skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd also argue even including Gates in a list of typical college dropouts. He was taking graduate level computer science and mathematics classes his first and second year in college. Anyone who can take handle graduate level technical classes has shown a decent grasp of the undergraduate material.
This looks really slick. avk and I were were planning on building bug tracking features into Outspokes, but we've stopped work on that project. Our original goal was to have a JS widget for teams to collaborate on their sites. Hopefully you guys keep it up and build out what we didn't finish. Let me know if you guys want any feedback or any help.
Context is very important, though. I don't think anyone is claiming that there is a correlation between intelligence and writing ability; only that within the context of HN comments from the majority of posters, style is important.
I have no idea what kind of axe you have to grind here, but of course it's extrapolation and approximation. What else do you expect, SD Cards with digital weather records from 10k years ago buried into the ground?

The point is that many people who are much more familiar with the subject than us two seem to agree that the extrapolation is accurate enough to draw certain conclusions from.

If you aren't too busy with your ad hominem attacks then it would be nice if you could make a factual point beyond "Wikipedia is wrong" and "The climate research community is wrong".

What exactly are they doing wrong?

If you could get an accurate reading on the global temperature from one location than why do we bother with all the weather stations?

Well, I think we do the ice thing to learn about the time before we had weather stations.

Also all it takes is a look at the TOC of that wikipedia page to notice they're using not one but dozens of core sites on multiple continents.

I'm almost sure they're not extrapolating from just a single block of ice, as you're trying to suggest here...
My friend created the EXACT same game for iPhone two years ago and they rejected it for the same reason. Interesting.
It's also the wrong goal to begin with.

You should never worship what the price winners think, you should question it.

Also, you should care about ideas, not prices.
I love how this works. But I'm worried about most bugs not being trackable by which div they're in. This would work if you're developing flat files for a customer that had access to this tool. But I think most bugs arise from heavy use of a system by the end user.
Looks cool. I might use it for a future project.

How many developers do you have working in it? Do you have a dedicated designer or did you design it yourself?
For functions of one argument that's easily enough defined in Haskell.

x |> f = f x
"Older natural languages have richer lexical structures (such as inflexions for noun number and case) and therefore rely less on word order. For example, in Latin the statements Puer dedit cani escam and Escam dedit puer cani both mean ``The boy gave the dog the food''. Indeed, the more usual word order would be reverse Polish, with the verb coming last: Puer cani escam dedit.

This flexibility is possible because Latin uses inflexion, not position, to denote lexical roles. The lack of a suffix denotes that the boy (puer) is the subject; the -i ending indicates that the dog (cani) is the indirect object; whilst the -am ending indicates that the food (escam) is the direct object.

To say ``The food gave the boy the dog'', one might write: Puero canem esca dedit. Here, the -o ending denotes that the boy is now the indirect object, the -em ending indicates that the dog has become the direct object, whilst the -a ending indicates that the food is the subject."

Which made me think of the scene in Life of Brian in which the centurion (John Cleese) impersonates a stern Latin teacher. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8
I suppose I see the tradeoff, but it sounds like an idea to me that went over well in a design meeting but never actually was user tested (I could be wrong?) There are other ways to ensure a user doesn't ask a duplicate question without having to convolute the search box with the "ask question" use case, which is certainly less common.

It was incredibly confusing to me, a software guy, so I can't imagine how confusing it must be to the average user.
You don't have to be a good writer to know that sentences begin with capital letters and end with periods; children know that. Anyone who doesn't do that isn't having difficulty writing, they're simply being lazy and only thinking of what's easy for them rather than what's easy for the reader. Not being a good writer is simply no excuse.
In this AI/machine learning is compared to the space race and the fight against cancer - I like the comparison considering I work in the field ;) Unfortunately though I think AI and machine learning has the fundamental problem of rolling improvement...

Think back a hundred years to a time before the internet, long distance telephones, common air travel and so on. To people from a hundred years ago we'd be the most outlandish science fiction story ever told.

I consider the same thing whilst watching science fiction films - in reality they wouldn't be amazed that they can reach Mars in a half hour. They'd instead be complaining about the in-flight entertainment or the turbulence caused by navigating asteroid fields.

AI has the same problem. People can now (naively) communicate with each other even though they share no common language. Texts and documents can be re-written in real time to be legible in another language. Credit card fraud and spam emails are handled transparently by systems trained on hundreds or thousands of hours of cumulative knowledge. No-one sees these things. No-one respects these things.

Human kind judges itself from the position it currently stands, not from where it began. For this reason alone incremental improvements will never really be considered milestones of achievement.
It may make some people regret buying the high-end product, but it makes the lower-end product more attractive. And besides, other companies get away with doing this all the time. In fact one of the selling points of the dual-core Amd phenom II chips is that you have a decent chance of easily turning it into a quad-core chip for free.
He's throwing around broad claims (wikipedia is wrong, climate research is wrong) and making ad hominem attacks without providing a factual point of his own.

