skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nobody mentioned the Leechblock Firefox plugin yet. Of course it only helps you by blocking chosen sites after a predefined spent time (highly configurable), it won't solve your problem for you.

But at least it gives you the "trigger" by bringing your attention to the fact you've already spent your alotted time goofing off.
Is there a way to specify the "license" for the pivot code? This might be handy--sites could take free improvements if they want--if a devoted user wanted to improve a site they dearly loved.

Additionally, you could let people sell pivots right on the site. I'm sure you're thinking of these things, though.
my level of agreement could be qualified as "strong" to "quite strong".
The idea behind the post was interesting at first. Unfortunately, I think you try to cover way too much. And in covering so much you fail to develop the connection between the two histories you discuss. Finally, to the end of the post is a jumble of semi-related ideas that are poorly connected.

I would suggest something like this to make it more readable:
-Intro
-History of Publishing
-How ^ relates to history of journalism
-History of journalism
-How both histories shape the present state
-Your ideas about the future

That seems pretty ambitious for a blog post though.
For my money the answer is yes! What Techcrunch did well back in the day is that it covered the startup scene -- HN improves upon that by acting as a link toolkit of sorts. Also unlike Techcrunch which was top/down this site is really about the community (i.e. the quality of the comments) so you've captured some of the magic of reddit/digg. What's interesting to me is that this has nothing to do with the technology, but with the curation skills of the community.
check this out: http://radio.rinse.fm/
http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

I'm not sure where I first heard about this, but it has drastically improved my productivity. It doesn't do much to get me started, but it keeps me from leaving my workflow once I'm already there. The short breaks keep me from getting too drained, but I'm always back on time and working again. I love being a slave to my timer.

I usually use http://tomatoi.st/ to keep track, but there are a bunch of other apps to help you out.
I'm not convinced. Isn't HN the new Digg, and Digg was the new Slashdot?

These 3 sites (HN, Digg, Slashdot) are all user submitted stories. Techcrunch is just one source of many for those stories.
Whatever happened to usability
Lots of good commments here. I find the LeechBlock Firefox extension a helpful tool: very configurable. You can block certain sites at different times, or allow yourself a given amount of time on a site per day.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/
The http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html code was written on one flight, for another example.
I too wish I had a shitty product like that. However:

> And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap.

Are you really successful at that, though? 9 times out of 10 when I use craigslist the transaction is a horrible experience--for example:

- the buyer of an item claims it, then flakes out
- the seller of an item jacks up the price at the last
minute, when I'm there in person, saying, "oh well
there are 5 other people that want it"
- potential rideshare flakes out, or changes plans at
the last minute
- potential landlord turns out to be unreliable

The one area where I have had great success with craigslist is hiring, which I suspect is due to craigslist charging for job listings (which keeps the bar high).
Here's four of my productivity hacks. The rest is actually quite similar to what jarin has said.

- The Pomodoro technique. I use Vitamin-R (great app for OS X)

- Immidiately when I see something that looks interesting but I really shouldn't be reading I send it to Instapaper. Each day I get the new stories from Instapaper automatically sent to my Kindle for bedtime reading. If you don't have a Kindle, get one!

- If it's a video, comments or something that's not really readable on the Kindle, I send it to pinboard.in

- When you eat breakfast, prepare a thermos of green tea for consumption through the day. It doesn't sound like it would be different from drinking coffee or energy drinks, but drinking green tea actually gives you a different type of energy. Instead of the energy rush energy drinks and coffee gives you, you get a more long lasting and natural feeling type of energy. It tastes good and is really healthy too.
I can't really argue that that doesn't make the most sense, but, at the same time, I also find it kind of scary. In essence, I obviously choose the start and end points of the transit, but I have no control over where my packets go in between.
App Pricing Experiments
...isn't this all covered by /etc/hosts ? Seems like reinventing the wheel..
"These are civil liberties that our forefathers fought, bled, and died to give us."

The poster is Swedish. Sweden's last war was fought in 1814 to occupy Norway. Before that it fought in the coalition against Napoleon so that it could demand Norway in the peace settlement. Previous to that Sweden fought in the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 to maintain and extend its Baltic empire and in the 30 Years War to defend Protestantism in Germany and to seize the basis for said empire.

I suggest that the existence of civil liberties and democracy in Sweden has more to do with peaceful activism and good government that with bloodshed and violent struggle.
You're mistaken about how that works. Amendments amend what comes before them. In the most absurd case, that logic could be used to say that the 3/5ths compromise is "more deeply rooted in the Constitution" than the 14th Amendment.

Courts have long recognized that the Copyright Clause exists "in tension" with the First Amendment and, therefore, have tried their best to harmonize the two.
The Easiest Way to Change People's Behavior (2009)
Nice to see some more start-up activity in the mid-west!
Duluth MN BarCamp Attracted Khan Academy and MIT Fab Labs
“How to Put Together a Slide Deck” by Startup Riot’s Sanjay Parekh
http://174.132.225.106/
That site has too much focus on things I dont care about: # of points, the site thumbnail, and the name of the site.

