skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I washed dishes at a restaurant during high school.

One day, someone defecated in the employee restroom and missed, leaving their waste on the floor behind them.

The first waitress to enter the room thereafter shrieked, then began laughing, and called the rest of us in to go look at it. I assume she used the customer restroom.

We all looked at the offending object in question, and laughed among ourselves. I grabbed a few paper towels, and went to go deal with the situation prejudicially.

After depositing the doodoo in the dumpster out back - you can't flush paper towels - I came back in, washed my hands, and resumed my proper duties as dishwasher.

Minutes later, the boss came into the kitchen, beaming contentedly. He made his way to the employee restroom, opened the door, and asked "Uh, where's the turd?"

As it turned out, the previously mentioned poop had been plastic, and I'd just discarded a five-dollar novelty gag. Laughs were had once again.

One of the waitresses and the boss both mentioned to me that I was "like, the best employee ever" because I was willing to take the initiative to deal with a nasty situation. I'd like to say that this has been borne out by my professional performance since then, particularly as it stands relative to that of my coworkers from that period.

The best part was that the boss had borrowed the plastic fecal matter from a friend of his and had to go fish it out of the dumpster to avoid buying a new one.
People who complain about a product that they have no intention of becoming a customer of are really annoying, especially in a startup focused community. Invite method is needed to ensure smooth rollout and scaling. Bugs can be fixed as reports come in, without getting the same bug report from 1000 people.
There's no way that number is correct. Yes, your site is just lumped into a list of several other links on TechCrunch, but the article was fb liked 61 times and tweeted 758 times, which means it must have been read (in my experience with analytics) at least 10x that amount (probably more), so let's assume 10,000 hits to that article. There's no way those 10,000 hits resulted in only 10 hits to your page - even if it was a blank page. That's an impossibly low number... so check your analytics.

Edit: Actually, I just had a realization that it Tech Crunch has a very wide reach across social platforms. I didn't think of this before, but it's possible the article was liked and tweeted by hundreds of people who didn't even hit the TC site. But I still think your number is off. I get 2,500+ hits to my blog every time I post an article to Hacker News.
Proof that the dot com bubble is back: The SCAVNGR Porsche
isn't kickstarter the kickerstarter for startups?
This may seem radical but... how about working in an actual office? You can get your own office. Room to spread out, no noise. You can still go out to Starbucks in your break, to get that vibe feeling.
Explain why access to health insurance is a bigger issue than access to a paycheck?

I can have access to a paycheck by selling stuff.

I can have access to affordable health care through some combination of public policy, state and federal programs, laws that may or may not end up being repealed or enforced, regulations on the insurance industry, reforms on the legal industry, pressure from consumer advocacy groups, happening to live in the right place, hoping that my insurance company doesn't raise rates too much, or possibly marrying someone with good health insurance, or being the right age to be on my parents' plan, if they have an affordable plan to begin with. Also I can choose not to smoke or have kids if I want to keep my costs down.
I agree. Although this may not be the 100% certainty mentioned, it's another good data point. When boostrapping, it often feels like I'm working in an opinion vacuum (I don't count friends cause they tend to be annoyingly kind about these things). I like this idea.
I don't know about ironic. Certainly I can see the inherent recursion.

http://upstartly.com/startups/view/1
I see your point. From a different perspective, if the library weren't so complacent on enforcing the rules there would be a need for less workstations, less IT staff, less infrastructure, less management. I guess I look at people surfing porn and youtube on public computers and see that as a 'waste' of money as compared to how it was intended to be used.
maybe in China.. but definitely not in all of the East
I doubt real estate choices had anything to do with Sun's demise.
Facebook updates while driving your car
Very interesting, I know I need a game viewer for my online simulation football game http://deeproute.com

Having a hard time deciding what to use. I've installed and messed around with Unity 3d, which seems like a lot of overkill as I just want a viewer, not an interactive game.

Something like this seems like it might be more up my alley. Going to start reading the docs.
I can't speak for the grandparent of this comment, but I'd like to see a Perl 6 release that is actually competitive with perl5 and python in a production setting. Last I heard, the Perl 6 implementations were still very slow, and lacking significant functionality specified in the Synopses.

Until such a release happens, Perl 6 is a nice idea, but not actually useful to me.
Better Web Forms: Redesigning eBay's Registration
Poll: What would you do if you invented PCR for the internet?
I have a not so hypothetical question: if you were to come up with a simple algorithm that could "sequence" the internet, what would you do with it?

PCR, polymerase chain reaction is the method for amplifying DNA, allowing it to be sequenced. Needless to say, this revolutionized the biotech industry.

