skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it's nice, but that OP has a valid point about sustainability. There's a lot of this in the arts sector, and while it's awesome in some ways it also exerts a downward effect on prices at the lower end of the market. Arty types like helping each other out for cheap; they genuinely love what they do, helping out advances everyone's skills, and the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts. But the fact that many of them are not in it for the money is often misread to mean 'not interested in money.'

A common problem for freelancers in film and graphic design is getting callbacks (or even referrals) where clients propose paying peanuts or even that the creative should do this bit of work for free - the client is sure of success and it will either be great for the portfolio, or there'll be a lot more work coming down the pipe, or they have a great rolodex. They think [whatever job you do] is extremely important, but most of their budget has gone on [something else important]. So they frame it as a sort of partnership situation, only most of the benefits end up flowing towards them. Sometimes this is straight-out greed, more often it's well-meaning incompetence or an inflated sense of entitlement without any deliberate intent to rip anyone off. But it often looks like a good prospect, and the more people that are involved, the more they reinforce each other's belief in the project...Titanic syndrome, if you will.

Unfortunately for every one of these low-budget projects that scores big and gives everyone involved a big career boost, there's about 99 others which don't. Half pay for themselves in other ways - making new contacts, or building new skills, or by a decent product. A third or so suck but are over quickly, and easy to screen out in the future. The remaining sixth are jobs from hell, where it's apparent within 24 or 48 hours of starting that something is terribly wrong but you're going to have to see it through to the bitter end.

I'm not suggesting such people are lurking on HN, but to the extent that a reputation for karma-based mutual aid builds up around the community, it will start to attract people on the lookout for freebies. Have a look at the gigs section on Craigslist, under the creative, writing or crew headings rather than computers. Generosity is great, but sometimes it ends up as the 'tragedy of the commons' - so don't undersell yourself either.
What to do when users tell you one thing and data tells you another?
My startup launched 4 months ago. We have software that online retailers (our customers) place on their product pages for their shoppers (our users) to interact with. So far, we've received great feedback from our users - they love our application. We're also positively impacting our customers through increased conversion rates and reduced returns.

Today, though, we discovered that the sales of the retailer are negatively impacted by one particular piece of our application. That is, once users engage with this particular feature, they become less likely to purchase (though on the whole the application is a net positive). The problem is that, from collected written feedback, this is clearly users' favorite feature. It has also been the source of a lot of buzz/press for us because it's something new/cool that has never before been part of the online shopping experience.

So what do you do when your users are telling you they love one part of the application, but you have data that says your customers might be better served by getting rid of it? PG says to do what's best for the user. Usually I agree with this, but our users aren't the ones paying us.

We've started by doing user interviews about the offending feature to see if we can better understand what it is about their interaction that may be deterring them from purchasing. It's not clear, though, that there's a tweak we can make that will change their behavior without ruining what they like about the feature. What should we do?
Super, while you're at it: http://ww.com/

we're in the midst of a redesign and any input you have on the old site will be used to help make the new one better.

thank you very much!

email is j@ww.com
Let say you helped 25 startups a year. After 4 years, that 100 startups. Probably, 10 of those goes big and at least 3 or 4 will remember your work (it should persist in their code base if it's quality work). So you got a job offer or consulting work.

Dual benefit for short and longer term.
Wow. That was fast. We have 10% coupons if you email me. Only for HN readers.
There's no way to make the $10K go away. If I can afford to pay $90K for salary and a $10K fee, can I automatically afford $100K salary plus a $15K fee? If I can, why not pay $115K salary and a $20K fee? If the candidate is worth "stretching" to pay that extra $10K, wouldn't I rather deal direct with the candidate so that I can "stretch" from $100K salary to $110K salary rather than stretch from $90K salary to $100K salary?

Sooner or later a company ready to make an offer runs into a limit as to how much can go on the table. The more in the headhunter's pocket, the less in the candidate's pocket. I am not aware of any company that is able to warp the laws of space, time, and the conservation of cash expenses.
Shtetl-Optimized: Research projects in quantum complexity theory
After I choked back the vomit, I began to think "Shouldn't this just be an Ubuntu theme?".
Just out of curiosity - what is the syntax to add polls to a post? Or is that an admin-privilege?
Ask HN: Conditional statements with Python nested lists
I asked this question at Stackoverflow but I was wondering if you can help.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4011728/conditional-statements-with-python-lists

I am trying to build a simple app in GAE that will take a string s from user and check if it is same as the previous string s0; if same, the string will appear in the same column; if not it will move to the next column.

