skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've heard scary stories about professors taking all the credit?

Don't worry about that -- it happens very rarely, but I suspect that even from those few cases the vast majority are dealing with graduate students where there's a real question as to who had which ideas.
Journals are really picky. The whole process takes ages. I'd recommend just writing it up and posting it to the arXiv.
No :-(
Having someone who has successfully been published by the journal you are submitting to review your article will greatly help your chances. It will also probably smooth out the process some since each journal has its own little quirks.
Nothing to worry about, but I'm taking some time off
I just sent a mail to Tumblr support yesterday asking if there was a way to do this without having to export all my Blogger content and write a custom loader script against the API. Of course, they said they don't have such a tool.

I love you both. Srsly.
A couple suggestions for importing:

1) I would recommend creating a scratch account to test the import with. You can always nuke that account and retry the import process.

2) You will want to include more fields than the sample does. Definitely date. Maybe things like tags; though their tag support for reading is pretty limited at present.
I find his blog often very funny.

Insight with wit. Better than just insight or just wit.

Again, imho.
Gmail Architecture, pt.1
The principal programming paradigms [PDF]
I had to uninstall beta 2 to uprade to start with cause it wouldn't recognize 9.5 as a higher version than 9.5 beta 2. I stupidly did a sudo apt-get remove opera (instead of a dpkg -r opera).

I then installed opera_9.50.etch-qt3_i386.deb using GDebi, went well but DragonFly doesn't work (Opera does but not DF). Something is fucked up with the windowing. It worked "well" with beta 2 ...

My mistake, I love Opera and fucked up the installation :P
A nice recap :)
Fascinating Idea - One Million Monkeys Typing: A Collaborative Writing Project
I'm not sure I understand why this is relevant?
Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming Scare a Hoax
I don't consider search to be Yahoo's heart and soul. They have several other great products that they need to focus on instead (for example on using Zimbra to chip away at the exchange market share).
trying to leverage their control of one market to unfairly gain an advantage in another is what got MS in trouble last time.
Outsourcing: India created more jobs in US than US did in India !!!!!
Engine Yard interview: we handle hosting and deployment so you can go drinking on launch night
I would agree with you on the surface, however the problem in my book arises when he was contracted to perform services and intentionally delayed production. It's sabotage, not savvy. Very poor taste and does not constitute a smart business man nor worthly competitor; a weasel's move. Had he heard the idea and walked away lacking confidence in their ability to execute, well... that's a completely different story.

Regardless, I still think he's a genuine entrepreneur and the success of Facebook is a reflection of his ambition. I only wish I had not heard this side of the story, it contradicts a more positive image I associated to him. It also sounds like success has gone to his head, a discount to fortune that makes it lonelier at the top.

:\
I always felt that if I can't put my code to others' scrutiny and live with the fact that it has errors and be glad that others spent THEIR time to help ME find problems, then I am a pretty crappy programmer. After all I can't expect myself to be the omnipotent programmer who writes perfect code.

Edit: I always felt that if someone did not look at some code and find a problem with it, they just didn't look hard enough :)
It eventually climbed back a little, but by the end of the trading day, $3.6 billion had been removed from the pockets of Yahoo stockholders.

Much of that $3.6 billion had been put in their pockets in the first place by speculation of the MS/Yahoo deal.
Picking Warren Buffett’s Brain: Notes from a Novice
Awesome recap.. That link is to the first ten minutes only though, here's the link to the second half:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9OkFTDG4fY&feature=relat...
This is what is brilliant about Wikipedia. Cartoon characters from children's shows are extensively detailed (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon ), but pages about semi-notable figures in the web development community are debated for deletion.

Jigglypuff is more notable than why the lucky stiff? Yeah, OK, if you're a comic book guy nerd.
Not really. In most organizations the quality of the HR function is unrelated to the quality of the engineering.
Thanks for the heads up on how this works. Not knowing wikipedia's process at all, I would have thought that why's entry was about to be deleted as well.

Now we know that it's not as big a deal as it seems.
How do you advertise yourself for contract work? Do you have a one person company, or you are just a contractor? While both things may in the end mean more or less the same, their perception might be different and you could be able to get paid more in the first than in the second case. Or am I wrong?
This is just plain wrong. Ideas certainly are property. Ever heard of a patent?
Only people that are into hardcore programming content know about _why. That basically means nobody in the big scheme of things.

That said, I don't program Ruby but I know about _why... so that means he should have a Wikipedia page IMHO ;)
"Are they coding to a spec?"

A spec is a description of the expected behavior of the program, NOT a description of what the code will look like. Unless we have a different conception of "spec"?

