skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that the Oracle acquisition and lawsuit is troubling. I disagree with everything else you've said. Java has an established, vibrant open-source ecosystem. C# does not. Java was the brainchild of a bunch of sincere tech geeks. C# was another cynical MS business ploy. Sun and now Oracle are heavily invested in Linux and other open-source projects. Microsoft has many times described open-source and Linux in particular as its enemies and indulged in a lot of sabre rattling and hints of patent infringements and has fought tooth & nail to stop adoption of Linux and open formats and standards at every possible turn:

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/199501735/microsoft-...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2023127.stm
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/microsoft-file...

Would I be happier if Java were in better hands? Yes. Does that make Mono/C# a reasonable alternative? No chance. If you're tired of hearing these arguments blame Microsoft for making them intrinsic to any discussion of their platform. Technological choices sometimes have ethical implications.
Game wise, Farmville has the feel of nickel slots. You give up something of value, your spare time, for a chance at a reward. Since many view their time as low value, the reward is worth it. The interaction is based solely on luck. The buying of virtual goods helps people justify the time they waste on the game because it shows them that in game rewards have cash value.

I would really love to read a full blown social psych journal article on Farmville.
I not only enjoyed your post, but laughed when you said you were obsessed with pre-isbn scanning. I can instantly guarantee that would be a mistake I would make as well.
When I read the initial announcement, and the subsequent comments, by first thought was "Oh, I didn't know Firefox provides this functionality now." I switched over immediately, and I don't plan to go back. Occasionally it's annoying to only have my bookmarks on one browser, but I typically only use one browser anyway. Most of the time I'm on Firefox, but when I need the corporate intranet I use IE. I have no desire to share all of my bookmarks with the intranet's ActiveX controls, so I'm happy to not be syncing them over.
Scott Adams: The Social Network, "The best movie I've ever seen"
> If a 6 character variable name can be shortened to 5 characters without losing meaning, then I do it.

So.... what, you get rid of vowels, web 2.0 style?
However, from Facebook help center:

> Similar to being tagged in a photo, you can only be added to a group by one of your friends.

Maybe you either don't really need 61532 "friends" or Facebook should have a distinction between Friends and contacts.

Not saying that's a reasonable feature, but still.
Try reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn - an extraordinarily straightforward wee book.
I think in attempting to be frugal though some people can actually spend more. While the minimalist will get one of something and probably go for a good one to last the person being frugal might go for the cheapest one, or buy a set of cheap things covering themselves for bad quality, they may end up spending more in the long run when things don't last.
No, the purpose of the silly silo is to rotate you so quickly that the floor can drop from under you and you stay stuck to the wall. It is AWESOME. :P
There are fine solutions within any single browser. But that's just a non-starter for those who don't want to be restricted to one browser across all environments.
I love making hypotheses-"Selling and The Law of Reciprocation"-what d'you thnk?
.
The Impeccable Timing Of The Verizon iPhone Rumors
Great photo - "scrunchface":
http://bugbear.com/scrunchface.html
i don't think you can say SEO counts to your main domain in the same way as subfolder - at least there's no empirical evidence in the link above that subdomains are better or even the same as subfolders in terms of backlink value.

if my clients are REALLY worried about SEO, i always recommend subfolder. if they don't care or don't expect tons of backlinks to their blog, subdomain is generally easier to manage so i recommend that.
Do you remember what Zuckerberg said with this announcement? The 'pristine' social graph?

That's the whole point. He's trying to restore the meaningfulness of saying someone's a friend. Friends don't enroll friends in NAMBLA. I have to say, for the second day in a row I kind of agree with Zuckerberg. This isn't going to be popular, but it could actually lead to Facebook being less of a distraction and more of a genuine form of communication.
If people are actually interested in what caused the flash crash, it was a sale of $4.1 billion of E-Mini contracts by a single fund.

Report of SEC finding [PDF]: http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf
My comment was based on Mark's statements. The actual video is at [1]. Scroll forward to 1:26:30. I'll try to quote the relevant parts verbatim:

Reporter: "Do you actually get your friends contact info as well. is any of the data in a format that can be easily imported?"

Mark: What we are focusing on today is your information...not your friends information, because that is not your information..

That clearly seems to me like they will be scrubbing not just IDs but also email addresses of my friends when I download my data. So when I take my data to a new service, I am not taking my friends with me. This means any new social network that I want to export my friend data to still has to go via the Facebook API. And what's the catch with that?

What Facebook doesn't allow anyone who uses their API to do is use data you get from them to target ads to users even if the user consents.

