skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, Google would be crazy to ignore good information and meta-data that is already there, but that doesn't change the fundamental problem:

People don't give a shit about metadata.
Ask HN: Whose attending SXSW Interactive?  
My company typically gets involved in a SXSW music conf party sponsorship of some sorts - we've been going for several years.

This year we were considering going to the last few days of the SXSW interactive but don't want to shell out the $ for the passes. I've never been to Interactive and was wondering if it was similar to the Music portion where there are ample shows, parties, and events to attend apart from the festival.

Does anyone in the HN community have any insight or a list of events/parties/mixers, both sanctioned and unsanctioned.
I'm not sure if the UE model I used reduced sound by 32db but they definitely reduced it a LOT. That's actually why I bought them. I didn't buy the high-end though. At the time I needed them immediately and could only afford the $50 buds from Best Buy. The difference in sound when wearing the headphones was insane, but the click trick still had to be turned way up.

Now that I think about it iirc, it was actually mostly my drums (mostly cymbals) that I had to drown out... the guitar cabs/PA levels varied depending on the venue setup.
No making of video, explanation or information on who made it?
I doubt they are skewing the questions. That kind of defeats the point. I suspect Jeopardy is constantly adding to a pool of questions. My hope is that they simply grab from that pool just like any other episode.

Note, the hardest questions for Watson are short questions -- the reduced time hurts Watson more than most human competitors.
What I don't understand is how it took over 1000 people to screw up modding Symbian (which has been around forever) into a usable interface. This platform should have been more quickly developed because at the end of the day, Symbian just needed a beautiful skin.
So what if you were lady gaga or something? Would she not be allowed to use quora without her real name? Or are fake names okay if you have celebrity status?
Facebook has Hasan Hasans, and even a Hasan Hasan Hasan. My guess is their flags for fake accounts are a little better.
Palo Alto, CA - Think Computer Corporation

If you have experience writing mobile applications for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry (or Windows Mobile), we want to talk to you. We run FaceCash, an up-and-coming mobile payment system that was just deployed all over Stanford last week and is growing quickly.

http://www.facecash.com

http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/jobs/index.html to apply.
Startup Quote: Mark Suster, general partner, GRP Partners
I paid $5, Trent Reznor paid $5000. Unfortunately, that still doesn't come to parity related to our incomes.
Biz to take advantage of hipsters.
Short version: The guys from Quplo - http://quplo.com/ - added code completion to CodeMirror (javascript in browser editor). We made it context aware and improved the (x)html handling a bit. Here's the code: https://github.com/webpop/cscc
What If Samsung Acted Like Apple?
As the web distributes, will human beings follow?
Goodiepal
Individuals don’t build great companies, teams do.

- Mark Suster (@msuster)

http://startupquote.com/post/3293103725
"I learned my lesson with facebook, which promised privacy and then years later made the data public."
FYI, it is not that simple.
Much of the stuff that passes for discussion on some of the more contentious pages makes me wonder about the whole process. See Talk:Danah_Boyd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Danah_Boyd) for one of the cases that made me realize that the editor process is broken.
The geek equivalent to the sports bar... There must be some website for doing this, right?
Reddit has a mixer during the interactive section. I'm going with http://min.us
Yeah - all the question and answer data comes from the J! archive: http://www.j-archive.com/
Well though the story isn't dramatic, the article title is crafted to be linkbait, so it sounds more dramatic than it really is.
Actually, BLANKSPACES is opening in Santa Monica in May 2011.
> I registered with a completely fake name, though it sounds like a real name rather than a handle.

This is why their real name policy is flawed. A real name that sounds fake gets flagged as fake. A fake name that sounds real does not get flagged. The process is completely subjective as to what sounds real. Requiring ID is one way to prove/disprove it, but checking scanned IDs does not scale well.
...sounds like you worked in a 70's sitcom.
Right, Django wouldn't do much for me without MySQL-python.
This sounds like the type of customer it is good to find other customers to replace them, then start giving very very large numbers for #1 equal to the pain this causes.
How to piss off a kernel subsystem maintainer?
High Revenue Android Apps
The documentary mentioned that Watson does some speech recognition. It attempts to listen to the competitor's answers so that it doesn't give a wrong answer that was already given.
The writers had no knowledge of which clues would be used for the Watson episodes; they only mention that they don't use audio or video clues. I certainly haven't done any analysis of it, but I didn't feel like they were any less common in the preview round than normal. Between all the games I'm sure we'd see more "linguistically tricky" clues. I'm hoping for some good "before and after" questions.
Clothes don't crash spontaneously...
What would Feynman do?
BLANKSPACES has a $99/mo membership for the WorkBar. Would that work? Jerome (founder, architect of BLANKSPACES)
I would think as soon as it computes an answer. Of course there is a penalty for getting an answer wrong, so it can't be pressing the button all the time. But the PBS documentary I think hinted that it will be a sent a signal to know what amount to wait before reading aloud an answer.

