skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What kind of person are you looking for?

Curious, motivated, and has initiative. Not scared to take on things that are "too big." Smart, confident, but not too arrogant.

What tasks are needing to be accomplished within your open source project?

There's all sorts of stuff my project(s) could use help with. Simple stuff like going through GSP (Groovy Server Pages) pages and replacing instances of hard-coded URL strings with the appropriate tags that generate that stuff, and more involved stuff like UI improvements; to hard-core backend stuff involving experimental / research-oriented machine-learning stuff.

Is there anything simple you would like people to help with?

Sure,there's always low hanging fruit that is good for people just getting involved in a project. If you want to take a look at my project, see:

http://code.google.com/p/neddick and/or http://code.google.com/p/quoddy

Or if you'd rather skip straight to the source code, see:

https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick and/or
https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy
It should be fairly easy to write a GVim plugin to do this for any language. Or if you want a full IDE, take an existing Python IDE and add support. Can't beat Python when it comes to balancing practicality and usability - you can call C, C++, and Fortran code from it, and Numpy, Scipy, and Matplotlib make it a joy to use for scientific applications.
I like the fact that this is jQuery - and that it could probably be used dynamically with other effects.

.. but I'm starting to think noise + block-color backgrounds are starting to become a bit cliche.
>> And during these 20 years, we've been through the Biotech boom, Internet boom, and are on the verge of another boom

Are you missing the possibility that there might have been more/better booms and outcomes if immigration laws were not as fucked up?
Nah, that was Orkut. This is just a front-end to a CIA database.
Cloud based technologies are a win for small to medium businesses* because they are a more efficient and stable way to deploy hardware resources; the amount of hardware you need to ensure that there is always enough resource for a single website serving a million hits a day is more than a hundredth of the total resources needed for a hundred independent websites each serving a million hits a day, because the probability of them all hitting peak traffic at the same time is low, the probability of experiencing 100 independent hardware failures out of 1000 machines at the same time is far lower than experiencing 1 failure out of 10 machines, and because it is cheaper to host whole racks or data-centres of machines and secure the whole rack or centre than to host and secure a few physical machines.

The cost benefits of these efficiency gains outstrip the costs of vertical de-integration, allowing cloud hosts to make a profit and still be cheaper for small businesses than hosting their own servers.

However, by the time a business is large enough to run its own sufficiently large private clouds, it gets the benefit of cloud hosting, but can also remain vertically integrated, and so private clouds can have a cost benefit over public clouds where the cloud provided needs to make profits.

As more Free / Open Source software becomes available to make private cloud hosting easier, I expect most businesses with sufficiently large server deployments will choose to vertically integrate and run private clouds rather than using public ones.

* Note that I am implicitly measuring the size of a business by the size of their server hosting requirements. I'm sure this measure is correlated with profits and revenue, but some companies with, say, high profits might not have many servers, and so would be small business for the purposes of this comment.
I wonder how close Mac OS X comes to the Anti-Mac interface, given that it includes a command line.
Very thoughtful response. I really appreciate your feedback. We have our reasons for that price, and might very likely change it in the future. Startups have to change or die.

As with the US real estate suck, that I 100% agree. There are many many reasons why that is the case, and many startups try to solve this problem with no one succeeding.

We are looking to be the one that eventually solves this hard problem, but as I said in the other post, it's an uphill battle.
yeah, I went for the snark, but I think your point is much closer to the truth.
argh, typo

Half a decade -- not have a decade.
It's not unethical at all and it's actually something that is very common. Why would you be concerned about the ethics of it? You're getting some money to build something they want and they're presumably getting some sort of discount, favorable licensing terms, etc...

To your earlier comment - I also don't think you should be worried about other possible customers being concerned about a "financial investment" from your initial customers. They ARE NOT partners - they're paying for a product just like any other customer. Instead, they're getting a discount for taking on a risk.
McKinsey, the Insider Trading Scandal, and the Problems With Consulting
It wasn't quite that simple. Yes I'd heard of it, but I didn't know how to randomly sample from a Gaussian distribution, nor why it was necessary to use it in the algorithm I was working on ("why can't I just sample from a uniform distribution?").[1]

Also, I was in a special situation. I had a strong passion for the work I was doing, knew my boss before I got hired, and had done related research that showed I was able to push my way through challenging problems.

[1] http://www.nashcoding.com/2010/07/07/evolutionary-algorithms...
"how's the music business doing these days?" - this aside seems rather ridiculous. the business of music is more vibrant than it has been in decades, precisely thanks to the internet. it just isn't paying a 99% tax to middle men anymore.

seems the nasty entanglement of "content" and "telecom" companies is the problem, not netflix.
I think you're right about investors and wrong about YC founders. Put yourself in a YC founder's shoes. If you got a cold pitch from an applicant, would you respond?

