skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I thought I was seeing all these Egypt Twitter stories because I get most of my news through nerd-channels like news.yc, but I s'pose they've invaded mainstream coverage as well.

My initial reaction is to agree with Gladwell, even to go further: I want to say that what we're doing when we focus on the "how" instead of the "what" in stories of modern mass communication is fetishizing indisputably "authentic" uses of technologies whose trivializing influence we fear or are at least insecure about.

But new platforms like Twitter could plausibly be changing the dynamics of political revolutions (etc.) in such significant ways that it really is worth talking about above and beyond the ground-level facts of the stories themselves.

I think Gladwell's just exhausted by the conversation.
"WebKit proprietary CSS extensions" are not "CSS3".
I think this (and SpiderOak in general) is pretty instructive for a company starting out and looking to find a way to generate revenue. I plan to roll out a service (unrelated) later this year and will be looking at SpiderOak for a compelling delivery/pricing model.
Every time I see CSS3/HTML5 demos like this, I think "awesome, but what's the IE situation?". I mean that in a honest way, not in a "oh, that probably will never work on IE type of way".

IE9 is supposedly way better than before - will it support stuff like this?
Ask PG: Please delete my account
I'm not a big fan of leaving a trail of abandoned logins. Thanks in advance.
I grabbed VLC before they got it removed, and it still runs for me. It has survived several iTunes syncs, too, and even a restore.
Ask HN: Karma Creep?
I'm not a big HN karma watcher, but I've noticed a pretty strange phenomenon: Every so often I'll get a bump up of 1 or 2 points and, since it seems odd, I'll usually scan my first page of comments and find no noticeable change.

Anyone else experience this? Do people occasionally up-vote really old comments? Caching issue?
The model I had in my head was web hosting providers with "unlimited" data storage vs. ones with 1TB of storage. Even though a normal user would probably get nowhere near 1TB, it gives the company a fallback on what 'acceptable' usage is. If the price ever does go down, they can always adjust the limit.
No strings attached Online megavideo
no strings attached Online megavideo : A hard working doctor and her one of her oldest friends, Take their relationship to the next level but decide to keep things just physical only to find that it's not so easy being friends with benefits.watch No Strings Attached megavideo
no strings attached,megavideo,online
How we got over 80,000 visitors and on reddit's homepage in 1 day
Buying users used to be a reason to acquire a product, but not anymore. Users are cheap. And Groupon already has one of the best email distribution channels out there

Its about the product and the team. Hipster is Quora meets Yelp, and the tech was in fact live for a while, just only in Boulder, CO. If Groupon wants to build a team & product to attack social local recommendations, its actually a smart move
Not "stealing" from people, but "milking" them.
I just finished The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov which is a similarly sobering take on the effects of social media and technology in general on authoritarian governments.

I can't summarise it anywhere as well as this link can:

http://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-Freedom/dp/...

If you believe that technology is inherently ethically neutral or that the use of social networks will necessarily produce a net-increase in democracy or freedom, perhaps it's worth reading for some balance.

Don't read everything you believe.

I had to unfollow a bunch of people on Twitter because they kept posting articles and blogs about how technology was being used to "help the plight of the Egyptians". You know, rather than articles about the plight itself.
Stephen Elop’s Nokia revolution; what we should expect?
Snowpocalypse 2011
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with what you did.

On the other hand however, I also think that some people have way too much money on their hands or a lack of intelligent spending habits if they are buying stuff like this. We are a very strange country indeed.

Have you ever seen the packets of clothing that are sold to vendors in third-world countries by the likes of Goodwill and such? They are full of t-shirts like this from 10, even 20 years ago and kids running around wearing them, barefoot and starving, while they put the hope for any local clothing industry out of business. Very strange stuff.

aha, found the link: T-SHIRT TRAVELS

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/tshirttravels/film.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCIlgUeYlM
Shifted to a Mac - Selling my Linux Notebook
The cultural environment has a lot do with it too my friend. As a foreigner, my parents always taught education is the key to success. Obviously, they also forced me play the violin which I profoundly disliked.lol. However, being foreign, as we see the U.S as the land of opportunities, our parents want to make sure that we have a better future than they had back in the motherland. Thereby come the pressure our parents put upon us. Don't you think it is also important to see life from Chua's lenses?
Techcrunch also tends to greatly exaggerate acquisition prices when they don't have access to any real figures...
I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive

Dude, this is HACKER News. It's all about exploiting opportunities in the system.

My only complaint is that 2am I was sleeping rather than hacking.
Excellent prospects, formidable challenges.

Basically, you have an engine that produces glass, rather than gas. At temperatures that eats most metals, plus a pure oxygen environment: basically it would have to be made from ceramics. Really voodoo ceramics.