That said, I wish the engineers would have implemented OCR technology into Watson so it could see the TV screen, decipher the text question, and understand it -- instead of directly being fed the question. It would have given Watson a nice little title of being'complete'.
Noam Chomsky v. IBM’s Watson Computer
"Over and over, new technologies lead to incredible profits for a few, controlling corporations, but inevitably these situations aren't permanent."

It's not inevitable. It's because people work to spread awareness and change the situation.
They come a lot cheaper than that. The biggest cost is the proprietary materials they use, I'm guessing it would easily add up to more than the cost of the printer over time. Servicing costs should also be pretty high.

I've compiled a list of most cheap printers (slightly out of date, I am going to add more soon): http://punkmanufacturing.com/wiki/

As far as usefulness, the open-source printers are not that different from the cheap commercial machines. A well-tuned RepRap should have comparable accuracy. The printing materials are a lot cheaper, as well as the parts (which you can print) and servicing costs. The commercial printers have better resolution, better materials and better software, at least at the moment, but I think that's going to change.
Not it does not have a special advantage but it also does not interface with the questions in the way that humans do, it cannot hear Alex or read the question on the screen, the questions are messaged to Watson via something akin to a text message or an email.
Fascinating look at the weaknesses of the US computing establishment circa 1976. I imagine Dijkstra would have much the same critique today.
Ask HN: Becoming a Better Programmer
I feel strongly that one of the best methods to become a better programmer is to learn new programming languages (http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2009/05/pearls-from-multiple-languages.html). I was reading on of EWD's letters last night and came across this:

"I often feel that the American programmer would profit more from learning, say, Latin than from learning yet another programming language." (PDF http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd06xx/EWD611.PDF)

That got me asking two questions: First, would Latin (or Japanese or Spanish...) make me a better programmer? Second, what would this community (with so many people who are better programmers than I am) think is the best way to become a better programmer?
You can try to use vWorker www.vworker.com for finding interesting projects on which you can learn new things and get paid.

I have worked on the site since 2006 so I have some experience with freelancing, if you work 1-3 hours per day you can make a nice profit. However it will take some time to build yourself a reputation on the site, so don't expect to make a lot of money from the start.
Unfortunately, there are many situations in which you get 3 after the initial estimation, since 3 is a long process which usually can occur only after a deal was made with the client. And in most(every) case, the client wants to have a clear price before signing a deal. The price usually depends on the number of man hours required for the project, so the estimate has to come before step 3. It's a defective process, but difficult to correct.
Looks cool. I'm always a fan of apps that can be used for a few minutes during a commute or other down-time. Just be careful if you actually launch this as a product. Jeopardy may come after you for using their name, or their content.
Sex in space: more than just mechanical barriers
Eschew "Experts," Follow the Curious
This may be the case, but it might also turn out that the team is no longer checking in rushed and untested code as they hurry to get out of the office and go home for the evening. Instead, the may just hold off on checking in the code until the next morning, at which point they've slept on it and possibly thought about some edge cases they should test further, etc.
Really? Are we reading the same article? Here are some direct quotations.

* The "Iraqgate" scandal revealed that an Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying heavily on U.S. government-guaranteed loans, funneled over US $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989.

* Saddam's elite troops received instruction in unconventional warfare at Fort Bragg

* The United States assisted Iraq through a military aid program known as "Bear Spares", whereby the U.S. military "made sure that spare parts and ammunition for Soviet or Soviet-style weaponry were available to countries which sought to reduce their dependence on the Soviets for defense needs."
The data from Radiohead's experiment is pretty interesting. There is one thing that they did poorly though. Consider the person who downloads the album for $0.00 because they want to hear the music before deciding how much they are willing to pay for it. Radiohead's website did not allow that person to go back and give money after the initial download. The only way to pay any money in that case, was to download the album a 2nd time using a 2nd email address (couldn't download twice with the same email) and include a $$ value for the 2nd download.

Credit me with 2 downloads, one for $0.00 and one for $5.00. If a lot of people did that, it would inflate the total number of downloads and reduce the average paid. I wonder how many people did something similar?
You're right of course - I really wanted to demonstrate that P/E ratios are a function of future growth and that a stock with a very high P/E can be underpriced.

I still know some people that think a company with a $4 share price is 'cheap' regardless of earnings, cash flow, or book value (and conversely, that high price stocks like AAPL or GOOG are 'expensive'). Not saying that is the case here, but there are plenty of people that make a similar mistake comparing P/E without considering growth rates.

