skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The easiest threshold is karma, as for polls.
I know a lot about this first hand, so I will give you two very simple pieces of advice that will help improve your life by 10x in 1 year if you take them. It won't be easy and it will take 1 year, so you have to stick with it. The good news is that it's fairly easy after you do it the first time.

1) Go talk to more people. Half of them may be ass holes. Another 45% may not care but as edw519 said "Fuck that shit". The 5% who will become your friends will be worth their weight in gold.

2) Work hard and know that the world doesn't owe you anything. Guidance is for you to seek. If teachers are bad, teach yourself. You are lucky to know English and be in a position where you can learn programming in a world filled with poor people who don't get to eat twice a day. You need to not just accept but believe that you are lucky.
Because then spammers would start to post comments instead, and those are harder to catch.
Agree. Also add a moderation queue. It doesn't go live as an RMS unless you pass either captcha + moderation or karma check. A great way to gain karma would be to review the moderation queue.
If you're serious, then your idea of rating people according to some measure and denying people who score low is outrageous.

Why would you so blatantly misrepresent what someone said? All CWuestefeld said is that if you don't know that much about politics, don't vote. Or does that somehow equate to denying someone the right to vote in your mind?
If there was an established rule about who got to submit RMS posts, lurkers would know that and create accounts.
Wufoo also made great partner and integration pages for us:

- http://wufoo.com/partners/notifo/

- http://wufoo.com/docs/integrations/notifo/
Hospitals Have Hope in Dutch 'Search and Destroy' Strategy
Obviously you need to get him interested in technology as a whole first - things like ipods, netbooks, etc. What first got me interested in programming when I was a wee lad was 'build your own level' tools for video games like age of empires. The first scripting I ever did was for AI behavior in these games, which really got me going. Then my parents got me a visual basic CD (the reeealllyy simple one) and believe my first program was text-based Russian roulette - A bit morbid for a kid, but you get the point. I think the key for children to be interested in making their own things (programming or otherwise) is to incorporate game mechanics so they can have fun in the process!
The Cost of a Chargeback
How well does git handle non-text files like .psd and .ai files?
Let him be interested in what he's interested in.
In fact they do it constantly.
I'm mostly leery of giving absolute advice. When I made the attempt it was explicitly to see how I would feel about trying long form fiction without a plan, in case it felt more "right" to me.

Now I know going down that path is foolish for me personally, so instead I have returned to more extensive outlines (my NaNovel outline is a list of all the scenes and an indication of which plot thread(s) they primarily touch on).
Maybe another section like the "new" section?

But don't name it rms, that means something else on any hacker site.
Degrees may not be scarce - but the knowledge that should be contained within an CS graduate indeed is. At least as my experience has led me to believe.

So to recap the article: Don't go to UNI to get a CS degree thinking you will make big bucks just due to the degree. However if you actually understand the knowledge you were supposed to learn - then you should be able to make a buck.

Nothing to see here - move along.
I think the market for CS is part of the problem. The skill set required from graduates varies widely across the industry. Also, it depends a lot on where you want to live. For example, if you are going to use hardcore CS knowledge, you must be or move to an area where companies require it. This means Silicon Valley, and a few places where there is a demand for such knowledge.

99% of other companies will hire CS people to write glue-code in Java or similar. In that case, the important skills are team-working and project management, beyond being able to program in Java.

So, you cannot blame only universities for delivering grads that don't know more than the basics. This is what the market will pay for. It does no good to a State University to teach for example AI algorithms that will be useful only if they get a job on Google, or writing Haskell compiler that will be useful only if they work for Microsoft.

I think a sensible solution would be to limit the number of CS programs, and create a separate major, maybe business computing or something like this, to attend the need to of the large majority of businesses.
What's the point of "flag"? By killing legit RMS posts from low-point posters, you're creating a lot of ill will, particularly when they follow up with "Why was this thread killed?" posts.
just let him enjoy the time spend with you, give him problems, not solutions. Give him options, be open to listen and show interest in his activities, you will be surprised of how much you will also learn from him.
Nice article. By the way, Brian, who did your illustration?
I never claimed to have discovered a universally valid break-even point.

The confusion stems from the language you used in your comment, which made it seem like you were claiming a lot more than you actually turned out to be:

"I have yet to see anyone ... actually do the experiment to determine where the actual breakeven point is. Hint: it's less than 5000."
What part of town are you? Houston is pretty spread out, so it may be better to specify a region.

Outdoors is pretty tough, since there are only about 6 hospitable weeks per year in Houston. I did spend some time at a company that officed on the BMC software campus, which I would definitely say was conducive to coding. Downtown, Discovery Green may be worth checking into since you have houstons city wifi available there. Indoors, pretty much every starbucks in town has at least one person working for extended periods. There are a few pubs that are open during the day that have wifi access that could do the trick as well.
I agree, but it's important that what qualifies as investment matters. Perhaps a function of comments, votes, submissions and time the account has been around.

