skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not in nanowrimo because I was 56,000 words into this one before November 1st, but ...

I'm continuing to write "The Apocalypse Codex", the fourth Laundry Files novel. At the start of the series, Bob Howard, a slashdot-reading sandal-wearing geek, accidentally got himself conscripted by the Laundry, that branch of the British secret service concerned with applications of Computational Demonology -- defending the realm from Lovecraftian horrors.

Ten years on, Bob has been shunted onto the management promotion fast-track as the emergency generated by the return of the Elder Gods gathers pace. In this installment, he's been put in charge of a couple of external contractors (hint: the Laundry never uses contractors -- officially) and tasked with learning just why a certain televangelist is cosying up to the Prime Minister. "I feel like I've been given a sack of catnip and a laser pointer and told to go play with the kittens behind the fence labelled 'Siberian Tigers'" he complains -- except the tigers have run into a big game hunter, and the fecal matter is about to hit the wind farm ...
Actually, studies done on pain tolerances shows that a pregnant women's pain tolerance goes up sharply as childbirth approaches, and then drops back down to normal levels after childbirth.

In addition I'm pretty sure I read that on average females have a lower pain tolerance then men. Though it can be changed by training... relatively easily too.
Ask HN: PG for President?
I wrote this before I remembered PG is from England and thus can't be our next President... but maybe others can suggest someone else that could make the next election different.

In two years from today, I would vote for PG if he was running. I've never met him, but through his essays, Hacker News comments, and the stories of all the successful (and not successful) startups out of Y-Combinator he has won my vote. I have always voted Republican (which I know is rare in HN land) and I don't know where PG stands on all the party lines, but it doesn't matter to me anymore. Both sides have failed us. Is he pro-life? No clue. That use to be something that would influence my decision, but not next time around. Would he be good with international relationships? It doesn't matter. He would build a great team that could handle the areas he was weaker in.

In 2012 I want to vote for someone that can be trusted, a teacher, and an entrepreneur. I want someone who can guide the small ideas that are usually lost and turn them into grand works. I want someone that can create actual jobs and focus on what is important. I want our government to use technology instead of restrict it. I want someone that not only can conceive that government can be efficient, but also actually do something about it. I want someone that doesn't put on a show, but rather shows us how we can succeed.

Can PG do all that and more? I'm not sure, but he would have my vote just so I could see him try. What do you think?
How to define a lead generation campaign
The difference isn't that great really though.

If you look at the dynasties that win elections in the US - Bush, Kennedy, etc They may as well be a monarchy.

Democracy typically only gives you 2 choices, and if they are both from dynastial families, it's pretty much a monarchy with the illusion of democracy anyway.

> "Monarchy?! Sure, you might be lucky and get a good monarch – but their son could be a total douchebag (like Wilhelm II, the gaffe-emperor who led Germany into World War I)."

Sounds like Bush Sr and Bush Jr to me,
Really appreciate the post. Shows what it takes to take on something on your own. And he's still a teenager!!
Here in India people finish school when they are 18 and go directly to college!
TL:DR: O(2n^2) complexity is better than O(5000n) for small n.

I believe the above to be an accurate summary.
That sure is an enterprise test runner they've got there, couldn't they come up with something more like http://html5test.com/ ?
User Experience Myths - with real data
Is my data normalized?
Hmm. Are you familiar with "Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress? (Hint: past decade Hugo-award winner.)

NB: if not, do not go and read it just now. Finish your own work first, then read it.
Would the Amish Use This Hand-Cranked Laptop?
Another really good reference is Scientific Advertising
( http://www.abenetis.com/encyclopedia-article-59.html )
The Times iPad app is currently free - I think it has been for a while - so it may be that people are downloading it for the 30 day trial, with no intention of continuing when the charge kicks in, so possibly it's not going to be a big revenue generator in terms of subs or advertising.

It may be that these free iPad downloads aren't included in the figure of 105k "sales" - I can't tell from any of the coverage I've seen.
I live in a different state, but I wouldn't be caught dead voting for Feingold. I know none of your local issues, but I know that he's co-author of the McCain-Feingold Incumbency Protection Act, which gags those interested in the issues from educating the rest of the electorate. Apparently Sen. Feingold believes that it's better to have an ill-informed electorate, and that we shouldn't be able to use our 1st Amendment rights to put a voice to our ideas, if it has anything to do with politics.

IMHO, this is precisely what the 1st Amendment was designed to give us, and Feingold's disavowal of it overrides virtually anything else he may or may not have done.
OS support is a little more nuanced than that.

The latest version of Firefox for OS X requires at least version 10.4 (released 2005). Ditto for Opera.

Google Chrome requires at least 10.5 (released 2007), and doesn't support PPC (the transition to Intel was `completed' in 2007).