Like this:

Hello world
Hello world
Hello world

Hello world Hello Universe
Hello world
Hello world

Hello world Hello Universe
Hello world Hello Universe
Hello world Hello Universe
Hello Universe
Hello Universe

Hello world Hello Universe Hello Cosmos
Hello world Hello Universe
Hello world Hello Universe
Hello Universe
Hello Universe

I have been trying to do this with nested lists; I learned a lot about lists but I start to doubt that nested lists is not the right method. I appreciate it if you suggest better alternatives. Thanks.
Hi Camz... first of all thanks for all the posts here. Learning a lot.

I know someone who got offered employment (via internship) with KPMG before they graduated (ie. they've not yet started). Do you have any advice for a new employee who is interested in startups?

Or more generally I suppose, do you have any career advice for someone specifically interested in accounting and technical startups?
Everyone and their brother is willing to do remote or contract work. What's tough is finding good local people who are willing to join a team.

It seems kind of useless to let me talk to any developer if you're not doing ANY skillset matching. If I'm looking for PHP or JavaScript developers, if someone really only knows C++ or .NET - I'm much less likely to want to talk to them.
I contemplated loading it for my daughter for a second... naw
Bill Gross of PIMCO calls an end to the 30 year bull market in bonds
Any chance you could expand on what makes you prefer the experience of using IE over Chrome?
PS: Ok, it's been ten hours. You should have emailed me to invite me to your beta program. I'm your target market and I've shown interest and a willingness to provide feedback. Isn't that exactly what you want? Why aren't you chasing me up?
Thanks. I have played the new Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. They make use of shaking and tilting the controller, but very sparingly and buttons are the main means of control.

(It's a good game. I was expecting it would follow the trend of making games ever more casual. I was wrong. Mario Bros. Wii is hard.)
Bullets do.
Link to SO discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4011728/conditional-state...
Volunteer on http://railsmentors.org - we'd love to have you.
Placebo
For some reason I find myself reminded of the whole RIM Playbook "coping with family" faux pas. It is almost as if WP7 were being promoted on the basis of selecting a phone based on wanting to avoid something: in the WP7 case, avoiding using the phone, in the Playbook case, avoiding your family. Both show a disconnect with reality and neither bode particularly well for the companies involved.
> But please... either explain what was going on in a meaningful way

Some of us like a technical breakdown and feel warm fuzzy reassurance. If a few people got confused after the first paragraph, it's less harmful than appearing to bullshit technical users.
Ask HN:Xcode on new mac air with SSD?
I was considering getting the new Macbook Air with SSD. Does anyone have one running Xcode? If so how is the performance? Any Pros/Cons?
This is terrible advice. You're setting a precedent right off the bat that you're just in it for the money. If someone said "hey I see that you often use recruiters, but I came to you directly, so how about you give me $10k" I'd retract my employment offer immediately.
One thing that I've found entertaining in my short time on this site is the surprising number of semi-hidden features. It's almost like the In-N-Out of tech sites. And now I know where to find the secret menu :). Thanks!
Someone must be held responsible for this.
I like the idea, but I think it could be more polished. For instance, once into a story, you have to keep hunting and clicking the "next page" link. Maybe an image would be better there. Also, being able to navigate pages using the arrow keys would be fantastic.

Also, from the landing page it's entirely clear what the site is about.
Two things not mentioned: When I was hiring, a resume that came direct (e.g. through an employee referral) was always the first choice to interview. Even a cold referral ("I don't know him, but he replied to my tweet about jobs") was a resume that had a "$0" recruiting fee attached to it, while a similar candidate from a headhunter carried a $10K+ fee.

No matter which way you shuffle things, as an employer I want to talk to qualified candidates that don't have a heavy fee dragging them down. Either I save money, or I have more flexibility about pay, it's a win for everyone except the head hunter.

Therefore, i always encourage people to network. It could be that you are marginally less attractive than another resumé, but if you don't have a fee, you'll get the interview and that may give you the chance to win the job. In which case, it's worth a lot more than $10K to talk directly to the employer.
Why not? A lot of goods offer pleasant and appealingly themed branding to lure customers to adopt their use. At least this one is educational and might help serve her more in the future.
"I'm not sure that giving up your password is analogous to being forced to testify against yourself."

This one is tricky. It depends on ones beliefs about the true reasons for the anti-self-incrimination laws. If you believe (as I do) that it is a fundamental right to remain silent whenever it could make your situation worse, then it is indeed analogous.

