skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What is your HN day like?
I was just wondering how everyone uses Hacker News within the span of a single day. Do you read every single comment related to a story they're interested in? Do you return to read any new comments? Use RSS only?

I'll start off with myself:

1) Browse through and read top stories of the day as well as the New section. I also follow links within the stories for deeper reading.

2) After reading stories, I'll come back and save any stories that were interesting.

3) I then go into my saved stories' related comments and read all every last comment.

4) As I read through the comments, I up-vote existing comments that, in my eyes, provide value either for myself or I see as enhancing the discussion. I very rarely down-vote.

5) After reading all comments, I'll then decide (rarely) to add my own comments to the discussion.

6) Once I've read through all of the posted comments, I usually don't return to that particular thread. It's difficult to sort out the previous comments I've already read from any new ones, relative to myself. Thoughts?

7) Revisit, usually browsing the main page and New section multiple times a day.
I suggest that Android developers get on the iPhone bandwagon soon, or they'll be toast. Android might sound nice on paper, but it doesn't actually sell applications. It will be spread out over who knows how many phones, each having different requirements. There is unlikely to be a central place selling applications that does it as well as the App Store will. Why develop for Android when you can work out all the kinks on the iPhone platform and THEN port it over to popular Android phones? iPhone developers will have a head start, so it makes business sense to start there first. Closed systems to have their advantages, and developers are ignoring them at their peril.
"I dislike cover letters because they feel extremely artificial."

Then make yours natural. Write like you speak and say what you want to say.

"is this over-the-top or absurd"

A suit is never absurd, except at the beach. When in doubt, overdress. You can always take off your jacket (and tie).

And don't forget the handwritten and sincere Thank You Note.
”The boundaries of my language are the boundaries of my world”, as Ludwig Wittgenstein said.
I am not really interested in tagging, so I will limit myself to design.

In addition to the other comments, I think the inconsistency between sometimes using capital letters at the start of sentences and sometimes not is grating. It seems unintentional

The blue bar about halfway down my screen is ugly and not in the right proportion. Go read about golden ratios and ancient temple designs and fix it. Better yet, hire someone who understands that stuff. It's a kinda subtle thing thats the difference between the gateway store and the apple store.

The entire front page should fit in one browser window without scrolling, and the list of supported services should be near the bottom, not top. Your users don't care about other cool start ups. Get rid of that clutter, and put the supported services on the bottom. Then, get rid of tags used to be all over, now they are all here. It's redundant with where tags meet. Are they here to use your app or read your second rate copy?

You should not have Search, register, and login as three things on a list to do. You are search. Collapse the other two into login, register, and get it out of the way. Wufoo does it right, if I remember. You could collapse add apps and comments in the three column part at the bottom, and put something more compelling.

I think it looks like what you are trying to do is a little bit cool and potentially useful to some people but that design and the words on you page bothers me a lot. It's subtle stuff but it adds up to give me a headache. You owe me an aspirin. I don't think the person who made that page is the same one who should fix it.
Charging per byte is neutral and it solves your problem, so just switch to Time Warner and be happy.

But I agree that there seem to be a lot of warez kiddies who are riding the net neutrality bandwagon as long as they think it will benefit them.
dress for your interview one-tier above the formality of dress the company you are applying to wears.

if the company standard is business casual - wear a suit
if everyone is in shorts / tshirts - wear slacks and a shirt with a collar
I would suggest moving the tag cloud below the results. After searching, the first thing I want to do is see the results. The second thing I _may_ want to do is refine my search. In fact, put it under the pagination links. Also, only showing the top X related/refining tags, and providing a distinct link to 'Show more tags', or something like that, would improve the experience as well, in my opinion.

I would also like to ignore certain services in my search. This functionality may be available to registered users -- I didn't register (sorry!).

Cool idea, though. Would be interesting to see it also search Twitter's unofficial tags (denoted by octothorpes -- '#').
The suit gains you 5 seconds of respect until you open your mouth. Then hopefully you will actually know something.