By "'sequence' the internet", I mean converting the majority of online content into a machine readable format, aka something like the semantic web. Also, for those who know their biotech history, the PCR analogy is no accident.
Patent it.
Start a company focused on the technology.
Start a company focused on an application of the technology.
Verify you're not crazy.
Test the bejeezus out of the algorithm to make sure it works.
Apply to YC and let PG decide.
Go back to sleep, you're dreaming, such an algorithm couldn't exist.
Clarification on the Twitter move: Its Brisbane, CA not Brisbane, Australia which for some reason came to my mind first :).

http://lnkd.in/kJZaxy
The danger with this approach is that you'll restrict yourself to products that people know that they want to buy before you even build it. It would be great you could validate every product this way, but sadly many products have to be used before people are willing to pay.
Relevant in the overall big picture of landing pages perhaps, but not to the blog post at hand. That's what "Related Posts" sections are for. If you spend the time to get original content, then you should not be afraid to showcase it.

If you want break up large sections, use visual cues to break up content. Since you mentioned Unbounce, see these[1][2] as inspiration. Note the use of font size and weight, lists, whitespace and images that are directly related to the copy.

If you want more feedback, my email is in my profile.

[1]http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/your-landing-page-...
[2]http://unbounce.com/landing-page-optimization/marketing-fail...
Hey Andrew! I hope you work on this more, but it's not ready for general consumption yet. Specifics:

Social proof is a big part of why kickstarter works. The startup pages should prominently display something like "X people have committed $Y".

Discoverability is also key. It should be easy to find your users, but I can only find you.

If you haven't implemented the above because you don't have any content, that's also a big problem. If you don't seed a site like this with content (from friends, family, cold calls, whatever) it causes all kinds of problems. For one, it makes it harder to see what the site does, because content is what happens when the site is doing things. It's also really unappealing at a basic human level, like an empty room. There's not much to look at, and you want to leave.

Your users' potential users don't want to "Validate this startup!". Your copy and design should align more with their needs.

The "Pledge" buttons are broken.

Your branding must be much weaker on pages like http://upstartly.com/startups/view/1. I would move all upstartly-specific content to the footer.

Hope that helps!
Ha! My Dad was a VAX programmer... it all comes full circle :)
I find it insane that we've come to a point when speaking to a machine gives you the ability to translate what you just said to a different language immediately. Sure, the pieces were all out there already, but the combination of all of them in one package is non-trivial. We've come a long way.

Much like Louis C.K. would say about flying: "people complain about not having wifi on a plane, but they're flying through the air, sitting in a f*cking chair"
A very interesting article, thank you for sharing. This is an option my partner and I haven't really thought about. It's definitely something we'll consider after reading your post.
At least at one point facebook gave it's employees a bonus for living close to work. Wonder if will (does?) still exist.

If so I wonder if maybe they could start to revitalize the East Menlo Park area.
I understand, and I likewise look forward to much improved performance.
If they're anything like every library I've ever worked for or visited in my entire life, they're probably too underfunded and understaffed to perfectly block people from using the public computers to do anything the local policy considers inappropriate. I highly doubt it's a matter of complacency.
Anyone else kind of scared by the fact that there's 280000 [0] lines of code in a car? I mean, I know there's computers in there, and that they are necessary nowadays, but that seems like an awful lot of code to handle some lights and engine timings.

[0] http://detnews.com/article/20110208/AUTO01/102080381/Feds-cl...
As a father, I completely agree. As a c++ developer I'm counting down to the russian support calls.
Twitpic Brings Video to Twitter
Its pretty tempting, I'm up in SEA, but the middle of the week thing makes it a bit tricky for me. If there are other people from Seattle thinking about going though that could be fun.
Is the name a reference to something? I must be getting old.
Very true point, China has a good record of gender equality. Much better then it's neighbors and also the West.
> Next we will hear that HP is using VAX as the name of new printer ink

They once used Apollo as the name for a line of cheap printers...

BTW, is there any emulator capable of booting Domain/OS?
Thanks guys. I really appreciate the fact that you guys are willing to fit me into your busy schedules. I will email both of you soon.

-S
You couldn't tell it was plastic? Must have been really good quality.

I've known quite a few people who worked in gas stations and other places where they had to clean the rest rooms. If there was shit, it was generally either sprayed everywhere or rubbed on the walls. I'm pretty sure they'd appreciate the politeness of a single fecal clump. As this was after the advent of cell phone cameras, I've seen the evidence. One single-person bathroom's floor was almost half-covered in feces.
Are you talking about the fact that it's CHARGING people to VALIDATE your idea? I get what they're trying to do, and I was actually on board for the first three points. But then I got to #4, and it was like slamming into a wall. So you're going to celebrate your launch by grubbing money from the people who helped you get there? Surely, there must be a better way. I say, keep thinking...
The point of arguing, according to "Thank You for Arguing" and rhetorics, is to persuade and be persuaded to take some sort of action. The article described fighting, not arguing.

