skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, even posting anonymously on the internet your identity could probably still be found, given someone sufficiently motivated to find it.

Was interesting maybe a year back we had someone post anonymously and then had a thread on people trying to work out who it was, knowing it was someone who had commented a decent amount before. People were applying algorithms to attempt to work it out, no idea if anyone ever did, can't find the thread.
I moved to Yii from CI and never looked back. CI was lacking the most basic features - I cannot believe it still has so many users.
Forward arrow worked well for me (same browser + OS) - though occasionally slow/janky. The presentation's creator mentions that it worked best on Firefox, I think.
But there is a minute, yet important difference: the App Stores are entirely controlled by Apple, whilst Microsoft never restricted or controlled your access to their platform as a software provider. So, maybe they "dominated" because of Office et al., but they never pro-actively locked out other providers - a policy common on the iPhone, formerly on the old Mac OS, and now apparently coming "back to the Mac [App Store]". The same thing was (and, in parts, even still is) the case with hardware: it was a piece of cake to sell hardware for the Windows platform (worst case you had to write your own device driver), but particularly tricky to do so for Mac. Apple now has the lead because they were first with many neat things on OSX, the iPod, then the iPhone and now maybe the iTablet. So they were first with a clean mobile platform. But Android has caught up and Windows 7 has just downright copied the entire OSX experience and maybe even added a few features of its own. So can Apple stand its grounds with their tight policies? I say, only if they manage to constantly stay ahead of competition, just as now maybe with the tablet PC approach. But how much longer will they be capable of delivering ahead of everybody else? And if they don't stay ahead, will they open up to let independent and innovative developers to maintain the lead or will they not? And in that respect I think current signals are rather discouraging.
how primitive svn is.

I actually consider primitiveness (insofar as it means simplicity) to be an advantage in collaboration tools like VCSes and ticketing/bug systems.

I currently work, for the first time, at a shop that uses git, and the closest thing we have to a git expert/evangelist has been complaining about how much hand-holding of developers he's had to do, especially as the company grows.

I like to point out that it's not the job of these developers (and web designers and a sysadmin) to become experts in a VCS, so one which is complex enough that it can't be effectively (if not fully) used by someone with just a passing knowledge, is bound to waste more time than it saves.

My other allegation is that git is not targeted at startups, which are, typically, very non-distributed collaboration environments. I like to gibe that Linus is the only target, but git does strike me as much more geared toward the decentralized development model of open source projects.
Hold a live power cable while walking barefoot across wet grass and I doubt you'd live to tell the tail.
The ability to post should be linked to the rate of posting. Or maybe the rate of pt change in general. This has two purposes:

It cuts down trolls who snipe in lots of different threads at once.

It cuts down on me too commenters, or the know it all contigent who seemly does nothing else but post on HN, again hitting lots of threads at once.

It encourages people to think abiut what they're writing, instead sending out one sentence snark, or writing a long missive they feel they can "clarify" later in a pointless semantic debate.

This isnt a complete solution... I have no idea how to correct for mean spiritedness, for example. But some kind of limit that tells people that they should stop venting/pontificating and take a walk might help.
Well, it's kind of obvious why it doesn't work. I visit a lot of blogs and can't remember that I ever stumbled across a flatter gadget. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have noticed anyway. Still, I believe the idea behind flattr is valuable. It will probably be a long time until it gains any traction, let's hope they hold out that long. Because chances are Facebook WILL copy this and it will be an instant success then.
The username being unemphasized is quite intentional - Reasoning being who cares who said something? If it's right it's right; if it's wrong, it's wrong.
Ah, so you do remember that the current is going to have to flow through you, and that will need something a bit more conductive than pavement and shoes.
Debian 6.0 Squeeze Beta Installer Announced
California has one overwhelming advantage that will keep it competitive until and unless it makes it impossible for a company to begin or profit: non-competes are unenforceable.

Also nice, but much newer, is a law that makes what you do with your own time, resources and ideas your own.

So to reify this, if I can't open "the same company in Seattle" simply because I'm shackled by a ludicrous non-complete them I'm damn well going to open it somewhere in California or give up altogether (well, I suppose moving out of the country might be an option).

And this goes for subsequent startups; this is a critical part the SF/SV ecosystem.

Question: does your startup's employee contracts include non-competes?
Oh, there's definitely cultural differences - I moved from Canada to the United States for grad school, but I've stayed because I prefer it down here.

However, the deeper differences between the two countries aren't going to be immediately apparent when interacting with tourists. It's not hard to see how someone on another continent could equate the two countries.
We use Pivotal Tracker to manage all our development projects. It's not only a bugtracker, but extremely usefull if you have any kind of agile process.
I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air, but consider it plausible.

Let's say 2200 employees with an average expense of 100K/year (salary and benefits) = 200 million dollars right there in costs. Factor in property (building, furniture etc) and other standard business operation costs.

