skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If there are certain times of day when comment quality is especially bad, then increasing the delay for thread replies might help.

Another thing that might help is to put the flag button next to each comment instead of having to click on link and then flag.
A Tablet Isn’t a Large Phone
Who is the "highly profitable" YC company looking for a technical lead?
If anyone knows who this company is, please post here. It sounds interesting, but before sending my resume to a company, I'd like to know more about them.

Here's the posting from earlier today:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2383727
How many of you just read the title rather then reading the entire article?
Artificial clouds could help cool 2022 Qatar World Cup
Me. And I wrote it.
What Gowalla is good for (and why you should use it)
I'd personally like it if you could visually see who was part of YC quickly (different colour nick for example).
I have plenty of that and in my experience that doesn't lead to contract work.

I get plenty of full-time job offers but no contracting offers.
Web Development to iPhone development
Hello all...

I've been developing web applications for a little under a decade. After reading some articles regarding mobile application development and the huge future that it has, I'm really interested in switching over to mobile application development completely.

My question is how others have switched over and what advice they'd give me (and others) that want to do the same? What have they gained (or loss)? Have they gained more freedom and income as a result? I'd love to hear what others have gone through.
Go BlUES!!! :)
Downvoted for non-contributive noise.

For future reference:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
Old hat - I already did that. Launched right here on Hacker news almost a year ago. Actually on April 1.

http://twittewittewit.com/
DHH noted that this gist comparing some Test::Unit tests to RSpec triggered his statements: https://gist.github.com/893027
shrtr?
haha glad you liked that! avril is so dreamy ...
I don't want to discourage you, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. I know there are a lot of people smarter than me, and I am no expert here so I thought you might know something I don't.
With respect to the interaction between programming and maths, I remember reading a while back about some computer science course where they found that a relatively simple maths test administered early on strongly predicted success at the end of the course, and it was mainly around algebra and variable assignments.

I wonder if the 'procedural' languages are more strongly slanted towards the algebra style of maths, whereas 'functional' languages are more strongly slanted towards the formula style (or whatever we would call that maths where you talk about f of n, and g(f(n)) rather than the x squared plus 4x plus c style - not sure of nomenclature, many moons ago I took a course on 'Discrete' mathematics but couldn't adequately define what makes it different from other sorts of maths)

My grossly inadequate labels aside, the point I'm getting at is that maybe depending on the type of maths they do, different mathematicians might be drawn towards different kinds of programming languages (or find them more or less 'natural'). What do you think?
What makes you think there's any server-side code running at all? It looks quite straightforward to me.
Thanks for the response Kelly.

Yesterday when I downloaded it on my iPad it appeared as Facebook was the only way to login? Maybe I was incorrect and I simply missed something. If so, I apologize for my statement.

With that being said... I do love the app and think you're on to something big.
IEEE's five-point plan to address open access
I'm getting:

PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can't connect to local
MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
in lock_may_be_available() (line 165 of
/srv/www/avabodh.com/public_html/includes/lock.inc).
ubermind.com, particularly if you're located in Seattle where they're based
Meet Edward Zuckerberg, the high-tech dentist
Actually I disagree here. I'm grateful that the founder of all people actually took the time to respond. This show's that they care what their users think.
it's kind of inspired by Why's ruby guide, because that's also a sort of funny-ish programming book with pictures, but i think our style is different enough.
Ahh great, thanks for sharing.

I've added a few bits to a git repo:

https://github.com/d122/Murder-Mystery

Just some basic python code in there for now.

I'll have a look at the differences in our transcriptions when I get back from work tomorrow, and maybe try and think of some more angles to approach this.
Put your agency through the paces
Carsales for $1.1B: Lemon or bargain?
I wonder if he might be using a gendered language. Which would explain a high level of xE or even yxE at the end of sentences.
A couple years ago Ev wished there was a better calendar to-do list integration out there.
Would have been better protected if their javascript was programmed in Welsh... :D
NYC: One last indoors Hackers & Founders, this Thursday (3/31)
I teach Zumba (dance exercise), freelance. I love it! I've "monetized my exercise".

It's not something I'd want to scale, I prefer web dev for the majority of my time - but now I get paid to exercise, instead of paying someone else. And I've gotten to meet a LOT of new people - people I can market my startup to, and bounce feedback off of.
Where the hell have I been, didnt realize Linode has an iphone app.
I love python (I did this in python):

https://github.com/d122/Murder-Mystery

But you are both correct, the indentation, circling etc. may be important, but I just wanted to get the letters down initially. Start with the basics and work up!
Ev Williams States The Obvious: He’s No Long Fully Committed To Twitter
It's a debate about the merits of two different testing libraries. DHH is pretty clear in his suggestions and opinions - it's not just pointless sniping.
I feel for you - my advice is not to let it get you down.

