skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good intensions doesn't counteract the outcome of bad incentives. Obviously tenure isn't about being rich - but it is about being independent in your work. The system produces behaviors in its "publish or perish" style that are centered on building your metrics for getting tenure / status recognition.

How many conference intros have we all heard that say, "X person has been published X times and in Y journals". Are you saying you've never heard advisors talk about splitting articles up and the like? How about the decline of repeating published experiments?

These aren't isolated incidents at all. Status seeking is in all of us, and I don't consider it a bad thing. The metrics just need to be aligned with the goals of the endeavor - furthering knowledge.

Currently, we have a system where most grad students are chattel slaves seeking PhDs for a tenure track positions that 95% won't be able to get. So competitive is the tenure system that people are doing the above things to have a chance.

It's like the idealist-activist who becomes a pragmatic-politician and learns along the way the cruel facts of life and the system. If that's an ignorant or insulting point of view, then welcome to humanity... ;-)
My Start-Up: 3000 unique users a day, only 3 offers?
My YCombinator Applicants Video page ( http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants ) got over 3000 uniques in a single day, many from domains of "very big name" companies here in the Bay Area.

I moved to Silicon Valley this summer to find angel funding and/or work. With me practically begging for angel money and/or work in the page comments, I thought for sure somebody would say "Hey, Patrick. You did all this basically by yourself. Obviously, you've got some sort of talent. We'll definately help you out." Instead... nothing. I got a total of 3 legitimate inquiries, all of which I responded, none of which I've heard back from a day later.

My question is... with all the deep pockets and easy start-up money I hear about, what's it take to get somebody to actually commit to some angel money?

Patrick Keys

citizenkeys AT gmail DOT com
Google is an OpenID.

http://openid.net/get-an-openid/
But the people who complain about noise don't? That would be interesting too.
It could have, but consider that it may be an intentional stirring of the pot. Since their domain was created only 6mos ago and the whole affair is so absurdly tone deaf, I'm calling epic troll of the US-Internet World on this one.

Now for the advertising postmortem...
To a certain extent, I agree; sloppily written Flash software is a huge part of the problem.

But Adobe isn't doing itself any favours either. Once every day or two the fans on my laptop ramp up for apparently no reason -- and a quick trip into the process monitor invariably reveals that the Flash plugin process has gone rampant and is eating 100% of my CPU, long after I've left the site that was using it. It's excruciating to wait for Adobe to fix these long-standing issues, as they seem to feel no real urgency to improve the performance and stability of the plugin.

"HTML5" as a group of technologies to replace Flash will no doubt see its share of terribly written uses, but at least the Firefox, Chrome, Safari et al teams can compete to write the most-efficient, least buggy runtimes for those crappy sites to run on.
I completely agree that you can do it in the US, I just meant that you can get more bang for your buck in a place like the Philippines. $1,000,000 invested in the US, even if you could get a 10% guaranteed return (that's a stretch in this economy), you'd earn $100,000 per year. Inflation is going to eat 3-5% of that $1,000,000 each year, so you can only take out $50-70,000 if you want the nest egg to stay intact. Give 1/3 of that to Uncle Sam for taxes, and you have $30-50,000 to live on, which won't go far, even in Arizona. Hopefully you have the restraint to live a lower-middle class lifestyle knowing you have $1,000,000 in the bank. In the Philippines that same middle class lifestyle can be had for $6,000/year, or if you want to live an upper-middle class lifestyle, $12,000/year.
Ah ok, didn't think about that.
Love is Great for Creativity, Sex for Analytical Thinking
And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.
This is the best thing to happen to PostgreSQL in a long time.
Please start at http://wiki.s4.io/Tutorials/GettingStarted
Link to video?
Yeah, the most interesting takeaway for me is how far these guys got with a relatively small amount of effort by picking the right apps to work on. For example, there are literally hundreds of unit converters in the App Store right now, and they shipped another one anyway to great success, because the demand for such apps are still so high.

It does illustrate that there is still tons of money to be made in the App Store for building the right apps.

(Thanks for posting this interview by the way.)
In my experience this works every time at Dulles international (IAD) but never works at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL). At ATL you get sent to the back of the normal line.
It would still introduce a second ribbon, but, if you have the two ribbons do a twist in the middle, I think it would work better.
TubeMote adds RC apps for Justin.tv and Scribd
You know, what you say brings to mind an interesting point. Right now most people ~98% I think, have javascript enabled all the time. Its a smaller minority of us that use NoScript.

There are no mechanisms that I know of in popular browsers to disable certain html5 features like canvas, video, or audio elements.