Then when you get to the engineering side of the house - the data centers, servers, bandwidth, etc.

It is easily plausible for facebook to be un-profitable.
I think I overspecified the problem. I'm looking for ways to deal with maximum ignorance, because if you can deal with ignorance of the outside that means you have achieved independence. Dependencies specification is so popular today and I want something quite the opposite. There's bloat of dependencies, but there's bloat in independence as well. How would you deal with the bloat of independence?
You know - if you don't believe you can build a good enough application with these tools such that users will feel motivated to spend 30 seconds installing a new browser... then how on earth do you motivate yourself to learn these tools?

I don't understand this attitude in web development that panders to this contradictory sentiment. It's like saying - yeah, really we believe all web applications are actually worthless and people only use them while they represent the path of absolute least resistance.

Maybe this sentiment is true. But then, how does any web developer convince themselves they are creating anything of value? Surely if you're going to spend all this time on this stuff, then you HAVE to believe that you are creating something of value. And if you do believe this, then surely you believe that people would be willing to spend 30 seconds of investment upgrading their browser.
Maybe this is a good article to read. The author's opinions on why earning revenue first is better.

http://andyswan.com/blog/2010/06/03/revenues-first/

Just another point of view =P
I'd also recommend Pivotal Tracker. Its simple, neat, and gets the work done.
GPS won't work inside a metal shell, which is what cargo compartments on airplanes are (passenger airplanes have windows).
I agree with the sentiment of your post, and I have no opinion on the 'hyperfocus' issue, but I'd like to point out that the DSM embodies the state of the art and as such lags behind new insights. Only after those insights are accepted by the psychiatry community they are worked into the next version of the DSM; DSM V is (as it looks now) going to contain a lot of updates on ADHD in children, and progressive insights on adult-onset ADHD are probably going to be too cutting edge to be included (now this is of course something fairly new and I agree with the methods used to compose the DSM - better to be conservative here; my point is that the DSM is not the most up to date 'standard' to follow).
It feels awesome to know of insights by people who think on the flip side of the coin. This article made me think, Yes this is so true, whatever I see at my workplace... It mirrors like 99% of the things mentioned in the article.
Spectrum mangagement: property rights, markets, and the Commons
You might have some luck selling your domains at http://sedo.com or http://flippa.com.

For things like site designs and old code I would take a look at the marketplace section of the Digitalpoint forums or maybe even http://themeforest.net.
The biggest issue with PHP doesn't really have anything to do with the language itself: there is a serious lack of ecosystem. Instead of sharing modules and libraries, every project seems to form an isolated environment where code from any other project is shunned. I've been thinking about ways to solve this, as the PEAR effort never really took off.
Mantis http://www.mantisbt.org/ works very well for us. Easy to use and to customize.
Not sure what you mean by more 'robust' than trac.

that said, we use redmine at work.

saw this the other day http://16bugs.com/ which looked like it might be interesting.
I figured it was because National Novel Writing Month starts tomorrow.
Out of friendly curiosity - what led you to change your official name? What are the steps to do that? (I have an awkward last name and am considering it).

It seems like you even changed your first name. How did it feel, how long did it take until your new name felt natural?
..and the fire departments and the police and the military and the internet...
India Withdrawals
I havent figured out anything specific, but I have a couple of thoughts about the karma system.

It occurs to me that the main failure of karma-type systems in general is valuing quantity over quality. This is perfectly rational for a commercial site that seeks to maximise engagement and page views, but it seems to actively harm both comment quality and the community dynamic.

It seems that the prime concern we have for HN is maintaining a high S/N ratio; Why should the karma system not make that desire more explicit? I may be completely wrong here, but I think most of us would like to see a community where people think carefully before they post. If we want to discourage flaming and poor-quality comments, I think we need to think harder about behavioural prods to discourage them.

I propose removing the display of a users' total karma on their user page and replacing it with their average karma. I would like to see voting privileges made contingent on average karma and would be interested to hear possibilities for punishing users with a high proportion of low- or negative-karma comments.

It is of course dangerous to use heavy-handed technical changes because of the myriad possible unintended consequences, but we all know that internet communities almost inevitably fail. As a community, we should be considering our options now while things are generally OK, perhaps even designing a 'nuclear option' for the possibility that HN experiences some sort of Eternal September scenario.
A little bit nitpicking, sorry about that, but it's only the installer's beta, not squeeze's itself (testing, which is pretty much "the" beta for the next stable, has been around for a while).
1. Yes

2. Yes

3. No, cargo planes are metal boxes and cell phone signals can't make it in, so jammers would be superfluous.
Agreed. I think downvoting starts a revenge cycle, and the methods that are in place to prevent revenge only make the revenge less direct.