I think an important factor in these interviews is the emphasis on talent in software development. Don't get me wrong - I don't deny its importance, it's more that I question the nature of the beast. To me talent is instinct, a feel for what you're doing, and the 'right' type of thinking for the thing. It's pretty obvious when somebody has it (or doesn't), and I think obvious whether you have it too if you're honest with yourself about it.

Tech interviews emphatically do not test for this. Nor do they, I believe, test for smartness; I think once you hit a certain level of intelligence the rest is far more preparation and experience (and yes I'm getting Malcolm Gladwell on your ass) - so all a failed interview indicates is (assuming you are an at least moderately talented, moderately intelligent candidate) one or more of the following:-

* Lack of preparation (knowing the stuff, and practicing the stuff)

* Poor/incorrectly focused preparation

* Lack of confidence

* Bad luck - e.g. haven't looked at binary search for x years they ask about it, or what Steve Yegge termed the 'interview anti-loop'[1] - basically the guy interviewing you just doesn't like you and that's that.

The biggest problem with these things is that people (and I'm kind of talking to myself here more than anyone) take these things personally and put it down to some idea of talent that you might just lack. Fuck that.

The problem is that - and I'm risking repeating a well-known cliche here - hiring good people is extremely hard, and a false positive is way more damaging than a false negative. It is right, IMHO, that (good) companies probe algos, os fundamentals, etc. as this stuff matters; however failing an interview emphatically does not mean you suck.

[1]:http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...
Coral cache: http://www.avabodh.com.nyud.net:8090/cxxin/cxx.html
http://www.appcelerator.com can make the process easier.
From the same article:

"About 24% of people aged 15 and over are considered overweight, compared with 65% in the United States."
I've got $10 riding on "they see the word Hacker in 'Hacker News' and start freaking out". :D

Oh, I understand the word hacker in all its culturally and context relevant forms, and you understand the word hacker, but they do not understand the word hacker. :-(
Where's the insult? You mentioned that you are a journalism major, so I suggested a course of action that could parlay that into a startup job, which is exactly what you're asking about.

Excellent copywriters can make very good money, and can be integral to the success of any company. I don't see any way that this is somehow "insulting".

If you're hellbent on doing something from the tech side, then I offered advice on the foundational skills/knowledge you should start with.
Meg Whitman to Join VC Firm as an Advisor
A web application which will combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. It won't be named Pyra.
While DHH has remarkably good taste—and he has, in fact, helped make code more beautiful throughout our industry—his taste is not necessarily perfect.

Exhibit A: Rails fixtures.

When using fixtures, you end share a single set of objects between all your tests. And sooner or later, your tests will become tightly coupled via the fixtures: To add a new test, you must add some new records. But when you add those records, some other tests break.

If you instead use an object factory like machinist or factory_girl, you can create objects at the start of each test, and fill in random values for any fields you don't care about. This makes each test independent of the others, and it keeps the code and data in one place.

So if we admit that DHH's taste in testing is potentially imperfect, what does that mean for the Test::Unit versus RSpec debate? Not much.

Some people like Test::Unit. It's a fine library. I prefer RSpec, because it's a better match to how I think. And many of the testing libraries I want to use are actually work better with RSpec.

Oh, and if Cucumber is a bad match for your project, try Steak. It's easier to set up, and you write ordinary Ruby code.
I'm probably thinking of some other python inspired book then. Well done for making a contribution to the advancement of knowledge etc.
Without having seen the app myself, could it be the case that it's designed in such a way to "strongly encourage" facebook signup? One of the design tradeoffs you or your designer may have made, consciously or unconsciously, was that some percentage of people might misinterpret your design as facebook-only unless there are very obvious signs to the contrary.

Of course, I haven't used the app myself, so I can't take one side or another on this one. Come out with an Android version and we'll talk. :) Either way, it looks like a cool product, so, kudos.
It could just mean that it's a transposition-only cipher.
I wish it would get a lot easier to raise $ from outside the valley. Hopefully this is just the beginning!

Hopefully the KIK investment will spark something in Canada.
I don't have any hard data for you but I believe you're right about the portion control.

Junk food is also popular in Japan, though probably not as much as in the US. However, in general portions are smaller here in Japan and people don't drink soft drinks all day. Apparently the average American geek needs as much food as a Japanese construction worker.
Forget the Amazon example (there are plenty of legit sites that self-sign, like my school's online grading system). It scares the hell out of your average computer user, and it doesn't provide much gain.
The online etymology dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=lam) says it's of uncertain origin, but does not mention ovines.
I'm likely to be on the wrong side of this argument, but part of my gets upset every time I hear about a founder leaving their fast-growing company. Great companies are built by the kinds of founders who don't just want to start something, they want to build and scale it into something world-changing.

