skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's an example of what a profile page (your bookshelf) would look like: no login required

http://www.shelfluv.com/pek.pongpaet/business
Actually, by British standards America appears an irony and sarcasm free zone. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is very noticeable.
Very cool project, Pek. It's been great to see you iterate on the design over the last several months.
Are you part of what makes the Web great? — quality freely-accessible content
I disagree with the tone of your comment. The book cited in the article, "Art and Fear", was first published in 1994. Having read both this article and the original book I strongly argue that neither has lost relevance over time. Re-posts are OK.
Thanks. I dont do enough testing on Chrome for sure.
Swiss :D
Don't let appearances dictate your perception of wealth (well, in the midwest at least). A lot of farmers, business people in the midwest don't look the part, but have the bucks.
Nothing to write home about. Electric engines are efficient.

If you look at the efficiency from, say, coal burned in the power station to electricity in the batteries to driving, electric cars fare similar to internal combustion engines. (Burning your fuel in the big power station is more efficient than a car's internal combustion engine, but going through the extra steps of transmitting the energy to your home and then into the batteries eats some of that.)
This is posted on every comment like this, but I'll oblige: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Perhaps this should be required reading before registration?
One person's comparison between IOS, Android & Windows Sales
America is special.

We're special for a lot of reasons, including 'soft power' (e.g., the most watched movies in the world are from America), 'hard power' (our military is more powerful and more likely to be used than any other plausible combination of nations I can think of), and economic power (our GDP is on par with the entire European Union. It is significantly larger than Brazil, Russia, India, and China's combined).

For these reasons, most every educated person in the world knows more about America than almost any other country (excluding their own and a handful of neighbors). I don't understand why a citizen of country X is surprised that most Americans don't know much more about X, than they they themselves do about Country Y (where Y is roughly of equal importance as X, but is on the other side of the world).

I've met Brits who were insulted that I only know who their Prime Minister is and what the major parties are, while they are familiar with the intricacies of American politics (upcoming elections, controversies, major players in each party, etc). Yet, they almost always know absolutely nothing about Brazilian politics (while I also know Brazil's major parties and President). Why is it so difficult to understand that, to an American, British politics are about as important as Brazilian politics are to a Brit?
I've hacked up one or two tiny things in Lush.

To me, the important thing about Lush is not that it's object-oriented, but that it's oriented toward high-performance numerical computation.

It has array types with aggregate operations (like J, K, R, NumPy, PDL, PV-WAVE IDL, etc.) even for interpreted code, plus bindings to all the standard numerical libraries; and it has a decent compiler and supports inline C.
Isn't that sending coals to Newcastle?
Many time they are not even ready to acknowledge that things can and often are done better outside their own country. The sense of NIH is very strong.

I agree with this, but I haven't actually been to a country that wasn't like that. Certainly here in Denmark, many Danes are quite certain that Denmark is run better than any other place. ;-)
Is this new or is there a unique angle to it that I missed? Rent-a-painting (and rent-a-sculpture etc) has existed here (Netherlands) for at least 10 years, and pretty much all of them offer 'buy if you like' options.
HN isn't just about hacking, programming or startups. Sure, most of the content is related to that, but we also allow truly breaking news (Japan tsunami for example), tech news, philosophy and other intellectual content.
Yong Vui Kong picture
Other cultures are often evaluated as better or worse than this one rather than simply being seen as different.

True.

Americans tend to think that theirs is the best way to do things

Not true. Just think about American adoption of yoga and buddhism. Certain aspects of Asian cultures, once discovered, were adopted and adapted by Yanks who thought their culture could use improving.
Great points. I work 95% out of a home office and while I have a large display in my home office I probably use it less than 1/3 of the time. One issue is health related: I have written about this before, but I'll mention it again: it can be very unhealthy to sit in a chair for long periods of time. In my case, I developed blod clots and almost died from two pulmonary embolisms 4.5 years ago. I tell anyone who will take my advice to set a timer to remind them to stand up every 20 or 30 minutes or so. I find that switching between sitting at my desk and a few other locations where I can comfortably work with my legs up using a lap-desk helps a lot.

re: issue of productivity: when I use an IDE like IntelliJ or RubyMine, I do like to plug my laptop into a large screen. When using Emacs with Lisp, a small screen is fine. Also, I spend a lot of time in SSH shells, and a small screen is good enough for that.

+1 for your comments, especially about the benefits of working in different environments
It would create more noise when trying to optimize your site to reduce the bounce rate which is a bad thing.
On your FLOSS comment: the agreement for a MSR PhD grant is very clear about "absolutely no GPL ever". But that's it. It's not hard to find MSR research into, say, OpenSSL running on Linux.

