skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Request HN: folding comments
It would be great to have a firefox/chrome extension (ff preferred for me because chrome is too insecure without noscript et al, but whatever's easiest), or better, a javascript bookmarklet, to implement a "collapse/expand" feature for HN comment threads.

I took a quick look at the source, and everything's in non-nested tables, so it's a little more work than "hide everything under this div because it corresponds to the replies to this thread," but it shouldn't be too hard.

I'd do this but I'm swamped with work and don't expect to have free time for months. Don't know how many other people would appreciate this feature, but I thought I'd put it out there in case someone likes it and has the time to get it done before me.
Other = Scala/Lift. Too different from Java to lump it into that general category.
I use graph algorithms when I'm walking somewhere downtown. With the shortest path defined by lights that are green / red. Sometimes I'll switch it up a bit and use a different search algorithm just for variety.
I am a paying member of Match.com but currently dating someone I met playing Lexulous (a Scrabble clone) on Facebook. I was reasonably happy with Match.com and got several dates, most of which were with reasonable matches I was happy to go out with. I met my last long-term girlfriend on Match.com.

When I go back into the ring, I will keep using Match, but I will try other sites at the same time. My experience with Match is that it's worth the money, and at any time I can find a dozen or so prospects in my city (~1 million people.) After you've gone through your top picks you have to wait a long time for new faces, though.

Also, this is a pretty poor multiple-choice poll. The categories could have been better-chosen. I doubt many people fall clearly into a single one of these categories. I'm seeing someone and not actively looking, but I'm not in a relationship; I met her online, but not on a dating site; I'm a member of a pay site, but also a member of OkCupid, but barely bothered creating a profile there because I met someone on Match.com right after I joined OkCupid. I clicked "other" but I think I was expected to click one of the others.

If the categories can't be improved, maybe a solution for situations like this is to let people pick more than one option, and track how many people picked at least one? If not automatically, then through a choice saying "Choose this if you participated in the poll?"
I wasn't arguing it was more secure. It could be made equivalent, but that misses the point. You don't always need a deadbolt in addition to a lock in the door knob.
No. Some of my 'worst' ideas have succeeded to my amazement. OTOH, some of my best ideas failed despite how 'awesome' they were.

When I look back, everything succeeded or failed based on timing and execution.
Microsoft slaps product activation on Mac Office 2011
Dissertations Writing That Guarantee Success 
A dissertation is a lengthy document which takes up a great amount of the student’s time. Regardless, if the writing process is not followed to the letter, you will not be able to submit a successful dissertation. Read on for some guidelines to writing dissertations that guarantee success.
I disagree. When I'm reading or figuring out a user interface, I move my mouse with my eye.

Perhaps this is why mouse-based tracking isn't very useful for user testing. It makes a fun demo, though.
First-time triathlete bets on himself, charity is the big winner
> The original post doesn't appear to misuse the technical term holographic.

If fact, the lead sentence is exactly such misuse: "The 3D universe in which we appear to live is no more than a hologram." I don't think I've ever heard a physicist use the word "hologram" to talk about the holographic principle, so that word can only be interpreted as an actual, star-trek style hologram.
He is definitely on the right track. I'm pleased to see that I share an opinion on this with one of the sharpest programmers on the planet.

The reality is that I have almost zero influence on how a very large portion of my paycheck gets spent from Capitol Hill. Ideally the U.S. would return to the concept of using states as "laboratories of democracy". When you have states with economies that are larger than most countries, there is no reason to be bumping so many responsibilities up to the federal level.
Can you beat Mr Champ?
I've had tremendous success finding stats through government agencies. they do extensive researcha nd the results are public, though sometimes you have to request the information be send to you.

Anyway, the obvious place to look for that kind of data is the U.S Census Bureau

I found this table (from 2002-2004). If you poke around long enough, you'll find newer data-sets I'm sure. http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html

Make sure to check this one also http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/
Thanks, Nathan. I'll be giving these a look later today!
I wish Javascript was split out into server-side (Node, etc.) vs client-side.
Thanks for the correction. I think you and lylejohnson (below) are right.
The traditional answer here would probably be to recommend the book "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White, so I'll do that in case you're not already aware of it. It's short, easy to read, and focuses on good style and common grammar mistakes. It's common as a high school or college text here (USA). From your question you seem pretty fluent already (your intro feels native or very near) so it should be well-suited for you.
Offer HN: Have you got a failed project? Interested in buying assets/technology
If you have a project that relates to either Open Source, Mobile Technology, Online Gaming. Let me know, I might be interested either in buying, investing, or buying assets.

Have an awesome and very bright day!!

