skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's see. There are two groups of people: people who would have passed the test and people who would not have. The people who would not have would most likely be hellbanned after their first 3 comments (and of course people are allowed to take the test as many times as they want). So you lose nothing. By using a test fewer legitimate people get hellbanned. In other words, this is only going to improve the situation. I'm not talking about a difficult test here: just a couple of questions like:

Comment: LOL

Is this an acceptable comment?

Right now people are used to that being an acceptable comment on the rest of the internet. These people currently get hellbanned on HN because other people downvote these comments. It's not a test for testing whether the people are acceptable on HN, it's method of teaching customs and a test for whether people have read the guidelines.
Classic line... the better question is: "Why can't developers see into the future?"

Programming is one of the worst jobs for dealing with people. Managers assume you have no life and work you 12 hours a day for a software product, telling you that it might save your job. It's all a ruse; once they get what they want, why pay for an expensive developer to support your new site or application?

If anyone asks me if they should be a professional developer I tell them 'Run away!'. I don't wish the experience on anyone.
This startup story emanates the true hacker spirit. Some good lessons in here as well.

1) You continuously provided something of value to your users.

2) You listened to what your users had to say and iterated accordingly.

3) You pivoted sensibly when your prime market was diminishing.

A good example of some basic startup rules that we often read about on HN, put into practice.
How we know that?
I mention it because I thought many of the ideas in there can be also used in website design. I particular liked how they consider brand and incorporating that in. I loved all the examples - so many. Not just talk. But prototype and evolutions.

I would also include "The Advertising Concept Book". To me a website is an ad. This book actually shows what worked what didn't - ads from the last 40 years for the masters. I love sketches to actually ads run. A lot of analysis on Apple ads. It was just an awesome, eye-opening book. So many case studies.

Side note; I think of account about typography in one of the books about FLICKR. Where if you were not careful what type you choose you would very much offend many people since the capital L and I might merge to be U.
Counting Clicks and Looking at Links (article on Google, 2008)
You're welcome! Glad to see you've already pinged the mailing list (I lurk).

Friday night networking! :-)
I don't know about that. I think a good hacker like Woz can be very very useful for Apple. While Apple are very good at creating a perception of perfection around their products, some of their stuff is definitely not perfect, or not even very good. This is especially true of things that are no longer in the spotlight.

Somebody like Woz that knows technology, is very practical, has common sense and a good eye for usability can be incredibly useful for Apple if put in the correct position.

But it ain't gonna happen. Jobs does not want to share the Apple creation myth with anyone.
Why Dropbox is dangerous
the thing of it is, most places charge you one setup fee... you don't have to pay extra for getting more sizes, so there is no reason not to get the XXXL and the XS. I know developers come in both sizes, and as so many other people in this thread have said, people, generally speaking, have a preferred T shirt fit, and if the T shirt doesn't fit that way, they won't wear it.

If you are buying for employees, it's easy enough to ask employees what their preferred sizes are. We all have a few tradeshow T-shirts at home, so we know how the various sizes of various brands fit us.

Buy some extra; some people will want two, if you have leftovers, mix them in with the next iteration, or leave them on the 'free' shelf in the break room, you know, for when your employees feel like upgrading out of their old copy that has developed holes.

If you are buying for the general public, well, you plan to run out, right? it doesn't really matter if you run out of the big sizes before the little sizes. keep track of what runs out of last and adjust accordingly next time.

If you end up taking home leftovers, mix them in with the next batch of shirts you give away.
Sorry, I never realized that - it is still interesting in any case.
Yep.

I used to work for big oil, and they would have 100-200 million dollar projects. Not software projects, actually building plants. Similar to software development, these were basically prototypes. Yes a lot of the technology was known, but they weren't exactly building cookie-cutter houses.

So the first round of estimates would be something crazy like +/- 80%, both money and timeframe.

