skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think a big problem with a "harsh debate climate" is that the people who can provide real value with experience, knowledge and insight will stay away. For different reasons like personal, professional or just disinterest. That will in turn attract more people who enjoy a harsher debate, which most (if not all) of the time are less enlightened.

Or as the saying goes "Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Contributing patches to Rails is exactly what I am thinking of when I say this: it is a lot of work, visibility for new contributors is poor, and the main beneficiaries are going to be for-profit businesses. Yet I hear otherwise very savvy people telling unemployed CS grads that they should build up their github profiles by, e.g., doing patches to Rails. That strikes me as an astoundingly poor use of one's time -- you don't have a coding problem, you have a marketing problem. Patches have a very poor ROI for personal marketing.
Dear Lord. This article shows so much ignorance about programming in general. If I was hiring, I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole...
When you have a large number of slaves lots of things that would normally be impossible suddenly becomes easy.
Could you suggest better metric than GDP per capita?
I wasn't going to reply until I noticed I had a long line of comments with 2s a couple of hours ago, now they're all 1s after this morning's little scuffle: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851115

You can never prove anything unless you have the logs so there's not much point worrying, just play with and enjoy the furore. The best defence, if there is any, is to have a lot of karma and only engage with these folks if you can bear to lose some of it.
> Is it clear that per capita GDP is a good measure of standard of living?

Yes. This is something else virtually every economist will agree on. ACists, neoclassical, keynesian, Chicago, Austrian, I'm sure there are other major schools I'm forgetting, but this is a very accepted measure of standard of living in the field of economics.
why not try working at Hacker Dojo, you can get the work done and make new friends the same time.
They mentioned in the video that they apply varnish to make them less flammable. So, they do burn but perhaps not as easily as you would think.
I think meanness is something you have to push back against actively.

This site is not in a state of nature. There are all kinds of things I do to keep meanness at bay, and the situation would be a lot worse if I didn't. Preventing the site from declining into a swamp of meanness and stupidity (I believe the two are closely related) is something I think about constantly.
You can't, but there is a value in the underlying team and product: winning and overpaying from time to time still resets the market when a competitor is making many acquisitions. It also gives you more access to the deal flow, because now you are seen as an active bidder, which in turn offers market intelligence from being able to interact with all of these early technology firms.
The article is one in a series of discussions about whether it is possible, or well advised, to start up a company if one has small children at home. Children need child care, health insurance, time, and money to support them. This is a difficult situation for some one starting up a new company. It is much better if you are single and unmarried to take on the risk of creating a new business from scratch.

This particular gentleman's situation is that he has a full time high paying job and a stay at home wife. The start up is a hobby he does in his spare time. There is not much insight to be gained from this because it is self evident that if you have full time paying work and a stay at home spouse, how to take care of your children and support them is not a problem.

There are many scenarios under which starting up a company with small children at home presents serious challenges and this is what has been discussed much recently. This particular scenario, of being able to comfortably support a spouse to stay at home with the children because one is primarily employed in work that is not the start up, is not one of the scenarios in which children are a particular challenge to overcome.
mfukar, I think you have been unjustly burried with the downvotes there, but I really wish you would come back with an explanation.

Did you mean that in 20 years, technology would progress so rapidly that change will be near instantaneous?
RPC is a domain where functional patterns really shine since the high-latency nature of network traffic is well suited to asynchronous, callback-oriented event systems which are themselves inherently functional.

My own RPC system enforces continuation passing style exclusively to unify the calling and return-value semantics. With this functional pattern in place it was pretty straight forward to transparently wrap arbitrarily many closures arbitrarily deeply in callback argument lists and method requests (which are the same thing under continuation passing style).
Do you have a better answer to the original question?
Does that answer have any actionable points?
Since you can only touch one conductor of a USB connector at a time (or really at all) unless you stick your tongue into it, then any mains power applied to it is going to be hard pressed to cause you anything besides an uncomfortable tingling.
They are necessary because of the large amount of hanging electrical wires SF has.
I keep seeing these posts discussing strategies for selling "mobile apps". How is the situation for apps not in the various Feature lists any different from the situation desktop software has always been in? Isn't "free and paid versions" the same as "shareware"? I would be interested in seeing some posts discussing established approaches in the context of the new markets.
they know whatever MAC address you're using at the time, sure. if that happens to be 06:66:de:ad:b3:3f, then anyone later inspecting the logs will probably be disappointed.
Do you imply that all answers must be positive?
StatusNet suggests HTTPS be a paid feature because it's "difficult to scale".
My comment was more of an observation rather than a telling point for or against git, but I don't think it's a huge advantage of git that everyone has a backup copy of the repo that can be used for failover. github is essentially a central point of failure for many teams. You're going to change the location your CI checks out from if github goes down? Are you using github for issue tracking? Code reviews? What's more likely, I think, is that you just wait for a few minutes or hours until it comes up again, which is what you'd do with svn.
Incidentally, if anyone has any suggestions for technical changes/features/tricks that would help fix the problem, I'm all ears. Fending off the decline everyone thinks is inevitable for forums is the main thing I work on. It has been since practically the beginning.
DHS Singles Out EFF et al. FOIA Requests
I don't mean contributing patches to Rails, I mean writing Rails. Or contributing features to projects that are viewed as bit more hard-core, eg. Apache or Python, though even there you're often better-off starting a new project than contributing to an existing one.