Imagine Mark Zuckerberg leaving FB to "start something new". Imagine Bill Gates leaving MSFT early on to "experiment with some new ideas". Larry Ellison, Page and Brin, Jobs, etc all evolved with their companies. Why does it seem like this class of entrepreneurs is uninterested in seeing their companies out?
Most consumer web apps require many and frequent iterations before striking a chord with users. Therefore, the ultimate great "idea" is usually arrived at through a process of engineering and design tinkering, and not through a singular, initial spark of genius.

The main differentiators in consumer web startups tend to be: the speed and creativity with which the team can iterate, the quality of the user experience and design, and, if all goes well, the ability of the architecture to scale. The capacity to do these 3 things well is relatively rare. Finding a person or a team with these skills is exceedingly difficult (especially in this talent market).

So yeah, I do stand by my assertion that the starting-point idea is the commodity, and the ability to build and design a decently scalable web-app in 4 hours (and then get user feedback and push another version later that same day) is a rare skill---especially on the open market, since most such individuals are either well-employed at companies or working on their own.
I quit my job this year and have been making a reasonable living via Elance and oDesk. Mostly GWT/Google App Engine projects, but starting to dip into Android as well.

On oDesk I was lucky enough to meet a great client almost immediately. I got an ongoing project with him for ~30 hours/week. I think I'm grossly undercharging him, but it's a steady gig that leaves me able to pick up other projects on the side.

For fixed price projects I generally don't even bother considering anything under $5K. I try to stand out by bidding high rates (by Elance standards). So far it's working fairly well. I hope to develop enough happy customers so that eventually I'll be able to move off of those sites and just get clients by word of mouth.
Ability to execute well is your most important asset.

And confidence to try is the second most important: if you try you might not succeed, but if you don't try you definitely won't succeed.
> After stepping down from CEO six months ago, my mind started to wander. The reason I left Blogger/Google when I did is that I felt it had reached a place where it was on solid ground and in capable hands (at the time, Jason Goldman’s as product manager). Though still an independent company, I realized Twitter may be at a similar point today.

Do people really mean it when they say this, or is it just a thing to say, the same way disgraced politicians claim that they're retiring to 'spend time with their family'?

I mean, i'm not suggesting that there's anything untoward going on, it's just that with a few rare exceptions i find it hard to believe when people (politicians, CEOs, message-board founders, or anyone else) claim that they've left because they looked around and, like the Old Testament God, saw that 'it was good', and decided that their job was done there. I have not ever been a CEO or anything obviously, but the concept seems unlikely to me. 'I'm tired of my responsibilities', 'the culture has changed too much', 'i don't like my co-workers', 'i've got a more lucrative opportunity lined up elsewhere', 'i want to raise my new child', whatever, i'd easily believe those. But that it's so charitable and grandiose as deciding 'it's done' seems foreign to me.
The Onion runs on Django and other juicy bits...
That's why we have to tell them.

If we, as hackers of the sort that inhabit hacker news, have a post like this on the frontpage and noone cares to actually write them and tell them they have a security problem that may cause them serious damage we don't deserve better.
18 ways to be a good developer
Fake girlfriend Facebook app
$ GET -e -d http://color.com/ | grep Server
Server: Jetty(7.3.0.v20110203)

Jetty server, so presumably Java.

$ host 50.17.223.164
164.223.17.50.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer
ec2-50-17-223-164.compute-1.amazonaws.com.

Hosted on EC2.

$ host -t ns color.com
color.com name server ns2.p18.dynect.net.
color.com name server ns3.p18.dynect.net.
color.com name server ns1.p18.dynect.net.
color.com name server ns4.p18.dynect.net.

With Dyn (DynDNS) handling DNS.
You're disagreeing with a phantom.

It wasn't the response that was being objected to, it was a (polite) suggestion that the rudeness of the response is not good marketing.

Nowhere does the replier suggest that the founder shouldn't respond at all, they are simply suggesting that a friendlier tone will look better than an unfriendly one.

See also: the old story about catching more flies with honey than vinegar etc.
اخبار الحوادث
If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can't recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories Bad Calories highly enough.

If you're not so interested, he wrote a TL;DR version called Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.

He also has a blog: http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/
Have any of you guys ever seen pictures of the Woodstock festival in the 60s? Everyone is skinny. It's something besides "The western diet" and meat-eating that's causing obesity to increase. A lot of diet news these days has the appearance of vegetarian activism with a severe case of confirmation bias, in that any study that remotely hints that meat eating is bad for health gets front page coverage.

