skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll give you a few tips that will make you rich, listen carefully.

Let people bet with paypal in every prediction, just $1 per bet. Winners share the pot and you keep 5% of proceedings.

Make a triple choice so odds are more distributed Yes,No,Tie and use simple icons for one-click-bet (like digg).

Put sports, lots of them (but don't over saturate).

Keep it simple as it is right now.

Put a section at the top with the top ten predictions by bets, for marketing (one million dollars bet on obama/mccain will draw a lot of attention).

You will charge for VIP accounts a year later for extra services but you won't need that money, you'll be rich already.

Good luck and remember me if you hit the jackpot.

I know you will!
What problem are you solving? Why would people want to get involved in this? Aren't there established competitors (I know for sure there are in politics) with communities? Why do you think people will pay $10 a year when they don't even pay for the most important thing online (email). This is the 0 cents vs 1 cent arguement - most people won't pay for anything if it requires them to go through the effort of pulling out their credit card. I'd say if it is a free time waster, you might grow a community, but even then, where is the money coming from? Ads? I think free time waster ad supported websites as a business model is failing - if YouTube and Facebook are struggling, why would yours work?
Google might still have a chance to do interesting things. Somehow they're managing to avoid adding huge amounts of "process" to building projects? They ship code fast?

Sounds like everything is going fine...
That is how you will make money - gamblers love it - but I do think it would be illegal if you made any kind of headway. Isn't this like off track betting? You need to host from a place in which it is legal to do that.
It's likely that a News.YC post isn't reordered until someone actually casts a vote on it. So if all voting stopped, News.YC would remain static, just like Reddit would.
They might not be very similar, but you are exactly right. OpenProfile was the first thing how I described Atomkeep to others. ;)
You absolutely did use your opinion as an argument. Look at what you wrote:

"Personal experience says being a parent is one of the coolest and most enjoyable things you can do with your life."

If you weren't trying to use your personal opinion as as evidence, what you should have written was:

"Personal experience says being a parent is one of the coolest and most enjoyable things I did with my life."

The latter is a statement of opinion; the former is an argument.
Civilization's golden era is teetering on collapse, yet we ignore meltdown
Yeah, good point. I wish I could still edit the title...
The problem is there's a huge conflict of interest. He could easily bid up auctions he had no intention of winning, thus inflating prices. Another is he might be able to see the bids or domain watchlists of other bidders, which gives him a huge advantage.
Of course in order to do this the guy will need to move to Malta or some other jurisdiction where online gambling is legal, but other than that you're spot on.
Massachusetts is the most tech savvy state, again
Simple, useful, congrats.
More tips:

Don't let people post predictions to the front page, you be the filter and the editor, you are the decider.

Let people buy 10, 20 or 50 "tokens" to fill their account so they don't have to go through paypal everytime they bet.

Allow a maximum of tokens per certain period of time (100 a month) so people don't get addicted and ruin your site with lawsuits.

Also, keep suspicious "winners" at bay with algorythms.

Pay prizes directly to users accounts (not back to paypal) so they "reinvest" again playing, so the money is always in your control and you will make lots of money in interests, (you could give away your comission if you want so the whole pot goes to the players).

If they decide to cash out, send the money to their paypal account. Not everybody will, so less overhead at the end.
The majority of the world chooses not to work for free. My landlord certainly won't let me live rent-free. I can't go to a movie for free. So I'm not sure who are the weird ones (or disparate) in this equation.

That said, I love, use and appreciate open source. It's just not the only answer, and many people working on open source are compensated by a sponsor (IBM, Sun, etc.). Is it fair to pick on someone for expecting to be paid for their work? World of Warcraft isn't much more than a time waster.
He addesses this very point in his post:

"As all organizations mature they tend to add PROCESS. These processes exist to insulate the companies from the mistakes that occur after a company gets to a certain size and can no longer trust its employees to always do the right thing. Requiring code reviews, design specifications, black box & whitebox & unit testing, usability studies, threat models, etc are all the kinds of overhead that differentiate a mature software development shop from a “fly by the seat of your pants” startup. However once you’ve been through enough fire drills, some of those processes don’t sound as bad as they once did. This is why senior developers value them while junior developers don’t since the latter haven’t been around the block enough."