For instance, you can't downvote replies to your comment, but you can go into their user history and downvote their other comments. This is worse, because their other comments quite literally have nothing to do with what would have been downvoted had that measure not been in place.

If someone views downvotes as punishment, then this engenders retaliation, and retaliation doesn't engender civil discussion.
I just read Paul's essay in Hackers and Painters on his spam filters using Bayesian probability of words in the message. Could something like that work on trolls? The body's corpus would be only replies marked with a certain flag?
Ask HN: Private video sharing sites?
I'm looking for a site where I can host private videos - that is have videos hosted behind a password of my choosing. This isn't porn, but family videos. I don't want them on youtube or facebook or anywhere else for the world or my "friends" to see. I want to be able to distribute a password to a select few that'll allow them to login and see my videos.

I want access to be password only, that is not have to have others sign up or register with the service. They can can just hit the page, bang in the password, and access my posted content.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
I've been seeing a lot of this lately, too. I wonder how much of it is related to the Digg mass exodus?
I'm assuming "in the history of air travel" means "ever" not "since we started reinforcing them."
There's a computer in my fridge, and probably in yours too.
They have 1700 employees. How much money is spent per employee (salary + other costs, like food, equipment, etc.)? Let's assume $150,000 (I think I saw this figure used elsewhere for this purpose, no idea if it's at all accurate.)

In that case, $255,000,000 goes on employees. That's already a nice chunk. Add to that any advertising costs, add to that server costs (I assume that for Facebook, these are quite high considering the huge amount of traffic they get), etc. That'll already be way up there.

Also, they buy some smaller companies for large chunks as well. Not sure if we can include that or not.

In other words, it's possible they're not profitable. No idea whether they are or not, but it is possible.
Then it explodes when loaded into the cargo hold, in which case only the loaders die and the terrorists could have done much better with just a bomb on a street corner.
Asymco prepared the graphic, they did not collect the original data upon which it is based.
You are assuming that users:

(a) know what a web browser is
(b) know that it can be upgraded, and how
(c) aren't prevented from upgrading due to school/workplace/etc
(d) realise the benefits that come with using something newer than IE6
(e) given all the above, decide that your app and others like it aren't worth the install

At least one of (a) through (d) is false for many users.
You beat me to it! :)

Where did you get the 2200 employee number? I got 1700+ from Wikipedia.
I've had a friend describe my 'crazy eyes' as 'watching an eagle soar', which really caught me off guard because I had no idea that I looked any different. Since then I have made a conscious effort to give my full attention to people. It's not easy though - ideas erupt.
People invest based on what they think the company will earn in the future. That's how investment works - you're betting that, given some money now, they'll make you more money later.

Considering the huge role Facebook has taken in the Internet, I'd say betting on them is a great idea.
It's disingenuous to throw 'ritalin' in the same basket as 'speed', even if they're in the same pharmaceutical family. 'Speed' as sold on the street is ingested orally or nasally in an attempt to concentrate its effects in a short time period, Ritalin (and similar) is prescribed in much smaller amounts (20-80 mg a day, for speed it's not uncommon to consume 250 mg at once); plus slow-release versions of Ritalin (Ritalin MR, Concerta etc.) make this effect even stronger. Some experimentation with Ritalin is necessary to find out a person's correct dosage, when you really get a 'hit' like you do with speed, it's not used properly. Plus, people who actually have ADHD react differently to Ritalin that people who don't. Please don't just throw out blanket statements about how 'Ritalin is bad' - for some people it makes the difference between being able to function normally and not being able to plan their daily lives.
The point is that the developer wants developers to build apps with his code and distribute it. So he's complaining about the entity responsible for limiting distribution. He has no problem with the company that built the app.

Of course reading motives into people's heads is prone to error, but it's implied by his choice of the GPL...
Funding Math and Science Projects For Young Women
Thanks, I didn't know that. I stand corrected.
Doubt it. They'd have an easier time doing that by putting IE6 on life support indefinitely.
>>metal on the other hand loses structural integrity when exposed to heat shockingly fast. the wtc towers showcased this effect quite publicly.

but isn't that at extremely high temperature? Wouldn't that same amount of heat burn wood far faster than it would damage metal?

The wtc towers were exposed to jet fuel and beaten by a jetliner slamming into the building. Also, the metal beams in the wtc towers were made of steel while ladders are made of aluminum.
I wonder if it is intentional irony that this post about avoiding distractions has videos embedded, that seem to serve no purpose except to entertain and distract.

That being the said the irc one was hilarious...
+1 for redmine. Had it installed on Windows 2003 server and used its superb built in migration tools to go from mantisbt. Used it for about 18months and its actively maintained. Great for multiple projects and provides a simple UI. Its integration scripts with Subversion, GIT etc are also excellent.
@blantoni: You can find Facebook data center cost data here: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/16/faceb...