If you are specifying the entire, detailed "design" upfront, you are not allowing for Hacking as a valid methodology (specifically, Bottom Up Programming). As we are discussing this on "Hacker News," I'm not sure we want to discredit Hacking as a valid model for software development.

"And it isn't lack of incremental reviews."

Aren't incremental reviews a valid part of project managemnt and software methodology?
For one thing, the function returned by createFramesetReal() seems to be using the undefined variable 'b'.
Op, I had that in a previous version, musta accidently cut that out when cleaning it up. It didn't have an effect though.

Went ahead and set it to what it should be... body.
I've installed the script under Safari and FF2 and I don't notice anything happening. Is it overwriting the existing links? I didn't do that because sometimes I may only want to quickly see the comments or main article.

Firebug doesn't seem to be showing me any errors either.

BTW: I like the title of your blog, "Artfully Underemployed" :)
If you installed it for the first time, make sure you turn the feature on. Look for the link called "blacklist" in the top bar of HN, which will pull up the options for the script. Check the box next to split view.

Since this is becoming more than just the simple blacklist script it originally was, I suppose I should rename it or something to make that more clear. ;)

Oh and I almost forgot, thanks for the brilliant idea!
I think I would feel I was making other programmers do too much of my work if I just sent them code that I new was bad, and have them waste time to look at it and just confirm that, yes, it's bad.

That's different, of course, from making your best effort and then asking someone who you think is good at programming to find all the places you could do better.
Damn, their packaging is clearly better for OpenSUSE, as it had no trouble recognising the higher version number, and I'm using DragonFly this minute. I had some trouble with beta 2 as it didn't import my 9.27 profile correctly and crashed halfway through. (I backed it up before trying 9.5 at least) Release version's working fine. It's nice to have Flash working again properly.

By the way, as far as I know, DragonFly is just some javascript that hooks into the interpreter/VM, so you might be able to download it from their developer website to fix the problem.
Search and advertising sales.
Millions of people all over the world have heard of Jigglypuff. I personally have bashed jigglypuff's oversized head in with a large mallet many times in Super Smash Bros. Jigglypuff is no doubt an important cultural touchstone for the generation who were nine years old in 2002 (or whenever Pokemon was popular, I forget).

On the other hand, I've never heard of this "why the lucky stiff" guy (I only clicked on this article because I couldn't parse the headline), although I have to admit I've heard of his "(poignant) guide to Ruby" second-hand from a friend who was complaining how annoying its writing style was. Having read his biography, I'd have to say his achievements, which seem to be limited to writing an online manual, a couple of libraries and speaking at a couple of conferences, don't seem to be all that notable.

Perhaps I'd feel differently if the wikipedia article were listed under his real name instead of his self-important handle. As it is, it kinda looks like he wrote most of this himself. I don't bother to edit wikipedia but if I did I think I'd vote for deletion.
Social Networking Gets a Sanity Check - GigaOM
Well the urgency at least makes people want to hunt around for reliable sources.
My co-founder and I started out working from our own separate homes, and we experienced a huge surge in productivity once we moved in to a common office. And I mean HUGE. Phones, IM, email, they're all very nice, but nothing beats face-to-face, sitting in the same room, looking at the same computer screen when necessary.

IMO productivity in a team, where the people are working on the same thing (which makes DHH's case irrelevant) goes exponentially down with distance. Measuring the distance in feet vs. miles makes more difference than measuring it in miles vs. thousands of miles.
Open Hold'em Bot
Until the cash (not stock) is in your account, you have nothing. Considering the finicky audience and the trouble monetizing it, FB could very well pull a Friendster.
How to Change the World: One Perfect Day with IGT
Good idea. It imports tags/labels. But perhaps I'll add tagging everything that was imported w/ something new.
I went from 2 people (myself and a partner) to 8, so I didn't do the individual thing myself.

In my experience, a single person ("John Smith" or "John Smith Consulting LLC") isn't at a big disadvantage against a small company (John Smith as sole member of "Razor Consulting LLC" or whatever). We would often compete with, and work alongside, individuals. It's all about getting your brand out there. You want people to hear about and trust your brand - whether it's your name as an individual, or a company name. But don't confuse people by pushing both. I actually recommend using your individual name unless you want to grow bigger than 2 full-time employees. I have several friends who are individual contractors, and most of them have incorporated under another name. But they are known by their personal name, not their company name. That's their brand, so to speak.
You're give a lot of credit to large companies - things are done wrong in them more often than not.

The developers code to requirements - a bunch of signed off requirements are handed off to them and they go make the thing work, so yea there is a spec, but it doesn't go to the level of 'use library x' or feature y or a 5 table join instead of 5 individual selects etc. The developers have license to code the thing in the best way they see fit.