(Similarly, they demand a free license to any patent that comes out of your work, but the patent is still yours/your university's. I've heard rumours of worse contracts, but this one was just about being able to use the results of your work.)
EDIT

As pointed out in this thread, that's not a bitcoin address. That's just a GPG key fingerprint. Nothing to do with bitcoin itself. Terribly sorry for the foobar.

The original post:

> It's a bitcoin address, used for both sending and receiving. If you want to trade with a person, you enter that address as receiver's address in a transaction.

Nb., each bitcoin user can freely generate several addresses to protect privacy; up to and including using one-off addresses (i.e., address for just one transaction).
I haven't tried it myself yet but a lot of people seem to prefer Fireworks. My experience with Photoshop so far is that it's adequate for web work but clearly wasn't designed with this in mind.
Www.sonyericsson
Usually gears have a prime number of teeth on the cogs involved if possible, and different prime numbers at that.

This ensures that wear is even which helps with the longevity of the parts and also ensures smooth-running as there will be no uneven wear on one part of a cog. Another side effect is to spread oil evenly across all teeth in a reasonably short running time.

I cannot see how a mobius gear would offer any significant benefits over this. Most cogs are already machined to fit each other neatly, and the problem with fan belts (uneven wear) doesn't really apply to gears.
To threadjack a bit, what about the equivalent for Illustrator? I've made myself minimally proficient in photoshop, but when it comes to creating something new (like an icon, etc.) I'm lost in Illustrator.
A variety of small galleries here in the US offer the option as well, with great success. We're hoping we can expand the number of people with access to this type of art buying to a more national, and hopefully global, community.
Non-facebook login seconded. I'd give it a go if it weren't for that.
Please have a look at HN Guidelines [0] -- spam ought to be flagged (the `flag' link next to the post) rather than downvoted.

----

[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think this is a great point, and the one that designers (and anyone feeling threatened by the evil onslaught of spec work) should be focusing on rather than the notion that the mere existence of 99designs is "insulting" to the profession.

Spec work is a good way to quickly and cheaply solve a simple problem where top quality is not the primary concern.

Many problems (and I would agree that the Skype UI is one of these) are more complex and require a more specialised approach. The latter is where top designers spend all of their time anyway.
I don't know where in India you are, but I've spent 2 months there and have encountered my share of educated Indians who, for example, didn't know where or what Austria is or that Israel has a lot of Jewish people in it (or even what Jews are). Another example off the top of my head was an educated engineer (who went to graduate school) who didn't know what the Roman Empire was.

All of these examples or equivalents never manifested themselves when I was in the US.

Many (upper class) Indians are extremely ignorant about the world outside of India.
My original comment was about Amazon.ca, not Amazon.com. If you try to buy the Kindle via Amazon.ca, you get sent to a .com site. The Canadian site itself won't sell it, as it still must be imported. For whatever reason, they don't want to stock it in their Canadian warehouses. Maybe the duties on it are more than they want to swallow? I figure they'd pass that cost along, and not worry about it, but perhaps I am wrong.
Swiss people.
I don't think you need scale...there are plenty of successful companies with few clients, that make a ton of money because they are charging $100K/mo for their services.
I don't think it's necessarily wrong, but the first sentence splits a list of 3 use cases into 2 + 1... It should say, "comfort, use, and to minimize..."
You know what 99designers can't do? They can't visit your clients' offices. They can't justify their decisions in realtime. They can't 'sell' their design beyond simply clicking 'upload.' Basically, they can't be convincing to the people who hold the purse strings.

But you can. That's your job. You're a designer.
I really like the design, and the idea is nice. One suggestion I have is making some way to add books from your My Shelf page. I didn't see a way easily, and ended up just going to the browse page. I'm assuming that's probably the flow you want, but you may want to have a plus button or something on the shelf UI that links to the browse page for books.
i prefer a combination of other suggestions in the giant thread:

1) hide points

2) on the front page, randomly pepper in new submissions. like, perhaps the top 5 will always be the true top 5, but the rest of the front page will have 5 random "new" items inserted in random positions.
Ending in s' is only for plurals formed by adding -s or -es. Men's room, people's comfort, etc.
Speaking as an American who has spent time in Mexico, Spain and Ireland, and has traveled to southeast Asia: yes, Americans do sometimes have an arrogant view of the world.

On the other hand, knowing about other countries doesn't come as naturally here. If you live in Europe, you can take an overnight train ride to any one of a dozen countries, with whom you share a currency and often a closely-related language. An extreme example is Andorra, nested between Spain and France, where even before the Euro, they were too small to bother having their own currency, and natives basically can't get by without speaking French, Spain and Catalan, at a minimum.

Contrast that with someone who lives in Iowa. You can drive for days in any direction and not leave the US. You live in a huge country with lots of geographical and cultural variety. Your country is wealthy enough that you'd never go abroad for your job or education unless you were explicitly trying to see the world. Learning another language is wonderful and enriching, but there's no real economic reason to. And there's no doubt in your mind that your country is safe from foreign powers.