If that seemed good, then they'ed fork over the money to get more specifications and more details, and come up with a new estimate. Maybe +/- 50%. Then they'd re-evaluate the viability of the project. And do that a few more times, spending more money and time each iteration, before they actually committed to the project or dumped it. At that point, the estimates were quite accurate.

So basically, the software version. How long will that feature take?

An experienced developer can spitball an answer. About a week. Then they start working on it. After a day-and-a-half, they're going to have a better idea if that's actually a three day project or a two-weeker or if it ain't gonna happen.

Or maybe they need a day-or-two or a week to do a spike to be able to provide that estimate. All well and good if you let them do the spike. Not so good if you demand an estimate when the developer has clearly said he has no idea.
great news...
these things happen

a couple of days sound good
I'm Hungarian and I think this is mildly disturbing ;-)
Ohhh, my bad, I totally forgot that people like selling things that don't exist but telling everyone else they do exist.
A short friend of mine complains that even the small American Apparel shirts end up looking like dresses on him. "It feels like I'm wearing a mini-skirt" he says.
Of course there's an XKCD comic about that: http://xkcd.com/799/
You can also try playing it in VLC directly.

Just use VLC's "Open Network File" menu command and paste the YouTube URL. Plays at highest resolution possible. Works great for me.
Actually, google translate is the best academic system there is. They never lost a single nist evaluation (for an example see http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/mig//tests/mt/2005/doc/mt05eval_... ), as far as I know, and they consistently publish intermediate results and details in their models.

If you go by your logic nobody ever writes software, as most of the building blocks were really invented by other people or adapted from other people's inventions.

And I say this as an NLP researcher.
Great post. I'd much rather read this type of success story than all the get rich quick examples given in mainstream media. You overcame obstacles and willed yourself to succeed.

One theme in your post I find really interesting. You talk about how your next move always came to you over time. That's really interesting, because you give the impression that the solution was not immediately apparent, and only after years of sales and feedback you realized how to evolve the business. Even if the data had been in front of you for quite some time, it seems that at some point a light bulb went on about how to expand, and from that moment it was obvious.
While the pronoun isn't inclusive, the sentiment isn't exactly gender specific. My Barbies raced around on Lego mindstorm cars ;)
Are you just making that up? R&D is around 10% of the US military budget (and the US military budget is roughly 50% of the world budget).

If the construction, deployment, staffing, etc was pointed towards space research and exploration, we'd be able to push forward all sorts of projects.
Where I think Woz would be a good fit for Apple would be speaking on college campuses and indirectly recruting the best talent for Apple.

But the biggest challenge would be for him to stay on message. First time he disagreed with Jobs in public as an Apple employee it would be very awkward. For that reason alone I don't think it would ever happen.

Woz is going to be the commencement speaker on May 6th at my alma mater, Michigan State University. They're planning a livestream of his commencement address and I will post the URL on here as soon as I receive it.
Gnome shell mandates compositing.
I actually had the same thing happen, so I'd like to know the answer if you find it.
"The Detroit RoboCop statue is a fitting cenotaph for the end of America, a goofy metal monument to everything wrong with the country." from http://takimag.com/article/robocrap
I agree with Ars on this one. And hopefully whether you're pro-Android or pro-iPhone or pro-whatever, you can appreciate some evasive corporate-speak when you see it. E.g.:

Rubin: What amazes me is that even though the quantity and breadth of Android
products being built has grown tremendously, it’s clear that quality and consistency
continue to be top priorities.

What does that even mean? Why are your priorities so amazing to you?

I think there have been some legitimate gripes about Android's openness lately (like manufacturer favoritism) and I was hoping for something more direct out of Google.
Or here: http://safe.mn/tools/#automatic-qr

(Discalimer: from my website)
Already rich, I have a wonderful family, and an enjoyable life.
You're absolutely right on the alert issue in the wiki: Displaying unsanitized text in this way is a security bug. However, I think the security bug is in the client app, which should sanitize any data it pulls from the server, if the server data may have originated from another user (if this is even possible in the current pageforest API) not in the inherent design of pageforest.