(note: I get emails every application season and always reply...)
It's funny the example of an anti-Mac interface is a bookcase — but if you look at the ebooks interface on an iPad it's pretty much that...
I walked away for 2 years about 10 years ago. I was totally burnt out. If I had taken time before that when I first started to get burnt out, I think it would have taken less than 2 years.

While it is nice that you have loyalty to completing a job you have undertaken, remember that is never a two way street. Situations being right, you can and will be cut loose someday- recognize that and determine when it is ok for you yourself to walk away.
So, how do I get in touch with you? I'm the CTO at Cheezburger and we're looking for people just like you...http://jobs.cheezburger.com.

I'll be at SXSW if you'd like to meet in person. My contact info is on my blog: http://scottporad.com/contact.
Summary:

In 1996 some academics tried to re-imagine human-computer interaction, and they used the current Mac OS as a starting point (FYI: It was version 7.5).

How Their Predictions Panned Out:

First off, they got some relatively obvious things right: they correctly saw that computers of the future would be hyper-connected instead of isolated (but in 1996 this wasn't exactly a bold prediction), and that they would have hardware orders of magnitude more powerful.

Somewhat more insightfully they predicted that the purpose of computers would shift from mainly solo productivity-type work to games, multimedia, creative, social, etc. They also predicted the rise of alternative forms of I/O, and I think the I/O of Apple's iOS, for instance, is in many ways consistent with what they envisioned.

A few of their guesses have not yet materialized, though. They emphasize the use of "language" over point and click icons. Unfortunately, NLP and AI are harder than they anticipated. If we again look at iOS as an example, touch icons, it seems, are still much more useful than natural language.

The article provides a fascinating time capsule of HCI thinking at the dawn of the Internet.

Incidentally, just weeks after this article was published Steve Jobs returned to Apple and sparked the new generation of interfaces that they could only imagine.
There are still major differences between the two, however.

Visual ugliness is often either an intrinsic quality of something or comes from a lack of effort to improve the visual quality.

Ad hominem attacks, on the other hand, are at best fallacious - they're simply illogical at their core. At worst they're signs of someone spending effort to decrease something else's appeal, in a way that is both wrong and simply mean. It's a net decrease of quality in every single way.
This is the internet, damnit.
Thank you to both of you. I own and have read both - I agree they are excellent.
My question was however not concerning design patterns, but architectural patterns, such as MVC, Blackboard or a layering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_pattern

I found the collection of concrete examples/applications of design patterns interesting, and wondered if anyone knew of a similar collection of examples/application of common architectural patterns.
If you look at the success of Windows 95 in that era (and what failed) it was very much about the money as much as the theory in that era. What's interesting is that when the article was being written Jobs was working on NeXT which is still alive today on your Mac and iPhone.
Wow. Great advice everyone. I'll probable start with GAE and see where I go from there as my experience/abilities improve.
Meh. I know how all those APIs work and use similar patterns in my code. Some of those I've used before people had names for them (or I was aware of such). Does naming these make me a better programmer?
I've seen some surprising things claimed on the cover of the National Enquirer. I hope that they are investigated seriously rather than dismissed with a snarky tone, because if Elvis is really alive on the Moon it would have profound cross-disciplinary implications.
In Search Of The Internet Kill Switch
When is an animated GIF better than a video?
for every guy like pg, there are 9 others just like him who went bankrupt

where did you pull this number from?
You know there's a famous maxim from Lincoln that if he had two hours to cut down a tree he'd spend most of the time sharpening the ax. The best cure for a burn out is to sharpen your ax by taking time and figuring out what excites you. I'd advise you to see what non-programming things inspire you and then bring that passion back to your work. Also despite what everyone tells you having a personal life isn't a bad thing...
Is this, this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289425
Was the work or workload any different at your next job? How did you manage everything for 2 years without work? Also, I've had three < 1 year stints in my 4 year career already, and this would be another one if I cut loose. I don't want this trend to continue forever. It doesn't look very healthy to me.
Ha, I'm surprised how simple the algorithm to generate random noise is. This is really cool though its applications may not be too widespread. I find with solid colours elements that slight noise can give it more of a body.
That's not what cliché is.

Noise is there to make the design easier on the eye. It simply works better than a solid fill in a lot of situations as it improves visual quality of the design. It is more natural if you will, similarly to how rounded corners look subjectively better than the straight ones. The noise was not extensively used before because it does not compress well, and spending 20KB on a background tile was just too much. Now it is lesser of an issue, so the noisy fill is seeing a wider adoption.