As an aside, how would we distinguish between RMS posts and regular posts? Would the spammers simply revert to normal posts? I think if this is the case then perhaps we should reconsider the goal.

If the goal is to stop spam masquerading as RMS, then it seems to me that accounts should require more longevity or community contribution to post an RMS post than a regular post. As long as we define etiquette for posting an RMS post, then it should be feasible to use a combination of following that etiquette, and flagging posts that don't follow said etiquette.

If the issue is stopping spam, then perhaps that's separate to RMS posts and should be considered as a wider whole.
are they? we kind of tend to smash down comments that are even slightly off topic or non-contributory.

they might sneak in on the less popular submissions, but i kind of feel like it won't get by any more of a problem than it already is. if comments were more a effective way to spam, they'd already be a problem.

alternatives: disallow links in comments until a certain karma/age. disallow both comments and submissions (ha) until you've voted on enough statistically different things. make it a game by creating a new metric that people can be measured on based on the number of spammers they've sought out and identified via flagging, and create a new top list for it.
It depends. I would typically vote for a candidate if his positions on other issues were not repulsive to me or if his stance really didn't matter at the federal level.

But I refuse to vote for a candidate because of a single plank or even 2 or 3 planks. I won't compromise on things like marriage equality or abortion rights. Those, while they should have no federal interferance at all, sadly are determined at the federal level. Same goes for economy.

But if the candidate has an opinion on, say, the Department of Education that I'm opposed to I might let it slide.

The point I was making is that is a case by case basis and more times than not, I've refused to vote for any candidate because I didn't want to send a message that I supported them at all.
I did read the article, and the title says it all. They lost money because they got greedy for data that was unnecessary to complete the transaction. As a result, another point of failure was added and frustrated users bailed. The body of the article may try to spin it as a case where analytics boosted the bottom line, but the truth is that it was a bad design choice that cost them money from the start, because they ignored the KISS principle.
This is a frivolous lawsuit. There is no reason anyone would sue a private company for not using their software.
Facebook Integration: Like, Share, Publish, What's the deal?
The Times UK Lost 4 Million Readers To Its Paywall Experiment
Jiminy! People: he's just saying I'm too busy to fix this the right way today, so you'll all have to make do with this band-aid.

Can we stop with the star-crossed imaginings of startup questions lost to the ages because of karma thresholds? If you have a real product you want to rate, and you can't post it, just find someone who posts regularly and who has their contact info in their profile. Then: send them an email and ask for help.

If that's too much of a hurdle for you, I have some bad news for you about entrepreneurship...
Lovely visualization. Thanks for posting this.
You have asked an important question: how do you detect the keyboard layout (in Javascript) when using KeyUp/KeyDown events? A regular press event will provide the charCode but the press/release versions do not.
Or you could get a ultra low voltage laptop and have the best of both worlds.

(Good battery life and a decent amount of processing power)
The Playsation Phone IS the PSP2 (And That's Why It Will Succeed)
Despite vehement – if mixed – denials from Sony, it’s hard to believe the long-rumored, much sought-after Playstation Phone is anything but a reality.

After all, those pictures and list of specs certainly seem convincing. Beyond the the fact that the snaps show the trademark buttons and long-rumored touch-pad, it’s also an idea that just makes sense. People have been clamoring after one for so long for a reason.
Just wondering, I've been able to down vote for a few months, but recently, my karma hasn't gone down, but I can no longer down vote comments.

Why would that be?
Understanding the mother/daughter divide
You are ignoring the fact that you have to calculate the hash-key. With association tables, pointer comparison is enough if you are searching for interned symbols.
Momentum MI seems to be a YC clone to me. They copied several things from YC - they take $20K for 8% of equity, they have a 'Demo Day' and so on.

Organizations like these seem to be popping up everywhere. And the companies they are funding aren't the same quality as YC. It seems like there is a ton of capital available and a ton of startups are being created (especially web based). Are we in some kind of a bubble? As a startupper, I find this interesting.
As a side effect, if you're legit, not a spammer but are new to HN (0 karma), then maybe one of the paths to getting an RMS is to be able to convince at least 1 non-new HN member with enough karma to stake their reputation and post an RMS on your behalf. Therefore the RMS is already vetted by someone real that's been around HN for a bit.