That's a crucial 5 seconds though. And it's not actually hard to get a clean, well-fitting suit. Most of the hackers I know actually clean up very nicely. That 5 seconds can set the tone for a positive and productive interview.

Absolutely you need to exhaustively research the company you're interviewing with. It's not just to impress your interviewer but also to find out if that company will be a good fit for you.
Thanks for the idea, that would be a great way to discover new feeds! Instead of blind recommendations like in google reader here you would know who and why is recommending you feeds.
I used PayPal with it's Instant Payment Notifications for one time payments. It works ok for now.. I seem to recall something about recurring payments there. You might want to check their docs.
I worked in finance, where incentive pay is substantial, and it has benefits as well as problems. Salaries in finance are low-average by NYC/Chicago standards, while bonuses are high-- starting at 25-75% for junior positions, and rising to 1000+% at a senior level.

Good bonuses have a positive effect on morale, but the real kick finance gets out of the system is in recruiting. The possibility to take home a $1 million bonus check as a fifth-year employee, brings in a lot of bright, young people who don't know what else to do with their lives but are willing to work very hard. Finance's rather unique compensation system certainly stokes people to put out a lot of effort.

The downside is that, since everyone is after the same things, politics come more into play-- if someone feels shortchanged in project selection, like he's not being groomed to be a future rock star, he's going to do shitty work. In tech, people are after interesting work, and everyone has a different opinion about what's interesting, so the game is not zero-sum; in finance, they're mostly looking to advance their careers and make money... which approaches zero-sum as the size of the company increases.
Well a resume conveys useful information, which is important. Dress does not. It's a signal to noise ratio thing.

Incidentally, bad spelling in an otherwise smart person is a good sign of creativity, because it's correlated with personality types that correlate with creative thinking (when intelligence is evidenced at all).
Forgive me, but I find it humorous that you reference a suit as a "monkey" costume, particularly in comparison to the art direction and name of Bathing Ape and the like.

I'm 26 and I find the trendy designer-esque throwback to the 80's an eye-sore that belongs in a circus, and a contradiction to the shouting cry for individuality when hipsters congregate.
I thought this also wasn't hard by using horizontal partitioning..? Which, I think, would have to map back into the application too.
Um, thanks? This is one of my favorite Joel articles. Highly recommended.
You sound like a rep for ATT in 1980. Pathetic.
Thanks i reposted. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218980
I use PayPal and IPN to set up subscriptions. You can include a code in your link to indicate the frequency of payment. You can also provide links that allow a user to modify their subscription (eg, upgrade to the next plan). It's worked well so far.
For those of you who swear in your code base, I ask you this: is it ok in your company to swear in a meeting? The code you write isn't just for you, it is for everyone on the team, including people you haven't met yet. Is that what you really want to communicate to others?
They're not. Objective-J/Cappuccino is made by 280North.
As a counter-anecdote, I did a (full-day) software engineering interview in 1998 wearing an old Magic The Gathering t-shirt and jean shorts. I'm not sure what I was thinking except the HR person told me they were pretty casual there-- this was for a really cool development tool company.

Anyway, I went on to be hired and then promoted through dev lead, dev manager, and architect roles at that company.

So, I'm not of the mind that it's something to worry too much about if you're a decent hacker. My more recent interview sessions, I've pretty much always been wearing a suit or at least business casual, but I wouldn't say it's a hard-and-fast rule, especially for a startup and junior position. Still, YMMV.

If a company makes a huge deal about you not being well-dressed then they probably aren't going to be the most flexible company to work for. I know I don't tend to judge candidates specifically by the way they dress, but those who look comfortable in nice clothes do come across more professional.
Very nice and useful idea. I may actually come back and use it (which happens very rarely with new apps nowadays).