I'm not saying "let's all be ignorant of other people," but for many Americans, awareness of other countries is like a gold star of educational achievement, not an everyday necessity. I was eager to expand my horizons, but for many people that's just not on their priority list.

And besides, some people are just not curious about anything.
Can people tell me the order of preference? What alternative is most attractive after that.
In accordance with HN guidelines [0], please flag (via the `flag' link) submissions you consider spam, rather than commenting on them. If enough users agree (by flagging it too), it will be removed.

For the record, I want this article on HN.

----

[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I listen to 'Stuff You Should Know' by Chuck and Josh at HowStuffWorks.com. The topic is usually very interesting and the hosts are very entertaining. While it is usually very well researched, I like that it is light enough that I don't have to pay attention to every sentence.

Who Charted and Doug Loves Movies are pretty good 'brain off' entertainment as well. And I've listened to Planet Money and This American Life for years and years and years.
"Americans" is more idiomatic.

But - I bet NYU has_many Chilean, Canadian, Costa Rican grad students who would be annoyed at the implicit exclusion.
Indeed, but Britain is probably the other extreme. I believe there is only one country that could've produced magnificent material such as Monty Python or Fawlty Towers ;).
I really wanted to play with Lush, but it seems to have broken with Mac OS 10.6 -- which is why I ended up going with Clojure.
E.U. Talks With Microsoft Called a Contradiction
How can a business pushing ebooks be seen as an impartial source of information. If I was behind StartUp Britain I'd definitely push my own products.
Looks like they have a bunch of great shows I look forward to exploring.
Going with the same theme as the advice I gave above I'd suggest visiting Nettuts Vector/Illustrator site: http://vector.tutsplus.com/

They posted a tutorial just today that would probably teach you a good 80% of what you need to know: http://tinyurl.com/3vo3cqv
Has anyone compared this with Incanter, another lisp-based (clojure) stats environment?

http://incanter.org/

Both look like activity has died out recently... This is a shame, I was thinking recently about this issue. It seems that there is a real need for a stats environment based around a straight-forward general purpose programming language that can be easily parallelized and can easily access GPU functions. Although GPU functionality is still pretty narrow, it's growing, and linear algebra seems to have a place in statistical computing.

I have not yet seen anything that fits this bill, but Incanter is the closest. Clojure has the Calx library for OpenCL. Last I asked around, nobody had put the peanut butter in the chocolate just yet.
I think the best way is just by doing. You start with an idea in mind, for example a metallic logo for a website , or a wood background texture for an iphone app, or rounded border gradient button. So look for tutorials in google, you will find a lot, so look for one you like the final result and make it.

By doing tutorials you will learn a lot of tricks and concepts on how to combine layers, styles, create shapes, etc... at the same time you will get work done (with better or worse results but done) Then becoming a pixel perfect designer it's just a matter of practice, and by combining the tricks and concepts you will learn in the tutorials, you will be able to do whatever you may want.

You will find nice tutorials in places like:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
One of the biggest benefits -- which thankfully gets a line or so halfway down -- is that induction motors require far less cooling accessories. This is big for cost and weight savings.
Preparation Tips for the JNCIE-ER Certification Exam
In any case, what matters most for a band is how many attend their public performances. Both for the reasons of revenue (bands usually get reasonable cut of concerts revenue) and for the reasons of publicity.

And self-esteem ;-)
Granted, but surely startup britain is better than nothing? And it seems like the entrepreneurs behind it have some real-life business experience, no?
I happen to have a friend who was forcibly admitted to a mental hospital as a result of delusions and suicide attempts. I visited him a lot, and while there were many things that were disappointing about his treatment there, I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. Compared to the 60's (and earlier) it is very difficult to forcibly admit someone, and even if you do have a judge saying someone can legally be confined in an institution, it is in the institution's financial interest to get that person out of there as quickly as possible. The biggest problem with modern psychological treatment isn't shit like what happened to Turing; it's that for really serious disorders - asylums (instead of being improved) were replaced with the street.

Incidentally, my friend, while he didn't enjoy his time at the hospital at all, will tell you he's glad the judge forced him in. He probably wouldn't be alive otherwise.
M&A Issues: Price
This seems a bit more accurate for New Yorkers than as a primer for Americans in general. "Observe their focus on themselves, rather on than their families" was particularly a "bwuh?" for me. In a university area (my local one is definitely like that), sure, but not in general.
I am a mentor for 4th graders with the Science Club for Girls (http://www.scienceclubforgirls.org/). At the beginning of each session we listen to tracks on this site to get everyone calmed down and focused for the weekly activity. They thought it was silly at first, but now they request it!
Engineering, accounting, and other +regulated+ fields use social engineering to solve the problem of how to be paid handsomely. What they have done is convince society that there should only be a limited number of engineers and accountants, those that are highly trained and have passed rigorous examinations. The imbalance of supply and demand takes care of the rest.

