skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Looks like it won't install (error code 0x800F0A12) if you have a different bootloader in the MBR. Bah. Can't be bothered to redo my whole Hackintosh setup.
Sounds like (s)he wants a Less Wrong for startups.
Sure. All sites experience regression to the mean[1].

Usually this starts happening about 12 months after I decide to become a regular. In HN's case I've come in halfway through the cycle, about 3 months ago, so apparently the magnitude of my destructive powers is increasing.

[1] and also the snide.
Sure: IMDB, Audible, and Zappos.

Also, the issue isn't that the founders leave; it's that the energy does. Founders are always going to leave.
This looks really cool, Craig! Signing up now, fantastic idea!
Ah, but you see, there are those that say that "data" by definition is plural.
Actually Broadcast.com was a 5.7B deal, believe it or not.
Theres also Tableau (http://www.tableausoftware.com/) for people interested in just pivoting data and charting. Its kind of expensive and PC only but serves that function well.

As a Statistician, I used to use SAS, Stata, R, Excel and of course SQL to extract data but for the purposes of pretty, pretty charts, Tableau is king.
If you can sideline all the people who want to bullshit about how the ipad2 is the future of personal computing or the quality of the writing at TC, you've already won.
Possibly. R is really great at doing "fancy" statistical analyses. It's very lousy at doing things like text manipulation. When I have a project that needs some text manipulation on the front end, I frequently use other tools (Python, vi, sed, ...) on the front end to beat text data into a nicer form for R. I couldn't say without knowing more about your project.
Case in point for "don't fuck with it".
New Millimeter-Scale Computer
>I've been watching this same story play itself out since Slashdot circa 1998.

And every social subculture in history. See: the constant evolution of the social scenes around music genres. It's just a fact of social psychology we have to live with.

"Dubstep was sooo good back in 02 before the students found out about it! I mainly go to future-garage raves now man..."
I'm not sure it's number of users--- Kuro5hin's downhill slide roughly coincided with a net loss of users, and its heydey was probably also its most populated era.

'08 HN seemed pretty similar to me, though, though I was just a lurker. It was a mixture of good technical content, startup-scene celebrity watching, too many TechCrunch posts, a vaguely political thread every few days (sometimes with a weak "hacking" justification), and the periodic thread once every 3-4 weeks about how HN is dying / has too many political posts / is turning into reddit. Just fewer total comments and votes (by a good margin).

Some random examples: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=179755 , http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=105739 , http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=109052 , http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=80234 , http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=437727
You're getting demographics data out of customer research around features? That doesn't sound right, could you describe your research methodology a bit more?
But isn't that the issue? The energy tends to come from the founders so how do you reliably transition away from the founders, whether it is without full company integration or not?
Or may be after a while our perception about something changes disproportionate to the actual change?

That's basically boredom--and it can happen even if you consume something good for a long time. That "good thing" doesn't change so much as your perception of it.
And Linux was so cool before the Ubuntu kids showed up.
They put two dummy satellites in orbit and measured the effect.

Tried to find a better source but this will do for now:

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-10-20/tech/warped.space_1_black...
Some highlights of Win7 SP1 that aren't in the main list (this isn't exhaustive, just what I can think of):

* Support for new Nehalem processor instructions (AVX)
* Many fixes for 512e and 4k-native disk drives
* TS can now remote 3D primitives across the wire (we had a demo internally where we played Mass Effect 2 over remote desktop)
* Better support for volumes > 2TB
* Superfetch now detects if you have an SSD installed and disables itself
* For devs, better crash reporting for 32-bit apps running on 64-bit OS (see http://is.gd/TaK9ZK for more info)
Torrent meta-search engine
It's also about creating new markets. Identifying something along the way and taking your business in a different direction. There are successful businesses today started out as something else, and evolved in time.

This continuous change of the landscape might work very well for the guy who's behind the competition and doesn't make all the money yet. Those that make the money are usually reluctant to experiment with new paths. They usually fear risking what they've got.

It's basically so unpredictable and things evolve so fast right now, that it's a wild guess what you, or you competition could look like in 2 years.
Hacker News circa 2007
And if one goes that far, one would have to include variant spellings, because in the heat of the moment of cursing an opaque or broken piece of code, a programmer is likely to froth at the keyboard.
Still my favorite site on the whole internet, but yeah, things have definitely changed.

Stories, yeah, they're a bit worse but that's not the main thing. I skip stories that don't appeal to me, and you can always go a few pages deep if you want more stories.

It's the comment quality sliding down that's scary to me... it's becoming much more okay to engage in standard-internet-level discussion here, which is to say, much less civil than HN used to be.

Perhaps liberally killing any comment that's primarily insulting, sarcastic, pedantic would help?