Windows Vista went to retail in 2007.

Firefox, Opera and Chrome all still work on Windows XP though.
Not exactly the pinnacle of BBC reporting there. No attribution, link or otherwise for the assertion that "Developers" say they've been "betrayed". Who are they, how many of them are there, how much actual investment have they made and how do they expect to lose out? Not saying the story's necessarily wrong or untruthful, just that as presented so far it can't be considered anything more than gossip.
I'd love to see Scala/GWT happen as well.

Given it's much closer to Java (no new type system, etc.), I think it'd actually be easier to get stab/GWT integration:

http://code.google.com/p/stab-language/

Though that'd also require someone coming along and building a great IDE for stab.

As far as writing Javascript apps in JRuby/Clojure via GWT...why use GWT? It's so heavily focused on Java/static type analysis, I'd think you'd be able to make a better/easier Ruby->Javascript translation by just starting anew.

The JRuby runtime itself uses reflection/some-day-invokedynamic to shoehorn a dynamic language into a static VM. Besides the fact the JRuby runtime would never get through GWT's no-reflection/nothing-fancy compiler, you're going from ruby dynamic semantics -> Java static semantics -> Javascript dynamic semantics.

Seems simpler to skip the static part. Some sort of Ruby's meta class semantics implemented via Javascript's prototype semantics.

I imagine the same thing applies with clojure, but I don't know as much about it.
Not that this test is official or anything, but IE9 beta gets 96. Preview 6 gets 106.
From Farm to Fridge to Garbage Can
Blekko Is Destined For Obscurity
Voting is to democracy as telescope is to astronomy.
Why Growing A Dedicated Community Before Launch Is So Important – With Wufoo
Developers complaining that a company with a history of treating people poorly betrays them? Cry me a river.
Linux Kernel Interactive Diagram
voting is pointless until we get run off elections. 3rd parties that would have long ago become prominent in U.S. with runoff elections are still stuck with less than 1% of vote, because the public isn't voting for their best interests, but are instead forced to vote to stop the other guy from getting power.

the democrats of today, are the republicans of just 10 years ago...and they get called socialists by the current crop of GOP. Why the shift to the right? Because they know they'll always have the Democrat vote, so they ignore them and shift to the right in order to get a few more independents.
A monarchy, when you have a good monarch isn't bad. However, you tend to end up with these bloody conflicts every now and again over who gets to be the monarch.

Merit might work, but it has the capability to discriminate against certain classes (even those who might otherwise make informed decisions).

I might be able to accept a system where you have to perform some level of service to the state in order to gain a vote. Something like military service, peace corp, teaching, being an EMT, etc... But then that starts to seem to Starship Troopers to me.
There's also the issue of less sunlight in winter, therefore less Vitamin D.
The Ultimate HTML5 Resources Roundup
Our goal in this article is to bring the best of those HTML5 resources together so you could find them all in one place. Here you can find some of the most useful HTML5 tutorials, websites, books, frameworks and videos which will certainly give you some proper HTML5 knowledge. Enjoy!
Babies and Their Sleeping Places
Ha ha ha, .... Very funny :)
I'm sorry you consider my reply to be condescending, as that is not my intention. I however find it discouraging when people refuse to learn from history's lessons.
In fact some States (e.g. WA was like this) only allow voting by mail. Potentially disenfranchising perhaps; how do I vote if I'm homeless?
Indeed, ATG was hot 10/12 years ago. I have checked their "customers" page and they still manage to hold big accounts, like AT&T, Best Buy. Surprising, considering how heavyweight are their solutions.
Ok.

I'll add something like a new page on the next drop and let you know.

Thanks for the feedback.
Convenience is king and this is an excellent example of how easy it is to go too far when collecting data from users. I already expect to jump through a few hoops when using a credit card online, so asking me for my life story will only encourage me to bail out and never return.
That's a silly argument.

You're saying that if a majority of people wanted change then they could vote for it, and it would happen.

But the change we've been discussing is the fact that 'majority want X' isn't a fair system in some peoples view.

If you believe, like I do, that "1 vote per person" is a flawed system and not good for the common good, there isn't really that much you can do.

The majority will vote for silly things that may well not be in their long term best interests. You can't trust the majority with anything.
Sorry, I'm going to play the "greater good" card here. Yes, it's a shame if/when your project gets canned. The important thing here is that the masses will not be stuck with proprietary crap.
Tablet Market: 95% iPad, 5% Everyone Else
I suspect it's there in large part as a psychological "trick" to make the £2 charge for a week seem good value in comparison, and thus - in theory - make people be more inclined to sign up for that.
Windows DataFlow (concept)
Pretty much, although O() notation doesn't really work with constants.
In the abstract, this ought to be obvious.