:-)
jimmy@inodesoft.com
I marked off C, C++, python, and other (shell scripts) for rethinkdb though I'm not there right now. The code was in C++ but most of it would compile as C, and we wrote lots of benchmarks in some combination of python and shell scripts.

If I were to do my own startup, it'd probably be in clojure.
E-mail Auto-Response
I answered for two people. My friend (not on HN) is married to an OK Cupid match. I have been with someone I met online for over 6 years.
I think it has to be "Frannie's Turn". Only six episodes ever created, he had an executive producer credit, from 1992.
It's especially "not insignificant" if you have batteries and can store the excess power generated during the times of day when you aren't using much power. Most houses are empty a large fraction of most week days.
Yay for the preservation of a generation. My early attempts of hacking together something in Notepad as a kid should be in there somewhere.

Now if only Yahoo donated the geocities.com domain to whoever has the guts to keep this archive online...
The Future of Money: Efforts-based (not products-based) Meritocracy
What changes did you make?
How to celebrate an Ubuntu release
I find it a little surprising that you use both perl and ruby. Is it an issue of "one guy likes perl, another likes ruby", or are there things you find easier in one than the other, in both directions?

Or is ruby just there for your API and your internal stuff is perl?
Married to someone met on OkCupid.
Thanks. Thats enough for most people (including myself) to have confidence in the author and to make a purchase decision.

In terms of suggestion I too think web scraping, however it might be worth taking the most simple one so that its easy to run on from the intro.
I'm curious about how well the all-to-all communication strategy scales as clusters grow large. Just going off of this slide, the number of links and amount of communication grows pretty fast as nodes are added.

Nodes could get inundated with management data... OTOH, maybe there's enough computing resources in a modern physical box to deal with this, particularly if you run a dedicated network for inter-node communication.
I have one particular one that my wife teases me about semi-regularly. It keeps me humble (not that I have anything to be un-humble about).
I agree 2 months is nothing...you haven't even launched yet. The hardest part is still ahead of you...struggling to get users, 1 person at a time
Indeed, there is no rulebook to follow when it comes to life matters, and I agree that a proper balance (which is a very individual item) is important. My reply to hugh3 was solely around what I perceive to be a statement made by someone who is yet to be a parent. It's misguided to place any kind of gender stereotype on who plays what role, and it only takes away from the larger message that once a child is brought into this world, the most important and influential job you can have is one of being a parent.
My "other" was for clojure and sh.
I'm a bit late in responding, but yes, it's a native vim extension. To make sure your plugins are loaded automatically, put

filetype plugin on

in your .vimrc.
> But what we can both agree on is that only Government could do it if it is possible.

How so? The government could mandate health insurance, and provide a health care option for those who choose not to get it from somewhere else. If enforced, this would make health care (of some sort) universal to everyone.

> So the question isn’t inefficiency because both sides concede government is inefficient

I agree with you that this is a central weakness in John C's argument: Libertarians (like myself) spend a lot of time trying to convince others that the government is inefficient, when the argument can only be resolved by quantifying exactly _how_ inefficient it is, whether the costs override the benefits. This is a much harder proposition to prove, though I suspect that John C is right that the costs almost always are greater than the benefits.
I'm more embarassed by my lack of attention span to see side projects through to completion.
One of my old blog posts explores this possibility and describes why our current model of trade/exchange needs to go. (Spoiler Alert: I blame the RIAA, MPAA, and their ilk.)

My thoughts: http://nobulb.com/2010/07/the-end-of-distribution/
But most people probably know someone who doesn't mind or who can help them do it. In other words it doesn't have to be a $1K job for everyone.

Smaller panels can make it easy to replace gradually, acouple here, a couple there...
No, because they were awesome learning experiences. The term "failure" is very vague. Do you consider anything less than a profitable exit a failure? I have had many startups that did not go as planned but because I learned a lot and they (the startup) led me to other ideas I would not consider them failures. The only time I would be embarrassed about a failure is if I had quit and the company went on to succeeded with out me.
Prediction: The Mac App Store Will Create a New Category of Products
> Take health care as a perfect example. Having studied the issue I personally think it’s impossible to have quality universal health care.

Just out of curiousity: Do you mean impossible in the US, or in general?
1) Usually use Skype.

2) Yes -- chat-wise Skype is absolutely fine though

3) I would love the ability to have longer term centralized storage of the chats with a decent search engine and the ability to have scripts post stuff as well.