For instance, I just saw a link to this two year old thread today, look how civil and friendly it is:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889

The only halfway insult on there - "Dunno but she has a Twitter page. Not sure why PG would quote such a weirdo." - was voted to zero. And the 2-3 jokes/sarcasm stood still at 1, none of it voted up.

Also, I'd love to see people who just consistently left substance-less comments get put on auto-kill, but I know that'd never happen for a ton of reasons.

I'm thinking of one guy who just posts about how outraged he is about anything remotely politics related, and nothing else. Joined in the last six months. Actually, that probably describes a lot of users now, which might be part of the problem...
Bad QA is worse than no QA. In my 15 year career, I've seen two decent QA analysts, and they both had extensive technical backgrounds.
Really great tips from Andrew. Andrew’s three key points in giving an interview:
1. Practice – The old adage “Practice makes perfect” is true. Especially on film.
2. Shut up – Don’t trust a producer or editor to cut something stupid that you said.
3. Tell a Story – People remember stories.
For one thing, because it is part of the way that your team is turned into a Resource. I never watched Star Trek, but I'm pop-culture literate, and my understanding is they use something called "nanoprobes" to effect the process of "assimilation".

Once you're assimilated, business decisions that impact your team become an MBA math abstraction to the parent company leadership. Time sheets are BigCo's mechanism for mapping what people to do top-down business objectives. The tops of most BigCo's think they have a strategy, but usually don't.

Also, there is something about timecard software that brings out the worst in enterprise software developers. I have never, ever seen one implemented well. I get to see a lot of them in this job.
This will be great...once somebody inverts the law of physics; it says it uses RGB inks, which is physically impossible.
My take on this applies to just about any field with regards to entrepreneurship. A successful entrepreneur doesn't emerge until the person 'gets it'. What I mean by 'gets it' is an esoteric combination of these factors:

-realization that life is not a dress rehearsal

-determination to be successful in their own right, and to not spend the rest of their lives asking other people for permission to trade their precious time for wages

-awakening that most barriers to success are mental

-development of absolute belief that they alone are responsible for how they feel, how they act, and their success or failure at anything.

The big difference between this and other fields is the lower physical barriers to entry for young people. There are no licences required, no physical assets to acquire, no permission needed to build software. On top of that there is a positive feedback loop where other people are willing to listen to a young software entrepreneur, because young software entrepreneurs have had success in the past. If other industries had these low barriers to entry, I would expect to find young successful people across other industries.

The age distribution I think is just the varying age at which people 'get it'. For some young people, they come out of the gates with this belief system, either innate or cultivated by their parents. For others, it requires maybe starting a family and accepting the responsibility of the same, maybe getting fired from a job, maybe a mid-life crisis or a health scare. The reasons are varied but the outcome is similar - a shifting of focus onto what is important. Once the shift of focus happens and clear thinking emerges, the entrepreneur can emerge - at any age.
Microsoft's Ultimate Display
"... the most common roadblock I see is overestimation of the competition ..."

Such a profound observation of why competition is important. There is a problem with competing in exactly the same space though. The pie slice I'm not so sure about. There is a strong correlation between Internet sites, and users which gives you an upper-bound on returns: Adermic, Huberman, "Zipf’s law and the Internet" ~ http://www.scribd.com/doc/3254689/Zipfs-law-and-the-Internet
Once you install the SP, it can get rid of a lot of older binaries that were related to Windows Update (i.e. we have to keep around old versions in case you ever decide to uninstall anything)
Workers Sickened at Apple Supplier in China
Hi, I'm taking on this challenge. Al3x, can you send me an email at jkwon.work@gmail.com?

Also, I'm taking suggestions for seed users. There will also be a HN Karma cutoff where everyone above a threshold can join. You can nominate HN users or yourself here.
Heatswell, throw-away cups that explode when hot
No. The issue isn't that the founders leave. It's that the team dies.
On reading this, the Evaporative Cooling effect comes to mind.

http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-...
Good point.

On reflection it resembles flocking behaviour. I imagine that website members can be modelled as simple agents with two rules:

1. A cool site has few, impressive members.

2. Move towards the cool sites.

Given an arbitrary distribution of "impressive" members, this should cause a constantly moving flock of members to move from site to site regardless of its purpose.
It says it would mix ratios of the three inks. How is that any different than a printer?
The airport is about an hour away so nothing is an hour away flying unless you just count fly-time!
Seven tips for being interviewed over Skype
No, Android phones are currently selling faster than iPhones (in the US). In terms of absolute numbers (and also counting iPods and iPads as iOS devices) it's think it's quite close (if you find trustworthy numbers, let me know).

But never mind Android, the dominant phone OS is still Symbian although nobody would say it is "leading the way".
Where is the data that shows HN has degraded? We aren't seeing kitten pictures. A scan of the front page shows the mix of articles being programming, startups, tech.