Problems:

Way too slow. Spend more on hosting :(

The "meat" is in the flickr, youtube etc. search results below. The tag cloud should appear blow it IMO. Also, limit its size, and let users enlarge, sort it etc.

How about letting me filter results to just some of the sites you're crawling?
Google Feeds on your page.
The top 3 Google results get 79% of all clicks. The remaining 7 results share just 21% of the clicks. In other words, more than three quarters of Google users never click past the first three results.

This is wrong. What the average user does 100% of the time is not the same as the average case. I click on the first 3 links around ~75% of the time but sometimes I go the third page.
Invented by Gordon Bell? (see bottom-right of page)

http://research.microsoft.com/%7Egbell/
On OS X I find safari starts in less than a second, though it doesn't have a full library of addons like firefox.

Although FF3 has had a great boost in its performance and load times for web pages, the WebKit nightlies kick its ass IMO.

And again, the mac theme isn't quite right with non-native menus etc.
Causation probably runs the other way.
I've used YUI more than once. It's pretty elaborate but for my purposes, I've just used their wizard (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/) to set up the grid the way I wanted it and it's never given me any trouble. Plus, it works across pretty much across all browsers.
Touche.

I've worked in many corporate environments, some where things were perfectly logical and others that aspired to be as good as Dilbert.

But I never had to fill out anything in triplicate. I guess I should have realized the sarcastic flag was up. Sorry.
Note on sailing: I just signed up on Saturday at the Community Boat House, and got my Solo certification. Will probably go out today after work as well, weather permitting. Full year cost is actually $240, but a 60 day pass (good for rest of summer) is only $159. That will cover sailing, kayaking, and wind surfing.
Advice: Once you find the page, bookmark it. It's really frustrating navigating around PayPal. You can get lost easily.
You really need to sanitize that input. It's really simple to inject arbitrary html into your page... best case it messes up the output and just looks bad. Worst case it exposes something etc etc

Not to mention things like this:

http://taggl.net/search/?tag=--%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(0)%3C%2Fscript%3E%3C!--

http://taggl.net/search/?tag=%2F%22

It doesn't look like you're santizing at all, so someone could have fun with your backend/sql/etc etc
And then they'll go back to apple, when they realize that telecoms or portal sites would take minimum 50% anyway. And there's marketing.
What industry are you in? If you're in banking, sure, but if you're in software I hope you clearly communicate this to interviewees.
Right,I got that part, I thought I was clear that my question was "HOW?"

How does the JVM increase interoperability? What mechanism is special about the JVM that is not available in the native machine that makes the JVM more appropriate/better as a platform for language interoperability?
A good analysis of the problem.
probably both ways, and probably in a far more complex fashion than we currently understand
New again?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128627

I do like the site, though. Not a big fan of the name.
what causes the lag in the US?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_and_programming_lan...
Pinker in "The Language Instinct" persuasively (at least for me) argues that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, at least as far as human languages are concerned, is _false_.
I didn't think it was THAT pointless. And I didn't mean for it to be an anti Java post. In fact, I was really targeting the "Software" developers that will only consider working with one general purpose language. I even see developers not even taking the time to work with scripting languages like python, perl, or ruby for basic tasks and have to fall back on Java.

"random platform or language". I didn't think the languages I mentioned were random. Most of them mentioned are mature and have a rich set of libraries especially for small or medium sized applications. Plus, I was trying to comment on "Java is the new COBOL" as opposed to selling other languages.

I actually may try to do that in "Part 2".
What is the big deal about the grid layout anyway? If you aren't trying to design a site that has ultra-dense-content on every page like nytimes.com, what's the point? I mean, does everyone have to jock Khoi Vinh so hard? For most sites that aren't so heavy in content, floating content smartly and giving text ample breathing room is usually a sufficient starting point.

The grid system reminds me of Ansel Adams' zone system for photography... it's good for teaching students about the elements of visual balance, but ultimately it's a pedagogical scaffold. IMO when the grid system and the zone system become a heavily used crutch for your design and art, that's when what is created tends toward stodgy and boring.
> And don't forget the handwritten and sincere Thank You Note.