There seems to be a general cognitive bias in the programming world against maintenance work, which strikes me as a bit dumb because it's both harder and more important than starting new projects. But as long as it exists, I'm going to exploit it, and do high-visibility but useless projects like port Arc to JavaScript or rewrite Tetris in 3 hours instead of contributing patches to JQuery.
u mad
Likewise, though I'm wondering whether it can only ever be limited to a very secondary sort of ID. I type differently depending on angle, how I'm sitting, device (consider iPad vs keyboard), etc.
"Correct, the "mean-spirited comments" are part and parcel of every open online community."

I often hear comments along these lines, I fear that people who write and read them then think that there is nothing to be done. That there is not point in trying, that there is no cultural or satisfactory technical solution possible.

If nothing else it is better try/do something then do nothing at all.
It's a weekend. There's always more random stuff on weekends.
Why bother with publicity if you can just develop it yourself?
Err, that thread was fine until you linked to his history, Peter.

But yeah, drug related threads, red flag :-) I hope you learned your lesson.
Most or all of the downsides could be negated by making this thingy a standalone wireless device.
You could try fragmenting HN in the same way that Reddit allows; this makes it possible to turn off the bullshit that invariably rises to the top. I mean, I don't even read reddit main or /r/programming anymore; they're just garbage.

Otherwise... aggressively ban people that don't contribute well enough. It is literally the only non-fragmentary way to fix the problem, because it's not a technical issue. People are just terrible. (I'm of the opinion that fragmenting is simply a less aggressive version of banning: leave the trolls to their shit-heaps, forge new ground.)

I'd say you should be banning at a rate over half of the new users you see. And if you look at my posting history, you'll probably see that I'm not exactly grade A material, so I'd expect to get chopped off eventually, probably sooner than later.
And? It wasn't. I find marijuana to be a useful tool, for the above types of coding, in high-level, low-level, dynamically or statically typed, or whatever languages. It encourages creative and lateral thinking.
I would make the argument that it depends more on the rationality of the person receiving the argument then what the argument is about.

A rational person is capable and willing to change their mind when new evidence is offered.

A irrational person may easily change their mind on some topics with no evidence and never change their mind on other topics(politics/religion/etc) even with the best evidence.
Good news for some startups. Not any that are looking for investors. At that average acquisition price, most investors would be disappointed.
Adobe shows off Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool.
i think the constitution is more about protecting the rights of all individuals. There's no weighing to be done there because the rights of one individual do not conflict with the rights of others. Rights don't require anyone to be sacrificed.
I meant that even today, it's near impossible to predict the state of the economy next week, let alone in 20 years.

We're also talking about a completely different society, like most societies changed from the '60s to the '80s and so forth. Different needs, different priorities, different state of affairs in a global level.

Take Google, for instance. Google first offered a useful product on 1998. Turned a profit first in 2001 ($105 mil). Its IPO took place in 2004 ($23 bn, wasn't it?). Even if one were so dense as to deny the upcoming global dominance of Google (at least in online search) back in 2000, those timeframes are so off the 20 year mark it's not even funny.

And yes, of course I expect progress (regardless of scale) in the future to take place a lot faster. We've already seen trends spread overnight. Who says someone won't be able to capitalize on such internet behaviour? Even if I'm too irrelevant to tell, I seriously doubt there won't be someone in 20 years' time.
I don't see a problem in looking at people's previous submissions - it can come in handy to get some context (in this case, it did, since his behavior on HN was getting him voted down in the past).