HN is the perfect design for a social news site, imo. It gives most of the attention to the links and discussion and pushes the other stuff to the background.
Those are paid app revenues only, though. Because of Google's focus on advertising, that's becoming a very viable alternative method of revenue for app producers. Look at Angry Birds, who is bringing $1m per month on Android [1] and doesn't have to sell to as many new customers to maintain those numbers. Eventually, they're going to hit a wall. $.99 is great up front, but $0.05 a month from 5x the number of customers is better.

[1] http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-m...
> Until the 19th century, you would pay to watch a theatrical or listen to live music because it was the only fair price available.

Actually, no. Locals often performed for free. It was part of the whole community thing.

> you wanted a picture of yourself, you had to pay Renoir to make an original portrait.

Or, you did it yourself. Or your a member of your family or a neighbor did it.

Drawing used to done by far more people.
+1

not to mention that some people just do better when they have more than one project running concurrently.

A contrary approach to working non-parallel is the little and often philosophy (Mark Forster talks about this in his time management books). Working on big projects in small chunks, but with great regularity.

Personally I only switch to a strictly 'serial' approach when I'm faced with a deadline, I'm in a zone or when I'm feeling stubborn about getting something solved. The problem with serial mode is that it tends to reduce quality and drains energy to an extent.
If I end up at TC these days it's because of a link here.

I used to check web20.originalsignal.com multiple times a day to keep up with TC (and the others) but their constant forcing of crunchgear/etc exerts into their RSS feed turned me off that, and their topic-incest turned me off actually going to the site a long time ago.
Google Begins Tightening Its Grip On Android. Manufacturers control removed.
Significant Radiation Leak into the Ocean at Fukushima
Asteroids with cocos2d tutorial (iOS)
Digg is nothing like HN. Granted, they are popular user submitted story sites with comments, but it's about the community. I visited Digg for a few weeks then stopped going because there was frankly lots of crap and trolls on the site. That is not to say that HN doesn't have some bad cookies here and there, but I got fed up with Digg when I saw lots of ignorant comments that were just meant to be hateful rather than for a positive discussion (particularly in the religious domain). HN for the most part, stays on the topic of startup/tech news, and has reasonable discussions.
Apples and oranges in my opinion. Techcrunch is not a community driven site but rather a contributer driven site.
Will we even be still talking about 'smartphones' in 2016 - a term made up by analysts after all. These are all just a particular size of wireless tablet computers.
BLDGBLOG: Seismic Decentralization
> The interesting point was his invention led to religious transformation by Luther and Calvin.

I know that's the generally accepted viewpoint, and maybe I learn towards it, but I still think its arguable, given the existence pre-Gutenberg of the Waldenses and the Carthari, Jan Hus and his followers, all of whom had reformation-style ideas.
Here's how I do it, improvements welcome: https://gist.github.com/875467
The tags at the bottom of bestofe.com make it look more like it's focused on "get rich quickly" schemes than entrepreneurship.
How come no one has mentioned the Pomodoro Technique?
I started using it about a month ago, and I can tell you it's been my most productive month ever. I use the Pomodoro for Mac app to keep track of time. They recommend 25 minutes work blocks, with 5 minutes in between and 10 minutes every 4 blocks.

I found out that I prefer 40 minute blocks, with 5 minutes breaks, and then 20 minutes every four blocks to disconnect from everything and relax.
Just sent you an email. I'd like to know a little more about the site.
Don't forget that Apple usually sells the previous generation iPhone 8GB for cheaper. You can now get a 3GS for $50 on ATT. I still use a 3GS, and it's still a great phone.
Can you get any Windows-running laptop, or only from a given vendor or vendors?
For free apps, the lock in is minimal. But if someone has an investment of $100 or however much in paid apps, that's another story.
-wake up
-wash face and brush teeth.
-I set up my dev/work environment (terminal, textmate, browser on localhost, skype, etc) make sure that when I sit on my desk I don't need to do anything but work. I even make sure that I'm on the right git branch and check my status, check my tasks for the day and have the code I'm gonna work on up on the screen. Although I'm still a little sleepy (I need my coffee), I push through to get setup.
-Check my emails while in the bathroom
-make coffee/breakfast
-read HN or other news stuff while I eat.
by now, my environment is setup, my emails are checked, my news are in, my bowels are moved, my stomach ain't empty and I'm ready to hack away.

During lunch, I might check news/HN again, facebook for a sec, etc.
Are there bloggers here who primarily submit to HN for their audience? And if so, if you listed them all, how would HN stack up to the Techcrunch roster?
Wait...

At a certain point, you have to ask, "What is two tasks and what is one?"

Currently I'm working on a GUI. In the testing phase, I notice a number of bugs. I can usually get an idea what's needed to fix each bugs and then do all the fixes before I have to go back to another testing phase. Am I "multitasking" since I don't necessarily tackle each bug separately?