You'd have to 10X those costs (to $500M/yr), plus assume a 250% overhead (another $500M) on top of your $200M salary and benefits figure for Facebook to be in the red.

Calling that plausible would seem a bit of a stretch.
Automatic Halloween Candy Dispenser Using Arduino, X10 and Twilio
5 ways to keep your Twitter followers happy
Four-year-old sued for bike accident
GitHub has just enough issue tracking tools for my needs.
Extrapolation does not work on smallish sample sizes.
One of the few things that has worked for me is the Pomodoro Technique.

If you haven't heard of it, it's very close to what the author is talking about: create a very specific list of tasks, with high granularity, and then concentrate on one task for 25 minutes. Put a mark next to it when you've done 25 minutes, then go rest for 5 minutes. Rinse and repeat.

This has all sorts of psychology built-in, like forcing you to stop after 25 minutes, often in mid-task. This makes you more anxious to get back and finish the job. It's also much easier to get yourself to say "ok, I'll just work on this one thing for 25 minutes", rather than "ok, let's get started on this 4-hour-long task."

For anyone interested in more information, you can read about the technique and download a (free) ebook about it from www.pomodorotechnique.com.

Also, I'm currently working on a small webapp that helps you manage your tasks using the Pomodoro Technique. You can sign up to be notified of the beta at www.pomodoroplanner.com.
FYI, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the slides.

Took me a minute to figure that one out.
Then why not connect all those thoughts together? If it was so easy and if the hardware was so widely available and if the stuff here is a commodity and if user interface design and fit and finish was so easy, then why is Apple the bunch that is rolling in cash, and not looking like roadkill?

From what I've encountered with many of the low-margin commodity products, various manufacturers reach the "it works and meets our minimal specs, ship it" stage, and we get lids and covers and doors and other pieces that don't fit or quickly break and fall off, software and firmware incompatibility or crashes, fuzzy displays, sloppy switch mechanisms, user interfaces that are somewhere between truly bizarre and purely inscrutable, and related, well, dreck.

And for the consumers, a low-margin business means plug-compatible race-to-the-bottom no-name interchangeable and irrelevant product vendors, too.

Sure. There's a market for dreck. But as you've noticed, it doesn't pay well.
As a student in College that was recently in high school, my response is that being a teacher is not the world's most underpaid profession.

The vast majority of teachers were underachievers when they were in school. They care very little about the students future's and well being and also aren't teaching because they want to teach, but teach because its a job.

There are many wonderful caring teachers, but they certainly aren't the majority. If you were to pay teachers more, you must first completely abolish teacher unions so that a meritocracy could form and those that don't really want to teach would be weeded out. The issue with teaching isn't that the JOB DESCRIPTION isn't important. Its that the people doing the job aren't passionate.
I always thought they were just rolling their eyes at me, but now I know they're deeply engaged in imagining that they're somewhere else.
At least they don't take away our clothes and make us wear orange jump suits for the duration of the flight - yet.
Outlook auto-corrects a variety of smiley-type -- :) :-) etc. -- into the aforementioned J.
According to Glassdoor.com, the mean software engineer salary at FB is $110k. A year and a half ago, Facebook has around 900 engineers. If you consider that an employee's billing rate is generally half-again as much as salary, on engineering alone they could be laying down $150 million. Depending on how a lot of other numbers go, yeah, I agree that their income could be small with regard to their revenue.
Griefing: If the system does not already, I think it should flag for review users who consistently downvote a particular user.

Cliques: Likewise if the same few people are consistently the first to upvote stories or comments of a particular user.

Multies/Sockpuppets: I think votes for a user buy another user from "too close" an ip address should be automatically discounted. I'm not sure how to define "too close" (and I suspect HN already does this)

Anonymous posting: I like the way MetaFilter handles anonymous posting instead of people making throwaway accounts. The downside of this is that 1) Posters have to really trust the site admins; 2) This becomes more work for the admins

Disallow noob posting articles: What % of the [DEAD] articles were posted by users with a very low karma? What % hit the front page?

(Yes, those last two are not directly related to the OP's comment but I feel they're ideas worth throwing out there)
That's true, many were. That was mostly in the Caribbean.

There were also (I would say the majority) private ships operating under a government licence, the letter of marque, where they could do anything to the enemy's shipping to "take, burn or destroy". That was mostly in the Channel and the south americas.

And there was a big grey area where a ship might be thieving on one occasion and operating under a letter of marque on another. As with most history, it all depends on who was telling the story afterwards.
Changing your last name is a reasonably straightforward process in most countries, because women usually do it when they get married. The first name is a bit more difficult, but if you have appropriate and reasonable reasons, it can be changed.
I do realize that he is not say this article, however I just feel that there is a lot of false sense of grandeur associated with being a entrepreneur.