The power of the Thank You note. In your Thank You note, reaffirm your interest and state when you will call them to follow up ("I will call you next Thursday at 10am") and make sure you call at that time! I got this from CollegeGrad.com back in the day and it's a valuable tip. Please do not email something. How much effort does that take? Putting a letter in the mail at least takes putting some clothes on, finding a stamp.
True... and there are others who just think "neutral means good" and haven't thought through the issue very carefully.

What it really does is limit people's freedoms, it does not enhance anyone's freedom, it merely redistributes costs in an arbitrary way.
I'd enjoy seeing that in a long file of otherwise stale code. I like creative/surreal comments as well, if they fit the code.

That said, a sloppy file full of f-bombs can be annoying and repetitive, too.
Check your search box for XSS exploits
Looks like that's out of date. Now 3,000 shares @ $60.

http://www.corp.delaware.gov/frtaxcalc.shtml
I was just hired by a startup and I provided a cover letter along with my resume. In fact it was mentioned to me that my cover letter was part of the reason I was brought in for an interview. Cover letter's don't have to contain all of the regurgitated crap you find on resume help sites. Its a great way to get a lot of the finer points across that your resume simply can't. Be sure that every cover letter (like your resume) is tailored to the particular job and company you are applying to. Nothing looks worse than a cookie cutter cover letter where someone can easily tell you just swapped out the hiring manager's and company's name.

On top of that... I wore a suit to the interview. I was on the fence on wearing it or not, but when in doubt its always better to be over dressed.
EBay opens up to developers as users look for alternatives
You seem to be assuming that p2p is the most efficient way to distribute content. It is not. Using a residential cable modem for pushing upstream content is not using it the way it was designed to be used. There is also a tremendous amount of peer traffic overhead that doesn't contribute to the download itself.

P2P technology is great, but I think it's totally reasonable for ISPs to charge extra to those who wish to use it. After all, with P2P the ISP pays for all that extra bandwidth instead of the initial content distributor.
Frankly, I don't have the problem you're trying to solve. And I'm not even sure what problem you're trying to solve is. I do know I never woke up thinking - damn, my tags are acting up again.
Interesting how it is better to be at the bottom of the page than the middle.

Also, people clicking the first result isn't necessarily due to short attention spans, but instead because the first result is what they're looking for. This is more of a testament to Google.
YC News participant goes to Valleywag (Alaska Miller)
the tag cloud is ok if its on the right hand side of the screen, and the results displayed in the remaining part of the screen.
And like others already said, its pretty slow.
Say what taggl is on the first page rather than "click here to find out what taggle does". That's my two cents.
Usually check my email in the morning, then visit HN main page and browse through stuff while I consume my morning coffee. I'll check out the New section periodically throughout the day. Usually don't vote on any comments unless I said "word" aloud to myself after reading them.
It got a new look, a new core feature.

Should we just re-launch it under a different name?
Amberjack is a lightweight Open Source library, enabling webmasters to create cool site tours.
"Way too slow. Spend more on hosting :("

I do hope you're being sarcastic there. Blindly throwing money at things is probably what got twitter where they are now.
What makes you think that rewarding someone with a cookie of actual, monetary value avoids the morale problems inherent in rewarding someone with a cookie made of polished lucite? You've still singled someone out as different, created jealousy and division, and alienated the team members who weren't equally rewarded.

The problem Joel is describing is inherent to rewarding individuals, instead of rewarding teams. Ratcheting up the value of the award doesn't solve the underlying problem.

