skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm wondering if you know whether there's any program that allows earning miles to spend on any airline?

I'm going to be doing a trip in two months that will take me from the Mid-West to SE Asia and then I'll hop a few places in SE Asia before coming back to the states - I currently don't have any frequent flyer program as I hardly ever fly (a few times a year) - but I'd hate for this trip to go wasted - plus I may be traveling quite a bit next year.
I use both and Instapaper does much nicer job of reformatting HTML into something readable. Most of the time it is a blessing, but sometimes it may be the curse (e.g. you have colored table with critical information).
1) Write down all of your new ideas on a list. This will help you stop thinking about them, without losing them forever.

2) Wait for an idea to really grab you. Keep thinking about it. Try to convince yourself that it's just not a very good idea. Have other people critique it harshly.

3) If you're still excited about the idea then start working on a prototype. Spend a couple weeks on it, definitely not months. Work on it long enough to know you're not going to get bored of it, but not long enough that you'll feel too invested to end it.

4) Take a really harsh look at the idea now and your motivation to continue working on it. If you aren't more optimistic and excited than when you started kill the project now.

5) Never give up. Never surrender.
Pictures?

One of my babies :) :

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/windmill/17_sep_bill...
I imagine they'll provide a configuration option for users to choose which they prefer, either in the Prefs menu or about:config.

I agree though, I prefer seeing update notifications popup at startup or anytime for that matter, than have it run silently in the background.
Ask HN: Help me find an exotic programming language to learn next
I want to start learning a new programming language but frankly none of the popular languages appeal to me right now.

I have written code in these languages, in order of experience:

- PHP, Javascript. Java, Python, Perl, C

I've been doing some random walks on the massive list of programming languages on Wikipedia and I've found a few interesting choices. Here is a small list:

- Cofeescript http://coffeescript.org/

- Fantom http://fantom.org/

- HaXe http://haxe.org/

- Neko http://nekovm.org/specs

- K http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_%28programming_language%29

- Factor http://factorcode.org/

- Ragel http://www.complang.org/ragel/

I think learning a niche language will be fun, could give me a different perspective than the procedural and OO languages I've used so far and could prove to be a valuable and marketable skill in the future.

Which exotic programming language would you recommend?
But! Realize I have good motives.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don't need to read any further.
Microsoft links up with LinkedIn
I work at Twilio (but was not involved in this fund) but I was working on a Twilio-based startup before I started here a few months ago. I would have totally done this (in fact, I'm a little jealous that I can't participate). 1% for 10K is way better terms than a lot of the friends and family 'rounds' I've done in the past. If you use Twilio in your product or service and you're serious about making a business out of it, you should do this. It can't hurt to have 500 Startups, Dave McClure and Twilio have your back.
RoboForm. It is indispensable. It encourages good security because now you can use meaningless, random 15-character passwords that are different for every site. It's a pleasure to use. Signing on to a site is a breeze: Roboform not only remembers your password, but also the site's URL, and your User ID.

Caveat: you must include the Roboform password file in your daily backup.

I also print every user ID/password, and keep them in a binder with alphabetic tabs.

(I do not work for Roboform not have any financial interest in the company).
That was, of course, hyperbole (about blowing up my phone) however on certain very sensitive systems I do have a kernel module that provides a wrapper to execve() and that goes directly to a remote logging server and gets replicated. Yes, it's fucking noisy, but storage is cheap and databases are searchable.

As you well know, a careful individual can evade it if they know it's there, but the initial prodding would get logged.
provide the "warm fuzzy feeling" as some freelancing/consultant how-to once said:

http://unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html
Many standard rpg mechanics in a large, seamless, 3d world full of both NPCs and players can tax resources.

Movement is one already mentioned, but in general, AI isn't only turned on in combat. NPCs move outside of combat - most creatures in the world wander about or follow a pre-defined path. I don't recall if they did on WoW, but I know in Everquest creatures used spells of their class both in and out of combat, such as buffs and heals - a creature in Everquest would even heal and buff up their allies. If monsters are buffing, you now are tracking those buffs & their durations - when we added monsters buffing to our multiplayer game, we made them infinite in duration to get acceptable performance.

Another operation that could be taxing is calculating line of sight (LOS) - this factors into any action an NPC or player would do. You can't have monsters attacking players, or buffing allies, through walls.
That's one of a series of posts Mr. Arrington made. They also fit in a general trend of manufacturing a dramatic store with no source and no supporting evidence.

Blaine's slide was perhaps poorly chosen, but it's also entirely correct: scaling the rails portion of twitter is trivial, just as it would be with php, .net, or countless other technologies. The stateless tier isn't interesting. But for whatever reason, the meme was never "mysql can't scale at twitter", but rather "rails can't scale at twitter", even though the app server stack had little to do with it.