I don't claim to understand the science in depth. But neither do I see why I should take his word over what appears to be the current consensus in scientific climate research.
I get the rhetorical point of asking these questions, but we both know the answer to them. Racism isn't a socially acceptable intellectual position, so people who express racist ideas only deserve outright dismissal. Actual corroboration and fact checking are only done when you take an argument in good faith.

Likewise, the characterization of scientific racism as "white supremacism" or of VDARE as a "hate group" means belief in statistical differences between different races is the moral equivalent of being a neo-Nazi. Even if your very own arguments better suggest Chinese supremacism than white supremacism.
I felt like I got duped into revealing my Facebook account for no reason. The page indicated that I'll 'save time' but as far as I can tell I didn't save any time at all.
I got the joke immediately and thought it was funny. Reminded me of a comedic movie (who's name escapes me) who advertised the review "If you like movies like this, you'll love this movie."
I created the exact same thing using Kohana but has a community aspect. My friends love it, I think this would be great if it offered community features.
It's just 2 of us. I did the design and the front end, while Alan works on the back end and db.

You can also blame me for the spelling mistakes :)
It reminds me of firebug+bug tracking. Very useful for websites. Is there going to be a Mac client so iOS devs can log bugs just as easliy?
Computer virus shuts down Ambulance dispatch service
I do understand why this stuff matters and trips people up (and I sometimes ask for clarification when I can't understand what someone meant because of a typo), but this kind of mistake is quite common with native speakers who write what they "hear" in their head. In one of my college French classes, a native speaker of French was taking the class so he could get a teaching credential (IIRC). He routinely made this type of mistake, which I never made in French. Ironically, it was actually a reflection of his higher fluency.

As for the general topic of this sub-thread:

I really don't have any problem with the tendency on this forum to correct/critique someone's grammar or spelling. I just think how it is done matters. I can't wrap my brain around claiming that good grammar and spelling matter tons while delivering it with contempt, disrespect, hostility and general bad manners like those are just fine (which I have seen done quite a few times on HN). I would rather talk to someone who makes spelling and grammar errors but has manners than someone whose writing is impeccable but you can just feel them sneering down their nose at you. I didn't think the opening post from SamReidHughes really did that, though it wasn't all warm-fuzziness either. So I opted to assume it was "constructive feedback" given with good intentions even though it wasn't the warmest, most convivial delivery. But then I generally think manners require one to give the benefit of the doubt and only nail someone to the wall when you are sure they are not only being an arse but intentionally so. It takes two to make good communication happen. It isn't just about what one person does.
Or for a $100, you can buy a pair of studio grade Sony MDR-7505's or a similar monitor type of headphones that will more or less faithfully reproduce a recording and not over-accentuate the lower and high end sacrificing the crucial midrange (if you listen to anything with electric guitars, that is).

http://www.zzounds.com/item--SNYMDR7506
To me that is like saying a glider is like the space shuttle. No disrespect to Convore, but comparing it to Wave is naive.
How much does it cost??
When I went from a big company to a startup, I saw a significant increase in engineering talent. There were some good people at the big company, but there was also a lot of dead weight. It was easy to just coast through a project there. At the startup, you had to be sharp, or you were out.

I won't say the code was always pretty at the startup, but due to the higher level of skill among the developers, I think the code there was superior to what was produced at the big company.

Although the startup went under after I was there 2 years, I learned 10 times the stuff in 2 years of the startup than I did the previous 5 years at the big company. The skills I learned at the startup allowed me to get into a much better job at another big company that I stayed at for 11 years.
Have you checked out ohdontforget.com? Basically the same idea.
Yeah that's exactly what this is. We have a JS widget that let's you log and manage bugs right from your site so can do things like tagging and annotating dom nodes.

Also feedback is DEFINITELY appreciated, we'd love to hear anything you can throw our way. Also let me know if you want a beta account and I can email you a link.
A related pricing quirk that I found interesting.

HD 555 MSRP in the States is $170, and you can buy it for $85 on amazon.com[1]. Right across the border, the MSRP is 200 CAD (202.5 USD) and you could get it for 180 CAD on amazon.ca[2]. In other words, the discounted price in Canada is higher than the nominal price in the States, which in turn is almost twice what consumers actually pay for these headphones.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional-Headphon...
[2] http://www.amazon.ca/Sennheiser-Open-Hi-Fi-Stereo-Headphone/...
I thought the entertainment division (Xbox+) had been profitable for some years now.
I have been fluent in Scheme for some time. In fact, I used Project Euler problems and Racket (formerly called PLT) to teach myself Scheme. I enjoyed it immensely, and it reminded me of why I decided to study programming in the first place.