The exercise issue is a red-herring. Sure you can run for an hour and burn 600 calories, or you can just skip a meal. What's gone wrong with our diet is most likely occurring at the metabolic level with the types of processed foods we eat.
Oh no! I couldn't find the email in question- it's entirely possible that I deleted it off my phone accidentally. Please re-send and I'll get back to you tonight
I have never, personally, worked with a client that was willing to work consistently at the level of detail that Cucumber provides. I suppose if I had such a client I might find it useful.

For communicating requirements among developers I think plain Ruby is already readable enough.
Google’s Value To US Users And Advertisers Is Over $119B
One clue is that a 404 page (e.g. http://color.com/asdf) says the webserver is "powered by Jetty": http://jetty.codehaus.org/jetty/

Jetty "provides an HTTP server, HTTP client, and javax.servlet container". Here is the wikipedia page for Java Servlet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Servlet So the answer seems to be Java.
Ask HN: www.mybillpost.com
Hey all. I have been working on this project off and on for the past couple months. Just wanted to know some others thoughts. Is this something you think would work? Would you use it?

Basically what it does is takes the e-statement emails you get from companies and scrapes the company name, due date, amount, and a link to the website login for the company. It then displays this info in an organized manner. Once it is setup it is all automatic and a user will get emails when bills are due.

Would love some feed back on what you all think of this.

Check it out at www.mybillpost.com and use this login info to check out the site.
username: Test
password: test123
Just because the data is open doesn't mean there's no business opportunity. There are plenty of businesses built on using open data.

Example 1: Some businesses publish and sell paper books containing Wikipedia articles.

Example 2: CloudMade provides platforms for building web and mobile apps using OSM data (CC-BY-SA 2).
If you take away write-access privileges, then malicious script still can steal your data.
Most of the time - that's really bad by itself even if you keep your copy of data intact.
If you assume the framework is correct, and then you update, migrate, whatnot, can you still be sure the framework is correct, or hasn't broken. If you can ensure your own code is good, then you are ahead of the game in such a situation.
IMHO, the best way is through your network. Great people know other great people, they tend to stick together. So find some great people and get the word out. I'd also suggest having a couple bullet summary of your personal value prop handy.

If you'd like to be more in the startup space then look at startup blogs for networking events in your area and attend. If you're in Seattle, you can attend things like OpenCoffee at Louisa's. I went a while back and met a few folks that were getting plugged in to various projects that eachother had going. I had coffee with Andy S (TechStars) that day. Your portfolio (which may or may not include open source contributions) will help seal the deal, but unless it's really prominent is unlikely to find the leads for you by itself.

If you're looking for enterprise level contracts, then probably the best thing you could do is go through a contracting agency to start. Most big companies don't hire independent 1099ers anyway, many times for insurance reasons (of all things...). Again the point always goes back to building your network so the first gig or two might not be what you want but keep in touch with the people you can. Make sure your gigs are at the best possible companies you can find. Again back to Seattle, Microsoft is awesome to meet great people at and they contract relatively heavily. Also the bio tech's are no doubt in need right now.

Good luck!
Don't apologise. If they don't recognise the extraordinary value of unsolicited first impressions they will just have to learn the hard way.

For field testing my iPad apps (for instance) I will just hand them an iPad and not give them any instructions or hints on how to use it. And then I will watch intently what they do and what they don't do. Two minutes of unsullied first impression is pure gold. The only 'downside' is that occasionally you learn that you have to redesign the interface...
Unfortunately, we don't have any plans to launch in the UK in the short term. It's too hard to build the competitive marketplace we need to do in each country. We're launching Canada later this week.
Neat looking product:

Basically: You make a quick little website about an ephemeral event from your iPhone or other device.
What level of detail do you use with clients?
I care about people who use the app and then respond with feedback based on actual usage. People who just say "shame on you" without knowing what they are talking about aren't helpful.
A lot of broad conclusions are made in this article without citing specific sources of research or evidence. Mostly, it's just anecdotal evidence (fictionalized at that) and obscure references to plotting curves (I assume on a graph, though we don't get to see it).
Questions for a non-technical co-founder
I don't complain about down votes - but it actually shocks me to think someone felt that my statement was counterintuitive to this thread and didn't offer anything possibly insightful. I think that it is irresponsible to assume third party code is safe - or will remain safe. If you feel that that is overly cautious so be it - but I rather be safe than sorry. But I guess that is just my opinion.
'14 "near misses" at nuclear plants in 2010'.

You'd think that with that many "near misses" per year, the U.S. nuclear power industry couldn't possibly have operated for over 50 years without a single death among the general public, and yet it has (plant workers and miners have died, but not nearly as many per kWh generated as, say, coal).

Maybe these "near misses" aren't quite as serious as they're implying?
shtr?
I believe the line is that you could care less, but that would take effort and you can't be bothered. :D

If you allow for the possibility of negative values for caring it is always possible to care less, it is just that there are diminishing marginal returns for that much anti-utility. :D