Yes, I know low P/E strategies do well, and margins of safety, danger or trying to model growth rates more than a couple years out... but I'm not trying to turn HN into an investing forum :)

Thank you for calling me out on that!
Apple allows you to run any software you want on your device. If you want something that isn't in the appstore, then you can have a webapp that works as a native app, that can be downloaded from the web, appear as an app on a page of apps like all the other apps, and operate like an app with access to the sensors of the device. Apple provides a complete platform for development of these apps, completely out of apple's control. If you want a native app, you can get a developer account and install whatever software you want.

Apple does this for two reasons. The first is, giving developers these tools outside of Apple's control, is beneficial to the platform. Apple wants as much developer focus as it can. The second reason, and probably more important, is that by having unrestricted app access, Apple provides the best solution for all of its customers. More apps means happier customers.

The app store doesn't let you make malicious or pornographic apps. The former doesn't benefit anyone, and the latter while a silly restriction is easily circumvented by using the web based platform.

Apple's walled garden is more a marketing slogan of Apple's competitors than anything else. Apple really doesn't care, because what apple does, is focus on the users. (which is why iOS is an open platform.)
Thanks for pointing out the security flaw! As of now, I believe it has been patched up. No user should be able to post as anyone else but themselves at this point (or anonymous).

If this is not true, someone feel free to drop be an embarrassing "favorite thing"
Names in Egypt often follow this pattern, because the second name is actually the father's given name. So you get combinations like Youssef Youssef or Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Ask HN: Launching my first major site solo. Need advice.
For the last couple months I've been building a site that has huge viral growth potential. Since I don't have any experience managing back-end systems (normally have assistance) I need to find a hosting solution that's really easy to manage and can scale quickly. I've been researching cloud hosting and looking at a few hosting companies. Since I'm bootstrapping the startup currently, I'm budget conscious. Any recommendations on companies or hosting methods? The site is entirely php, uses mysql, and I'm looking to add Ajax soon.

Additionally, can anyone recommend a good open source shopping cart? Looking mainly just for the back-end processing, I already created all the pages. Since I'll be selling physical products it needs to handle and process payment, address, and shipping information.
This reminds me of the public / private dichotomy within corporations. Publicly, a corporate officer might need to say something to not offend potential partners or investors, but privately they may feel another feeling which they express to their coworkers.

It's interesting that culturally, the Japanese appear to have identified this behavior and have given it a name.
I'm afraid I don't understand your question
I love that I can use different pseudo-anonymous handles on different websites.

It gives me a chance to experiment and explore different facets of my life and personality that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing if that exploration were tied to my real name.

Maybe Quora isn't the place for experimenting with identity.

The Internet used to be a place where we were able to freely express ourselves. Increasingly it seems that we can only express ourselves if it's congruent with our IRL selves.
A look at sex discrimination in science
Related idea I got: one "easy" (nonmanual, not super-invasive) way for them verify names would be to do a credit card verification, which would verify that they had a credit card in that name.

But people probably wouldn't be too keen to give their credit card info to a free site just for "name verification".
Thanks! I definitely have no intention of trying to launch this as a 'product' because of the legal issues involved - I just did it as a fun experiment.

It also makes for a fantastic drinking game.
What are some things about our HTML specifically? Thanks for the comment - since I am relatively new to web development I need to soak up all the standards I can. I probably have done several things wrong in terms of standards and good practice so let me know what else I can fix!
I knew a guy in college that had the name "Harrison". He was from south-east asia. In fact, he told me that from where he comes from, they don't have such thing as first and last name, his name was really just "Harrison". But since no one in the "western world" could handle that, he used Harrison both as first and last name.

Lessons for me: things might be very different on the other side of the globe. Don't try to arrogantly believe you can judge wether things can be true or not from your limited experience and imagination.
Only wikipedia has the critical mass necessary to maintain a human knowledge project, otherwise I'd offer to build such a thing.
You chose a bullshit major.
I was looking at 'dvtm' yesterday, but this looks a bit nicer. Thanks!

Also, actual tutorial links are:

Part 1: http://blog.hawkhost.com/2010/06/28/tmux-the-terminal-multip...

Part 2: http://blog.hawkhost.com/2010/07/02/tmux-%E2%80%93-the-termi...
One need only look at the quality of comments on a site like Hacker News to see that "real names" is not a requirement for quality and valuable discussion.

No doubt, real names would be an effective aspect to quality content, but if the system of verification is flawed, it's meaningless.
Write once, run away.
Did your Valentine just cancelled on you? Fall in love with our API.
How are you actually making money? Take that model and expand.