That said, I just went back and re-read your post and, yes, I see your point now and it's not quite how I read it first time round. I think the real problem is people who go back and vote down stuff to "punish" people, not those who introduce context from looking through your history (which I'm quite happy for people to do when replying to me).
Does this include Apple's revenue share deals with the operators or is it just phone sales?
I've read it from cover to cover many times. When I lived in Barcelona I lent it to this very cool chick from the US with tattoos of Koi fish on her feet. She promised to return it, "don't worry, it's back this week". I never saw her again. I remember his advice about adverbs. He likens them to dandelions if I remember correctly. It was one piece of advice I didn't get. I got that he had seen the adverb abused and as Mr. King is a man of taste he recoiled in horror - I recall he can't bring himself to use the word "zestful" for similar reasons. Adjectival phrases describe nouns, adverbial phrases describe verbs. If you're fine with adjectives then why wouldn't you be fine with adverbs? Honest question. However when I read a -- "what are you doing here", she screamed mightily -- I chuckle and think of Stephen's (may I call you Stephen?) advice.

Regarding talent. In On Writing he preaches Read Lots, Write Lots. He hammers that home. You don't have the time to read? You certainly ain't got the time to write. From the reading list he gives out at the back of the book you can see for yourself his taste in authors and let me tell you it's not Dan Brown territory. When Stephen (okay, King) equates talent to successfully published I think he's telling a little white lie and he knows it. Untalented writers get published all the time. Why? You can work that out for yourself. I think King tells this porky in this article because he is trying to dispel fear. His target audience here are aspiring writers. He thought they'd need to hear this stuff to keep the demons at bay. That was before his horrific accident. After that he wrote On Writing and you don't find that equation in there, let's just imagine that his brush with death allowed him to man up and drop the pretense. Stephen King is talented. Stephen King, last I heard, manages to sell a fair number of copies. But not everyone who sells a fair number of copies is talented. Did I mention Dan Brown? I think you get the point (he said haughtily).

Funny thing is, a lot of _serious_ critics wouldn't rate King at all. He's just a horror story / fantasy story writer they will say dismissively. He's not Proust, he's not Hemmingway. I've grown out of King (sorry, don't hate me) but damn it, that guy can turn a phrase. He writes like you are his companion, like he's taken your arm at the elbow and is walking with you awhile discussing personal matters. He scared the living _shit_ out of me when I was younger, The Shining is a genuinely frightening piece of fiction and boy is it well written. The Stand is an awesome piece of work that held me spellbound. Ditto, It. Long books both but I didn't want them to end. Maybe I have less patience now but it is rare I encounter a long (> 500 pages) book that I'll read with unflagging enthusiasm from cover to cover. I figure, if you've got something to say, say it briefly, winningly and championly or get off my lawn.
Exactly. Attention deficit is a misnomer; inappropriate attention, or poor attention control, is the issue.

Some additional "been there, done that" comments: if you try drugs, give them time to work. If you trying different drugs, give them time to leave your system. Know that some side-effects are temporary, but each person may respond differently. You may need to try a few different drugs.

If you honestly think you have a real cognitive or neurological problem, keep pushing for help and don't give up.
Have you ever considered giving people the option to register their abstinence from voting on a comment? Right now we have up and down, but a lot of the time I feel like I wish I had an "abstain" button. This would be reserved for the comments that aren't mean-spirited, but don't add much to the conversation.

Then perhaps a comment with 20 up, 5 down, and 500 neutral would rank lower than a comment with 20 up, 5 down, and 0 neutral. The idea being that, all things being equal for two comments, the one with more indifferent voters is considered less valuable, and is thus ranked lower. Maybe a neutral vote simply works by increasing n when judging the size-weighted score that HN uses to calculate rankings now.

I'm sure there are flaws in this line of reasoning..perhaps someone would be so kind as to point them out?
I would agree that there is no reason not to single out those who are constantly belligerent and vile. When these individuals are easy to identify they are often isolate from a group and do not end up causing many problems. However that is probably not the case that causes the most problems.

The case that I have seen cause the most problems are the people who are normally ok but are belligerent and vile with a specific topic and or individual. This hypothetical individual is normally a productive part of the community and may not deserve to singled out. I would not out such a person unless I had good reason to believe that that they would be treated rationally and that the community would only see it as an opportunity to help said hypothetical individual to become more rational.
It's not just Hacker News. It's everywhere on all forums, blogs, etc. I have no idea what's causing it other than economic stress!
pg, (this might be somewhat obvious but)couldn't you detect and (penalize?) the "punishing" some folks compllain about? someone downvoting a specific person across discussions. I would imagine most people do this by bringing up the target's profile first and then downvoting all his comments. Hard to think of a lgitimate use case for this behaviour.
Which got me thinking a few nights ago -- what a way to stimulate the economy. Hire some damn moderators!! ;-)
Well. Cell phones start coming at INR 500 (~ $12) with really cheap carrier call rates.
I don't get the point of this article. The author is repeatedly juxtaposing contradicting images. May be its an attempt to show economic disparities, or to say that this looks absurd. But he's done nothing more than putting together some circumstantial scenes.