See their terms, 9.6, for developers:

You will not directly or indirectly transfer any data you receive from us to (or use such data in connection with) any ad network, ad exchange, data broker, or other advertising related toolset, even if a user consents to that transfer or use.

Further, the new social network, a Facebook competitor, would continue to be dependent on Facebook and any future changes to their TOS which they are forever subject to.

A bunch of people thought that with the user now free to export all their data and import it into a new social network, platforms competing with FB, who want to source data from FB, would be able to do so without consenting to Facebook's terms like the one above and permanently free them from future changes to Facebook's terms. Clearly that is not the case, since using the Graph API means you are still subject to these terms.

I was not making any statements about Facebook's confidence or lack thereof. And sure there is no credible competition at this point, but that's my point. Competition is good.

Finally, you said:

It was rude, and deliberately so...it is my duty to call attention to this situation. A downvote is not sufficient.

If you think that calling attention to factual inaccuracies requires being rude, I think you have misjudged HN as a discussion platform and, in my opinion, misunderstood the general rules of conversation as well. I'll leave it at that.

I never implied that people "really want to leave Facebook". May be you should stop conflating opinions expressed in other comments with mine.

[1] http://www.livestream.com/facebookinnovations/video?clipId=p...
This is not really the same thing. Ballmer was answering a question from someone in the audience. The context and amount of preparation is certainly different. You would think he has some good clear prepared statements on a subject like the iPad and Microsoft's tablet offerings.
OK but minimalist could also be a Patek Phillippe Calatrava instead of an all-singing all-dancing Casio Pathfinder...
Talk about sour grapes. Industry standard game design has been terrible for many, many years and it's not Zynga's fault.
Whether it was a mistake is rather a matter of perspective: I'm sure the Microsoft folks didn't think it was wrong. But that aside: I realize that it may not have read that way, but I think what Mono does is an elegant solution to an unfortunate problem so I'm not knocking the approach. For something so fundamental (and obtuse), I just found that it was skirted a little too broadly in the docs that I read (I also searched around mailing lists for a while, where this particular topic seems to have been an intermittent source of confusion over the years).

Nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to address my observation.
The reasoning here is the same as photo tagging, or wall posts. Friends can tag "you" in photos without your explicit acceptance of the tag. You have a much more powerful tool for preventing "prank" photo tags/wall posts/group joins than Facebook could ever invent technologically: social pressure. To wit, these people are nominally your friends; even if you've been somewhat promiscuous, and they're just your coworker, or acquaintance, or distant family member, you still have much more leverage over their behavior than Facebook ever will.

So, if Joe Idiot tags you in a photo of a goat, or joins you in an embarassing group: a) untag/unjoin yourself, and b) tell Joe THAT WAS NOT COOL. Optionally, unfriend Joe. I.e., exactly what you would have done if Joe wrote a blog post about your embarrassing medical problem, or put you on a mailing list you do not like.
Roger Ehrenberg: The rebirth of VC - on the verge of a cyclical upswing
Mark Zuckerberg’s Take on “The Social Network”
so what (is so special about this) ?
How so? Looks like two legs to me.
> That's no small thing

I'm not saying it's a small thing. This isn't a netbook vs. iPad argument. I'm saying the resume-from-sleep speed has to do with good Apple engineering, not the keyboardless form factor (which is what the OP was defending).
I have some friends who use FB as their main means of communication. Instead of firing on a quick email to them, I send it on FB.
I wasn't implying that kids need lots of stuff.

I was implying that then you have a kid and have more urgent things to worry about than whether or not your life is perfectly organized.

Like how to get the kid to stop wiping their poop on the dog.
"2. A lot more convenient. No taking off shoes, check points and lines. Plus the chances are a train station would be a lot closer to the center of the city, rather than an airport."

I would imagine that the first part would change as rail became a more traveled medium, thus making it a more attractive target for terror attacks.

However, having train stations closer to the city centers than out in the suburbs would be great.
Journalism in the Age of Data: A Video Report on Data Visualization
Not to me; I find it too cute. The reason I call it such is that it uses a powerful mechanism to implement a trivial thing.
For-profit colleges’ increasingly desperate tactics
Thanks for the love :-)

Xpenser for Business is the commercial version of the product for businesses, and it's bringing in a good bit of revenue. At the moment it's by request/invite only, but will be generally available soon. Anyone interested in an invite can send an email to feedback@xpenser.com .