So while its possible right now to disable Flash by not installing it or using certain browser extensions, if an ad provider loads an ad that uses the video or audio element you really have no way to disable them. Disabling javascript should prevent canvas-based ads from running, but what's to stop video and audio playing if your browser supports autoplay?
Twitter now using Snowflake Tweet ID generation
Plastic SCM: the Windows DVCS is now free
I think lutthorn's point above is on the money. Publish the algorithms, data, assumptions, and any other implementation-agnostic information required to reimplement, but don't bother with the actual code.

Successfully reimplementing the experiment on disparate platforms would liekly serve to support the findings even more. It might be more work up front for researchers to have to do the complete implementation in their preferred platform and then work out the kinks, but it might improve the actual science being done.
The less optimistic part of me agrees with you but hopes that in the future this will somehow turn out to be wrong.
Less say but if you think about it, are the chances higher that 1 of say 7 startups will succeed (when you have the choice of being highly selective when choosing them) or that 1 of your 2 - 3 starts with succeed to the point of bringing in 5000 a month?

I think at this point it makes more sense.
10 Strange Things About The Universe
There is an easier explanation. I didn't see the original on the frontpage, came across the article I linked, and so I submitted it. Had I seen the original submission, I wouldn't have submitted this link.
If this were relevant to you, you'd know what most of that means, particularly stream processing. Why exactly is yahoo faulted for your lack of understanding of the technical vocabulary? I'm mostly annoyed that you think that using the usual vocabulary to discuss a problem means that people have to mind-read.
video of what?
Wow. Impressive story and an impressive site. Also, thanks for all the details on how your site handled the load. It's a great write-up. Best of luck!
My guess is yes. I think it's worth trying, at least.

There may exist zillions of sites, but that in and of itself doesn't matter. If they can build a better product that can draw a large enough audience, that's important. I have personally looked around for tools like this, but haven't found anything that really kicks ass. Playing with their tool makes me optimistic -- they may be on to something.

I don't think they have to worry much about duplication. Building the product isn't the hard part, getting users is. Not sure if they'll be successful here, but if they fail it'll probably not be because of a clone.

Good point with the money, that almost certainly be tough. However if their product is useful enough and enough people use it they'll have an opportunity at making serious money.
How long have you been doing the 40 days a year thing?
...the 75 percent of Mac owners that use the product

This is the most surprising part of the article for me - that 75% of Mac users use MS Office. I actually find this pretty hard to believe, since none of the Mac users I know use it - they end up using a combination of OpenOffice, iWork, and Google Docs.
"They" aren't similarly so squeamish about waving fear and flags around to force body scans and invasive pat downs on us. This is an issue that is important and we must use tools that work to get it to stop.
Kohana 2 was "just a php5 fork of CI", while Kohana 3 is practically a whole new framework. The "problem" is that Kohana team doesn't like handicaping new versions for sake of complete backward compatibility.

They just make the framework better with every new version, although in case of Ko3 minor versions are backward compatible (for example 3.0.8 with 3.0.1., but 3.1.0 will not be, at least concerning the response object and the ORM logics).
'Silicon Valley' coming to London's East End
Thanks. I probably just missed it.

Here's the relevant info from FINA:

FR 2.3 Depth - A minimum depth of 1.35 metes, extending from 1.0 metre to at least 6.0 metres from the end wall is required for pools with starting blocks. A minimum depth of 1.0 metre is required elsewhere.

http://www.fina.org/project/index.php?option=com_content&...
I'd buy a nice place, and use the rest of it to live while I build something else.
Well, the entire point of it taking 20 minutes is that gets rid of the spur of the moment 'why not? totally not qualified, but may as well try' or 'let's do it for jokes!' submissions. And this being the internet, there's quite a lot of those (for the lulz I believe is the technical term).

I would think the reddit staff to be intimately familiar with that type of behavior.
From someone who just moved to SF 4 months ago:
1. Bring lots of money (probably applies to LA as well)
2. If you can, dump your car
3. If you need a car, get CA plates within 10 days
4. Once you have your plates, get a res. parking permit ASAP!
5. Get your smog check before you do #3
6. Budget at least $100/month for parking and other tickets for the first few months
6. Sign up for every Eventbrite and Meetup event you can find that interest you and go (you should have stuff scheduled for at least 2-3 days a week if not more

Being a techie in SF has been absolutely amazing. The startup community here is an incredible force. Meeting people is a no-brainer if you put yourself out there. I work as an independent consultant with clients located across the US so I can't speak to the job market in SF. After being here only 4 months, I am thinking it will be very difficult to leave when that day comes since the opportunities are just incredible.
Remember that the best way to get money is to not need it. Investors aren't interested in "helping you out"; they're interested in making money, and broadcasting "we were rejected from YC and we're desperate for money" isn't a very good way to convince potential investors that you can make them rich(er).
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence. For example, I personally don't know any Mac users that use OpenOffice or Google Docs... and all the ones I know use MS Word.
It is the maximum time, but issues are not that simple. The long-term members of Congress know the electorate are upset, and want to make nice; the new members are spoiling for a fight; the Dems are in disarray and retreat (I haven't a clue as to why), and the GOP is eagerly taking ground. It's a perfect time to push an issue with your Congress members.
Very nice interface and website. It's sleek and uncluttered. Overall, pretty enjoyable to use.