I'm not sure what Alex wants? More discussion around PG's hackers and painters?
This was discussed before: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1934367

I had a comment which I guess I should link to rather than repost: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1934605
Well, I guess because I was editorialising!! I found it sensational at the time. That was the first time I had looked at a site and said to myself "well that must be Flash(TM)", and then a second later in my head thought "well fair enough, you'd HAVE to use Flash(TM) to get that kind of experience for a major brand", then right-clicked on the page only to see the standard context menu... no "Zoom in"!!

I was really quite blown away. I could have just put it on my blog then posted that to HN (which is actually what pg said I should have done when he emailed me), but my initial thoughts, were that I really just wanted to share this with my pals on HN (similar to the way someone else had posted Ben the Bodyguard as a "Gorgeous HTML5 implementation" or something) and that putting it on my blog then linking to my blog from HN would just be viewed by the community as me jockeying for traffic and being self-promotional!
Very well written article. I think he has some good points. I'd really like to see a 'deeply technical' alternative to HN and hope he'll find the good guys !
In related news, checkout Hackruiter (YC S10): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2248362
tl;dr

Lunula is a Scheme to C# compiler.
Pittsburgh can be a bit of a shock for the San Francisco set though. There are comparatively few of what I'll call "post-hippie" establishments here. They're around, don't get me wrong, but not like in the liberal bastions of the West coast (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, etc.)

One of the most celebrated places to eat around here, Primanti Bros., sells giant greasy, meaty sandwiches with fries and coleslaw inside. Froyo places have just shown up recently!
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
While I basically agree with you--I too have seen this cycle many times before--what I don't understand is why people feel the need to slap down newbies in an attempt to recapture some since-passed golden age.

If I get bored of a site or simply get nothing more out of it, I just move on.

If I see topics that are boring or simply have no interest to me, I just ignore them.

If I see rude, insulting comments or personal attacks, I just flag them and move on.

I really don't understand why people need to express so much hate.
Theory on the threshold: the point at which groups that social engineer social news sites decide the site is worth their time. This is also a point where the population has grown to a certain point and the discourse has regressed, providing a larger and more easily manipulated audience.
Add to that:

3. A member's threshold of minimum community coolness below which they will leave, is correlated to their impressiveness.
Yes, just stop the old and start the new :)

But warning, very old clients will not work as 2.2 completely dropped the support for the old protocol, that was only "discouraged" with 2.0.
I keep reloading this comment because I'm in the same boat as jmm57 and would love to see some examples as well.

Out of curiosity, is Hacker Monthly (http://hackermonthly.com/) what al3x and other long-time members want? Or is it the kind of discussion & content seen on a StackOverflow?
Internet Map of the Middle East
I figured I'd covered that in rule 1, but upon inspection, it's really two different rules. Your rule 3 is a better statement of one of them.
The WinSxS folder is cleaned up after a service pack is installed. (http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/itdojo/reduce-the-size-of-t...)
Forking of sites has the same problems as forking open-source projects. It exacerbates conflict, forces people to choose sides, and ultimately both forks typically end up poorer because of members lost.

Instead, the best solution is to evolve Hacker News as a product.

My personal opinion is that we should put Hacker news in the hands of the YCombinator alumni. Founders and first employees (CEO, CTO, lead designer, first engineer hire and first design hire) of YC startups would probably make the best moderators and admins.

In fact, I would say that it's probably time that PG spin off YC as a full-time startup, assigning control of the design and codebase to one talented UI designer, one talented developer and one talented product manager.

For the site to keep growing in a way that maintains quality, it needs more functionality that it has. The two features that lack the most are filtering and combinatorial game mechanics.

Filtering is necessary so it is easy for the the hardcore tech articles to be easily found by high-karma members, so they can vote those articles up. If it's not findable, it's not voteable. Filtering is also necessary for people to extract the most value out of hacker news. Most users don't want 100 front-page articles everyday. They probably want 10-20 of the highest value articles. Less is more.

Combinatorial game mechanics like those on StackOverflow would help as well. Upvoting/downvoting is limited in that it will always fall victim to the masses. Giving special voting/tagging/burying rights to distinguished members (very high-karma users and YC founders and employees) would go a long way to helping eliminate the crap.

I think I speak for most members here, when I say that I don't want Hacker News to be a democracy. I want it to be a technocracy. I want the smart and accomplished people to control what is good and should be visible to all. I've got only 260 karma points, and personally I don't think that should be enough karma points to allow me to upvote a submission. 500+ karma points should be the threshold to be able to vote an article to the frontpage.
On a side note, I wish articles would just say "guessers expect the iPad 2 to be thinner ... blah blah" instead of analysts. I'm getting tired of "analysts" who "predict" but play no role in the creation.
Loss aversion, maybe?
Orky, thanks very much.
Awesome, Japan overcomes NIH syndrome for once.