Users sign up for the free product, like it (or love it it :-) ), and ask to use it in their company. The free product is acting as a very good way of bringing users to our commercial product, so it's remained free.
Because the government doesn't want us avoiding social taxes by going freelance. What really sucks is I've been working and living outside the US for years now but I still have to pay 15% of my income to the US government on top of all my local taxes due to self-employment tax.
I made http://isitnormal.com, which is almost paying the rent now.
Sister Wives - A New TV Show Is Coming
WOW. Thank you so much for reporting this; you just found a bug that makes me look evil. :)

Basically, the Sign up page contains the word "javascript", so if you search for it, that page will be included by the search function. Given that the email textbox grabs the focus, you'll get immediately sent to the bottom of the page.

If you try to search for something else you will not experience this behavior: http://img.skitch.com/20101007-xpcmkm4ebj4kiwsbsfiknsc7m4.jp...

Thank you again for reporting this. I'll fix this ASAP.
Thanks patio11

1. Good thing is that I don't think there'll be any problems for the mangling the name as it's a very simple name :-)...

2. It makes sense that the traffic is going to be a wider interval, hadn't thought about that

3. Yeah, I've already done that, all non logged in pages up to the signup form are static HTML. Hadn't thought about putting a Welcome Oprah Viewers banner but it definitely makes sense, will talk to my customers about it. Thanks :-)
How Did a Statistical Language Invented in NZ Become a Global Sensation?
Xcode Analyzer Error: "Analyzer skipped this file due to parse errors"
Right, which is what I'm trying to understand: what does this allow you to do that is not just a cute way to call a method?

I think the ActiveRecord example below is the answer I'm looking for, since it creates a method at runtime based on information that did not exist until runtime. But I need to read up on it to understand it.
In a previous life, I was half of the engineering team at a call center. On more than one occasion, one or another of our customers (always a different one) would call us and say that their product/service/organization/whatever was going to be "mentioned" on Oprah "next week", and could we please set up some extra phone-answering capacity for them in order to handle the inevitable spike in demand.

At first, we would try and accommodate their requests- bring in an extra operator or two, do a special answering script, etc. Besides being good customer service, we figured that increased usage on the part of our customer translated into more money for us, so it was worth spending some time on our end helping them get ready for a spike.

After a little while, however, we eventually stopped taking "Oprah-induced capacity panics" so seriously. Why was this? Because we never- not once- saw any serious spike in calls from any of our customers' Oprah "mentions".

I'd suggest planning for some extra capacity, just in case, but don't go doing too much special-purpose engineering work for this one customer. Unless, of course, their "mention" on Oprah is really more of a "entire episode dedicated to their product" kind of a deal- that might be a different kettle of fish entirely.
many people graduate beyond the use of cocaine to crack

Cocaine is a gateway drug to crack?

According to this NSDUH study (http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k9NSDUH/2k9Results.htm):

In, 2009, there were 617,000 people, aged 12 years or older, who used cocaine for the first time. During that same period, 94,000 tried crack for the first time.

If many people 'graduate' beyond the use of cocaine, I would expect I larger number of first-time crack smokers.
Agile, the next generation: Three ways to go beyond Scrum
to clarify, I said 'pro on subfolder', meaning an advantage of being in a subfolder is that you get the SEO.

I was listing the benefits of subdomain/subfolder and on subfolder seo is the only one I could think of
How do you transfer them? I've searched for a while and never saw an option in the customized GoDaddy interface that the Google Apps domains use.
Yes, I was talking about an automated import.

Having to copy-paste a link from email, or forward the email to the new network would be yet another barrier for a new user.
Apple's got over 90% of retail market share for computers > $1000. The customers have spoken, and said they'll take windows on cheap machines.
How cool is this? the 1st toolbar dedicated to business software
Design early. Earlier than that.
You gotta love how the foreign country is specifically unnamed -- another news report says it was referred to as Country X, but "It is alleged that in later communications, Doxer said his chief desire “was to help our homeland and our war against our enemies.”" Doxer is Jewish.
"It's the tie to go along with jQuery's tux."[1]

-----

[1]: http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/
I'd put a big Welcome Oprah Viewers banner at the top of it with a sales pitch leveraging that social proof for all you are worth and giving them "special" advice for using the site, by the way.

^^ This. You are in a unique position of being able to PLAN for a huge spike in traffic. While planning for the technology impacts are important, do NOT forget the business aspects. You already have a damn good idea of the demographics of more than 100k visitors that might be visiting that day, so get started now.

Do you want to offer a special "discount" for Oprah visitors that day? Does the signup process need to be simplified for less tech-savvy visitors? I definitely agree with Patrick that you want to have a targeted set of instructions or otherwise customized copy for the visitors that will come that day. Above all else, PLAY UP THE OPRAH CONNECTION! A banner, special icon, her picture, etc. Visitors should be smacked in the face early with some indication that they have found the site mentioned on Oprah.