Platonic dialectic is related yet different, but I can see how modern ignorance of rhetorics have led people to equate platonic dialectic with debate, arguing with fighting.
I'm no troll. Just Angry at corporate complacency of America.
Here are the 'real stats'.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/
I draw the line at mice. They're mammals.
It's probably not about farmers: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4172
As far as I know there is no such thing as winter time.
Russia had standard time (UTC+3) in winter and changed to daylight savings time (UTC+4) at same dates as the rest of Europe. Now they decided never to switch back to UTC+3 but stay UTC+4, effectively making UTC+4 Moscow standard time.

As Moscows longitude is 37 degree East, they should really use UTC+3 as their standard time, but that's a different story.
I feel vindicated, I must admit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169952
There was an issue with the pledge buttons - it's fixed now.

Thanks for the advice though, I think it's spot on. I'm going to put in "X people have committed $Y" ASAP.
Church Approves 'Confession' App for iPhone
Very, very inspiring. I love posts like this (as we all do) because it's a good way to benchmark my own projects and gives me hope for future projects. When I finally round the numbers up (hopefully later this week) I'm going to make a post detailing the financials of my little 4-hour profitable project (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176771)
China also maintains the same time year round.
Backpack for me.

Although I do consider it a minor victory when I can make it out with just iPhone, keys, and wallet in pockets.
In my experience as a library employee, there had to be a strong case that somebody was disrupting other patrons' abilities to use the library / creating a hostile environment before they could get kicked out. Coming in falling-down-drunk, stealing stuff, or looking at porn on the internet stations was pretty clear cut, but sometimes the line was fuzzy.
I am not eager to clean bathrooms on my first day as a software developer. Relevance to my job title, which is important to me for both self-fulfillment and career management reasons, is a big part of why. I am eager to create software, and I understand this includes the mentally dirty parts. If I was eager to get physically dirty I'd go and make more money for an easier job at the tar sands.

You want someone who will do whatever you pay them to do, hire a cocker spaniel. [1]

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22hire+a+cocker+spaniel%22
I agree, although most CL and Scheme implementations seem to be stuck in the Lisp box, from which escape is painful. Racket (PLT Scheme), Chicken Scheme, and Lush do a pretty good job of providing good access to the OS, but SBCL and CLisp (neither of which I've poked at in years, so there may be some magic library by now) always felt like they wished they were the OS and pretended there was no Unix, owing to the time when CL was standardized and this was sort of still true.

Smalltalk implementations are pretty similar in this respect, although both language families are still pretty fun. Erlang and Inferno/Limbo are both sort of guilty of this, but for slightly different reasons. But it's pretty inconvenient around the borders, getting into and ot of the "real" OS. It's sort of a mixed blessing that nowadays, most developer OSs are (on some level) Unix: there's a baseline, a set of facilities that can be expected to be present and to behave a certain way, so most modern Lisp-like languages are pretty friendly to the OS (or at least provide an FFI to C). The downside is that the baseline is POSIX, a little stiff sometimes and often quirky for historical reasons. (Still waiting for Plan 9 to catch on...Maybe I should stop holding my breath.)
Validate fiftypoints on Upstartly
No. Per the article, they're staying on UTC+4 (aka DST) permanently, rather than falling back to UTC+3 in the winter.
My concern is that it seems like telecos that offer metered fees do so as a wedge to extracting greater profits out of ALL of their users and not as a some sort of field leveling fairness action.

Case in point: text messages. There are still many wireless plans that put a limit on the number of text messages that can be sent and crossing that limit brings about fees to the user far in excess of the costs of sending the text (10 to 15 cents per text would not be uncommon).

Maybe at one point a decade ago those costs made sense (less bandwidth overall, more infrastructure needed, early adopter tax, etc.) but now we're trapped in a legacy rate structure for text messaging that simply won't go away.

It's hard to predict the future, but I feel pretty secure in saying that the data caps we see today are going to seem laughably small a decade from now and I don't want the teleco's to "text messaging rate" my bandwidth from here on out. I think it hurts the industry as a whole and US competitiveness.
One dream exits, another dream enters.

yes, engineering dream exits and and social marketing one enters...
I can attest to their support being phenomenal. I found a critical bug last week and got a patch within hours of reporting it to their customer advocate. You don't see that kind of turnaround very often.
When I first learned Rails I kinda messed around with it and wrote a quick demo app, but really wasn't that impressed with it. Coming from a C# background and ASP.NET MVC had just come out I didn't see much value in learning a new MVC framework.

However, when I started to need a language that I could use to write code that would let me easily integrate with different services and APIs I was finding that C# was cutting it for me. Not so much C# than just the .NET community. I found that the Open Source community is Ruby's greatest asset.