For example:

1. Use targeted advertising (Facebook Ads, etc) to attract more of your best customers.

2. Use tools like visualwebsiteoptimizer.com to test and optimize

3. Find ways to sell your by products [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1620-sell-your-by-products]

I wouldn't worry too much about the "1.0-ness" of the site. Most users (especially in your niche!) don't care about bleeding edge technology and are even sometimes turned off by it. I know dozens of people that love freecycle and none of them ever said "I wish this had more AJAX and shiny tables!"
Allow users to pay to upgrade to a "featured" listing or something like that.
http://hnhackers.com

I don't understand the point of this site. A list of random programmers isn't a very good way for a potential employer to find qualified applicants.
What he means is that you aren't permitted to buzz in on Jeopardy until the host has completed reading the question and the buzzers are activated. Perhaps Watson is spamming the 'answer' button from the moment he knows the answer, or perhaps they let him cheat by sending him a signal when the buzzers become activated. Given that the process of buzzing in to answer a question is a large part of the strategy of the show though, I hope they aren't letting him cheat in that way.

Edit: Failed to read the comments lower on the page. Looks like Watson plays by the same rules as everyone else, using a physical buzzer which can't be activated until the question is read and the 'answer now' signal light is activated. I know that another restriction on when to answer that Watson has is that he won't buzz in until he's confident in an answer, while human players will sometimes buzz in figuring they will be able to come up with the answer in the couple seconds between buzzing and answering.
That's probably not really anonymous - Quora almost certainly knows you posted it still even if they don't display that you did.
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I think we are moving away from ownership and towards a more utility/service-oriented society, so I don't think a 3D printer in every home will ever become a reality.
However, they have kept the self-created-leak model. They have, quite successfully, prevented this album from being known about until they chose to tell people, and allowed the album to launch under their own terms.

The way I see it the pricing is the least important point here.
This works for people with credit cards, but there would need to be another layer for people without credit cards.
It's not about hand annotating; it's about exposing databases in a well defined way and using standard methods to describe structured data. Look at what dbpedia is able to do with wikipedia data.
Nice catch -- it still illustrates what a deleted page looks like though.
Wow...I have never heard of this stuff. Seems like a surveillance cam could perform similar function without being as intrusive (i.e. actually spraying unwashable goop on your body).
Why isn't reportlab in the list?
Speak for yourself. My girl-friend is sufficiently geeky that she suggested we watch it together on Valentine's.
Wow, that is a huge collection.
OneNote on your iPhone
No need to look forward: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1111
I've been doing a ton of Python work lately. Frankly, in my experience, Python 3 is more of a pain to develop with, primarily due to two factors:

* Encoding specifications required.

* maps/reduces returning iterators objects instead of a list. Having to call list() on anything I map is just a pain.

I don't plan to switch to Python 3 until a compelling reason shows up. 2.7 works great for what I do.

The real story here is how Python 3 appears to be a largely unwanted improvement, IMO.
Denver, CO - Collaboratory

We're looking for a freelance jr. web designer & developer to contract work out to on a regular basis (ideally local, but will definitely consider remote). HN probably isn't our target market, but if you know a new-ish front-end dev, or are looking to pick up a bit of extra cash, look us up.

http://letscollab.org/jobs

Note: if you rock socks, don't sweat all the application cruft, we just wanted to weed people out (please mention this HN post).
Too many authors don't update their classifiers before uploading to PyPI. Plenty of things on that list are incorrect, but it's the package author's fault.
Primera Licenses 4100 Print Engine to OEMs
...and a thousand other reasons. Perhaps a government steps in to break a monopoly. Perhaps a new technology arrives to subvert the control. Perhaps a competitor simply offers something a little better or cheaper.

We don't necessarily have to "spread awareness" for a problem to find a solution. In this case, especially, we're all already pretty "aware" that roaming internet sucks.
I ran into this with a flight reservation system. I lost hundreds of dollars and missed my flight when the front end accepted my email address but the back end didn't send me a confirmation.

A plausible explanation given to me was that the web application worked just fine, but it sent the data to some COBOL-ish back end written long before the advent of web bookings, and the integration code mangled my email address when it stuffed it into some data field that was never intended to hold an email address.

This is why any real-world system needs end-to-end integration testing and not just unit testing :-)
I sort of agree with this statement, in that I do think that Apple will mercilessly drop support for things that they think aren't worth continuing support. Alternatively, I think that helps keep their platform healthy. Compare OS X to Windows as an example: one of Microsoft's core tenets is backwards compatibility, and it means their platform has been a mess (you can still write Win16!! applications)[1].

[1] "Has been" because it has been a while since I've written anything at that win api layer and I'm assuming it has been cleaned up a lot since they now virtualize access to old APIs.
Anybody know whether this will be live or if it's pre-taped like most jeopardy episdoes?