Crowdsourcing RMS spam control sounds like it could work well. Like how investors stake their reputation by inviting other co-investors, established HN'ers would have something to lose if they posted RMS spam.
You have almost 1000 karma. Do you have a startup you want to ask about? Try posting it; he's not going to kill it. Otherwise: what's the problem?
Credit card numbers are fairly easy to detect, they're all 13-16 digit numbers with predefined prefixes and have checksums, so if you wanted you could automatically filter fields which contained credit-card type numbers so they wouldn't get stored.
Where The Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep At Night
Understandable, and I don't mean to imply that there are absolutes applicable to everyone. Rather, I'm a believer in statistics. By far the majority of hobbyist writers will benefit from an outline. Also, I've found that overconfidence and newness to the hobby are correlated. So it's just a matter of saying to most beginners that they should strongly consider outlining. Not necessarily that everyone absolutely should be outlining, but rather, that it's a good starting place for most people.

I suggest newbies try outlining before deciding categorically that they don't need to do so. That's all.
The marshmallow experiment
Answer every question.
Also, people on commuter tubes into central London are not even representative of all the people in London.

I find that interesting, care to elaborate? I was under the impression the LU is the lifeline of London (from my admittedly brief stay here). Maybe you could drop me an email, seeing as how OT this seems...
Hey Justin, good to see the chat lighting up again. Thanks for the post. Good luck guys, but don't let YC consume you, get back to your startup!

GDH
Unless you really believe that the sample set contains 95% people with degrees.

That's the whole point. The value of the degree is the inverse of its scarcity. If you have 50% of people with degrees, it's more useful than if you have 80%, which is more useful than if you have 95%.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I am saying?

I'm not saying a degree isn't useful or meaningful.It is not a boolean, meaningful or not meaningful. Just that it is more useful and more meaningful if a degree is scarce than if it is plentiful.

We don't need to agree or disagree on whether the lack of a degree signals the lack of knowledge or whether we have confidence that those with degrees really do have all of the skills we seek.

Just that the scarcer it is, the more meaning we apply to it.
I imagine a number of people blindly up vote the RMS posts to encourage the trend, though I'd be curious to see the data behind this compared to other post types.
Canvassing vs. Facebook
Can you tell if an iPhone is locked or not from the UA string? Because I'd expect that locked iPhones are exactly the customer you want most: has money and signs long term contracts (whereas an unlocked or jailbroken product might indicate that they'll do extra work to save money -- exactly the customer you don't usually want).
Had That Beer http://www.hadthatbeer.com

Plan on launching it into a private beta this month.
There's an enforced ratio of downvotes to upvotes that you may have hit. Also: comment more.
I like this because it's different from the usual 10-slide, boring template that everyone mentions. I can see why those slides would make you more likely to raise money.
The karma needed to downvote moved from 200 to 500.
They're different because they can be to sites that would otherwise be offtopic.
I'm reminded of the first time I saw PG speak, it was on bayespam at MIT -- he noted that if SPAM can come up with interesting and engaging email, he'll happily read it. I imagine that as soon as someone is posting interesting content, RMS or not, PG and others won't think of them as 'spammers' anymore, rather contributors.
For lack of a better word, this YC "synergy" is a HUGE competitive advantage for YC startups. Rock on.
This is absolutely fantastic, and quite possibly really useful...
Simon, it's a perfect use case for PubSubHubbub :) Susbcribe to the feed for the right tag and get notifications as soon as new pix are uploaded with the right tag!
I think that, when he mentions smart graduates, the idea is that current CS grads are on the low side of the intellectual spectrum, as compared to majors such as math and physics.

At the time I graduated, the differential was the high student demand for CS, so only the best ones would be accepted into a CS program. Nowadays the large number of programs and the low demand pretty much guarantees that almost anyone can be accepted, and thanks to the dumbing down of the curricula, they can actually graduate.
I second that. NIC is pathetically slow. It is Indian Govt. after all.
Perhaps in addition to the user's credentials you could analyze the url they are submitting. Has it been submitted before?
Always assume yes, at least when it comes to stress testing.
What I attempted to do with the article was to educate people to the wide disparities between curriculums in CS programs and to subtly encourage picking a school based on its rigour.

To the extent that you read the essay as being anti-college, I failed as a writer. I apologize.
I am not worried about spam since there isn't really any avenue for it. If there isn't a GPX/TCX/KML geo file attached to the email, the upload isn't processed. As a result, I don't expect this to be abused.

I think I may just proceed and handle it if it becomes an issue, probably with a simple passphrase in the subject field.

I am not using gmail, I actually setup a postfix transport layer, which runs a simple ruby script that just pipes the email through a unix socket to a r receiving server - the server has Resque loaded up and queues up jobs to be handled by my resque workers.
I may do the secret key, but I'll probably only resort to it if there is indications of abuse.
The process doesn't have to be random. Nobody likes to fill out forms, so the goal is to make them as simple and short as possible. What value did "Company Name" add to this form? Someone thought it would be a good idea to collect this data, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was never used in any way that contributed to the bottom line.
People who think they are multitasking (I mean true multitasking, doing disparate things) are really just good at context switching.

