skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I initally intended to read 100 random Reddit threads, counting posts containing blockquotes with those not, and counting total inflammatory posts in either case.

I've done four now and I'm getting really antsy.

I'd love to come up with an algorithm to automate this, but discerning a troll post from an inflammatory post from an informative post algorithmically is an Engineering-Very-Hard problem [http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engine...].

Anyway, of the four, so far the results have been surprising: Out of 457 total read comments, there were only 25 blockquotes. Of the 25 blockquotes, there were 5 that I (totally subjectively) considered "inflammatory", either because of a strong personal attack, or because of a deliberate misquote of the author ("FTFY"). I only counted 15 inflammatory posts not containing a blockquote -- clearly, I wasn't counting comments that were just lame, tired repetitions of a meme, lacking content, etc.

Because the sample set's so small, there isn't enough information for statistical significance one way or the other. However, in [http://www.reddit.com/info/6s09o/comments/], I did notice that there was a pattern where posts containing blockquotes in a thread tended to be longer, better written, more precise responses to the previous comment. The thread might devolve into a pedantic debate between two people, but it was still more of a discussion than many of the other threads that didn't contain blockquotes at all.
Computer and desk stretching exercies
A Sort of Difference
No, he's right. For example, I use a dock at work so I can charge my phone and have it look decent. Well, the new phone doesn't come with a dock, so you have to shell out 30 bucks for a new one. By the by, the new dock does not include a cable, so if you were buying a dock as a second charge point, you're SOL.

I'm really disappointed with all of these cheap tactics this time around. I don't know that I'll be buying iphone v3.
In the video, he shows that comments too can be voted up and down (not just search results), so bad comments will quite quickly disappear.
Here are a few i've used before:

Google charts: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
(if you want a really nifty flash tool to help you create google charts check out: http://www.clabberhead.com/googlechartgenerator.html)

Sparklines: http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/ (on HN right now)

Flash charts: http://maani.us/

PHP Charts: http://naku.dohcrew.com/libchart/pages/introduction/
I saw his talk at MtWest RubyConf. One of the few presentations worth paying attention to.

Basically, people learning Ruby need to watch this video, spend a bit of time getting accustomed to how Ruby classes and metaclasses/eigenclasses and such work (really not all that complex), and never be spooked by the idea of metaprogramming (least in Ruby) again.
Interesting product. I worked on a web-based LMS (not Blackboard) for several years.

The trick with this market is finding a way to squeeze out a profit. There's a very limited amount individual teachers are willing to spend, but selling to districts is a major undertaking - think dedicated salespeople working for a year or more on each account. They don't much like small companies either.

The other big issue is legacy system support. Districts won't buy a LMS that doesn't integrate with their student information system, which is unfortunate since the SIS vendors jealously guard access to their walled garden. (They all have their own LMS products now and don't want their customers buying yours.) We poured man-years into this problem and only covered a tiny subset of the products out there. It's a huge potential morass.

Pretty much everyone working in this field recognizes how bad the products are, but not always the reasons. The users - teachers and students - don't have much input into the decision-making process. Endless sales cycles ensure high prices, and that means the decisions are made by administrators at the district office who never come anywhere near the software. It takes years to make a dent in this market.
Certainly. I suppose it depends on whether you see PageRank as a specific algorithm (as I think most people reading papers on search algorithms do) or "the thing that powers Google's search results". My point was that the original comment wasn't just stupid.
Sounds like jesus:

Mark 4:10
When he was alone, those around him and the Twelve asked him about the parables.

Luke 8:10
He said, 'The secret of the kingdom of God is granted to you.'

Mark 4:11-12
'But to those on the outside, everything comes in parables so that they may look and look but never perceive, listen and listen but never understand.'
Music on Profiles
I am developing a site similar to respectance.com for a client and he is adamant about wanting users to be able to upload background music for a memorial. I've expressed my concerns, regarding the legality of it all (posting of copyrighted material) and he really wants to give users this feature.