But that is indeed a good argument in your favor, ktsmith.
So, Rest of us will be notified to make sure that we are in that list of 50 applicants?
I wonder if running dropbox as a user with read access but no write permissions would solve this guy's problem. I also wonder whether it would work at all. :-)
Thanks for the quick replies. Given the additional information I can better answer your original question in the post of "would I use this." Due to the lack of a trusted agent anywhere in the stack I don't have any use cases that fit your model and so no I couldn't use it. Maybe a single player game or other toy. For the work that I typically do accessibility is also a huge factor and javascript can only be used for progressive enhancement so I couldn't create a 100% client side javascript application anyway.
Create a TV in Photoshop
In this tutorial you will learn how to create a TV in Photoshop from scracth.
nothing so far
>If you want to give swag - give something useful like a electrostatic-free strap. That always comes in handy.

Oh god. do you know someone who will print my logo on a ESD wriststrap? that would be /perfect/ for my company.

If you can find a vendor I'll send you one once I have 'em printed!
I agree, JavaScript development can be maddening, even with (and because of!) helpful plug-ins like Firebug. Lispers spoiled by swank/slime in emacs may like https://github.com/ivan4th/swank-js as a JavaScript dev environment.
Closure Compiler just errors out. "This won't run on IE, and you don't want it."
Yeah, Dwight really doesn't look good on that chart

I hadn't considered color-blindness. That's something I'll have to look into.

Thanks for your feedback :). I think you're right about the onmouseover... I've wondered whether a dropdown menu on the axis in the chart would work. We'll have to work on the visual aesthetic a bit more.
Likewise on references, oh you want references? Give me some references for your previous employees.
Thanks for the update, I did explain that to Kirsty in my mail. I know there are some folk over in the Convore chatroom in the same position, Convore's proved pretty useful today.
Ok, well I'm rather new here, but if 50 applications were accidentally marked as late, does that mean there were like 100+ applications overall? That's a lot of new companies. Are all these already for real, or are the bulk of them in the "programmer with an idea" stage?
Google woos enterprises to Android with new security offerings
I didn't think of it this way but yes, some of the ways to expand were in front of me and were really obvious in retrospect. I can't believe I didn't think about selling to ISPs sooner. It was definitely the biggest blunder I made.
I agree.

But, as a guy, I LMAO'd, because it felt so true.
At the same time lots of Indian's currently staying in US are migrating back to India. There used to huge difference in earning but the gap is now narrowing down.
Here's a list of editors with support for changing keybindings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors#Key_...
Call it "NudgeNudge.com"
Were those on-time-marked-as-late applications sent the rejection e-mail by default?
I'm totally going to pitch an application submission management system in the next round. I know of at least one potential customer.
Toronto's Pushlife acquired by Google for $25 Million
Last I heard, the YC crew doesn't announce numbers because they don't want to get into phallus-measuring competitions with other organizations; but based on numbers published in the past I'm guessing somewhere between 500 and 1000 applications.
تحميل ون بيس 493 One piece مترجمة 
تحميل, ون, بيس ,493, One, piece ,مترجمة تحميل, ون, بيس ,493, One, piece ,مترجمة تحميل, ون, بيس ,493, One, piece ,مترجمة تحميل, ون, بيس ,493, One, piece ,مترجمة
Possibly; however Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 and ES2, and Constellation 1 and 2 TB; Hitachi Deskstar and Ultrastar 1, 2 TB, and Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB desktop and pro are all physically exactly identical.
PG has said repeatedly and publicly that he did Viaweb to get rich.

It's bad PR to talk about getting rich, that's why people rarely do it.
I agree, I work at a company where they try to sell us $30 shirts with the logo on it... Nobody buys and it makes you feel shitty.
I'm actually partial to keeping FPO images as default and gray as possible. That way everybody knows exactly what is temporary, and there is no confusion.