Sounds to me like he thinks Google is in need of some "process" (in fact, he specifically uses random breakage in Google apps to illustrate why this might be so).

I'm not saying he's right (wouldn't know, I've always worked for small companies where there was little need for a lot of "process") but the argument he puts forth is that everything at Google is not, in fact, going fine.
Gasp! Such logic! Such wisdom! Such overwhelming intellect!

FWIW I'm not the one claiming I you can "sell your software for $20,000." I'm the one telling you, just like your mother did 20 years ago, "Don't be a fool: be careful what you accept as truth."

But if you must know: I _also_ remain anonymous because of the deterioration of a previously close friendship due to differences of understanding about business risk and reward.

Since that satisfied you in his case I am certain that you will find it acceptable in mine.

Or not. Bugger off.
One last tip:

If paypal is not an option try SMS

1-800-FOOBET * ITEM * USERID * 1|2|3

$1 per SMS, work it out with the telcos.

SMS is the new micropayment, believe me.
I believe internet gambling is allowed in Antigua and some other caribbean islands
Solution: Turn off your IM, and don't respond to facebook messages. IM is optional, if you don't turn it on nobody will contact you.

That said I find a phone call even worse.
I agree. To criticize Google still working like a start-up is a big complement.
To take the token idea further, make sure it's impossible to evenly divide tokens by an action. For instance, if $10.00 purchases 1000 tokens, charge 150 tokens for each "bet".
I worked for a 'college prep course that shall not be named' for a while as a sophomore in college.

The paid us a fair amount of money to go back and take the SAT/ACT and memorize questions (they called it 'tapping'). I tried once, and I only scored 20 points higher than I did when in HS. Although, both were in the 99.9th percentile, so I suspect they were both within the margin of error of perfect though.
My father is one of the two pranksters named in the article. The diagram of how to get the car up and over the edge of the roof was the big secret and closely resembles the sketches he showed me as a child. The article doesn't say that they had to get the car up in 20 minutes because of the regular beat of the local policeman.

My family were all sworn to secrecy as they had agreed to keep the mystery up - I went to the same college and had to play dumb, even though the authorities had a good idea of who had done it.

We revisited the college recently and sneaked up the tower to go over some of the more obscure details.

I have actually played a couple of fairly major jokes in my time, but this page isn't the place to talk about them.
I am not picking on anybody, I don't code much for free either (should be apparent by looking at my profile). I am just wondering out loud how some guys afford to do that, while others (myself included) try to follow PG's advice of building something small and easy on top of mountains of free products created by others.

In fact, if I were Zuckenberg, I'd give a fat chunk of Facebook stock to various free software projects such as PHP, etc. Moreover, I believe it should become a tradition, those guys are the reason why "startups are so cheap!" (quote) these days.
I'm generally against any complex lock-free data structures, because they're extremely difficult to prove to be reliable (and I mean prove in ACL2 sense of proof).

Have you tried any of the garbage collection libraries for C++? I've never used them for any of my projects, but I currently work in the mobile industry and they would potentially solve two problems. One being the concurrency issue, but then also memory fragmentation. (Windows Mobile 6 allows 32 MB of memory max per process, so this is a big one for mobile)

I know they can cause a lot of cache misses, but it seems like all but the most primitive of low end devices would run into a problem with it in most situations at this point.
Theglobe.com founder to facebook execs: sell your shares, now
check out www.predictify.com --- might give you some ideas on how to make a buck (and what you are up against!)
Do they really have to put a "next page" link after every two paragraphs!?
Not entirely no.
Truly rich web application: text editing online. (now - without a browser!)
Ok -- thought I'd ask before I downmodded you.
It's hateful because it's not referring to non-citizen immigrants but rather the lump-sum Muslims in general - which includes people with full citizenships, etc.
StarWars theme on a PC floppy drive
Yahoo ups domain registration fees from 10$ to 35$.
Advice for the guys:

Do a very light, low-intensity workout before you meet women. I'm talking about a light, 20-minute jog to break just a minimal sweat. On 80+ sunny days, a long walk is enough. Don't wash up.