The point of my comment was to agree with what was said in the article in that its bad to go and spring 5 weeks of coding on the team (whether its an open source or closed source team) without running what you are doing past the other team members or stake holders at frequent intervals.

In my case, I have been sprung with weeks of code in one go - it doesn't really matter if there are modular/OO approaches being used - 5 or 6 weeks of code can run into thousands of lines.

The same problem appears with other things too - eg I need a report for 20 components of a system, and it takes some time to prepare the stats (one off manual task) for each part - I would say send me the stats for each component as you get them, but they tend to hold everything back until its all done - then when the report isn't quite right its a much bigger job to fix it than if I had seen some stuff early.

Agile development is sort of like this too - show your customer things each week as its easier to fix when its going down the wrong path, instead of springing three months of work on the customer in one go to find its no what they wanted.
Ask HN: Web Fundamentals for a Newb
I know it is common for non-hackers interested in web development to ask how to get started, but I think my question is a variation and has not been covered in depth. I apologize if I missed a previous discussion addressing this issue.

I am attempting to teach myself Rails and have also made a concerted effort to understand Ruby. I have heard on many occasions that it is advisable to understand what problems Rails solves in order to use the framework to its full benefit and my little bit of experience supports this claim. While my study of Ruby has definitely helped me to understand some of the magic of Rails, there are holes in my understanding that Ruby knowledge alone will not solve.

My weakness is in understanding web fundamentals, and I would like to take a step back from Rails to do kind of a survey of those fundamentals. In particular, I know I need to read up on webservers and CGI. Any particular recommendations on either subject? I also wonder what other subjects I should be reading up on? Are there any books out there that do a survey of web stuff but are relatively technology agnostic? Any particular terms I should be googling for? (I do have a basic knowledge of html and css as well as a very rudimentary knowledge of mysql syntax).

Another area I would like to focus on is how to design the architecture of the web app itself, particularly in a MVC framework. The books I am using are tutorial-based but they never really address how to figure out what your models should be, etc. They just tell you how to make models in Rails. Any suggestions on this front?

I think that I should probably also learn some basics of database design even though ActiveRecord makes it tempting and easy to ignore. Is this a correct assessment?

To make a long post short, I am looking for advice on non-Ruby and non-Rails skills that I need to develop web apps. I know this is a great group of people to ask and appreciate any and all direction.
Ask YC: Do I have a chance?
My partner and I have an idea for a website. We are 18 and 17 years old. I thought of idea and do web design, and he has 4 years of programming experience. If we build a prototype or beta do we have enough for an investor to invest in our company/website? Plus I live outside SV.
When a CEO Coughs, Do Shareholders Catch a Cold?
Why not try doing it without an investor? Does it absolutely require one? Could you get something going that would generate revenue and then grow it?
Only a small minority of jerks would bother to try, so just make sure that the professor you're approaching isn't a jerk. Frankly most professors don't have time to bother trying to steal credit, especially for something which isn't close to their core research.

Ultimately you're just asking them for help in refining it into publishable form, so you should be first author, they should be second author.

Also, note that the first professor you go to is likely to think that what you've done isn't sufficient for a publication. That's OK. But if you try three professors and they all think that, you might want to give up trying. Based on your description (small change, decent improvement), what you've done may or may not warrant a publication all on its own.
Clever Doorbell Hack for Deterring Unwelcome Solicitors
Ultimately you're just asking them for help in refining it into publishable form, so you should be first author, they should be second author.

Only if you've feeling very generous. I would acknowledge help received in a section at the end of the paper, but I would never list a co-author who didn't contribute any of the ideas.
You are wrong; a patent is the _rights_ to exploit an idea, but it is not the idea itself, and one of the explicit purposes of the patent system is to ensure that the ideas behind the patent are made public.
Cool, I got it to work in FF. It doesn't work under Safari (no blacklist in the toolbar). I noticed extra scroll bars in FF but my guess is that's because there is some css padding/margin stuff applied to the body.

Because it overrides the page itself you can't click "Back" or Alt+Left or whatever to go back to the list of stories.
I did go back and add the check for if I'm already inside the frameset to my code though. Gotta prevent those recursive split views :). Now if you surf back to the main page in the right frame and click on a SplitView link it will reload both frames.

I will look at it in Safari some and see if I can figure out what the deal is there. Safari's Activity window doesn't show any errors.