I don't know much about journalism - but whatever it is, I hope its not this
Please clarify on what aspects of the article you deemed ignorant?
increased popularity has decreased the signal/noise ratio. just reverse the popularity :) or just make somewhere new to migrate to.
That saying is only true if there are no other people listening to or reading the argument. If your goal is to convince lurkers, it's actually pretty easy to win a written argument with an idiot.
OTOH, there are threads that are just way too interesting, but get virtually no contributions.

Here is a thread with one comment and one upvote, both mine, and it just has the potential of being very rewarding, IF the person who started has any intention to continue:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1852001
Your "real question" is a change of topic. The age a particular sexual practice becomes a healthy endeavor depends upon many factors, including, for example, the attitude parents have about their own and their child's sexuality. But this thread is about knowledge and not about doing.

We are talking about whether access to information about fisting on Wikipedia should be blocked or not. I argue that if the child is interested, male or female, they should be able to learn what the term means. I also think that kids should be able to see for themselves race-hate propaganda, religious intolerance, naked people, and pornography if they are interested. It's our responsibility, as parents, to help them to look critically at the information they find on the web, on TV, and elsewhere. And we need to be open and willing to answer their questions in a clear, non-judgmental fashion.

It is also our responsibility to teach kids about their bodies and their sexuality and what kinds of endeavors are healthy and what are dangerous. I believe that an informed person, regardless of age, is better off than one who has no information or misinformation.
I believe that the less anonymous a forum like this is, the more polite it will be. You have said you want people to speak to each other here as they would in the real world: well, I believe the more strongly you tie their real world identity to their account here, the more polite they would be.

My suggestion, similar to that experiment in the past, and similar to twitter, add a "verified user" badge in the users profile. However, to become verified requires a simple step: add a link to your facebook, linkedin or xing profile. Any already verified user can then verify you.

Non-verified users then have a very minor voting hit, for example a comment karma cap at 50 or so.

This will encourage people to associate their real life accounts with their hacker news accounts, and will result in conversation that more accurately reflects what one would say in real life.

The fundamental dynamics of the site would not change, since the advantage to being verified are not that major.
I wonder if it would help at all to add some kind of persistent disincentive for users with low (negative) karma. Maybe the rate at which low-karma users are allowed to post comments could be limited, or maybe low-karma users' posts could start in a slightly shaded state (like downvoted comments).

I guess the success of that strategy would depend heavily on whether a user's karma is a good indicator of the likelihood that they will make a mean-spirited comment in the future. It would also depend on whether the low-karma disincentive is actually undesirable to a potentially mean-spirited poster.
The economics solution would be to make teachers invest in students (paying cash to teach them!) in exchange for a percentage of future earnings. Taking a cheap student who everyone assumed would be a failure and inspiring and educating him into a successful entrepreneur might then be a better investment than finding a professor's son and providing an adequate education, due to a presumably kpmuch higher valuation of that child.

A problem is that a successful entrepreneur or hedgie is still more likely to come from a middle or upper class background and can easily make 1000x the return of other professions (which are more credential based, and hence a more level playing field for lower class students.). Hence, even at high valuations, investing in motivated, intelligent, well connected students may be the best investment.

Year on year changes would help ensure teachers were compensated fairly, as long as the market provided some kind of feedback to let parents and students evaluate teachers. I assume there is far greater variation among students and among teachers than between the teaching value offered by the same teacher to different students, but that may not be the case.

I don't really think this scheme is workable, but it provides the right economic incentives to everyone.
A flaw: I might vote neutral as "I agree with this comment's current point value." In that light, 20 up, 5 down, and 500 neutral is a fairly confidently ranked 16-point comment, but 20 up, 5 down, and 0 neutral is not. However, the less confident one should be "floated" to a small portion of users to get more votes.
I completely agree with you, except that I value customization higher than you do, so I choose emacs.

Have you considered VIPER mode for emacs? I know it's not complete VI emulation but it's pretty close. If I was to start again (with no muscle memory built up) that is absolutely the way I would go.
I think the abstain effect can be emulated by just skipping that comment :-)
Here's what you can do:

1. Avoid meta threads.

2. Downvote off-topic meta-discussion in other threads.

3. Do not add to the meta-discussion; just downvote and move on.

In this way, you can express your distaste for such discussion and avoid most of it with very minimal effort.