But as it relates to this specific example, I don't see how to test it. Surely you're not going to just randomly remove fields from forms, to see if anything good happens. The only way I can see to deduce this particular problem would be if the site is storing all of the failed checkout entries. And I think that's the wrong thing to do in this case, because of the privacy implications
"Goodbye GoDaddy" promotion
I know, but it was the most concise way I could express it.
> Why does California and Delaware both get 2 senators?

Slightly off topic, but I'll bite: Because democracy is much more about protecting minorities than ensuring the majority is in charge. If Delaware and other small states were only ever represented on the federal level in proportion to their population, only issues that Texas and California cares about would ever be taken up.
might be all true.

but thats an article about this guy, CEO and his amazing achievements at 21 yo, not about his current company.

one might say "whatever another rich kid with all his papa money and connections", but i see young and hard-working individual. nice read.
Ask HN: Best price increase emails
I'm considering raising prices for one of my web apps and am interested in reading through some sample price increase emails from other web apps (both successful and unsuccessful). Please feel free to post the letter or a link. I'm sure this will be useful for other startups as well.
Official HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results
As per the announcement: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_14_announcement

This is the first release to include official ec2 images. However, I'm having trouble finding them, anyone know the ami?
:) Yup that is my standard zip code when I need it. What I find even more frustrating is that some US stores ask for your zip code when you make a purchase. (Is it ok to refuse?). Being English, I just state that I don't live in the US, but it's not a practice I've ever encountered in the UK.
An idea in and of itself is free from technical debt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
Dictionary.com API
Ask HN: Constructing 1st E-mail for Venture Capital?
I've been working very hard on a business plan for about 5 months now and have reached a point where everything looks great. Myself and 2 other business associates have been working on financials and a small presentation deck for a new Internet media company. We are now at the stage of polishing things off and raising investment.

The problem I'm having is figuring out introductions. I follow many VCs online via Twitter, blogs, other mediums.. but I'm struggling with how to construct and present an initial e-mail to any angel investors or VC firms. We all understand the idea is solid. But we also understand first impressions are everything and any subset of too much or too little information could ruin any potential future partnerships. Any advice would be really appreciated
The best part of Git? More and more people are using version control and a lot of them aren't even developers. Just like Rails, the community and the social effect (aka GitHub) have made this possible.
"Intracellular and extracellular buildup" are two of the problems the SENS people are trying to fix. It sounds like you'd be interested in Aubrey de Grey's book...he goes into a lot of detail on their ideas.

On another note, Kary Mullis has a clever idea that he thinks could make cures for all infections diseases:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mullis10/mullis10_index.html
Mathematically correct but psychologically wrong
Units at the Olympics (2004)
California and Delaware both get two senators because the United States is a federation of states, and when the Constitution was written many of the Framers argued that each state, being sovereign, should have equal representation. This has nothing to do with redistricting.
This is actually an issue in the reporting rather than their figures.

The statement made it clear that 100,000 is the subscribers who have activated the digital element of their subscription (about 70% of the total possible).
Nobody is seriously considering those boards for servers, but server boards built around ARM cores. The only question is the peripheral logic around those cores.
By virtue of suggesting the very specific texts that you have suggested you have in essence suggested voting for a candidate of a specific set of characteristics. I could very well in turn suggest another list of texts, to reach a differing conclusion.

Seems much like a Catch-22 game.

Therefore, please just vote. From your life experiences, what you believe in, what sounds good to you, or by whatever text is of your liking.
Facebook hits developers that passed user IDs to data broker
I'm surprised this opinion has so much uptake. Ideally, we would all be highly informed. The reality however is that most of the voting public will not be, and your informed vote has no more weight than an uninformed one.

I don't like voting based on party, and I think the two-party system we have is inadequate, but the parties are there for a reason. I know that I'm voting for a platform if I vote for a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian, and that the candidate is going to represent that platform at least to some extent. In most cases, candidates' platforms are drawn directly from the party platforms, and you're not likely to find out much more about them until they've been in office for a while. Even then, what is knowable about a candidate is mostly in aggregate.

As to actual issues, these can be much less straightforward, but often it comes down to something as simple as, "do I want gambling at the mall?" (a current issue in my district). There are a lot of implications behind this - money coming in from out of state to protect other gambling interests, developers who want to build, etc. - but I still think it's valid for someone to vote for or against it for their own personal reasons. It is an expression of culture not just reason.
Sorry that you've been brainwashhed.

"Apparently Sen. Feingold believes that it's better to have an ill-informed electorate, and that we shouldn't be able to use our 1st Amendment rights to put a voice to our ideas, "

Let me get you on the record here -- you actually think the various "Americans for American Americans" groups are contributing to the debate? You think these groups deserve a voice? Let me re-enact a little play for you in 3 lines:

Lobbyist: I've got 5 million to spend, Senator. I can spend it with you or against you. We need our subsidies.