Unfortunately, I spent so long writing Scheme for my own amusement that I neglected my skill with C. I felt like a complete idiot the next time I tried to compose something in C, and I try to be more mindful of such things now.
Well there's no client as such. Currently it's embedded into the site you're working on so there's no browser or OS requirements, you simply log and manage bugs right from within your site.
We haven't announced pricing yet, still working that bit out :) That's always the hard bit!
You always learn something new when you see it through someone else's eyes.

I didn't know the range operator "," could take regexes.
It might be a good idea to mention that English is not your first language, at the beginning of your longer posts.

For shorter posts, it is probably worth your time to spend an extra 1 or 2 minutes making sure the capitalization and grammar are correct. But, for longer posts, when you are expressing more complicated ideas, spending too much time reviewing your writing style would damage your train of thought. It would probably suffice to say, "Sorry if my English isn't so great."

There's a HUGE difference between a native English speaker writing a thoughtless post with bad style, and a non-native English speaker writing a thoughtful post with bad style.

I think a lot of HN people are sensitive to writing style because it's a useful way to decide whether or not you should bother reading something. If a comment is very poorly written, it is more likely (but not definite) that the content is also poorly imagined.

The problem is when there are "false negatives" such as yourself--people who are carefully thinking through their ideas, but are not as well-versed in writing style. Help the community cut you some slack; advertise the fact that English is not your first language when you do not have the time or skill to make your posts perfect. :-)
It's more subtle than that, though. Every list has a beginning; not all lists have ends. If the 'car' semantics are "last item of the list" this is actually meaningfully different from "first item of the reversed list".
Not everybody gets the most out of being at an Elite university.

My family comes from an ethnically Catholic background, you know, Italian, Polish, French-Canadian, many of the people who came to the U.S. fleeing the aftermath of WWII, members of the surplus humanity whose livelihood was destroyed by the mechanization of agriculture in the early half of the twentieth century.

In the 1960's and 1970's, in a time when it became unfashionable to attack blacks and indigenous persons, academics such as Mark Granovetter and Edward C. Banfield were writing treatises about the inferiority of traditionally Catholic ethnic groups. And I'll just say that in graduate school, people from these backgrounds find there is no organization for their "national advancement" or "anti-defamation" and they'll be left to their own devices to understand why certain doors just aren't quite open to them.

[Disclaimer: the author of this post has no relationship to the Catholic Church other than having many family and friends who are members, and in fact, is a pagan]
I would honestly just do the .com

You can buy the other extensions and keep them in case you need them (forward them to the proper place) but focus on developing on just the main site for now.
My assembly-fu is weak, but wouldn't that invalidate all jump addresses and data pointers inside the program?
There is also a method for logging non-gui bugs. It's not visible in this release though. As a developer myself it is useful to not have to click, especially for db related issues.
... being an ESL speaker myself...

I appreciate the "please forgive my English" notes, actually. I am a native English speaker, and I have no ability whatsoever to distinguish between ESL writers and sloppy natives. I certainly was not aware that frevd was not a native speaker until he mentioned it.
I saw the link to Office and Company in Pasadena. The rates are a bit steep for me at $325/month. I've also been to Blank Spaces in Santa Monica. Are there any folks out near Caltech that be interested in sharing a space or just working together? I usually work at home now and I wouldn't want to do co-working everyday of the week; I find I focus better outside an office environment. But I think spending a day or 2 every week with fellow developers and designers sounds fun and interesting. Ping me if you like the idea of part-time coworking.
You're right, I was off by quite a bit :) 15k hours seems more like it.
I understand that pricing is difficult to determine, but I think you'd have a lot more conversions/signups if you:

(a) had an idea what the monthly cost was going to be,

(b) advertise that beta users will get a special discount on the product, and/or

(c) didn't emphasize the fact that the trial is only 30 days.

I was going to sign up, but the wording you used made me think twice, look for a pricing page, and eventually decide it wasn't worth my time to start using until I knew the price.
Since you seem to be online, let me walk you thru an example.

What do you believe is the "current consensus in scientific climate research" on whether glaciers are shrinking or growing? On the balance, are they receding?
I've found a circumstantial connection to the Rustock spam botnet. That's still far from certain, but the botnet already uses wiki-like code in its control network, so there are good reasons to think it might be related.
"not risked the bad PR"

The risk was minimal. Everybody does it. The odds of them getting targeted weren't significant, given the pool of possible targets. You could spend every hour of every day cataloging all the places this occurs. And this still is yet to be a big deal, even.