You won't smell, because the quantity of sweat is small, but you'll be putting out pheromones, and this will help with the first-second attraction. Does it always work? Obviously, no. However, it increases your odds dramatically, and it's the only reliable way I know of to hack women's attraction systems.

There's obviously the risk of overkill. If you sweat too much, you will smell bad, and then you have to shower.
Domain auctions are always a voodoo science.

Especially when you're talking about domain sniping, and the subsequent silent auctions where you don't really know if you're bidding against ANYONE, but you still have to put in a maximum bid just in case, and you don't get any feedback on whether you've bid enough money or not until after the auction is over.

There's so little visibility that no one really knows what's going on or if they're inflating prices or using fake people to auction against you or anything.

What do you guys think about a true registry-level wait list policy? Maybe combined with open auctions if there's more than one person waiting. Then we wouldn't have these companies with hundreds of fake registrars constantly pinging the registry getting away with all this stuff.
Some guy I know is doing the same thing. This validates your idea but obviously also implies a bit more competition. http://www.hubdub.com/
Roeschke Pornblocker Software (Gives the internet back to innocence)
Alexa's "Web Information Service" and "Web Search" might also be of use:

http://www.amazon.com/Alexa-Web-Information-Service-home/b/r...

http://www.amazon.com/Alexa-Web-Search/b/ref=sc_fe_l_5?ie=UT...
I'd be more interested in knowing how the _really_ rich spend their time. Not the $100K+ folks -- a group which is mostly composed of plain ol' hard-working types with good jobs, but the people who are rich enough to retire but young enough to work.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence about these folks, but I'd be interested to hear the statistics.

Gee, people who make under $20K a year spend a lot of time watching TV? Who'd have thunk it?
The author defines a theory as something simple enough to be understood by humans.

If you drop this requirement, machine learned theories are a big deal nonetheless.
I don't know about you guys but I've never done this whole 'practice coding with simple applications' thing.

When I started writing software I did it with specific goals in mind, things that would either help me or others, and then found out everything I needed to to accomplish that task.

Everyone has their own learning style, but this one seems to be rarely presented.
Since most of Google's applications are web-based, releases can happen just about any time and can happen frequently as well. This is not the same thing as shipping code fast -- the delta between any two consecutive releases might be quite small, much smaller than what a startup might do in the same period of time.

Speaking as a newly-minted ex-Googler myself, I can say that for some projects, development is not what anyone would consider "fast".
I Freed Myself From E-Mail's Grip
Haha. Sorry my answer is very ambiguous. I would like to explain myself: I would not like it if everyone stopped reproducing. I would however like it very much if the human race stopped reproducing as much. To be more specific I would ideally like the human race to reproduce just enough so that the total human population began to gently decrease until we return to a sustainable population. And if it was up to me I would make me very happy if the population then remained constant indefinitely.
The OP is suggesting that a published study is "cherry-picking" data -- but isn't providing any evidence to support his claim. His only argument is his personal opinion.

It's sad that a blatant logical fallacy can become the second-highest-rated comment attached to this article.
http://ycfeeds.com/
I said nothing of immortality, I said of SHARING. When I was 12-14 I used to go play golf with my grandfather and he would tell me stories of his time in WWII, or working on the nuclear tests after the war. My other grandfather used to take us out on his boat. Neither will be remembered in 200 years, but they both had a lot of fun sharing their stories with their grand kids.