As far as I can tell the best alternative is setting up an IRC service: it'll run within your corporate environment if you must, easy to integrate deployment scripts into (&c) and there is a lot of archiving/search apps already.
You're alienating a lot of designers by excluding HTML from the list. ducks
You still sound overly supportive of the guy. His dad actually hired him back at least twice before he had made something of himself.
Mobile Design Patterns
this is an excellent comment because it makes me wonder: how often do women really get approached?
Apple tightens its grip on developers with Mac App Store
I'm a new Dad, in my late 30's and I'm starting up a new business. It's not easy, but I have support. Although my wife and I are a team, she's taking on most of the work during the day (and in the night). She believes in me and wants to make sure that I have the bandwidth to do the things that I need to do. When I'm not working, I do my part to help with my son. We try and give each other "me time" breaks as much as possible. It's still early, but things are working out.

The article definitely touches on one thing that is definitely true. Time is now no longer a luxury, it's a gift. So, you must make the most of it. This is driving me to be as efficient as possible. Which is something that I really need and I think it's going to benefit me.

I think the one thing that actually drives me more so than before is that now when I'm working on my business, I feel a lot more motivated to get things done and being successful. My calculated risks are a little more calculated than before. I feel as though this is going to be one of the secrets to my success.

Bottom line: I see this as an advantage...as long as you have that support.
Unfortunately, as i recently saw at a demo for Windows Mobile 7, not every mobile browser uses WebKit. When the guy told me the native browser is based on IE 7, I just wanted to cry.
I don't know of any hard drives that can do a seek+read in 0.2 milliseconds. Keep in mind that the reads are distributed randomly - you're almost certainly going to need more than one disk if you have less than a terabyte of RAM for your datastore.
When exactly did he say "women should not run a startup."?

> "I write in a gender independent style (unlike your comment!)."

That seems fairly silly considering 95%+ of founders are men. Women founders are an edge case. Whether that's how things should be or not is a question for another day IMHO (Ask women why they don't want to be founders), but acknowledging the fact that 95% of founders are men, isn't being sexist.

I think his point is completely valid - if you have a supportive spouse, you can be 50% involved in baby, or you can be 1% involved in baby. If it's 1% then it won't really impact your success in a startup (Although you'll most likely live to regret it).
Using both Ruby and Perl is nothing compared to the GHC Haskell compiler using Perl.
I usually grep for socks.
I was hired to do consulting so it wasn't my direct employer but this was a pretty quick change (<5mins) that saved a lot of money(>$500,000 / year):

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/07/using-wrong-tracking-c...
Solo founder here as well. I think the biggest problem is scope creep when there are no other opinions. My solution to this is making sure most features are responses to clients paying for said feature.

But the best part is that you do not need to compromise on your technical decisions. And if you do make a mistake, you can back out of it with a limited amount of fanfare/humiliation.

Also, since we're tech guys we really need a Steve Ballmer (or Alexis Ohanian) to handle the non-technical stuff so we can code in a bubble. They don't need to be founders, or equity partners, but should have a large role.

Oh yeah, and 2 months really is nothing :).
If you are storing the energy in Li-ion batteries, you'll have an added 10 - 20% loss.
To produce in China you need to be spending at least $50,000 - $100,000, otherwise they won't deal with you. Screaming Circuits also does small runs of 10-20 which is enough to do certification, programming, and testing.

The bureaucracy involved in electronics is why I got out, I had to close my last company because of new idiotic regulations passed by Congress that skyrocketed my costs. The certification process is pretty easy if you have a partner in China, they will take care of it for you.

The hard part of selling is getting into the sales channels, most large retailers require whats called a Dun & Bradstreet Rating (a credit report for business). It will take quite a while to get and you must already have a couple million in sales. Target, Wal-Mart, and Best-Buy all operate the same way which makes getting started a little difficult.

As for learning electronics, I am self taught. My education was in Mechanical Eng, Biomedical Eng, and a MBA, while I had a couple electronics and programming classes most of what I know was self taught through trial and error. Then if there was a device I wasn't comfortable designing, I'd hire it out.
This might be my own personal failing, but those tests will never get written. Once the feature works, the temptation to move onto the next thing is just too great.

Also, by writing the test first, you ensure that the code is actually easy to test. This gets easier as you get more experienced with testing, but still.
are you worried about copyright infringement suits?
I'm a freelance developer so I assume I potentially factor into your audience in some way. I also encounter people who need developers so am a potential source of referrals.

To me "the top choice for entrepreneurs, designers and businesses to hire world-class coding talent" is an grandiose, empty and (certainly this early) probably untrue statement. I don't like to deal with people that make statements like that so it makes a negative first impression on me.

It also makes me ask the questions:

* "top" Compared to what? In what way?

* How do I know the coders are "world-class"? Is there vetting? Guarantees?

Possible replacement:

"CollectiveJam helps entrepreneurs, designers and businesses to hire coding talent."

I don't know enough about your product to be able to say what a reasonable and accurate claim is. :) If I knew more I could probably extend that above to say "...by something something somethinging the something."