Also, those of us who've been through the pain of a rapidly growing startup, even if it wasn't growing as fast as twitter, understand that the real challenges are people, politics and vendors. Rarely is there a deep technological problem that requires a novel solution. Typically the fight is over getting the things you need to implement a well known solution.

In particular I had a few calls with early twitter folks at the time and know first hand that the people involved were not clueless. They were quite humble and helpful in providing frank discussions of vendors and technologies we were considering.

Just because it's a blog doesn't mean it's a new medium or that bloggers shouldn't expect to be challenged on the accuracy of their claims. I don't see any reason that the expectations I'd have of reasoned discourse in person, by phone, video or print don't also apply to the techcrunch blog.
just a small point of disagreement here - Forbes is not a serious publication
1password (Mac only I'm afraid) and dropbox.
Ask HN: How can startups using Yodlee afford it?
I wanted to build a new product using the functionality that Yodlee provides (it is used by inDinero, Mint, etc), but using their contact form, I was contacted by a sales agent who says that I would have to sign a 1 year to 3 year contract, pay an upfront fee of $12,500 and pay a user fee between $3 per user to $1 per user, depending on volume.

Are there cheaper alternatives?
Would love to see numbers and citations or just a good article on this.
Ask HN: Which Android phones have Wifi disabled?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that there were a handful of Android devices that had wifi disabled on them? Does anyone know which ones? Thanks!
I don't know. You should ask them.
How about a Lisp?
I wonder what the % of message traffic is on Facebook compared to SMS or e-mail?
Clickable links:

- Cofeescript http://coffeescript.org/

- Fantom http://fantom.org/

- HaXe http://haxe.org/

- Neko http://nekovm.org/specs

- K http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_%28programming_language%29

- Factor http://factorcode.org/

- Ragel http://www.complang.org/ragel/
Drinks and casual conversation are not a particularly efficient way acomplish that.

Probably north of 50% of the sales of most enterprise software companies happens over drinks and casual conversation. And probably over 90% of business development deals happen in similar circumstances.
learn R.
Also http://tashian.com/multibabel/
Shouldn't lights be optimized first to reduce accidents? I've always understood inefficiency to be an intentional safety feature.
They should probably work on getting a minimal logo.
> Outside of programming, aren't we all used to varying shades of gray?

There are even more colours.
GM Resumes Political Giving
IPhone vs. Windows Phone 7 (Video)
Real hackers don't steal passwords to begin with. There is no end game.
When I heard FB was down I went over to twitter to see how many tweets this was generating, I was surprised to see the first refresh of "XXXX more tweets since you started searching."

I decided to start keeping track and I made a graph of the difference between refreshes. You can see my graph here. It seems like in the course of just a few minutes (I was probably conducting my little experiment for 10 min?) you can see the frenzy gaining momentum then it seems to die down until only hundreds of people are talking about it per 15 second refresh.

A little bit about the graph, each tick mark on the bottom represents a refresh (15 seconds or so I think). The Y axis is the difference between refreshes.

Graph:
http://drp.ly/e3oH
I've considered it but it doesn't feel right at the moment. Definitely a language I want to learn in the future though.
6502 Assembler.
The Dark Side of Android Hacking
There are numerous methodologies for valuation. "last share traded" is by no means the ONLY method. Markets by definition are made up of actors who independently value commodities in various ways, none of which are definitively the only valuation method. Is that tautological enough for you?

Perhaps a little more humble thoughtfulness, rather than indignant ignorance, would do you some good.
Cmd+delete is not the equivalent of shift+delete on Windows. On Windows, that key combination permanently deletes an item. In OS X, this key combination moves the item to the trash.

Good point

Based on the authors perspective, anything that is different is "annoying"

Strawman. There are lots of things that are different about a Mac that I either like or feel neutral about. I just listed the ones that annoy many PC users who make the switch. Things like having a window on the right side of the screen that I want to widen, and being required to move it to the left and then resize it, instead of just resizing it by dragging the left edge of the window is not just different, it's a pain in the ass.
One Django Dash judge commented on one project that "There's not much Django here - looks more like a small bit of Twisted/Redis integration." http://djangodash.com/judging/results/team/14/

That judge must have been looking specifically for Django.
Whilst I agree with some of the sentiment of your post (we all have public personas), I don't think this calls for a banning at all - not even a light slap on the wrist.

If you have a public persona, then it's certainly fair game for others to criticise it.