As for immortaility, I don't care to get my name in a history book, but I do want to leave my mark on the world. I want to CHANGE something. One of my grandfathers was a doctor and started a hospital in Guatemala. Which do you think has had more positive effect on the world? One of you guys comes us with a web 2.0 startup selling advertisements, makes 10 million dollars for yourself, has no kids, and then the site dies after 5 years, you die 50 years later. Or the guy who never made a huge amount of money, but started a hospital? His name may not be remembered, but his contribution has an effect on people everyday.
Good idea, good execution. But I think you should focus on benefits on the frontpage. If you tell me I can keep my photo albums in sync accross all my accounts, that is more interesting and more of a benefit than the somewhat abstract 'sync your profile'
That's pretty much a non-answer.

> I'm part of the "grand conspiracy to take over the world?"

It's not really a conspiracy. A conspiracy requires secrecy. Islamic theology plainly calls for supremacy. Not that this is a realistic threat, it just underlines a certain incompatibility with modern sensibilities.

> I thought hackers were supposed to be more open minded and stuff!

At this stage in the game the open minded position is one that acknowledges the realities of world cultures and human history. The closed minded position is unthinking acceptance of the multi-cultural mantras.
Didn't everybody want to be a games programmer when they were thirteen?
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand
How do you make a reputation for yourself?
Hacking the Facebook Platform for Data Portability
Interesting, but flawed. I posted why on TC:

"I think that what is missing here is the definition of “Exportable Facebook Properties”. The author assumes that it is defined, and consists of ALL of the data on Facebook.

But a minor bit of searching turns this up on Facebook’s devwiki (http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/ExportableFBPr...)

“At this time, there are no exportable properties. In the event that we allow certain kinds of data to be exportable to non-Facebook applications or data repositories, we will list those properties here.”

Unless I’m mistaken, that undermines the majority of this post."
Hmm, I put my foot in my mouth on this one.

"Passive income" for me is defined in terms of how much time I have to spend for the income. If I have to spend a lot of time, that's active income.

My statement, "it is taxed much higher than passive income" is a broad generalization, something I shouldn't have written. I put in the internet subscription fee in there because I don't have to trade time for it, and I assumed it would flow through a sensible business entity. If so, legitimate business expenses are deducted before they hit the personal tax returns.

Going to a job and taking a salary on a W-2, the costs for earning the salary includes a car (usually car payments), automobile insurance, car maintenaince, fuel, toll fees (if applicable), parking fees (if applicable), lunches, daycare (sometimes), business-appropriate attire, grooming supplies, etc. Few employers will reimburse an employee for those expenses, so all of that it is coming out of pocket, money after earned income taxes.

In contrast, the costs for obtaining the internet subscription fees includes server hosting, development equipment, office supplies, books, sometimes travel/commute ... and just to make sure this isn't merely a rosy picture -- accounting fees, legal fees, state fees, state taxes, county taxes, health care, amortized office furniture, office leases ... you get the idea. A number of these expenses can be paid straight out of the income generated from internet subscription fees. You're taxed on what's left over, meaning that your personal income from the business is lower, you're taxed on a lower tax-bracket than you otherwise would have, even though you can do a lot more with the money. As a disclaimer, I'm not describing or encouraging a "tax shelter"; it isn't sensible to sacrifice profits just to be able to cut the amount of taxes you have to pay.

You're right about the corporate double-tax. If you're not actively involved in the corporation, then a dividend is not bad considering the time spend in it, even if it is double-taxed. I'm sure you're also aware that if the corporation compensates you through a W-2, say as a director or as a consultant, then there isn't a double-tax. You just have to spend more time.

So to conclude this, I shouldn't have said that earned income is taxed much higher than passive income. Instead, I should've said that bigger chunks of your earned income gets taken away than from your passive income. But my guess is that you already know this. The important thing about passive income is the time you free up, not the taxes you may or may not save.
I know the girl in the featured relationship. She is in fact quite a looker. It's funny to read about her in this context.
YouTube - Z-War
Sure, they are. But I think it's confusing to characterize machine learning as an alternative to the scientific method; it's an example of the scientific method.
"... It is showing OpenOffice.org used as a WYSIWYG editor for documents stored on a webserver ..."