Then again--I'm not a copywriter. :)
I don't believe that hacking is or should be confined to programming.

That's pretty funny insofar as it (the verb) is precisely the point not in dispute. Also, your quote supports what pg said: "hacker" refers to programmers by default, though non-standard usages are possible.

I don't see how this is even an argument. Pick just about any verb; I just thought of "bake". I baked something the other day. Does that make me a baker?
That's a pretty good comment, but I thought I'll throw in what I think is a more concise and accurate summary of the holographic principle:

The number of fundamental degrees of freedom in a region of the universe scales with the surface area, not spatial volume, of the region considered. Any complete mathematical description of a D-dimensional region of the universe can be mapped to a mathematical model constrained to D-1 dimensions, with only the latter exhibiting the pleasing property that the number of degrees of freedom is proportional to the (generalized) volume.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the holographic principle is not much more than a conjecture supported by certain striking analogies between thermodynamics and the behavior of classical GR black holes. There is some additional circumstantial evidence from other areas of high energy theory, including string theory. There is no experimental evidence.

The really great thing the holographic principle has going for it is that it's a very general idea which isn't tied to any specific theory, and so it almost certainly has a better chance of being correct. Philosophically, it's very analogous to the principle of relativity put forward by Einstein. (For more on that philosophy, you can check out the accessible SEP article: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/)
I stopped reading Gizmodo awhile ago, for the same reasons you described. And quite frankly, the writing just isn't that good.

BTW, I wish this post was boticed a little more. I'd like to read what others have to say about this.

Good luck with your one man micro startup!
Latest Galaxy S Overclock to 1.6 GHz (Vibrant)
Money is not a problem in education. Second, his critique was mainly aimed at the federal government.
When I looked around St Dunstans in Sussex (provides support for the blind and visually impaired), it was suggested that Braille was on the out, which surprised me.
@dennisgorelik && @ThomPete

I used 'child', but I did mean 'children'. Not going to travel down the road of semantics there.

I also don't believe I advocated, nor did Jason in his post, the stopping of everything else in one's life so that they can be a parent. "Most" important implies that there are other things of importance in ones life, and having accomplishments that can be shared with or serve as inspiration to our children is a wonderful gift to give.

As Einstein said, "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
> In a longer essay he would agree with you that children need to be cared for by society and that this requires tax money to some degree.

Yes. Actually children could probably be provided for to a large extent with charity. Though I imagine less sexy causes are more in need of public money.
That it is "priced in" only means that the probabilistic effect of it is priced in : what is priced in is its probability of working (p) times its effect (e). As things play out, p will get closer to 0 or 1. That things don't change immediately after the announcement does not mean that e is zero or that p*e is zero.

That you have to grow revenues by 20% a year to stay still does not necessarily mean that you are getting screwed. It may mean that the value of your services (at least from the economies that can buy them) are becoming less useful due either to cheaper competition or simply lack of need in a less sophisticated economy.

Side question : why 20%? I don't think the dollar index is weakening and currently there is very low inflation or slight deflation.

Is there an alternative to trying to control inflation? Are you saying that energy spent trying to do it is wasted or that inflation would be stable with no intervention?
Chatroulette now makes money referring flashers to Hustler.com
About 10 years ago I worked at a company called Nu-kote that did printer / ink supply chain stuff. They had clients like office depot office max etc... There was a system alled extenterprise that was like the daily dashboard / forecasting system for the sales team. On my 3rd day I fixed some problems that extenterprise was having. After about 3 months I was given a bonus because my forecasting algorithm was substantially more accurate than what was previously being used and it saved / made the company tons of money.
I saved a client tens of thousands of dollars per year by not making a small change.

The client had just had a customer service issue where one of their customers discovered many months later that her card was still being charged for her subscription even though the card had expired. She didn't know that many cards continue to work after they expire, and had never bothered to cancel her account.

So the client wanted me to make sure that we don't charge expired cards in the future. As far as I knew, this was the first time the issue had come up in the more than a year since we switched payment gateways, so I generated some new reports, and it turns out they had charged almost $4,000 to expired cards just in the previous month. Some of those customers would correct their card data if we notified them, but the reality of subscription businesses is that there's a lot of inertia involved. It's safe to say that the client would simply lose a fair portion of those dollars every month if we stopped charging expired cards with active subscriptions. Much better to refund the one customer/year who complains that they thought an expired card meant they unsubscribed than to forgo all that revenue. Of course they agreed and we didn't make the change.

FTR, this is the same client that a few months ago was complaining that I was the only programmer they'd ever worked with who bills them for email and phone conversations. I'll be reminding them of this case if it ever comes up again.
Icing PayPal: How We Did It
Engagement = Revenue? Here is an equation.