The challenge is in the power plant; the rest of it is awesome and relatively straightforward. If someone wants a real epic project, designing a working boron-gas turbine is a plum.
Just playing devil's advocate, since I largely agree with you. I do think you are missing 3 key costs: redundancy, power (including cooling) and people.

I actually don't think bandwidth is in the same ballpark as these three items.
I would like to recoup about half the costs I have spent on the company (~3k) although that may be a bigger number than I can get on flippa.

Do you have any suggestions on other places to sell?
I don't understand what happened. Why was the government able to set internet rates at all? Is there a monopoly here or not? Why weren't we (I'm Canadian) paying per usage before -- was it a law or did a flat rate grow from convienience?
Yes we CAN.
At the risk of being pedantic (and maybe too American), isn't this a promise from politicians that it will be overturned? The title might be masking that a little bit...

(The important words in my question being "promise" and "politicians," for hopefully self-evident reasons)
That's pretty impressive. I understand keep your tips to yourself, but is there anything you can share about how you managed to get $7 profit / shirt? That's unheard of.
Affordable web design and development
The "proprietary extensions" follow the CSS3 working draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-3d-transforms/
> Dude, this is HACKER News. It's all about exploiting opportunities in the system.\

Ha, you do have a point here my friend.

Re: sleeping - I haven't slept in like 2 days =]
Windows drops below 90% market share
Think it's interesting that John Gruber got a review device provided by Apple. I don't recall them ever really reaching out to bloggers in the past.

I wonder if Gizmodo got one?
I love this article, and I always loved OkCupid for their statistical analysis and myth debunking. I am very saddened that they had to join their competitor. O well.
I think it's safe to say that, with two major reversals in a year, the CRTC has lost any credibility it may have had (although it did not have much to lose).

My vote would be for dissolution - maybe then they can create a regulator that actually employs people who understand what they're regulating.
This success story reminds me of the just-in-time fashion design companies. They track the big runway shows and can quickly turn-out copy-cat fashions.
@endlessvoid - see my other responses here. There's no magic going on, just streamlining and being very efficient.
From what I know, the CRTC didn't set any rates - they approved a request to adjust rates/use a new model. They are a regulatory body which oversee a highly regulated industry.

The industry is regulated, I would guess, because (a) it has been (and might still be) heavily subsidized, (b) it's an essential service and maybe even because (c) there's an extremely high cost of entry for a new player, thus little competition.

edit
I'm not suggesting they were doing what they are supposed to do, which I would describe as balancing what's right for consumers and what's right for the industry (not always the same thing). And I'm certainly not saying that, in this case, they made the right decision. I'm merely trying to describe the process, from my limited knowledge, with respect to the parent's question.
email pg@ycombinator.com
This is true. No one really knows how Mr. Miner got his money and from who. You have to be a really savvy business man to make it in Russia that's for sure...Or you have to be very well connected, or you have to give a lot of bribes. I doubt that he made his money in a "clean" way. I wouldn't take the money because most likely they are tainted. But I guess it doesn't matter.
Non-techies cared, in this case, because it was pretty easy to see how this would affect you personally - you would have to pay more. Period.

If you asked the average person who is opposed to UBB (read: practically everyone), very few could actually present a nuanced argument as to why it's bad for a number of reasons. Instead, they can simply equate UBB to paying more, which it turns out is good enough for collective action.

So democracy wins, but only because this can be framed as a pretty black-and-white issue in the eyes of most Canadians.
I haven't attempted this, but I think a better route than listing on Flippa (or another site) would be to seek out a strategic buyer, someone who would see $1,500 of value in the website. This could be someone who wants the users, or just the application. To justify $1,500 it seems buyers on Flippa would want a few hundred in monthly revenue at least, and stable too.

Again, I haven't tried this, but what about looking on Elance and other marketplaces for people who are looking to build a similar site. Offer to sell the site and consulting services to set it up for them. To them, the value of a tested application would be worth well over $3k I'm sure.

By the way, I'm in a similar situation with OrangeSlyce.com.
When you're setting up the "buy now" links/buttons, you can choose to add sales tax.

As for income tax, every man for himself I believe. That's not Paypal's business.
UBB: A Clever Ruse?
Show HN: Publ.ca - Instant and Beautiful Web Publishing
Hey Everyone,

So this was a weekend project that I did basically as a favor to a friend of mine who is a writer. This friend wanted a simple way to publish his short stories on the web that gave him a short url for tweeting and had no associated branding with the published work. Essentially this is what I have done here with publ.ca . My question is that I want to know where I should take this project in terms of features.

Possible extensions to this project are:

- automatic tweeting when publishing
- custom layouts and designs
- markdown rendering
- user accounts ( FB connect or Google Accounts ?)
- analytics
- publisher dashboard

I am curious if anyone has any suggestions for features that they would want from a project like this.

Any criticism is good criticism.