In other words, if it were just a decoration for the sake of decoration, then - yes, you would've been right, but since it carries a useful function, then it is not a cliche.
What is a dickfor?
10 Facebook Events Gone Wrong
those college loans are split up, you pay them off in monthly increments like $100 or $200 a month, which is basically a car payment. you could consult for companies with technical skills on roughly the same amount an engineer would get in salary (probably higher if you can negotiate that you're not taking benefits, equity, etc). that's at least $5k per month if you're smart, determined, and enjoyable to work with. i know friends consulting with funded startups on a contractual basis; it's sometimes easier on the startup because they don't have to offer benefits and there may be tax advantages with contracting vs full-time hires.

my guess is his antisocial personality isn't helping his odds, but even that is a controllable factor. from talking to a lot of founders and asking what they look for in hiring, they almost all say "personality" first; if the guy comes across the wrong way (antisocial) that might hurt his chances, although not saying that explains why he hasn't had luck.
They lie, or publish unverified pap, whenever it suits their agenda.

I have no specific knowledge regarding whether, or how, this news article might fit their agenda,

Clearly in this situation it is appropriate to assume that they are lying, or at the very least publishing unverified pap, and to wait for evidence that may indicate they are not.
FYI, it uses canvas. If canvas is not supported (IE < 9), then fallback image is needed.
Not really. Your example -- keeping up with underlying technology upgrades -- may not even require as many commits as the number of upgrades to the underlying technology version. Especially if the software is well-written without unnecessary "cleverness", software can often survive upgrades to the underlying technology without issues.

Sometimes, such changes do need to be made, though; sometimes, you have at least part of a point. On the other hand, those changes might consist of a flurry of commits every time the underlying technology's version bumps, and the project may appear dormant the rest of the time. Some might think it's a "sick" project because it only gets updates in groups every now and then, with three, six, twelve, or even eighteen months between such flurries of updates (depending on the underlying technology), but they very well might be wrong.

[Basing your impression of a given project's quality and health on project activity is dangerous.](http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.065.16.43.41)
PAX is more than that. It's a whole other niche. E3 is about the companies. GDC is about the developers. PAX is about the players.
I agree - commercialism was around .. but not many companies really understood how to monetise the web in the early / mid nineties. For example, Bill Gates famously didn't think the Internet would catch on, and assumed that MSN would be most people's choice of walled-garden alternative.

The WWW was just another application for the Internet (along with Gopher / FTP / Usenet / IRC) - and therefore wasn't seen as the Internet.

Because the technology was relatively new, I think people were interested in taking risks - user expectations hadn't been set in stone, and innovation could be less about iteration and more about being bold / daring.
>> Apple are a greedy bunch

Compare the price of Mac desktop or laptop to a Dell/HP/Newegg PC with the same hardware and Windows. Or just check the profits Apple is reporting. They definitely have way higher margins than the other mega-corps, selling hardware/gadjets.
A lot of IAMAs are trolls. But it doesn't mean everyone believes, it's just selection bias. The people who don't take it at face value stay quiet because you're not supposed to be skeptical about it, that would be "insensitive".

Personally I find it odd that someone who "has just found Reddit" would take the trouble to do an IAMA instead of, I dunno, anything else in their last hours.
Article was pretty light on the details. I thought the new york times did a pretty good job of convincing me it was a joint israel/us op back in january:

Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet...

(pay special attention to the national laboratory discussion)

It doesn't sound like Langner is presenting any proof per-se, but then again it's not something I'd stand up on a chair and prove if I could.
"In other words, it is not always valid in either direction to judge a message by its messenger or its medium."

Even though that's precisely one of the things the author does.
In terms of ethics, I've just heard horror stories of people selling "vaporware" and don't want to be lumped into that category.

As for point two that makes great sense.

Thanks for all your input I appreciate it.
I'm surprised Stonebraker is still around deliberately misinterpreting how MapReduce works in order to sell more of his expensive database software. Some of his blog entries about MR vs databases a few years ago are laughably wrong:

http://databasecolumn.vertica.com/database-innovation/mapred...
and a rebuttal:
http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=16
> Internet content is constantly fighting for the attention of the reader, and I think animated GIFs demand it

And not in a good way. Most of the time these clips annoy the shit out of me. However I have to admit that I do like the continuously firing cat, probably because it illustrates my feelings toward animated GIFs so well. And I find clips of pretentious people pronouncing a word over and over especially tiresome.
Location?
HBGary Hack In Depth
The complete lack of licensing information on many projects is something that Google Code tends to "fix" much better than GitHub, though -- even if Google Code is a little inferior in some other ways. It would be nice if sites like BitBucket and GitHub would do something to encourage people more strongly to actually tell us about the licenses used in their projects.
Thank your for the feedback. I agree with you on your points. I'll ping you separately for a more in-depth discussion.
The article is quite vague about what an anti-Mac interface would but it does make some good points about the limits of the mouse-window-and-menu GUI.