You might also want to find any Oprah-related message boards and create accounts now. Then on the day the site is mentioned in Oprah, go to those message boards and post a clickable link. Not only will this help the visitors get to the correct site, but they can use it to share the correct link with OTHERS.
Not cool at all. Why not Google it?
Have a look at the video. It rolls on wheels that are obscured from view by the oscillating feet that are floating above the ground. Bipedalism is more than just having the appearance of two legs. It requires pivotal motion around the point of contact with the ground. Otherwise a bicycle could be considered bi-pedal.
My thoughts on Facebook Groups. Awesome but flawed.
I had 1260, and i'm working here
maybe you are over qualified
It certainly reduces the potential security downside for Facebook. If someone tricks you into giving up your email password, they could get all of your email but is that a valid argument against letting you download all of your contacts and emails?
Anatomy of a Debian package
You might start kicking yourself when winter rolls around all you have are cargo shorts and a few ironic t-shirts.
Are you saying the headline sucked but did a great job at attracting eyes? =)
try "Pantaleon and the visitadoras", it is very light and funny
Pedantic note:

"There is one Phillips screwdriver in my house."

Uh oh. Philips screwdrivers come in varying degrees of bluntness, with the very blunt ones for the very big screws and very pointy ones for small screws. Phillips screwdrivers are not the right area to avoid redundancy. (buying one with variable bits that fit on it would be a better option).
To clarify, I meant "unknown at the time."
One thing that I think isn't getting enough attention is it wasn't even a Wall Street "master of the universe" like GS, just a relatively staid firm out on Main Street in the Midwest.
I specifically do link building services for aggressive internet marketers and most recently local small businesses. I built a full web app to handle all orders and tasks and have a full staff of workers that can pump out orders quickly and efficiently.

Register an account for free here and you can check out what I offer. We can discuss things privately if you need a strategy put together.

http://members.layeredlinks.com
I'm glad I went here, first., and saved myself the time.
Sarah Prevette, Founder of Sprouter, Shares Her Startup Story
Posterous seems to be working on a V2 of their API. 
I accidentally stumbled upon the url.
Sony outs world's first 16.41 megapixel cellphone sensor
Humanity as a single, very big piece of multithreaded software:

Minds are processes, reality is shared memory. Crashes happen under suitably bad conditions (e.g. WWII).

I don't see how this per se offers any real insight. You can apply the analogy to almost anything.
"identical amount of control that you're surrendering."

Not at all. If you send me an email without me asking, there is no public effect. One example of how this is bad with groups is what if I happen to be on a job search and someone adds me to the "I steal office supplies from my employer and sell them on eBay" group. Let's say a prospective employer is a friend of a FB friend of mine and looks at my profile and sees this. Job offer gone.
Also, rates depend on the work required by the client. If you are purely doing some frontend/interface work, it is reasonable to adjust that rate differently from backend work.

Another note is that rates should fluctuate depending on timelines from the client, their budget and requirements. A healthy balance of determining all those factors and your ability to estimate your abilities to complete work can result in a wider range of price ranges - either fixed/hourly/weekly/monthly, etc.

Most of this can only be figured out through lots of experience.
then they can cut rest 90% also,
it will further improve their performance
You have to email support and they give you a token which you push into a slot that drops a ball that rolls down a chute, lighting a candle which pops a balloon and so on. I don't recall the details, but you can find people who have done it by Googling for it.
Verisign once upon a time actually was a half decent company

When was that? Network Solutions never gave good value. When NSF privatized domain registration in 1993, they paid NSI $6M to run it for two years; it couldn't've cost anywhere near that much. They were supposed to set up a more efficient ordering system (developing it was part of the $6M deal), but didn't. They couldn't be held to the terms of the deal, though, because the NSF had set it up as a cooperative agreement, rather than a contract, so that they could evade government procurement rules.

Here's how bad their early service was. In 1996, I was considering giving my dad ourlastname.com for Christmas. I emailed an ISP local to him, to ask if they could host the domain for him. I then decided it was a bad idea (giving somebody something that takes work); but, before I contacted them again, I got a bill from Network Solutions for the domain name. (It was misspelled, too, but that was probably the ISP's fault.) I told NSI it was a mistake, that I hadn't authorized it, but they told me I couldn't cancel the registration; only the ISP could do so. The argument that person A should not be able to incur charges for person B didn't cut any ice.
Looks great Atestu!

I'm curious as to where you're getting your data! I'm building out something similar at the moment and I'm using TheMovieDb.org

I noticed you're using Rails as well so I'm just curious which solution you chose!
I'm not sure if this is related. I clicked "like" on an article someone posted (or I thought was an article) and now new articles from that company seems to be showing up in my news feed. What's the deal with that?