Senator: I'm going to do the right thing, not the corrupt thing.

Americans for American Americans: "Senator X supports wasteful government spending and death panels"

(Note that the lobbyist who was asking for money is now running ads accusing the senator of spending too much. That's ok, because it works.)
Invoicera Review: A Great Invoicing Application for Designers and Freelancers
How to Erase a Memory
Two more analysis:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/nov/02/tim...

http://www.beehivecity.com/newspapers/times-paywall-105000-d...
This is apparently it:

http://videos.apnicommunity.com/Video,Item,1068300085.html
Do people who have taken political philosophy 101 vote significantly differently than the rest of the population? I highly doubt it.
It's just the hammer approach to security as opposed to the scalpel approach.
The article talks about "many of the comments on Mr Muglia's blogpost", and links to that blog post a bit further up:
http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight...
I don't see him pin any actual numbers to things. It'd be interesting to see how things work out with different sized lists and hash tables.
> It should be enough for me to say "I'm not making that assumption."

But you were.

> Rather than call me a liar,

I didn't.

> you could assume that either you misunderstood,

I didn't. You said what you said. If you didn't mean what you said, fine. But then clarify it.

> or I misspoke and decided correcting it wasn't worth spending text on.

Then maybe you should avoid commenting on things you don't feel are worth your time, especially when you can't be bothered to say what you mean.

> Maybe I just assume too much of people.

I make the assumption people say what they mean. As you've demonstrated,

> Was this little diversion really necessary?

Apparently you found it necessary. Rather than simply correct what you wrote, you decided to disregard what I said and then comment on things completely unimportant to the discussion.

You asked a question, and I answered. If you aren't interested in a discussion, don't post here. If you are, at least have the courtesy to be clear about what you write. Being lazy and uncaring about quality aren't respected here.
... and using upper-case characters at the start of sentences is just silly.
Oracle Buys ATG
I understand that your comments are partly in jest (I hope!), but still the basic idea expressed in them is very misguided, dangerous and wrong: Misguided, because one can argue that everyone acts according to their beliefs, even an economics professor. You cannot talk about a clear dichotomy between those who vote on their belief and those who vote on "rational principles".

It's wrong because voting is an inherent citizenship right; it cannot be made contiguous on intellectual (or any other, e.g. socio-economic class) aspects, e.g. knowledge of economics, full understanding of the issues etc. of a voter. If you open the door to voter discrimination by declaring some votes less equal than others, who knows what other ideologies may walk through it.

It is also dangerous because it creates a sense of "right". The one thing that always amazed me in my discussions with liberals in the US is that they argue that their position is, how to put it, "inherently right", i.e. that they are the informed ones, whereas the "others" are the hoi polloi, the uneducated, stupid masses. Years earlier, in the race between Kerry and Bush, when I pointed to these people that Kerry came across as unlovable and stiff, I was met with disbelief: It was Kerry's "right" to be elected because he was "right". The danger of this view, of course, is that it often leads to defeat. In any confrontation, knowing the enemy's full power is crucial and belittling them will not make you win the war.
Of course I am trivially right, I posted a trivial reply to something I was only nitpicking about (and I told the op I agreed, just not with GDP).

No one offered up inflation adjusted GDP, and my point, which was very simple, though long winded, was that you simply can't say "Increases in GDP make the world better".

Look at zimbabwe. Their GDP is Hundreds of Trillions of Zimbabwe dollars, because they print a 1 Trillion dollar note.

To be more fair, the OP would have been better off using your food example instead of saying "GDP rose". I wasn't arguing that we are worse off today than 1929, just that it isn't because of an increase in GDP. If the currency wasn't inflated, we could get better off with GDP staying constant, through productivity gains.
He doesn't, but that's the crux of his entire argument. It's not like the theory is unsound, it's just that it applies to very large n, where the constant factor is insignificant in comparison. When n is small, it's the constant factor that dominates, and that's what he's saying (albeit in too condescending a manner).
HN and Reddit have always been very helpful in pointing out Manpacks' price competitiveness with Amazon. :)

To put it into perspective, using Hanes crew necks (that seem to be a baseline for comparison) you're paying a "discounted" $12.99 for a 3-pack on Amazon. Not including shipping -- or what you pre-pay using Prime -- that's $4.33 a shirt. Manpacks lists them at $5, with free shipping on orders above $30.

If you just don't see the value in not having to think about or shop for the basics, then that 67¢ savings will be the deciding factor.
I always liked the Git website for these reasons. The headline states that Git is a "fast version control system". There is a an example of the commands to show how easy it is to get started. There's a list projects that use Git. And finally, there is a prominent download section.

http://git-scm.com/
Domain registrations for $16 a year? Perhaps they should change their promotion title to "Hello GoDaddy".