also causes playback to restart. I believe it's a bug that needs to be fixed in the applications and not really an OS problem. Hopefully by now most apps have fixed it.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8038
* The logo looks like it was designed by the CIA to be hard to decipher.

* Showing two screenshots made me think the left was one version and the right was another. I no longer think that is the case, but I'm not sure. The screenshots are too small to really make out the UI.

* The example image made me think it was some kind of war photo. Maybe a different image would be better.

* Flipping through the photos with my keyboard didn't work (Chrome latest). Maybe that's not what you meant by "arrows and mouse".
Not to mention the part where it's not designed for realtime. If you want realtime, just use IMs.
Works fine in the latest Chrome release or Safari 5
it works pretty well for me. i've recently made a lot of lengthy calls to australia and india, and within the US.
Second Newspaper Chain Joins Copyright Trolling Operation
Not so much. Trust metrics (underpinning Google's PageRank) are pretty efficient at this sort of thing. If people A-Q all vote each other up, but nobody votes them up, their weighted effect is pretty close to nil.

Try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank and http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html for a bit of an overview.
I hate jellyfish, but still have to say this is a great idea. Actual site - http://www.jellyfishart.com/
Perceived value: customers are willing to pay a premium for pink color. That is only skin deep. How much would they pay for truly game-changing features?

The article also talks about anchoring. Radical innovation can be priced quite freely because the customer does not have obvious price references.
Worked fine in both Safari and Chrome for me on Mac OS X.
I'm using rails 3. OP is full of crap. Rails is a full stack framework complete with ponies, unicorns, and rainbows. Asking it to be minimal is a joke, but you can get rails pretty slimmed down if you work at it. You wouldn't want to build a full app on ActionController::Metal but you can.

The redesign has made the internal code of rails much simplier and ActiveModel is simply brilliant. I'm using CouchRestModel and having ActiveModel means I can use plugins like Formtastic right out of the box.

Rails 3 decoupled the major components. It's more modular now. I can disable ActiveRecord without the plugins I'm using getting upset that it's missing. If anything, this makes the framework less complex because you don't have to worry about interplay between the components.
Infosec Island Celebrates 2000 Members and More
Try it in Chrome.
If we can get a PG in here, I have a question:

Trust metric based, or something else?

I'm not asking for code, as I suppose exposing that could make it more attackable, but I am curious about the technique.
Google App Engine Blog: App Engine 1.3.7 SDK Bugfix Release
You're getting all wound up over nothing :) I write a blog about anonymity, so I'm pointing out that anonymity is part of the problem here.

Your point that moderation is the larger goal and reputation/identity is only a tool is certainly valid. I guess we disagree about how effective a tool it is. For a visceral, deeply depressing account of how different the same person's behavior can be depending on whether or not they're anonymous, check out the story of the harassment of two female Yale Law students on AutoAdmit: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfoli...
What is Hacker News?
This post is spurred by seeing the Hacker News guidelines this evening: [Moderator: feel free to remove this]

What IS Hacker News? Is it a social site for startups? Or venture capital? Is it similar to Slashdot (or was Slashdot once similar)? Is it a combinator for startups? (No pun intended). Or is it a more "elite" group of like minded individuals?

I am relative newcomer to the Hacker News scene, being a member for just under a year, but I've gained significant knowledge from those that participate here. I own and manage a well established Internet business, but with regards to Hacker News I struggle to understand who exactly Hacker News is designed for, and targeted to. Frankly, I suffer from an identity crisis at times.

I may need to be content with the understanding that I gain great perspective for my business by reading and participating here, but my curiosity still recommends that I ask this question.

Warm regards,

Lindsay