There are so many gems to be used in Ruby/Rails that I found that I seldom have to write anything from scratch. There is always a gem I can use to help me get a job done.

The second strongest asset of Ruby is the language itself. I found it to be a wonderful language to write in. Since learning Ruby, I haven't cared to write another line of C# again.

Is it worth learning? I say emphatically, "yes" but I would implore you to try it for yourself. Also checkout Github/Rubygems.org to see if there is a gem out there to try.
Libraries don't charge thousands of dollars per month to rent your workspace, that's certainly one reason.
Do you really wish Jesus's career/fate for yourself or anybody else whom you wish well?
Crowdsourcing predictions for 2011
I find it amusing that google has an application that can translate from language to language yet when I call <insert big name company>'s automated system they cannot decipher what I am saying worth a damn.
That too (the atv increased my Netflix consumption 3-fold).

The influx of Netflix apps and devices just before the Holiday season seems to have been a very smart strategy.
What exactly would Microsoft's motivation be to remove a revenue stream from their OEMs? It would be like Google requiring all Android phones to not have carrier supplied software by default. Both would be nice, but this installed software makes the difference in profitability.
The Secret of User Activity Streams and Cohort Metrics
I saw that checkbox. But if I'm sending the link to people I know, why not just send an email and avoid this site completely?
This chart should dispense with the "Watch SG-1 in order up to S7" and "Watch the remainder of Atlantis" in order and just concentrate on the interesting part.
It was probably the Canadian launch (late September).
'You do so much for this company, this is the only thing I can do for you.'

Typical lie of a boss. He could have given him more options or a promotion for example.
This is a very common sight in Toronto, which has a large asian population.
I think the title of this post is incorrect; they're not abolishing DST, they're permanently moving to DST.
So, you wouldn't work out at a place like Zappos, where everyone had to hit the phones and do customer support their first two weeks, from application developers to executives.

"Making employees clean it on their first day? Not so much."

What will you do your first day as a business owner (that is, if that's the end goal for you)? That's just one of the many things you'll do yourself for awhile, just FYI.
Tell HN: Ongoing issue with EC2
I run a web app monitoring service and I aggregate data by hosting vendor. For the past hour or so, most of the 71 sites hosted by EC2 that I'm monitoring are showing increased response times. Any ideas as to why?

https://www.blamestella.com/vendor/ec2/report

There's no information about it on Amazon's status page (http://status.aws.amazon.com/). To me this really shows how important public monitoring is.
Why does the media keep repeating his employer's name? It has nothing to do with his activism.
Pirates hijacks oil tanker along with 17 Indians and five Italian crews
I personally did this for over a year (Springfield, Missouri) in our kickass library downtown. Great coffee shop nearby, quiet, plenty of books (doh) and magazines to read as break entertainment and just fantastic.
He's the CEO, he doesn't have _time_ to read :D
From my experience, simple AdWords used to work great, but don't anymore without a dedicated landing page.
Doesn't that, then, lead to a race-to-the-top method of pay that's ultimately unattainable? You pay them so that they're the top 1% so now other people do the same. Eventually, they're only in the top 10%... top 25%.

Rather than throw money at a problem why not find ways to increase overall satisfaction? If money is a component of that, then great, but it doesn't motivate everyone. Often times people are looking for a better quality of life outside of the workplace: things like more time off to spend with their families mean a lot to some people and, if executed properly, don't hurt your bottom line either.
Yeah, the movie There's Something About Mary, specifically this part (23s - 33s) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xuah8LC-Cw&feature=playe...
i am trying to be generally optimistic, but it seems pretty likely that Conde Nast is going to eventually want to monetize the reddit community in ways that no one will like. without some sort of payoff at the end of the road, i can't imagine why they'd agree to additional hires.
When you compete in what is viewed as commodity business, many people simply check it has their minimum features and buy on price. Apple is viewed as selling something different. I would guess that someone could build a brand around Linux and do the same thing, but "build my own" tends to conflict with "premium". Check any comparison of a hackintosh to an actual Mac and then see how it would work if instead of OS X you were talking Linux.
Maybe starting a revolution was part of his 20% time?
I'd pay a small tax increase of .1 cents to abolish internet pornography in libraries. Call me a party pooper, but there's a time and place, and the place for pornography is definitely not public spaces.

I don't care if there's a nude painting on display, but I do care if there's some hard core humping on a computer monito in a public place where my child can see it... I mean he was just born, give him at least a few years innocence!
Welcome to "The Cloud!"

Amazon owns your business, you don't. Seriously, I'm not joking. This is why I still operate over 100 servers in a data center.
I did some consulting a while back for a manufacturer that sold the home page on the default browser for $150M. It is indeed real money.
I have an app on Heroku that is loading slower than normal. This might be why. Is anyone else seeing a similar problem?