"Everything looks great but we're not crazy about the vegetable picture you chose."

"...Yes we agree, that is a temporary image and can be ignored."
Django Authentication using an Email Address
placekitten was actually the inspiration for this website (to make it possible to show pages with placeholder images to humorless clients).
People on forums can call many things... but it's still the Canonical staff that makes the decisions (Tech board in this case).
Since we're already at a disadvantage of being the over-quota bunch, I say all 50 should be allowed to pitch in person if they pay for their own trips. ;)
Yes - this app is not a good example of doing this "right" (my bad). It should instead sanitize the input before displaying it (especially to another user).
"how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a wouldchuck would chuck wood"

That isn't really the best example, considering how these systems tend to work. If their system has a giant bank of text it's using to predict the statistical likelihood of your next word, once you've said "how much wood ..", 'would' is a very high probability candidate for the next word, and once you get to 'woodchuck' the rest is statistically almost inevitable.

A better 'difficult' test would be something along the lines of 'colorless green ideas sleep furiously', although we can't actually use that one since that example is so famous it would likely turn up in a web-derived corpus many times.
Estimates are unimportant. Why? Because most conversations about estimates go thusly:

Client: "How long will it take?"

Dev: "Approximately three weeks."

Client: "We need a firm date."

Dev: "Fine, April 29th."

Client: "Unacceptable. We require this functionality by April 10th."

Dev: "I could only possibly do it by April 10th by having the entire team work day and night until then."

Client: "Excellent. We look forward to launching on the tenth."

And then, they're pissed off when you pull off the incredible and deliver a three week build in three days.

Fuck everything about this business.
One other small note. I don't see where document management is handled. I see the document listing and can get back and forth between documents I've created, but I don't see any way to delete those documents.
Free Throw Fail
I happen to be in California this week for a client. I'd be happy to run up to Palo Alto .... :-)
Flagged for stupidity. (Actually, for being not-news, not-interesting.)

// TL;DR Summary: "Why, when I stop paying for service, does Flickr stop providing it? Those jerks."
I think he's claiming to be amazed by the manufacturers' prioritising quality and consistency. His next sentence is:

"Miraculously, we are seeing the platform take on new use cases, features and form factors as it’s being introduced in new categories and regions while still remaining consistent and compatible for third party applications."
Google profiles need to solve facebook's privacy problem. Do what the competitor's aren't doing. Let us have control over what we share. They disrupted email with with gmail (by offering the storage space people wanted) they should do the same for social.
I guess I fail to see what the big deal is here. Everyone agrees that Google is going to release the source code when it's "done", and that this is going to be some time in the relatively near future.

Terms of open-source licenses have been adhered to.

It sounds like they probably incurred some code debt rushing this out, and they want to clean it up before people start running with it. They themselves have said it doesn't even run on phones--to appreciate why that's bad, just imagine what Gruber would have written about it.
These services are quite cool, but I keep getting bizarre/distracting images (read: not great as placeholders).

For instance: http://lorempixum.com/output/sports-h-g-640-1920-8.jpg, http://lorempixum.com/output/fashion-h-c-300-420-7.jpg
oh god, so this means that because I'm hosting a VPS for some italian, they think that prgmr.com is in italy? it sounds like an even worse idea than looking at the address in the whois.
SpectraLogic tape libraries are insanely great. IMO they're the best available. Unfortunately they're quite expensive, sensibly more than Overland equivalent. An Overland Neo 8000e should cost about 60000 bucks, to which you must add 350 60$ LTO-5 tapes. However the power usage cost will be negligible, while 500 TB of drives will burn more than its price in power and AC every year.
Reflections on the 10 Years Since the Agile Manifesto
Woz went back once before, and at one point his manager actually gave him a bad review. Good thing it was pre-internet, or the mgr would never live it down.
This is none of my business, but I'm a little confused. I don't see why pg/yc has to apologize. When was the last time a vc acted like he was obligated to hear your elevator pitch, let alone read your huge application---and not only do that, but do it FAIRLY, without giving undue advantage to some other guy with a plan and an MVP (...or not)?