An opposing view is that not being forced to testify against oneself comes from other, more basic reasons. One of the "higher-order" reasons against forced self-incrimination might be that punishment for refusing self-incrimination gives incentive to false self-accusation. This one does not apply to forced revealing of passwords (you cannot falsely self-accuse in this case.)
I think it's difficult to separate "see if it would work" from having "some effect on its audience" for something so completely focused on its audience. This isn't a hard disk driver, it's software built around the notion of real people interacting with each other.

I also think in the context of starting a company around it, the motivation is absolutely to have an effect on your audience. After all, your moto is "make something people want" not simply "make something that works."
I have run a site called RailsMentors (http://railsmentors.org/) for over a year that links up people looking for help with experienced Rails and Ruby developers that graciously donate their time. I'd love to see you contribute there as well.
Hell I could just say I forgot the key

I had the opportunity to attend a public gathering with Jack Straw during the public consultation of this bill (he was the MP who introduced this law).

The issue of "what if you forget your password" is covered in the law, which basically says you have to know and keep control/ability to decrypt all encrypted media you own.

Forgetting the password isn't a defense.

(don't shoot the messenger, I think it's crap too, but I'm just saying they already covered that 'defense').
Blog The First Draft
We’re pricing standard edition like a traditional design tool: on a per user basis in the low hundreds of dollars

Brilliant space to be in; customers are used to paying big bucks for Adobe solutions. These guys are probably going to make a lot of money.
The gold standard of availability is generally "four nines" - 99.99%. To me:

99.5% (or less) = unacceptable
99.9% = average
99.99% = exceptional

0.5% downtime = 216 mins/month (almost an hour a week!)
0.1% downtime = 43.2 mins/month
0.01% = 4.32 mins/month

Getting to that last level is certainly very hard, I hope Heroku will get there, but the service is relatively new, fairly cutting edge, under active development, etc. I would not entirely expect them to reach "four nines", but I hope it is their goal.
thank you! noted
This is entertaining. Is it intended to be serious at all? because having these 2 Q&As consecutively in the faq:

---
Q : How/why did you make such a great OS?
A : I thought - what would attract young users to Linux? So I created this idea after a lot of reading and work.

Q : How can I watch DVDs and other Media?
A : click the Hannah Montana menu, then Utilities, then Konsole, then type:
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 kubuntu-restricted-extras
---

is comical. to me, this says, "it's for kids, and the first thing they should learn is that linux requires you to learn obscure things to do stuff that's easy as pie and very commonly used on other computers."
I love:

Agile Retrospectives

Coaching Agile Teams

4 Hour Work Week

Live 24 hours a Day

-

All helped me in different ways ;)
If you like the 'offer HN' threads, see reddit's /r/favors
But by the nature of a social networking site "seeing if it works" means "seeing if it affects in audience in a way to get them to join".

I'm sure Mark wasn't interested in seeing if he could build the technical aspects of the site. Besides issues of scale and some of the newer programmatic layers, none of it seems like rocket science from the perspective of a developer.

Unlike a hacking project to see if you can make free long distance calls... I think that Facebook is a lot more like the movie than what Woz used to do.
"We've started by doing user interviews about the offending feature to see if we can better understand what it is about their interaction that may be deterring them from purchasing."

This. Something sounds fishy. You should collect more data and interview more users. Are you asking the right questions? If you can't find anything about the "offending feature" that is driving people away from sales, then there might be some other hidden issue.
http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

If you have enough karma. This question is answered in the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Yahoo Still Rules E-Mail, GMail Catching Up
Abstract Syntax Tree in Eclipse
Unfortunately, yes. "Hackers and Painters" is a rather famous instance of that particular non-analogy. Given that you've published a book under this title, however, I doubt that there's any point in debating the issue here.

So I'll just say, even if painters and architects are hackers (to which I strongly object, but hey), including screenwriters such as Sorkin goes one or two steps too far. There's a line, and crossing it just makes "hacker" semantically arbitrary.
What are the biggest challenges you meet in terms of missing software infrastructure to support your NLP/ML work? Things you wish someone would implement?
"Movies are messages. Hacks are not."

Maybe art films are messages, but most Hollywood films are all just following the same masturbatory formula to sell tickets by telling people what they want to hear. The goal is to glorify the complacency of the average American by selling them on the idea that they can get different results by doing the same thing. That's why just about every Hollywood film starts with the main character waking up one day and discovering that he's different than everyone else, and he has some sort of special destiny. No hard work required, you just have to recognize that one big opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime and take it, or whatever other bullshit.