Here is an example of a tech crunch article displayed in publ.ca - publ.ca/ab47 - ( original source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/android-honeycomb-ipad/)

TL;DR - Publ.ca looking for feature suggestions and feedback
Greg! I would love that machine -- too bad I am not in the market at this time :(

Need to get together soon, was just talking about Quicknet today with JBlair...

-sam
I wish there was UBB that was remotely based on the transfer cost as opposed to some number that a C-Suite jackass picked out to make their profits SOOOOAAAAAAAR.
Sometimes you have to ask yourself who are those people in charge? How did they get the job?
I occasionally up-vote old comments.

It works like this: I'll read a comment that I find really intriguing for some reason (love or hate, usually). Curious about the poster, I'll go to their "about" page and scan through their old comments, which I'll upvote using the same criteria as for new posts.

Probably once a month or so, I end up giving 3-4 upvotes to one person this way.
FWIW that site/project/business is pretty much defunct. Not that it failed or anything, but it was really just too slow paced for me and I got bored with it. High effort for low return. I actually ordered hundreds of shirts that I never even posted for sale on the site. They have been sitting on shelves in my bedroom for 2 years. Hm.
Interesting... I am going to have to setup some a/b testing or just a quick email to a larger group to see how this plays out across a larger data set.

As a separate question:
When you hit the page, does the copy below the Ask / Learn/ Win columns help or is it either

a) not helpful text
b) your eye didn't even go there
I'd stick with mozy, but 50GB is too small. I have about 89GB in Mozy right now and if I could get that for the $5 per month, I wouldn't go anywhere. Mozy is pretty slow, so backing up even more data isn't very practical. Also, their system doesn't handle large files very well. My 89GB is just pictures, personal movies, documents, and source code.
I'm not sure what his next book is, but he's currently working on http://mongoliad.com/
I had bad service in NC (just south of Raleigh, near Fort Bragg), but was astonished to find that moving to Tampa made my service worse. I drop calls, can hardly hear, and lose data signal constantly. I'm ready to switch, even though I just bought a brand new iPhone 4 a few months ago.

My only concern is this - why buy an iPhone 4 on Verizon when the next model is due in a few months? Will be interesting to see if this pisses people off.
Dating sites have very strong network effects. The entry on that page acknowledges that: if you want to start a dating site, the question you answer is not "What should we do better about online dating?", it's "How will we get our initial users and keep them?"

Patrick's point is that if you have the skills to get users in a business with network effects that strong, there are many more lucrative markets you could crack. EBay, for example. Online auctions is hugely lucrative, orders of magnitude more than dating, and EBay sucks in many ways. But their network effect is so strong that it's virtually impossible to break in.

(Online auctions is #10 on the list, BTW.)
That's exactly what I was trying to say. It's true, some people come out of the womb requiring very little discipline. My sister, for example, would yell from her car seat, "Quiz me!" And we had her doing multiplication tables before she could read. She was her HS valedictorian, went to Harvard, played two varsity sports and is a VP at a major Investment bank and she's still in her 20's. She never needed any discipline and probably could have been given her own apartment at age 13.

I on the other hand, was a dreamer who seldom knew which day it was and frequently left for school 30 minutes late with only one shoe on. I hesitate to think where I'd be without my parent's prodding.

If the kid doesn't need prodding, then life just got easier for you. But to allow a kid to rot in the hope that one day he'll sprout wings is bad parenting. From my experience, kids who require no prodding are outliers.
One classic bit of advice for getting over a breakup is to do something ... don't just sit around moping, find some activity to take on. A sport, taking a class (cooking, language, art, music, etc), volunteering, whatever. Ideally there will be women involved in the activity too ;-).

So my advice would be to dial back a little bit on the startup, and find some new non-work activity to take on.
Yep. The reason is we are actually in beta mode right now. More interested in finding early adopters and proving utility than making a quick buck. However at some point we will likely turn on a subscription billing service, then that page will become more relevant.

Hope that helps explain what is going on.
I've seen this a bit, and tracked most of it to an old comment in a post asking for what features you'd like to see added to HN thread.
It's helpful, but secondary. By the time my eyes get there, I should be thinking "How does this compare to other products" or "Will this work with my application" not "What the heck is this?" I do think the columns and text are helpful though.I think a better one-liner and tagline would be sufficient in the top portion.
The best way is to sign up. We won't spam you but you'll at least be able to try it out when merchants are available nearby.
MG Siegler over at TechCrunch did. He just published his review, which was pretty much the same as John's. But Gizmodo... ha. That'll be the day!
By any chance are you in the mobile space? Your feedback seems to be on the fence around the value of the product. What would help tip the scales?
Yeah. But do you have an HD picture of the Golden Gate Bridge?
It seems that a bunch of bloggers received pre-release Verizon iPhones for review. It's probably because expectations have already been set for the iPhone 4 and Apple doesn't need to worry about reviews negatively affecting initial sales.