Seriously, what do you think this is, kindergarten? This is the real world. If you don't want to receive undesired advice or criticism, don't be a public figure.
Pick up a copy of "Wishcraft" and a copy of "What color is your parachute?" Work their "programs" (for lack of a better word). Use a goal oriented mental framework rather than a timeline oriented mental framework -- ie don't set dates, set milestones for what needs to be accomplished to get there from here.

I am also looking towards leaving the East Coast. I am not job hunting. One of my goals is to make my online stuff profitable enough to support me and my sons (with their assistance -- they aren't actually children). The main thing I am working on here lately is figuring out what milestones I need to hit to get there from here. That approach has turned out to be very reliable in the past for other "impossible" challenges.

Good luck with this.
At least Hacker News still works. All is well.
And the game?
Agreed. I don't think and article has made me feel so uncomfortable and wierded out for a while, if at all.

Critically assessing someone in such a personal way is more than rude it is totally obnoxious. It verged from religious idolatry to deep psychoanalysis. And all of it based on stuff Patrick has posted online and nothing more.

Sorry to rant, but I really disliked seeing that post voted up so much today and it is definitely material I'd like to see none of :)
You should try the same games with human translators for comparison. Perhaps using mturk, to make it cheap (although non-professional, but at least comparable in price to Google translate).
Unless your compiler is smart enough to optimize the tail-call into a jump...
You should go for a functional language like Haskell, Clojure or OCaml/F#. They're mainstream/practical enough that you could write real programs in them, but different enough from the imperative languages you already know that they'll open your mind to new things.
HN needs its own drama tv show. This is getting ridiculous.
wow! you really think 2 dead people disagree much with Paul Krugman?
I've always wanted to write a tool like Game Maker that was built, itself, on game design principles. Make a level, get XP. Game mechanics that synergize give you combo points, that you can "spend" on a Mechanical-Turk-like marketplace to get people to contribute 5-10 minutes of work on your game, or playtest it. Every time an A/B-tested-metric you've inserted moves positively, you unlock new premade-resource-packs. Etc.
Or one could espouse an ideal on real world behavior closer to that of kindergarten, wherein one claims things such as 'be nice to one another', and the world could...be nicer?

While your realism is realistic, its also chilling.
I don't think an outright ban is what's called for, but it might be a good lesson to observe that if you intend to take on a person that has done no harm that it would be nice if you passed it by them before hitting the 'post' button, and that the only result from mudslinging of any kind is that you'll end up with dirty hands.

As for psycho-analysis I hope nobody takes the time to read the rest of that site ;)
This is one of the few interface niceties I miss when I go from OSX to Windows.

The action of springing through a file structure while holding onto a bunch of stuff is really great.
This one was fun too...

http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/did-lastfm-just-hand-over-u...
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/22/deny-this-lastfm/
Good point, this post talks about their need to rewrite the scrub code to fix a bug and make it faster. http://blogs.sun.com/ahrens/entry/new_scrub_code
> There's no demand for that sort of thing here.

Don't shoot me for saying it (I wasn't one of them), but 197 upvotes say otherwise. How often does something get 197 upvotes?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244
2 wrongs don't make a right
Sure, but I would hardly call secondary markets for startup shares a valid market or even try to compare it to public market. Come on, Joel!

So you would agree with the valuation of Slide or Ning a few years ago? Maybe. Would you now? No. Valuation of private companies is not a science but an art. That's startup 101 stuff. Do you really call Sharepost a market most investors would call credible? Please.
Please don't. Please use the voting buttons for expressing contribution to the discussion, and not agreeing/disagreeing.

And real estate is not that bad an investment in general, if you do not rely on it going up forever. The real problem is its illiquidity.
And we also haven't seen evidence of a great monetizing juggernaut... yet.
That's a great idea. Do you have any more info about the technical side of awesomereminders?
A root cellar, 8'×8'

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=204054&...
Judging by the fact that in spite of receiving 197 upvotes it is currently not on the homepage it received a large number of flags as well.
Does anyone know how he promoted it? I'm having a bit of trouble with my startup (historious), in that I don't know how I should go about promoting it...
You can always choose to reveal more later. Once it's out there though, it's nigh impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. Even if you take it off your sites, other people will still remember it, still quote it....etc... So, if you want to try this, I would suggest: Get your toes wet and see how it feels. If it makes you cringe, stop. If you feel okay about it, give it a little time to see if you notice unpleasant side-effects that you had not expected before moving forward. Don't assume that the initial response is all there is to it. It's not.

(Former public navel gazer. Mostly personal stuff, though.)