-You need SSL. Badly.

-You need to post a privacy policy. I need some something to reassure me before I can store private information under your control.

-Public demo? A lot of people will lose interest if they have to set up an account before even coming into contact with the software. Knowcase (http://www.knowcase.com/) does a good job of providing a demo without forcing you to jump through hoops.
I've got a slightly different angle of approach to this than most others.

First, it sounds like a lot of people here are far more expert about alcoholism than I am, so I won't touch on that part, except to say it sounds like a legitimate concern that should be watched carefully.

To me it seems more important to look at what you're actually concerned about.

You're bothered that you want to relax (beer may not be the best method, but that's what you're using it for) and spend time with your wife.

It sounds like WORK is what you're more addicted to... or at least the idea of work. Now, I work a lot of hours myself between regular job and my own endeavors at home, and I won't ever try to say that's a bad thing in and of itself. But, assuming that your senior leadership role pays the bills comfortably (or at least your share of them, if your wife also works), what that means is that you're making a conscious choice that work and personal accomplishment is more important than comfort and relaxation and time with your family.

Be careful when you read that last sentence... I don't mean to suggest that you don't ACTUALLY spend enough time relaxing or being with your family; obviously I don't know enough of your life to judge that. But what I mean is that you BELIEVE you should be working rather than doing that, and so even when you are sitting on the couch with your wife and a beer, you're stressed out because you feel like you should be somewhere else. That stress leads to the need to drink, which leads to less ability to do the work, which leads to additional stress, which leads to additional need to drink, and so on.

I certainly understand the need to create something of your own outside of work, whether it's art or music or a business or a racecar or whatever. But maybe it would be better to take a vacation from that, and allow yourself some time where the only goal is to drink beer on the couch with your wife. If you set yourself a goal such as "For two weeks I don't WANT to do any entrepreneurial work at home", then you'll never feel like you're failing at something because this is designated time off. That in turn could take the edge off your stress level, which could reduce your need to drink, which could improve your productivity, and the cycle reverses itself.

Good luck with it!
I knew nothing about any of these subjects before doing this puzzle and I got it within 45 minutes, and the majority of that was digging through the ICMP RFCs to figure the first one out. It's definitely a test of if you can figure these things out unless you happen to know ICMP header codes, the weight of gold in an olympic-sized swimming pool, which company's data-link layer address starts with 08:00:09, and the html entity codes all off the top of your head.
Are you confusing open source with a wiki editable by everyone?

Open source just means that you can fork it and do whatever you want with your own version, e.g. fix it. The original owner's don't have to accept your fix.
You keep using that word, "arguments". I don't think it means what you think it means.
Very cool, but no backspace/delete/arrow key support? Can't seem to correct a typo other than just hitting enter, getting the 'command not found' message and retrying.
Yeah, but R is all caught up in a stats education -- and I think that's much harder to cover in a single book. Just my .02.

If people are looking for a broad overview of statistical stuff -- what's a t test, a sampling distribution, a regression, anova, variance, glm family, etc, I'd recommend this unfortunately very expensive book:
http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Sleuth-Course-Methods-Anal...

It's very applied with subject oriented chapters, eg what is regression? What about regression where my dep var is counts? A probability? With correlations in the design matrix? It's not perfect, but for self learning of stats, it's the best thing I know of.
> Trade Gothic wants to get to the facts, but Bell Gothic wants to have some fun.

What? It looks like fun is in the eye of the beholder. The lack of proper specification really bugs me. It's sort of similar to how wine connoisseurs use words like "round" which don't really mean anything, or at least not until you've had enough "round" wines to recognise the distinct flavour property that is being described. I vote for ditching this stupid scheme in favour of being more specific and / or defining terms clearly.
That sous vide thing they did is wasteful and a bit silly. Don't cut the slow cooker cord. Integrate the thermostat, voltage converter, and an outlet into a small box with a cord. It is at least as easy, can be used for different heat sources / cookers, and doesn't interfere with using the slow cooker normally when you want to.
To a point, but some sites actually serve up different content if your browser can't do Flash.
My New Stealth Startup - Yelp, Meets Groupon, Meets Foursquare, Meets Twitter
Ask HN: How do you go about hiring a designer
My startup is a web app, and as such needs some serious UX/UI love. I can do my best, but I will never get it to the level that a competent designer could.