What are the legal ways to go about this - I have no experience in copyright issues, not a lawyer, but just giving him some generic "from a nerd who reads the news" advise.

Some options I've considered:
- Registering as an online radio station and paying the fee per song play (strongest, legally, I think).
- Displaying a message to users telling them to only upload music they have rights to and that they are responsible for music posted (weakest)
- Forcing my client to move to Switzerland and take his server with him (medium)

Anyone have any thoughts? How do companies get around this very touchy subject? I'm sure MySpace has deals with all of the industry but what about the smaller sites, like Respectance. Where does the line of Fair Use begin/end?
Nobody at OpenBSD investigated the issue? Well, that's shocking. Their developers behave as assholes sometimes, but they don't ignore sensible bug reports.

I had problems with OpenBSD's UVM too, but it was a known issue and increasing NKMEMPAGES_MAX solved it.
Five Multicore Chip Startups to Watch
Budget Rent-A-Car Coupons
Commentary on how the find the best Budget Rent-A-Car Coupons.
'Openness' has always seemed like a fragile foundation for a mobile platform. Mobile operators are the least 'open' companies out there, and they hold all the keys in this market.

If Android apps really are going to be unrestricted, then the first applications everyone will download are VOIP and SMS gateways. Are mobile operators really going to tolerate a platform that circumvents long-distance and SMS surcharges?

If they don't allow applications like this, Android doesn't really have much going for it relative to the iPhone.
Wouldn't it be much easier to just implement it and see how it goes than to start writing code to sift through redddit? You can always just pull the plug on it if you feel it's having that effect.

I personally am comfortable with the fact that this place isn't really a democracy when it comes to stuff like that.
This is going to be really useful for some of our in house analytics for our project.
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was potential acquisition for Digg. Google+Digg rumors have been on for quite some time now.
The only thing that worries me about the voting functionality is how this will work in regards to SEO - specifically people spamming with votes for less relevant search results in their various niches. I have no doubt that this kind of voting will work for broad terms, but would be less valuable in very specific keyword phrases which only get few searches.

What would be fantastic is if Google could weight these votes based on how "alike" the person voting for it is to me.

EG, if I was interested in say, Kung Fu and Knitting, and there were other people interested in Kung Fu and Knitting, then the options that they vote for would be more relevant to me than someone who was doing SEO work on those various sites. So hopefully those would rank higher.
How to get in to the program? You go to Apple's website and sign up. Its a two step process, first you sign up, and then sign up again for the developer program. When they accept you, you pay $99 and can submit applications to the app store. No word on how long those are taking to get approved. And they have added a few hundred apps since launching. There are RSS feeds of new applications, updated applications, and the top applications. See http://www.pinchmedia.com/your-view-into-the-app-store/

I'm not sure of where to go for the developer side, but apple's forums would be a good start. I run a blog about the business side (in sig.), and there are many other resources out there as well.
awesome plugin for an awesome library
Your repeated lines... aren't repeating anymore, presumably thanks to the magic of editing. That is a remarkable improvement. The sight of the same sentence being echoed over and over, a sight which practically screams "enraged fanboy", is now absent.

My other problem with the point-by-point rebuttal is that all the chaff (in the form of those detailed but disconnected footnotes) threatens to obscure the bottom line, which in this case is "it isn't 2003 anymore and X has actually made a lot of progress since then". Basically, what I wanted to read was your second post. Which is much better than the first because it's written in prose -- connected sentences that speak in your voice and tell a story -- and not in chopped-up bullet points.

Now, if this were a detailed design review of a windowing-system project, things would be different, and I'd agree with you that your format is just fine.

Perhaps the issue here is that you obviously know and care a great deal about the design details of windowing systems, whereas I would rather read a short, colloquial summary of the state of play and then go to bed. ;)
where have you been all my life? =O
But at least it wouldn't all be italicized.
Seems kinda odd to speculate about what would happen when we could just do it and find out. Especially for something so minor as a change from <i> to <blockquote>.