(Please note that when I say everybody does it, I mean simply that everybody does it, no more, no less. I'm not passing judgment about the virtues or lack thereof. It's just the truth. Oh, and everybody doesn't literally mean every single person, but this is a well-established meaning of the term.)
Agreed. Plus, you need all the quiet time to focus and concentrate that you can get. I've found coworking spaces to be full of distractions. Spend your non-working time socializing/networking instead of your working time.

One thing that bothers me about coworking spaces is the "anti-office" mentality that assumes the world would be a better place without any kind of working privacy.
How about a company that offers a technical co-founder as a service.

You could take your idea to them and they would decided weather or not that wanted to work with you.

If both sides agree they took you on as a client for a 20% cut.

For the programmers it would give them a chance to work on multiple startups per year and for the client they would get the expertise or help they needed.
I'll be starting the transition to a new career over the next five years[1] and what really made me decide in my mind that it was something that will happen is by immersing myself in the subject for 2 years, as serious hobby outside of work. At the end of it, I still had huge enthusiasm and so now I'm ready to sink some money into it. Also, before you enroll into a program, do some research on the feasibility of transitioning from programming to X via some self-studying, a few courses and being in the right place at the right time.

[1] I've got a family so I can't just drop things and become a college student again.
I just had a similar experience. While looking to buy a $400 item, I found someone with the item in stock who was willing to ship (note: not in the USA, many merchants will not ship internationally, including Amazon on big-ticket items).

After some back-and-forth, the order was placed, and this small online retailer had my business.

But then - 5 days after the order was placed - an email came back. We want an international wire transfer instead of mastercard payment. No way, I said - a wire transfer is a black hole where I have no comebak. I offered a PayPal payment instead. No, they said, wire transfer or nothing. I cannot for the life of me understand this logic. It's not like I'm buying and shipping to Nigeria or some other known fraud location. If it was about mastercard fees, I would have happily paid a 2 or 3% surcharge. It still would have been cheaper than having to drive to my bank, sit in a queue, organise forms and pay $20 for a wire transfer.

So the answer was no credit card, no sale, and they didn't get the sale. The sale instead went to a combination of Amazon and a third-party freight forwarding company. The combined price was about the same as the original merchant.

Why anyone would offer to ship internationally and then request a wire transfer is beyond me. Either shun international purchases (eg zappos) or welcome them properly.
Is this similar?
http://www.acceleratorcentre.com/about
Or is this for more mature startups?
Nice coworking space in Vancouver:

http://bootup.ca/garage/
... I generally think manners require one to give the benefit of the doubt and only nail someone to the wall when you are sure they are not only being an arse but intentionally so.

I prefer to err on the side of safety, and never do any crucifying.

In the best case scenario, you never respond viciously to someone who was just expressing themselves honestly.

In the worst case scenario, you treat the incendiary jerks with unexpected kindness, which usually confuses and annoys them in turn. It's win/win, you see!
I was expecting more of the same old CRUD crap, but was pleasantly surprised. Good luck with it!
It amazes me that this site has any users at all! There is no path from the home page to browse the content - its sign up or go away. I think very few people will sign up to a site without seeing its content, I know I won't! Quora marketing must be really good to have overcome this barrier to achieve the success they clearly have had...
I'd recommend a free option, because then people will more likely buy your service as they expand :)
Eh, you get the point, but thanks for the catch. Fixed...or not. Can't edit because of the reply. Darn.
Could we have invites?
A Manifesto of sorts: Apple is great but it’s not perfect « The Orange View
I read the entire article, but if the act of summarization is lazy by definition, then yes. But I don't think it is... :)
It's clear he doesn't understand what 'long tail' means. I think he conflates the term to mean 'small retailers' when in reality the long tail is the large amount of low volume items that consumers really want. The example he gives is an example of demand moving out of the tail and into the head, where Amazon and Walmart are interested. Amazon and Walmart both stock a wide variety of items, with very low depth of stock in each category. From books to rifles, Wal Mart only carries the big sellers. Amazon does offer the long tail in many categories, but below a certain scale the small time deep dive inventory people will still sell on Amazon marketplace.
HN Comment Tracker
I think many will love this Chrome extension. (I'm not the developer)

Keeps track of what HN comment threads you've viewed, highlights unread comments, and annotates articles on the main page with an 'unread comments' count.
For anybody wondering, the giant pink cowboy hat is a reference to the Java Posse podcast. A long running Java podcast - though they mostly talk about Scala these days.
There are so, so many businesses in North America that have not adopted iOS or Android so far and are still using Blackberries. This deal probably gives Nokia its best shot at getting a share of this market -- not necessarily a great shot, but better than it would have had otherwise.
Ironically, this is somewhat related to the "grammar & writing style" debate raging in another thread on this very post. If the root poster had written:

Google "Cone of Learning"

It would not have been so ambiguous!