Merlin Mann had a good (short) podcast about this subject back in 2005 (but sadly, I cannot find the Odeo-hosted track
any longer).

"“Multi-taskers” are really just splitting their time and attention into smaller slices than you; no one can really do more than one thing at a time."
A large number of voters voting by dice would have no effect on elections in which a plurality is required to win...
Agree. I commented on a recently killed "Rate My Startup" submission asking the reasons behind killing it. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861551. Now I know.
Being an utter nerd I find that the way I handle multi-tasking is similar in some ways to popular 16-bit computer architectures (see, I did warn you).

I certainly find that I'm able to Context Switch like early versions of Atari TOS, Windows and certain forms of extended DOS, but there is a penalty. Some of my tasks most certainly terminate and stay resident (i.e. I switch to task B but am still committing mental activity to task A), but as long as I plan what I'm doing, switching between things is no more difficult than saving my text in edit.com, starting lotus 1-2-3 and importing the text (forget cut and paste, I have a 16-bit mind in a 64-bit world, and only 512k of RAM to play with).

On the other hand, depending on the task I can do certain types of task and switch pre-emptively, just like Amiga Workbench. Like Amiga Workbench, I often find that I can only really do one thing at a time but things do carry on in the background. Some might call it intuition, but I can tell if a need to context switch is coming up and if the task doesn't require that much by way of resources then I'm fine doing both at roughly the same time, there is an impact on resources, but it's not always externally visible.
These sorts of things are a bad idea for a number of reasons, but one that's often forgotten: touch/tablet interfaces generally aren't great for multitasking. And that's not an OS-level problem, it's just a weakness of a platform that doesn't have a windowing GUI. I often use my iPad and my phone simultaneously.
I'm in your boat. I read HN pretty religiously but don't have much time to comment or follow up on comments. Every time I even think about doing that I'd almost always rather spend more time obsessing about my product. Thus I barely have any karma points. But every once in a while, I like to post my latest project.
Palantir is a data-mining company. They make tools to analyze datasets, but in reality, you need to understand data in order to present it well. The skills involved here are all specialized to data-mining. Since you work there, I'm sure there's obviously going to be some bias in your arguments :-). At least I'm seeing both companies from an objective viewpoint here.

Working with founders from acquired companies is actually a great way to meet co-founders. Most founders post-acquisition usually start new companies after their vest-in-rest.

Doing an enterprise startup relies heavily on sales. Having worked at an enterprise startup does not necessarily give you the skills needed for your next enterprise startup unless you're the guy doing sales.

As far as reputation goes, the reason facebook & google are stronger with investors have little to do with the mindset of employees at google, and more to do with the types of people google/facebook might hire.

You might be the smartest guy at USC, but investors would still choose the harvard grad over you. We all wish that logic & intelligence would triumph over the good ol' boys network from ivy league schools, but investors rarely go with logic. The only way you would seem more favorable than a team with all ivy league alums is if your project has good traction, or if you have a past track record. Palantir may have smarter people than Facebook, but investors don't care.

Typically employees from large companies like Google/Facebook typically know enough alumni there to help their next company be re-acquired by the company they left.

The original question was which company is better to work for if you want to work for a startup later and I believe some of your arguments are more general reasons why you'd want to work for company X over company Y.
The problem with the template is the use case - people will be using this primarily when they log a track using My Tracks on Android. The app has an option to email the resulting log file instead of saving to SD card. This way, the user can send the file directly to their RWGPS account instead of to their email address, then upload it from their home computer.

Keeps me from having to write an app for android, since My Tracks is a great logging utility! That, and other developers can easily integrate with our site using this option.
What is multitasking? Whoever's answering this question is going to have a different interpretation, and I think each interpretation can be either beneficial or harmful. Listening to new music while coding is multitasking that's beneficial to me. I can still code successfully with the background noise, and I get to explore new music that I can potentially get into.

I'm definitely coding at 100%, but I'm not listening to music at its full capacity. But I am parsing it enough to know whether or not I want to check it out again in depth (100%) later.
Skype must to have a similarly named function in it. In skype chat window, when you press random keys on a keyboard in groups, the other side sees a cat icon in the chat. Kind of neat of them to think of that.
Try to have the confidence that your kid will get to computing technology if they need it.

Your job is to enable them to identify their interests and follow their curiosity. Not so much to direct it.
I've found in general people take advice better after going through with a choice and discovering it doesn't work :). Then they have a better appreciation for the alternatives and more willing to listen, especially when you can relate it to what they've already experienced.