If a post is bad, that's what the downvote arrow's for...
Good interview but the speed-perfection quote has to be taken with a grain of salt and should not be generalized, by Sunil Mittal's own admission the retail stores venture with Wal-Mart is "surely going slowly..."
It was great. I remember playing with it. It had these funky microdrives which were small "fast" tape cassettes as far as I can remember.
He also gave a convocation address (20 min mp3 interview):
http://deshgujarat.com/2007/04/03/speech-by-sunil-bharti-mit...

I liked it, YMMV. He briefly mentions Microsoft and Google.
Twitter Acquires Summize
What if the preferred stock has a liquidation preference and the amount is smaller than their investment? There are some cases where the preferred shareholders can get paid and not the common right?

Obviously you weren't talking about that sort of acquisition, but it does highlight the point that common stock would be worth somewhat less than preferred due to that potential unless I misunderstand something.
Apparently summize found a quick exit after switching from book/movie/product review search to twitter search.
Breaking news: scientist labels life's work important
Have they matured since then? Maybe so! I was just giving a snarky answer to the assertion that OpenBSD's code was a gleaming gem of righteousness.
I have not dug into the code, but how does this work for IE? Firebug tells me it uses the canvas tag which makes sense, but in IE6 that tag is not supported but the code still works. Is it inline images of the form

<img>[Bitmap data]</img>

or what?

EDIT: Clever, looks like it uses the IE-supported XML shapes (this is how Frontpage exports simple shape graphics). The javascript line

javascript:prompt('',$($('.line')[0]).html())

produced

<SPAN style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; DISPLAY: inline-block; PADDING-LEFT: 0px;
PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; OVERFLOW: hidden; WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" width="21" height="16">
<?xml:namespace prefix = v /><v:group style="LEFT: 0px; WIDTH: 21px; POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px;
HEIGHT: 16px" jQuery1216275956207="2" coordsize = "21,16">
<v:shape style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px;
POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" coordsize = "21,16" filled = "t" fillcolor = "#cdf"
stroked = "f" path = " m0,15 l0,1,3,5,6,3,10,15,13,11,16,5,19,11,19,15 e"> </v:shape>
<v:shape style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px;
WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" coordsize = "21,16"
filled = "f" strokecolor = "blue" strokeweight = "1pt" path = " m0,1 l0,1,3,5,6,3,10,15,13,11,16,5,19,11 e"> </v:shape>
<v:oval style="LEFT: 16px; WIDTH: 4px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 9px; HEIGHT: 4px" coordsize = "21600,21600"
filled = "t" fillcolor = "#f80" stroked = "f"></v:oval></v:group></SPAN>
Well it is good to know that Google is experimenting with Social Search in this way.

I am very enthusiastic about Social search and even built one (with the same commenting, voting features).

Wikia is doing the same, so, nothing new about this for people like me, but, feels great to know that Google is atleast 'experimenting' with social search.
Competitor to 37signals Campfire?
Barsh Bits: Is Your Value Proposition Better Than a Seat Belt's?
Improve Gas Mileage
Tips on how to improve gas mileage.
will google be the ones to actually pull of a human filter search engine? I hope so.
I can see it being really useful for one of the areas the internet currently sucks at, research.
The funny thing about that quote is that it defeats itself.
Fun is the key to your point. I hated working with JavaScript before and now because of jQuery, I prefer it.
Hackers offered a job by those who they hacked
Most of the comments I've seen in response to this post are either that "the author was wrong" or "the author didn't give enough evidence." I think that you are completely missing the point of what this guy Cecil wrote.

His point was that pg's essays on philosophy/art made him cringe. Ok? That's his whole deal. He goes on and tries to explain why, but I think that what is really valuable here is that Cecil (who I'm assuming is an artist) is expressing a point of view which has largely gone unstated.