If anything hackers should learn from Hollywood and use the same toolkit to market their startups. Apple does it extremely well, but rarely do I see startups doing a good job at it.
If the law sees it as anything other than what it is, a separation between what my data is and the fact that it belongs to me, in contrast to where it is stored, it will probably open a a big ass can of worms. Might as well change the name of the USA to North Korean States of America.

My opinion: If I write a poem in a notebook (hard drive) using a cipher (encryption) for which only I know the key, the law is able to take my notebook as evidence and process it as they see fit for their investigation, but the data is still mine, it's my set of bits which I'm entitled to not share with anyone unless it's my desire. I'd even say that to force me to share my data is equal to torturing me to get information from me. In both cases the law would be forcing me to reveal something against my consent, which is a violation of my rights however you look at it.

YMMV of course.
I'm against polls! :)

Although I'm happy to see the community organically grow HN into what people want.
The difference:

1 -completely arbitrary
2 -randomly assigned
3 -words to fill space on expense reports and business cards
4 -another made-up title
> Why not have both and see what the market decides?

Kin was killed after six weeks, the market decided it was crap and only a couple were sold. Actually not so much that the Kin itself is bad, but carriers weren't enthusiastic enough, and Microsoft had marketing problems for a product that would battle WP7 6 months later.
Premature Optimization - You are solving a problem that may not need to be solved, or to put it another way

Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that may never come due.
I created the SEO-thread.

I got a bunch of questions and emails (around 250 and they're still coming in) - all they ask for is tips and tricks, maybe some ideas on how to further expand their presence on the webz.

I don't ask for anything in return, I don't promote products, I don't promote services - just plain old "This is your site. These are the flaws - this is why it's called a flaw, and here's how to fix it".

I once wrote: "I'm really interested in your project. Here's my personal email. Email me and we can discuss a possible investment on my part."

Crappy SEO, but the product was incredible.

Back on track;

I created a special email address just to accept HN questions.

But I do see it from your POV. Many entrepreneurs I know have lost a lot of money via the "I do something free for you - but you have to buy something from me in return"-scheme.
Have you thought of writing an ebook about what you know?
thanks all, I can't tell you how much these comments provide relief on this subject!! :)
I think it's in reference to your statement "I'm not a hacker in the technical sense." Which may imply you are a hacker in some other sense, e.g. social, as you have elaborated.
And the problem with keeping things in email are numerous and insidious. Consider:

email hides embedded knowledge and frail processes
(Jane asks Bob for A in an email and only Bob knows that B and C are implied when Jane asks. If Bob is out, the process to ask for A can be completely paralyzed.)

no actionable meta-data
(no easy way to harvest project name, members, status, dates, etc. Good luck trying to find out who you need to invite to an integration-of-two-systems meeting.)

no easy way to bring new people up-to-date, save massive retyping.

no easy way to know current progress without sending out a mass request-for-status email

history tracking problems
(all it takes is one or two people to not hit reply-all, for an email history to be completely untrustworthy from any one inbox)

Naturally, people should aspire to make replacement systems as easy or more easy to use than the ones they replace. But email being easy is never a good argument for leaving a process in it. Particularly not project-management tasks.
I don't think I ever applied the word "hacker" in that book to anyone except programmers. Or in anything else I've written: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+hacker
Carly Fiorina destroyed the 'HP Way'
It has the potential to, sure. Do you have any evidence to show that any of the existing offers are motivated by increasing their professional reach or increasing business? Seems cynical.

But I agree, I'd prefer if it were in a subsection and didn't get mixed in with everything else.

As PG said, it's interesting to watch a shift in how a community interacts and evolves.
This idea of people only doing it for themselves is cynical. I agree that it is taking up space on the home page; maybe it should be a sub-section (edit: and now it is).

This notion reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg's recent quote at Startup School: That others (Hollywood in this case, but I think applicable here) can't see to grasp the idea that people would build things just because they like building things.[1]

[1] http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272178321
If you're considering implementing a tagger, then I think this is a good paper to read for approaches that will improve your results in a developer time efficient way:

http://l2r.cs.uiuc.edu/~danr/Papers/RatinovRo09.pdf
Here's what will happen.

Through some seemingly-tiny feature of the OS that the developer arbitrarily decided to include (something not related to Hannah Montana), this will become the best-choice Linux distro for a small group of people. A couple of these people will turn out to be brilliantly gifted hackers, and will continue to enhance the OS to the point where it begins to overtake other distros in overall experience.

HML becomes the flagship distro of the Open Source movement, and on its strength Linux finally overtakes proprietary OSs and establishes a dominant market share. Eventually, nearly every computer on the planet runs HML. By 2100, HML is the only thing anyone remembers the name "Hannah Montana" for.