It's not often that you see two reviews for essentially identical products from the same source. This was a pretty smart move by Apple.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/verizon-iphone-review/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/technology/personaltech/03...

http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/02/verizon-iphone/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/02/verizon-iphone-review/
Jerusalem UFO Spottings Over Islamic Landmark Surface Spark Debate (VIDEO)
Yep, planning on it. Keep an eye out on http://madebyloren.com - my future blog for my startups/projects. I'll certainly make a post here on HN as well.
The big providers in Canada own the "last-mile" network infrastructure connecting residences and businesses with the internet backbone.

The decision being overturned is the one that allowed the big providers, who were leasing the last mile to independent ISPs (because the CRTC set regulations compelling them to do so), charge said independent providers by the gigabyte at the same rate as charged to customers. The regulation was later amended to give the independent providers a 15% mandatory discount - still a whopping markup of well over a thousand percent.

The big providers are still allowed to charge more or less whatever they want to customers, and will continue to do so.
Just ignore everything she said.

Sure, but it's not something that everyone can just switch on. if thte OP were that kind of person, he probably wouldn't have posted. So I think this advice is poor for this case.

You'll meet someone soon enough that will see positive where this last girl saw negative.

This, on the other hand, is 100% true. But very hard to believe when you are in the OP's mood.
Twitter Offers Metered Pricing for Firehose of Tweets
"Those who can't do, teach."
I mentioned this in another article, but I have yet to see evidence that demonstrates that bing is parsing google's queries either from a) the url of the referrer, or b) directly on the google results page, yet many people on HN have asserted as such, generally exhibiting a false dilemma fallacy.

An alternative is that the bing toolbar is collecting 2-tuples "<search_string_in_toolbar, next_href_clicked>" and sending these back to microsoft (regardless of the search provider selected). I would consider this "click stream data" and seems to agree with statements in the above article. Additionally, since it doesn't involve parsing hrefs it seems like the easier solution (and the one I'm going to tentatively assume by Occam's razor).

Just to be clear, it does not have to be the case that the bing toolbar is collecting data entered directly into the google search box. Indeed, google could have tested for this by having a control group where they entered search queries without using the toolbar search box, however from the details released so far we cannot conclude they did this (read: google hasn't released enough specifics about the test they conducted, and it's far from being reproducible with the current details).

Additionally, why do many in the HN community think this google specific? I understand that google isn't claiming "bing copied just google" but that seems to be the consensus within HN and the arguments of foul play (see the countless posts asking if there exists code that specifies google: "if string contains 'google' then..."). I'd like to see a test where users entered a pathological string in the toolbar with an alternative search provider specified (EDIT: not bing or google), clicked on a low ranking result (low ranking, or not appearing at all on bing for those keywords), and see if it pops up higher on bing at a later time.
In the next few days we'll find out if the problems were with the network, with the phone, or both.
Choose your neighbors on your next flight = good idea.
"They confuse pattern matching with knowledge."

Seems we have the same problem on HN...
I think this applied to unincorparated providers only. But I agree, this was a very intrusive expansion of reporting requirement for taxpayers. Thank goodness they are getting rid of it.
Some old HN threads are linked in more recent threads or on blogs/websites. That could explain it.
Police map of crime: the data is richer and more useful
Hey Andrew, get better and have lots of good food. It's been amazing watching your interviewing grow more improved, more subtle, and better at getting interesting answers over the years. You're an inspiration dude - best wishes to you and yours, and here's hoping for much health and good food on the horizon.
I have different goals/passions that don't seem to relate: programming, fitness, speaking different languages.

Often, my greatest anxiety episodes arise from thinking of how I can balance these, and have a social life and do the laundry at the same time.

I find articles like these great, because they get me just that one step closer to learning this how to figure it all out.
If the toolbar is simply sending "they clicked link X from a page with text 'A B C'" and they are using that in their search engine to mean "If someone searches for A, B, or C, they might be looking for X" then that is, in fact, NOT copying Google's results, it is a general measurement of how users react to ALL web pages.
What are you talking about? They wrote an entire blog post about what their experiments entailed.
20 reasons why PHP function names are inconsistent
No problem, but she's a he.
We have experimented with partitioning features and always grand fathered the existing users. It has generally worked well. For most B2C services at any scale, you have a lot of new users signing up everyday so you don't have to worry about over optimizing on existing users. Its better to just keep them happy
I was refuting your earlier points specifically about the enclosure acts themselves:

> The Enclosure Acts "kicked" very few people off the land ... previously starving peasants moved into the cities to become well-fed

Your description makes it sound like some peaceful transition, followed by massive prosperity, everyone happy and singing, but the reality is pretty far from that.