</none of my business>
Any printing? What about a joke or a picture of a panda bear or something like that.
> Basically, it is unfortunate that the standard academia is publishing papers (or pdf files) rather than publishing libraries. With this standard, the academics can't even readily use each others algorithms with this situation.

I am not sure code should be the uniform standard for judging (computer) scientific work. It is much harder to review/validate a theory when it is supplied in the form of code than paper.

Of course code can serve as an addendum to your work or may be useful as a demonstration of it. (Many academic authors do seem to do this)
I'm referring you specifically to the second link I posted which is not from the forums but from the mailing list from which all this speculation arose. The forums don't mean anything, it's just where I originally found the pertinent link.
I wasn't trying to pick on your wiki app, it was just a readily available example where input/output sanitization wasn't happening. I'm not sure what your target demographic is, but I would be surprised if this wasn't a very common problem that your potential users encounter. One of the advantages of many of the server side frameworks is that they provide this type of sanitization for free.
"The report of my death was an exaggeration." -- Mark Twain

I was having a look at Terabyte drives in Best Buy yesterday, and while wondering how well a model might work with Linux, I realized, now the display computers actually have internet capability, I should be able to look it up right there in the store! So, I wander over to a convenient laptop, kick it out of screensaver mode, start up the browser, and plug in the product name. Only after I hit the search button did I notice WHAT service I was using. Added bonus: Google was NOT an option.

I'll believe that Bing is dead when it isn't the default search engine in the default browser on the default operating system at the default computer store.
I think this is called comunism

I think communism is chiefly defined by public ownership.

What I propose is an obviously crazy impractical outlawing of owning big houses with much better then average infrastructure. It would still be perfectly legal to have tons of money and lobby your politicians hard. So think of it as law against big, fancy houses, and gated communities.
That's especially a problem if you follow the "buy American Apparel" tip. Their women's sizing is miniscule; my wife tends to wear medium-to-large shirts in other brands, but has to go up to their XXL before they'll fit her.
Right because before I had to keep random acquaintances as friends and read their updates in order not to hurt their feelings, now I have to fly to random places in order not to hurt peoples feelings. Can't wait.
I've had the opportunity to meet with and talk with Woz before. The man really can't be anything but honest and he just loves talking - to anyone - about technology. He's almost the anti-Apple in that respect.
What do you think Google should do that Facebook doesn't let you do with its privacy settings?

In my opinion, Google is even more open than Facebook about user data...
> I think there have been some legitimate gripes about Android's openness lately (like manufacturer favoritism)

Android has always done that, it did it with the G1, nexus1, nexus S and now xoom. In some case it took them a month to release the source, other cases two months. In this case it will take a bit more (probably 4), so what? Big deal, Android is Apache license, this is completely fair game and as for manufacturer favoritism, here is the list of manufacturers who already have access to Honeycomb source:

* Motorola

* Samsung

* LG

* HTC

* Acer

* Toshiba

* Asus

* Dell

* Archos

Sure Motorola got it first, but the same happened with every Android release, again, big deal. Sounds like FUD to me.
Guys, they are talking about having a classic-desktop OPTION by default. Otherwise people will have to install gnome2-desktop to get it. Unity will be the default.
http://www.technori.com/ coordinates an informal gathering every Friday.
I think this is a great example of why you should look to your customers for inspiration but not necessarily specific direction.

Although your users might not want 'another login to manage twitter data' they also probably wouldn't want every startup in this space to go the same route and create a browser extension you can have unlimited logins, you can't run unlimited browser extensions.

I would put the web app on top priority as for now I'm put off installing yet another browser plugin.