But how do you hire one? Where do you find one? Do you usually hire him/her to just do the one time thing or is it more customary to make it a regular deal where they do the incremental updates as well? Who writes up the contract in a scenario like this?
I think he is simply wrong that web is only going to get more and more social.

I would posit that an opposite movement will also happen. Social networks become more ubiquitous but that very ubiquity will teach people what not to share and raise the value of the "anonymous web".

For example, if a merchant can understand their customers exactly, it introduces an information asymmetry into the market game that the merchant enjoys but I, as customer dislike. I don't want a merchant to know exactly what I'd be willing to pay for X. I want the merchant offering prices anonymously and then for me to be able to pick the best of those prices.
For everyone wondering wtf chucK is and only able to find information about some tv show when you google: it's a synthesizer or some such.

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
In Demand  A week inside the future of journalism
A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin | 43 Folders
When reality doesn't match expectations, modify expectations to match reality.

You can start by actually getting realistic data on:

1) Time to get angel investment

2) Number of people with 3000 unique in a single day that hit front page HN.[I reach front page only for a brief period and had 2k unique visits, twice]
You're vastly underestimating the ability of a poor programmer to bring your computer to its knees ;) A tight infinite loop running on any virtual machine will have the same effect.
Their website probably got a lot hits from the curious today, since it was a hacker news front page story. I wonder how many potential users, like me, that they lost forever because because of the register-before-we-explain anti-pattern. And no, I will not unblock a video until after I am interested.
They call it "angel money" for a reason. If you were "ramen profitable", then you wouldn't need angel money, you'd need legitimate venture capital to get big fast. "Ramen profitable" right now is about 500 bucks a week.

I also indicated I was looking for work. If I had some outside work, I could self-fund my ventures. With all these deep silicon valley pockets, I'm surprised nobody offered me any sort of work.
You don't consider the offer to "make good" by donating $130 to the school of journalism to be a perfectly good first option before "belligerent counter-attack"?

Griggs was an idiot - but thats OK, there's no law against being an idiot. There _is_ a copyright law though. Griggs was offered a simple and inexpensive way to to fix the crime she committed out of her idiocy, and she chose to not take up that offer. What else should the copyright owner in a case like this do except get belligerent?
I don't think it's so much that HN is getting worse, but that it's old enough now (in Internet years) for people to start reminiscing about the "good ol' days" because people like to do that kind of stuff. It's a bit more populated and faster now, a bit less exclusive, a bit more noise to the signal. But the signal is still very much there, easy to find thanks to voting, and better than pretty much anywhere else on the web as far as I'm aware.

I'm not too worried about it. If it starts to suck, there will always be a considerable faction ready to saturate the front page with articles about the innards of Erlang to drive away those that don't really belong here. (Ahh, those were the good ol' days...)
Colin, they didn't say much about their marketing. Do you think they're doing any app store SEO?
until ads turn to JS+Canvas+whatever to ruin the whole thing again.
It will only take 35 days and 18 hours.
glad to see HN is enjoying yesterday's release of mod_pagespeed: http://enekoalonso.com/terminal.php?command=ls&path=../....
It would be interesting to see more people chime in here about using sites like Elance. Have you had good/bad experiences with this approach?

Outsourcing seemed to work great for these guys (good for them!) Is it because the apps were fairly simple, or did they get "lucky" with picking the right developer(s)?
+1 for the principle
+1 for the latex glove logo: make the reader feel unconfortable (ok... most readers anyway)
-1 for not having much substance past point 3
-1 for selling T-shirts: it's perception, but it sure makes one wonder if this is just a quick way to make a buck taking advantage of an actually serious issue
+1 for making a quick buck by taking advantage of a serious issue

ok, you're in the positive.. for now.
SafetyWeb.com's "Find Help" application on Facebook
Hey Andrew! Curious why your podcasts don't show up in the iTunes feed until a few days later. I'm having to manually download this one because I'm so excited about it. :)
This would be an awesome way to port over Zork or any Infocom game to the internet!
Both Smashing Magazine and, more recently, the Smashing Network posts they link to from their own site tend to be highly variable IME. Some are quite deep, and some are like this one, with laudable goals but simply not very good. The trouble is, unless you already know the topic fairly well anyway, it's often hard to tell the difference between good advice and bad, or between subjective personal opinion/preference and conclusions based on hard empirical data. After all, as I write this, the link to this article has 67 points and is near the top of the home page.

I'd like to encourage people who might post more HN links to articles on graphic design, typography, usability, etc. that have real depth. Clearly a lot of people who contribute here work in related fields, so I suspect there would be enough interest to justify highlighting good content. I just don't want another five linkbait articles parroting the differences between en- and em-dashes as if that sort of detail is what typography is really about, or another ten that start by explaining a colour wheel and then parrot trivia about what each colour "means" without giving any useful examples or practical discussion about how to use that knowledge to do something better.