How is EPUB for graphics-heavy content, like manga?
> Site X begins to exhaust natural topics of conversation. Denizens of more than 3 months standing become sick of 100th "What does Site X think about AlphaGamma?" post and begin to slap down newbies.

This implies it's hostility to "old hat discussions" that have already been around the block that people are worried about.

I don't think that's primarily it. The civility levels have slipped a lot... this place used to be as civil and friendly as meeting a bunch of people at a dinner party where everyone admires the host.

Still super-civil compared to the rest of the internet, but the levels have come down a lot. Raw outrage, profanity, and outright insults used to get downvoted to oblivion even if people agreed with the general argument the commentor was making. Rudeness really wasn't tolerated, so new members learned quickly that you had to think for a minute longer before replying.

It's still a great site, but it's not elitism and reminiscing that the old guard is scared of. It's comment quality slipping to rest-of-internet level.
We have a table full of unsavory words due to generating more than one password that upset someone. At one point someone decided we needed "pronounceable" passwords for our new users without considering the consequences.
Ask HN: Income Tax Slabs
Hey HN!

I'm about to file my first return as a consultant [with plans for a startup down the line] after quitting my typical 9-5 job and I just realized how much I'm going to be paying in taxes. More importantly, I feel punished by the income tax slabs for being successful. Am I alone in feeling this way? Is there some angle I'm missing?

Can HN show me the light? FWIW, I'm in my early 20s. I'm really not looking to go into an idealogical debate. Just what fellow people think.

PS - A quick calculation, pre deductions, shows that I'm gonna be paying 30%. Even with generous deductions, I'm not sure I can bring it any lower. And if you're wondering, no, I don't live in the States and no, I do not make in excess of $171,851.

PPS - I'm not a native English speaker. Apologies, in advance, if the above text sounds.. whatever the proper opposite of suave is.
It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way.

As the infamous "How to Become A Hacker" states "The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved"[1]. There is no mention of those problems having to be "deeply technical".

I certainly see the tremendous variety of topics that make the homepage of HN as an asset in keeping with the true Hacker Mentality.

[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe1
The Illustrated Guide to Flame Warriors is a handy reference: http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304354

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321443
How about, instead of a single community, the site runs as a set of "cohort" communities that each only allow direct sign-ups for their first year in existence, but then run a bit like leagues thereafter? If people like you on HN/2011, you might be invited into HN/2010, then HN/2009, etc. It could also be automatic/karma-based: if you earn enough karma on HN/2011, you start again on HN/2010 with 1 karma point (though you can also stay on HN/2011, marked as an alumnus/boddhisattva.
In my official capacity as commenting wind-bag, I'll second that.

HN started as a way for YC guys to communicate. It was about startups, the tips and techniques to make one, to grow one. Once PG opened it up, it became "stuff hackers like", which meant cool deep tech stuff. But the tech stuff was there because after a while, all the startup stuff just ran together.

Then "stuff hackers like" kept drifting wider and wider. I was happy with that, but now that the traffic numbers are through the roof, what I'm seeing is the 1% snark factor is out of control. If each member of HN said something truly snarky only once a month, there would still be thousands of snarky comments a day on here. It's just too much noise.

HN has always been driven by emotion: the only reason to click that button is to express your emotional response, good or bad. Sure you can rationalize that in various ways, but in principle it's about how the thing makes you feel.

Now we have the love-fest stories, the hate-fest stories, the snide jokes that get upvoted, the trashing of "rate my startup" posts (I still can't believe how some of the startups are treated). It's becoming less of a community and more of a mob.

I think maybe the story titles might look mostly the same, perhaps, but the quality of the stories and the quality of the conversations have changed quite a bit.
Thank you for the compliment — I was going to write an article a few weeks ago, but ended up spending the evening redesigning the blog instead: http://tav.espians.com/new-site-design-for-2011.html

Procrastination has its benefits I guess, heh. If you fancy them, the css/templates are in https://github.com/tav/blog and the site is run using yatiblog — https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/src/pyutil/yatiblo... — the source is all public domain, so do with it as you please.
As an "older" entrepreneur (I'm 43), I can say a few things:

A) Its harder to put all of my eggs in one basket. When I was younger i could afford the time to do that (and had several successes doing that). Now, its more important for me to diversify my "entrepreneurship"

B) the way I do that is by finding the qualities that I had (in other young entrepreneurs) and investing in them at low valuations (so I feel as if I have the equity of a founder).

Most entrepreneurs I know in their 40s tend to do the same thing. Its a little bit easier (less late nights programming when I have two kids) and almost as fun and just as lucrative. Ultimately, my "business" now is my investments.