In those two fields, you can see that when supply is unfettered, compensation does fall. For example, accountants in Canada make fairly good money, but unlicensed "tax preparers" do not.
The "manager" of the band is stuck in the old media model of the music industry. I would be delighted if my album was downloaded 100K times- I'm sure I would see corresponding increase in Twitter and Facebook followers, YouTube subscribers and live show attendance, merchandise sales, etc. When are the music industry people going to get that? I would think that this would be common sense?!
Fantastic. Thank you, good sir.
Please don't alert based on percentages
High volume makes high quality both possible and necessary.

If a company sells 500 $500,000 sports cars a year, it isn't going to have much information about problems that happen at the 1:1000 level. Toyota, on the other hand, is able to think about problems that go wrong at the 1:10,000,000 level with Corollas.

This is why the "six sigma" label makes some sense... Big corporations really work on a scale where problems at the six sigma level really turn up regularly.
I would check with a lawyer for legal issues.

See http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Federal-Laws/ for a list of articles on some of the gambling laws. In particular if you become popular, users will begin betting on sports, putting you squarely afoul of http://www.gambling-law-us.com/Federal-Laws/sports-protectio....

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but there is a reason that the bazillion gambling websites out there are not US based.
Back to Work (http://5by5.tv/b2w) is one of my favorites too. It's not tech-centric, but offers some fantastic insight into life outside of the text editor. And if you're lucky, Merlin might do a Dr. Phil impression.
You might also try adjusting the number of books that load at one time from 10 to 12 or something divisible by 4 so that you load complete shelves and don't have half a shelf loaded.
From my experience, there has never been any confusion about which country I am from when I tell a non US citizen that I am "American". I have also never, in actual conversation, heard somebody refer to the totality of western hemisphere landmasses as "America". It is always either North America or South America. The only exception I can think of in that regard is when discussing "The Americas" from the perspective of 15th and 16th century European exploration.
It only makes sense to have experts on topics that are clearly objectively and experimentally verifiable. Otherwise there is no way to identify truth and we abuse statistics to go in circles - this would be okay except it has the consequences of tarnishing the view of all science as wishy washy in public opinion. Note that in time, topics can move to become objective subjects.

Experts have a tricky road. The advice a good one gives is nuanced and filled with caveats. But people don't like that. They want definites. So there are some "experts" who sound like experts and they are dangerous. Especially when it comes to anything which involves taking action based on prediction. An expert's opinion is unreliable for forecasting, especially when compared to crowds or novices, basic algorithms and animals with simpler brains - e.g. little or no better than random. Human biases are too hard to get over, not to mention information limits and complexity of the process generating the probable events impossible to get a head around.

---------

Here is what one expert, Richard Feynman, has to say on the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPunpjeFaiQ
Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
There is something weird with the logic that lack-of-options (or hiding options) makes something a perfect design. To me, just one button in all the margin "whitespace" is a huge waste.

By that article's standard, this transparent phone is actually "more" perfect:

http://www.gsmarena.com/mobiado_and_aston_martin_show_transp...
Over this past weekend I had the idea to build a sort of link shortener but with a payment system built-in. There have been many times in the past where I wanted to share a link - on Twitter or just through IM with a few friends - but did not want to go through the overhead of setting up a whole store.

So I built Gumroad. I coded/designed from 12PM -> 11PM on Saturday and 8AM -> 11PM on Sunday. There are still tons of features missing (I'm working on AJAX file uploading next!) but I think it's reached that - buzzword alert! - MVP stage where I want to see if anyone's actually going to use the darn thing (I'm thinking about taking a 30% cut).

Here's an example Gumroad link: http://www.gumroad.com/l/hjbaod - I use Stripe for payments. Here are some screenshots I took while making it: http://letscrate.com/gumroad/gumroad-progress - I didn't use Photoshop so no crazy time-lapses!

I think it has some potential. What do you guys think?
I listen to:
http://thechangelog.com/
and a lot of the 5by5 stuff
I know of some guys working on a project called NowJS that should take care of some of your socket woes.

http://nowjs.com/
The Moth Podcast
But you give up a certain amount of "Control".
The beautified source code: https://gist.github.com/901751
I like the design and idea. One thing you might think about is letting people put their own amazon referral id (for a cost or something). I recently asked Hacker Newsletter subscribers what books they were reading and had a great response, so I created a page to display the results (http://www.kaledavis.com/2011/03/25/hnl-book-list-vol1.html). Amazon astore's are just not what I was looking for, but something like this would work pretty well.
Kaji Ulang Kata Poso oleh John Lusikooy