I'll also see what I can think of for the Back button issue when doing it your way. That may not be a big deal to anyone else though.
There are plenty of other successful companies that weren't founded on fucking over everyone who helped in the early stages. Google for example. They didn't transfer the IP to a new corp after they realized it was a good idea.
Ask HN: Scalability and .NET stack
Python rocks, but I know at least a few of you out there are using the Microsoft stack... :)

Most startups founders I've talked to use Python and Amazon Web Services for scalability. Until Microsoft reveals their cloud computing solution, it seems there aren't too many choices for the Microsoft stack hosted scaling solutions, besides Mosso. I've heard Amazon can be used with a .NET app, as long as you are not running SQL Server on the back-end. Is anyone using MS SQL Server Express as the database engine for their startup? How do people here using the Microsoft stack approach scalability issues?
Agreed. Why are we voting this stuff up?
I believe that on Everett's approach, when you measure some observable with two possible outcomes, the total number of worlds increases, like a bacterium dividing. But on the version you're suggesting, it sounds like we constantly hop from one already-existing universe to another, because every instant brings with it a different configuration. But it makes little sense for our bodies to hop between worlds, since they're parts of worlds, so is it our 'mind' that does it? But that sounds like many-minds, except with many worlds instead of one, and with a new problem of how we do the hopping.

Unless by configuration, you mean that each world is a world-line that contains a set of definite outcomes for all quantum events, and so all the quantum outcomes are predetermined for each world, and we explain probabilities by recourse to the proportion of some worlds to others. That's not really many-worlds, that's modal realism (every possible world exists, and "the actual world" just means "my world"). Which is more David Lewis than Hugh Everett.
I work on a small team with a large legacy codebase in ClearCase. Builds take long enough that it is easier to work on a large chunk and do a clean build once the couple of libraries and executables I'm working on are in good shape, then deliver the blob.

I check-in on my own branch on a feature-by-feature basis, but in practice, no one sees my work until a large blob is out there. There's limited opportunity to second guess people (this cycle, we had one formal code review per developer).

At my work I am just stuck with these limitations, but I don't recommend working this way.
This stood out to me:

"In his senior year at Exeter, Zuckerberg and his roommate, Adam D'Angelo, wrote software for an MP3 player that was able to learn a user's listening habits and build a digital library based on previous selections. Several companies showed an interest in the application, including an AOL subsidiary, but D'Angelo and Zuckerberg had no intention of selling. They didn't care about money. They cared about code. "They were the most advanced computer-science students at the school," recalls Kristopher Tillery, a classmate who set up a site with Zuckerberg that allowed Exeter students to order snacks online."

And this:
"The way he talked, the way he dressed, everything about him screamed immature," Greenspan recalls. "He seemed unprofessional. I had run a company since I was 15. It just didn't seem like he got it. That whole persona just didn't impress me." Although he was congratulatory at the time, Greenspan now says he was put off by Zuckerberg's original venture, Facemash. "You can spend time writing software for good or evil, and that was pretty close to evil," Greenspan said. "It wasn't that he inflicted harm because he enjoyed it — it was because he didn't care. Which I thought was almost worse."
You'll really never know if you spend your time speculating and hesitating to take a step without 100% certainty. Just do it. See where it goes, and judge accordingly.
Great question... I am somewhat in the same boat you are, but about a year further. One really good website that I found has filled in some gaps for me is http://www.buildingwebapps.com (although I haven't seen the specific issues you've mentioned).

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I probably need more fundamental knowledge of algorithms, and computer science in general than the things you mentioned.
Question: why are you posting the same comment to multiple stories?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216787
It's certainly useful to know how things got to where they are, but it's not always necessary. Even in history circles people debate how important history is if the lessons can be handed down via knowledge of good-practices.

If you want to know how good you've got it now, I'd start with building a site that uses entirely static content. After you've got a few pages, make a change that affects all of these pages. You'll see how static pages lead to redundancy and a lesson will be learned.

Then setup a cgi based commenting system in either c or perl, which would arguably represent the start of interactive web sites. From here, you'll see that there are things you'd like to store, like a username, and you'll understand how frameworks make following a user easy.

Once you've done these two things, add some database support for the comments and a way to search the comments.

I'd say, after these three things, you'll have a pretty good understanding of how slick things like rails are and you can go back to being as productive as possible with respect for the problems it's solving. There's definitely more to learn on this topic, but it might border on distraction at this point.
It's actually pretty straightforward to detect a face; most mid-range digital cameras can do it nowadays. The problem is that even if you tell the program that face A is not face B, all you've done is given it a very small hint in a VERY big problem space. The human brain is hard-wired to detect faces (newborn babies prefer to look at pictures of human faces rather than colorful shapes), which I think makes it feel like an easier problem than it actually is.

That being said, don't let me stop you from trying. It would definitely be a cool (and very saleable) bit of tech.