Good luck.
Wow, those airline loyalty programmes seem pretty sick to me, if they encourage such behaviour.
joking aside, this actually had this effect, as so many pages actually resolve some components to facebook.com, the slower response was felt on a wide variety of sites.
Well, I for one am glad that I learned from articles like this. It's a hell of a lot easier to read discussion from "real programmers" and learn from them. Now that I'm in college stuff like this is second nature.
I take it from the downvote and lack of general interest that the problem isn't that nobody saw it, it's that people genuinely didn't care. I'm surprised, but I stand corrected.
The Genius and Tragedy of HN Linkbait.
According to an article on the NY Times:

"While tuition has risen at public universities, his report said, that has largely been to make up for declining state appropriations."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/education/03college.html
I suspect that they have been coming more and more common in a positive feedback cycle. I know when I was in college in the early 1980s, loans were available, but not especially common; a lot more people seemed to be working their way through school, but as the cost rose that became less and less viable.
There's no use pretending this is anything other than the public world. Bits of HN comments regularly get quoted on blogs and news sites. I recall someone once upon a time getting blasted both on and off HN for a callous comment made on this site. Pretending that it's not public will only lead to sore disappointments when reality invariably proves that actually, yes, this is a public forum, and anything you say here may be held against you, and your persona here is public and liable to be criticised.

To be honest, if you can't take a bit of criticism (or some slightly freaky fans), the internet seems like an odd place to have a persona.
In some cases, the timing of the submission also matters.

e.g I've posted a few interesting articles that dropped off the new page
Are those only the names of the candidates?
All I can say is that your writing and insight makes my life a lot better. Thanks.

You should drop by Silicon Valley so I can get you a beer.
Where are the most interesting uncharted waters in social software design?
ye but that turned out to be true. the founders quit over it.

one of the sysadmins posted to a forum and then deleted it a while later.
I am really curious as to the answer to this question:

Of the stories that got more than 10 votes, how many of those (first) 10 votes came from upvotes as opposed to multiple submission.

My theory is that it frequently takes multiple submissions to get stuff in the front page so that it can be upvoted, rather than through upvotes from New. In which case the best story in the world might not do well if only one person finds it.
I wrote an article about this:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art/features/CoderGameArt/

In general, this was trying to offer concrete advice that people could use right away.

Here's what I'd suggest (and what I'm doing for my games):

- Make sure you pick something that doesn't need a ton of art.

- First, try and make all the art yourself. For certain styles and games, this is not as hard as you think.

- If you're not happy with your programmer art (and you should be very careful here of falling in love with your bad art just because you drew it), then find an artist online and give them your programmer art to redraw. That way you don't have to "spec out" the art too much, the bad art is it's own spec and can drop right into the game hopefully.
Dude, there is post right now on the FP about this. Even assuming you didn't see it why would you submit a regurgitation of the original news source?

Please don't make this site a TC RSS feed. Flagged.
I use LastPass[1] to store most of my passwords. It has extensions for every popular browser, auto-fill capabilities and a lot of additional features I don't really care about.

The only password I don't store there is the one for Gmail. It's the most important account for me, moreover it's the place where all the password recovery emails are sent.

I spent some time researching the architecture of LastPass and I'm quite confident that it's secure enough. The decryption takes place on the client side and passwords are not visible to anybody who doesn't know my master key.

http://lastpass.com/
heh... ironically facebook's error rate is at an all time low!!

http://developers.facebook.com/live_status
I don't see the point of learning Coffeescript (compiles in an obvious manner to js). Fantom and HaXe have the somewhat interesting problem of an API that is compatible with many backend VMs. neko is the opposite and also possibly interesting. None of the above languages will teach you anything about syntax or semantics, they're mostly implementation details.

K and Factor should teach you about composability, semantics and expressivity. I have read some about Factor and I like the philosophy. Ragel looks extremely interesting and (from this list) is probably the one I would choose.

But the languages you know already are all semantically derived from Algol. You should program a lot more stuff in functional languages. I highly recommend Haskell to anyone wanting to expand their understanding of programming languages. There's a LOT to learn from Haskell, and few other languages capture as many Things Which Are Different.
Be ready to do your first gig way below your price.

The best way to do this is to offer a discount for new customers. Once you're established you'll instead want to offer discounts for established customers, but framing your low initial price as a discount will help you adjust it to the market rate once you have some experience under your belt.

Do something small but visible as a spare-time project.

This is extremely worthwhile. For example, I organized a meetup for JavaScript developers in my city. It grew over time and is now how I meet a lot of my clients and friends.
You can start with http://hotfile.com/dl/71319191/96579fe/ycombinator-news20080... - a mirror of old 'Y Combinator Dataset Of Posts Version 1.7' from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=296919 .

Also, could you please post final dataset somewhere when done?
Hacker News is dead, thank you Ruby and Apple fanbois
Hacker News is dead, thank you Ruby and Apple fanbois