To be honest, reading Cecil's post made me feel better in some way. I don't know anything about art, but I have been thinking about philosophy for freaking forever and I have to say that PG's essays often make me cringe when he traipses into topics which he really -does- seem naive about. Note I said "seem." I don't have examples offhand because I haven't read one of his articles for weeks. Also, the point of -this- post is not at -all- to talk about PG, it is to talk about my understanding of Cecil's post[1].

I think that in general my aversion to internet discussion comes from the fact that people seem to spend approximately 1 second understanding each other and 20 minutes formulating counter-arguments to what they are assuming/hallucinating their "opponents" -meant- (not said). They often miss the -point- of what others are trying to say (and yes, I recognize the massive potential hypocrisy in meta-meta-criticism). Have some heart.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

[1] I think that I could, in fact, explain why they make me cringe. (I assume that Cecil could, too, actually - I assume he could sit down next to you, read through them with you, and whenever you saw him cringing you could ask him why - I don't think he's making up the fact that he cringed.) I could go back and re-read his essays and write up long responses explaining what classic philosophical and logical errors he is making (most of which have to do with assuming context/over-generalization/etc.), but the problem is that his errors are very deep. His errors (like so many people's errors) have to do with his big complicated worldview - to reveal them would take a book. And frankly, I don't care - it's much more interesting and fulfilling to respond to someone who's really spent their whole life "thinking" about deep philosophical problems (Chomsky, Foucault, Nagle, Graeber, etc.)
.me domain name open registration starts tomorrow at 8pm PST
User Mediated Trans-Enterprise-Web Mashups?
Is Scala for Academics and Egomaniacs?
It takes many years to learn to play a violin. Violining is reserved for "violinists." You are confusing -description- with -prescription-.
The Top 50 Entrepreneur Geek Blogs Of The Year
What I don't understand is why your interest in the company isn't mentioned at all on this "advice" page.
Actual blog posting: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/05/welcome_to_the_ju...

Okay, does anyone even use OSS anymore? I thought it hasn't been included in kernels for a while. (save for the OSS->ALSA compatibility layer)

As for there being a large variety of user-space libraries: are we supposed to believe this to be a bad thing? In the past, we've needed sound servers, which have become pretty much entirely unnecessary as ALSA can do mixing, etc. (except for JACK, but even Windows has a completely different set of kernel audio drivers for professional sound recording)

These choices and the eventual elimination of some of them are a good thing: it means the better technology (as judged by developers & users) wins, not some decree. I don't know what other unix-derived OSes use, (OSS?) but on Linux-only libraries, I suspect OSS support will eventually disappear.

Now, of course Adobe would complain about this, as their plugin has to run on all possibly imaginable systems out of the box; there's no open-source component that interfaces with the hardware drivers so that the community could fix obscure problems themselves.
I remember looking at the Ruby source code about a year ago, so it may have drastically improved since then, but I remember it being a bit of a mess. But it is quite fun to step through the code in gdb and you can learn quite a lot by hacking on it or implementing a DLL extension.

If trolling through language implementations is your kind of thing, I'd suggest having a look at Lua or Python as well (I never got Perl to configure, let alone compile) - then you can compare and contrast with the way things are done in Ruby.
Here's another good resource that's not in the article (but is in the comments):
http://www.learningjquery.com/
Well, according to the first couple lines of the article, GMOVE stands for "Graphic MOVE". Further down it talks about pixels and graphics, x/y coordinates and leveys/korkeus which I take to mean width/height. (I don't speak Suomi, so that's about as far as I got)

Also, in the bold part in the middle of the first column, it gives the calling syntax:

GMOVE (#ch),x1,y1,l,k TO x2,y2

All of this evidence leads me to believe it's a blitting function. As for how it's implemented, I have no idea - looks to me like the DATA statements basically contain Sinclair QL bytecode. Anyone got a disassembler handy for that platform? ;-)

Out of interest, does anyone know what the (#ch) might be? The rest of the parameters are obvious.
Why do you assume you can't use a one liner in an OO language?