Especially: Language-like interfaces are better than thing-like interfaces. Interacting with language is a much preferable approach than physically manipulating things, especially since most of what an average user wants to input is discrete, meaningful bits of information (visual and auditory artists are the exception).

Both Google and Quicksilver are example of more "language like" interfaces but there's not too much flesh on the bones of the article's "anti-Mac User Interface".
"Incidentally, just weeks after this article was published Steve Jobs returned to Apple and sparked the new generation of interfaces that they could only imagine."

In what way were the newer generation of interfaces different to what they'd already described (as the 'mac interface')?

--

I think we're still using very WIMP orientated interfaces .. most interfaces haven't changed that much. Even iOS / Android use central themes from the old desktop metaphor.
Calculo Bacillus ;=)
I'm a bit confused - how could a TEDx event charge admission for a livestream of an official TED event, to which they are not affiliated? Afaik TED/TEDGlobal/TEDIndia are not TEDx events.

Did you mean that TEDx events could not charge for a livestrem of their own event? That is probably true.
>While it is strange that he would publish his paper in the Journal of Cosmology, it doesn't change the validity (or non-validity) of the facts.

It effectively does. Suppose the author had good, convincing evidence of bacterial life. He wouldn't send the data to a third rate journal.
Hey, let's get in touch. I'm working on a cool early stage product that's just about perfect for a product/developer guy. Small focused team, consumer web, interesting product. I'll be at SXSW - hopefully we can meet for a beer and a demo.

(plus - if it turns out this isn't gig for you, happy to intro you to a friend at Amazon - etc).
Ask HN: Advice on improving my sign-up page
The problem is, working with a startup has so far meant giving up my life - and just working 24x7. Not a healthy trend, but I don't know of a startup that works otherwise. I believe I'm not very comfortable telling my boss - "I can't do this". He's the founder and this is his dream after all. I feel I'm not doing my job if I don't finish my work - no matter how long it takes. Am I obsessing unnecessarily?
.. in 1996, really? ;)
This is beautiful. I like the extra work done to make sure tiles only fit together if they may be legally placed next to one another.
This was done as well. However, one should look at all the available evidence to inform one's analysis. Printing in a third rate journal is the first clue that something is very wrong.
Origins of St. Patrick's Day
The b2b product would really require a commitment to run and operate it to make it work out for the best. Its not really a build it, release it, and move on kind of thing. That being said I guess I could get it up and running and hire in the required people to operate it and run it while I migrate onwards and upwards.
Factoring, in Forth and fiction
Thanks for all the great advice so far, I've removed the centred text as suggested which I think is an improvement.

Instead of running a time limited offer of one year free service I've decided not to make the offer time limited and instead just track if the referring URL is from HN, so if you click on this link:

http://www.mightycv.com

and decide you'd like to sign up then I'll make sure your email is matched up and that your account is free for one year after Mighty CV launches. You'll just have to take this offer on trust, but I promise I'll honor it. Thanks again for all the feedback so far.
I appreciate the practical aspects of the author's post. Too often on mailing lists for various machine learning groups, a novice will ask if they can "just apply [technique] to [big problem]"; usually something like stock trading or DNA analysis. The obvious answer is "Sure! Now go spend years understanding how your domain really works in context of the algorithm you're trying to use." You can't just feed in stock prices to a black box and get rich, sorry, doesn't work that way.

As for the idea of "general machine learning" not being feasible, it's worth noting that the No Free Lunch Theorem [1] applies here.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt...
No potential startup founder left behind
>Because NASA is a big government bureaucracy, and he's been working there since 1966.

To be fair, any other academic institution would have given him tenure. The point of tenure in those systems is precisely so that faculty can say batshit insane ideas with the hope that the odd lunatic will be right, or at least invite discussion.
Google reacted in a prompt matter to the fix the problem. This is a risk that will always exist when a software becomes open source and you are downloading third party programs - which the Android Market clearly warns you of this risk before downloading the applications. I personally am not holding Google accountable for this incident and am pleased with the quick remedy to the issue.

Although I do find it ironic that Google fixed the problem by using a backdoor 'kill switch' in the android software to fix the backdoor malware of infected users.