Not incidentally, Google found this out the hard way with their Founders' Award program (http://members.forbes.com/global/2007/0702/028.html):

"Early on Page and Brin gave 'Founders' Awards' in cash to people who made significant contributions....but it backfired because those who didn't get them felt overlooked. 'It ended up pissing way more people off,' says one veteran."
I assume that's an LLC held by Amazon, Inc, which I assume is a C-Corp as it is publicly held. They might have it set up as a smaller corporation to protect the bigger corporation from liability.
I swear in code like I swear in life, only rarely and with great motivation. If I am going through code and see an "F bomb" I know I did something seriously wrong in that bit of code that I didn't have time to fix.
What's the problem that you're solving?
Check this out:
http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-3-column.htm
I was surprised to read PG's mention that he was affected by Yahoo's C++/Perl rewrite of Yahoo Store (someone else has supplied the link).

The dog food to eat now is Arc, not Yahoo Store, isn't it? Wouldn't it have been more fun to just rewrite the original Common Lisp portion in Arc and host it himself, similar to how he's operating Hacker News? Or is Yahoo's promise of stability/uptime more valuable than having another anvil for hammering out Arc on?
He argues it well for fundamental things, but I think it falls short because he doesn't touch on abstract notions, like 'personal freedom', 'federalism', or 'separation of church and state'. There's a line that can be re-drawn between what is "language" and are "ideas", and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds depending on where you draw that line.

A lot of our thought is based on frameworks of metaphors, the vast majority of which are learned, not discovered on our own.
My guess is it's so slow because he is pinging the web services realtime for results.

See if you can index them and cache them.

Also:

1. Make the tag cloud have a max of 10-15 tags and have a show more link, make sure the beginning of the results are above the fold.

2. Mix up your results better, and have a sort by feature (sort by flickr, youtube, w/e)

3. Vimeo support would be awesome, digg & mixx support as well, oh and why not add technorati.

4. If you could add Yelp + Maps support I would probably use this to look up cool things to do in any given city.
It depends. Certainly a suit is never going to be helpful when interviewing at any true technology company, whether it be a startup or not. But the idea that it would hurt is situational: certainly if a mid-career professional walks into an interview in a $500 suit, his/her attire just screams "I've been writing VB code for 10 years in an IT department."

But if it's on a recent graduate, or an amateur trying to break into hacking as a profession, not so much. There, it's just a sign of naivete. It's cute, not dumb. It might be awkward, but at least it shows the candidate cares about the position.
Don't just check your search box inputs (everyone checks that). The classic problem with search is that search results can trigger XSS.

Remember there are two approaches to dealing with XSS:

* Input filtering, where you disallow people from entering live HTML metadata into inputs, or neutralize those inputs with entity encoding.

* Output filtering, where you neutralize HTML when rendering content that could have originated from users.

Both are important, but output filtering is particularly easy to do inconsistently, and an extremely common example of that is data that is nicely output filtered in the "show" action, but that isn't filtered either in the search list summary or the search clickthrough.

Remember that XSS vulnerabilities in search results are persistant (or stored) XSS vulnerabilities, which are worse than reflected vulnerabilities which only work when someone clicks a malicious link.
We use PayPal and Credit Cards (Visa, MC, Discover, and AmEx) through Chase Paymentech (http://www.chasepaymentech.com/). We don't support Google Checkout, because nobody uses it, but I do want to take a look at Amazon eventually.
I think that after a certain age, humans (I first wrote, users...) can't pick up new languages as well as their first language. There is some physical process that occurs in the brain. I am sure our native language affects our thought processes, but I believe it is a moot point whether some language is "faster" than our native tongue, we couldn't switch those hard wired neurons if we wanted to.
You are never going to get ruled out of a good job for wearing a suit. You can get ruled out of a lot of really crappy jobs for not wearing a suit. So, OK. But you are always safe in business casual. And you can adapt on the fly, untucking your shirt if everyone else is in cutoffs and Birks.
Save the suit for weddings and funerals.
Google still can build something on the same lines as the iphone app store and deal with the complicated/boring part of advertising, hosting and getting paid for applications. They have all the pieces in place.