Counter example:

list(1, 2, 3, 4) map(+(1))

http://iolanguage.com/
Games for Programmers: Black Vienna
> Onko joskus tullut eteen tilanne, jossa olisit halunnut siirtää osan ikkunasta toiseen paikkaan? Homma ei onnistu ilman oheista Basic-laajennusta. Se lisää QL:n käskysvalikoimaan GMOVE-käskyn, jolla voi siirtää grafiikkaa esimerkiksi piirto-ohjelmissa.

Here's one attempt at an awkward translation of the introductory paragraph:

"Have you ever come across a situation in which you would have wanted to move part of a window to another location?
Your task won't be successful without expanding the set of Basic instructions. It adds to QL's selection of commands the GMOVE command, with which you can move a graphic, for example, within a drawing program."
Lovely plugin! Reminds me of JQuery Plot but with a more elegant API.
Any advice for if the company has not received outside investment and has no plans to seek it?

The best I've been able to come up with is to make a guess as to how much I think the company might one day be worth and then estimate my stock's value based as a percentage of the issued stock. I know my stock can be diluted, but I'm not really sure how to take that into account at this point.
The Lazy Way
Thanks for that. So it is indeed a blitter routine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitter
It was probably downmodded because of the "no interest" in learning anything else.

Any programmer worth his/her salt should be always learning newer technologies that might be useful to him/her. Having a favorite is different than not wanting to learn anything else.
Maybe, but on the other hand it would be painful if many sites would start using phone verification.
.me Domain names are going to be avilable to everyone tomororw
Like macros?

Actually, constructively, opt-in blockquotes might be interesting: you have to click to expand what was quoted making it clear if someone is quoting too heavily.
That's only valid if the existing co-founder is capable of (literally) pulling the entire company product out of his ass, if he needs to. If he feels he's not capable of it, then he needs to adapt to the person who is capable of writing the entire product by themselves in their technology of choice - because that's the kind of person you want as a technology co-founder.

As I said, early employees are a different matter. They need to be shaped around - well, around the technology co-founder who wrote the whole product in a storm of caffeine fuelled fury.
the parent page has download links -
http://research.microsoft.com/users/simonpj/papers/slpj-book...
could this possibly be a joke?
Having "no interest" in learning other languages is a serious bad mark against your brother, I'm afraid. He might be a "very good" programmer, but he'll never be great - never be a "hacker", by pg's definition.

I don't know any hacker who doesn't have an intense, irrepressible interest to learn new stuff - languages, frameworks, whatever. I also don't know a single hacker who hasn't learned well over half a dozen languages to a proficient level. And no, CSS and AJAX don't count (unless the Javascript is taken to a scary level). Sounds like your brother is a designer with some coding skills, not technical co-founder material.
I'm reluctant to have my data stored on their server. If it's software that I run on my PC, why does it need to save its data on their system?
Simplicity is hard to build...
do you think the voting should affect the results?
Doesn't that agree with what I was saying? Games of perfect information are less skill intensive than some games that don't have it, because it's just a matter of visualizing the game tree, even though with chess or go the tree is too big.
That sounds like a good approach.

You should also include unallocated options in the calculation of your percentage. For example, how many options does the company plan to issue in the next 12-18 months?

This is like including unallocated options in a fully diluted basis.
Agreed. We'll cover liquidation preferences in Part 2.

In general, I like to look at the "lottery ticket" value of the options. What are the options worth if everything works out?

Especially when the startup can afford to pay a reasonable salary, I think of the options as a free lottery ticket.
Hi Randy, can you elaborate? Thanks!
I'm sure I'll spend some time on it some day.
Sport is probably closer to the middle than you think, especially where a team is involved. If you don't think an athlete can get unlucky, ask anyone on the Falcons. One teammate does something stupid and your team is out of contention for years.

Teams are generally businesses too, and just like most other businesses have a huge random element.
How about "I am feeling ... <dropdown>"
I'd like to hear more about exercising options early. I had no idea that could be done. Not that I'll ever be in that situation, but I'm just curious how that happens. Sounds like a bit of a legal hack. Did you mean with the 83b form?