It has been possible for quite a while. Matt Sergeant was doing this back in 2000 with AxKit and an OpenOffice module. The OO files are in XML format. The AxKit OO module allowed you to convert the text to a page using the OO markup to indicate the Web markup. The workflow was something like:

- motivation to write

- fire up OpenOffice

- write stuff

- load url

- AxKit converts OO file to markup so you can read it

- etc...

Ultimately the idea didn't work. You simply don't need to fire up a binary application to create a marked-up page. The conversion of the OO file to another format is an extra step. Blogger proved that users would tolerate a simple text editor as a Web-app. I think the main reason I stopped using my tool (a hack wrapped around OpenOffice::OODoc ~ http://search.cpan.org/dist/OpenOffice-OODoc ) was I realised I could get away without firing up OO and simply use text with templates.

I ended up taking the bicycle out instead of the 4 Wheel drive.
Geez, this is hacker news, how about some data backing up this claim. A much better explanation (including reasoning and calculations) is here:

http://www.andrewfarmer.name/2008/06/on-fuel-efficiency.html
A couple *of* something, not a couple something: the most pervasive grammar error
Why would debuggers or unit testing be an exclusive choice? I see unit tests as a way to work in the existing code without breaking it, and a debugger as a way to figure out what's happening when you've broken something.
Software That Lasts 200 Years
Citysense uses location data to map nightlife
Sell _some_ shares != Sell your shares
Ah yeah. One more point to mention:

Another investment vehicle is owning a share in a LP/LLLP -- limited liability limited partnership. They're usually formed to own real estate or a chunk of infrastructure, such as a cell phone tower, or an offshore oil rig. As a limited power, you have no say in the active management of the company ... but you're also protected from liability. A general partner, usually a corporation, manages the asset and sends you money every so often. You get a K-1 and you report the income alongside with your LLCs and other passive income. And if the asset generates a loss, you apply the loss to your other passive income http://www.wwwebtax.com/deductions_z_other/passive_activity_...

As far as I know, venture funds are often structured this way, but don't quote me on that. I didn't really investigate it to thoroughly.
$100k/year isn't really "rich", and most people in this category are going to be middle-class, so this doesn't really establish much about how "the rich" spend their time.

Also, the amount of time that someone spends in "compulsory" activity does not necessarily indicate poor fortune. A good job is infinitely more rewarding and fun than watching TV. People are happiest when they're busy, but have a great deal of autonomy in what they are busy with and how they do it.

I'm not one of "the rich", but I live in New York and can offer my perspective on their lifestyles. I've noticed that sons and daughters of wealth tend to be shiftless, unhappy people. They lack discipline on account of never having had to learn it, and the absence of structure characteristic of their lives, as well as those of most of the underemployed <$20k people, leads them to low-utility activities (goofy hipster parties for the trust-fund kids, TV for the poor) and a collapsed sense of purpose.
If you go by what the on-board shuttle group [1] is doing for NASA, more process is the key to a better functioning organization.

But then, that's how software should be written when there's lives on the line, which doesn't exactly describe Google.

Still, something to aspire to.

[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print
"Dear George: Remember- No Man is a Failure who has Friends", writes Clarence.
It's from http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/salesguy.html
Awesome!

Of course stone-age wikies are a pain in the ass but now most of them are wysiwyg and really easy on the noob, who is the long tail of blogs and wikies.
Good idea... but, how do you intend to make money with it?
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/highscalability.com

It seems kind of weird that you created an account just to post that though. Thanks for playing anyways.
I don't like the specific ad but this site coloribus.com is a goldmine of interesting visual print ads, most of them from European/overseas campaigns.

Edit: Coloribus has a paywall. It was too good to be free.

Thin-slicing one woman's life:
http://www.coloribus.com/paedia/prints/2008/06/24/202386/sho...