This certainly seems much faster than shops where I had to always be working on bug X at any given moment.
You make a good point. But if you're looking at it as a winner-take-all (or winner-take-most) market like a lot people do, the phone is where the battle lies. Once your phone is beefy enough to be your media player, game machine, phone, and GPS, most people won't have differentiated / specialized devices.

Q4 iPod sales were down 11% year over year. I'd look for that to accelerate as smartphones become more ubiquitous.

If you want #s of everything, here's what a quick googling yielded:

Android shipped 33.5M devices in Q4
Apple shipped 27.34M iPhones/iPads/iPods in Q4
(~14M iphones, ~4M iPads, ~9M iPods)

Presumably some meaningful percentage of iPods were NOT iPod touches (i.e. no App Store), so shave 3-5M off of Apple if you're trying to guess iOS devices.

So conservatively, about a third more Android devices shipped in q4 than all iOS devices combined. That's BEFORE the 7% market share boost that Fred is talking about.

(this is quick/sloppy research-- feel free to point to better #s).
Show HN: OneSong.me - Describe me in one song
If you were to describe your friend in one song, what song would it be? Thats what http://OneSong.me is.

Not to forget, it was inspired by ThreeWords.me and Gabriel Weinberg's post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2168220, and written using Java Playframework and hosted on Google Appengine.

Any feedback is welcome. Anything I can do to make it viral?
True, but going back a few years, Digg had a very similar community to HN. As it branched out into other topics it really lost focus and is the site we never visit today :)

Many HNers are former Diggers. It's just been a few years.
$ while true; do sleep 20m; xmessage 'stretch' &; done
I thought a strawman was a rhetorical device where you make up a weak version of your opponents argument and knock that down as a way of winning an argument in the eyes an audience who doesn't spot the flaw you introduced.
Clickable: http://OneSong.me
People chase what inspires them. The problem is that there are no heroes in science like there are in sports. Here are a couple of ways to inspire people:
1) Huge prizes like the X prize for a variety of breakthroughs (milestones in energy independence) Prizes should be 10M+ so they get a lot of media attention. Turn the scientists into media celebrities. The main benefit is that the government gets huge leverage for every dollar spent and doesnt spend any money until a milestone is reached.
2) Create competitions for students to teachers to professionals to compete in at every level similar to sports. Televise (reality tv) and make the competitions fun. Make the prizes 100K plus.

----------------------
This is happening already with entrepreneurs - a few young hotshots getting really wealthy in technology startups should generate interest in science/math/tech. But definitely have inspired a generation to start their own tech businesses.

Dancing with the stars, american idol, all the chef shows - have all increased interest in those fields/hobbies.
Very interesting idea -- we will definitely think about it!
nop, reddit is the new digg, HN is the new reddit
http://www.phds.org/reading/schwartz/market.pdf

http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/miscelanneous/aiprep0...

http://physics.tsu.edu/Academics/EDphysund07.pdf

Some good examples of how degrees in physics have changed relative to population, enrollment, job markets, etc...
But seanalltogether never said it was just about lighting. He mentioned, "camera lens, filters, and lighting."

Your dissection of what is wrong with Samsung's interpolation had nothing whatsoever to do with seanalltogether's comment.
I'm not sure it's such a good idea to be associating your site to Digg. People's views on Digg have declined lately.

I agree with benofsky too, the site just feels like a link farm.
I envision a table filled with a grid text input boxes and some buttons to add more rows or columns and maybe to do a few other things. We'll do things server-side if we have to.

Ugly as sin? Slow as hell? Absolutely. Probably doable, though.
Yes, it's one party consent, two party notification. There was clear expectation of privacy (it wasn't a public meeting in a cafe, or a press conference). Hiding the identity of the outsourcing guy might legally change things -- I actually have no idea. The firm is trivially identifiable, but it might be enough. Regardless, it's irresponsible.

More ice blocks and real guerilla marketing, less bragging about violating employment laws or wiretapping vendors, please.
Angry Birds Rio Achieved 10 Million Downloads in Just 10 Days
I can relate to the feeling/temptation, but I cannot relate to your sense of loss in productivity.

Work on stuff that matters; the fear of fucking up will always outweigh the temptation of fucking around.
HN is HN.
Or VirtualBox (or VMWare). (There's nothing novel in this suggestion, but since it hasn't been mentioned here, yet.)

If you can use it in your current work environment, you can start shifting work items over and see how it goes / (re)learn a "UNIXy" way. Having real goals, and payoffs, is a big motivator.
"The logo is on fire," explains one surfer. "Why is the logo on fire?" she asks. "Uh," he stammers as the enthusiasm in his voice quickly dissipates, "it's a flaming logo."
>Doesn't it also have a clause that says anything not declared in here are relegated to the states, or to the people?

That would be the tenth amendment, yes.
True enough!
You are just another order higher.
I think Techcrunch is community driven because you read the comments more then the actual posts themselves.How many times have you ''Skip To comments'' on TC
You are trying too hard.
The prices he mentions are unsubsidized and contract free.
>everything not mentioned in the Constitution is a right of the people.

Prior to the Bill of Rights, that was not the case. As I mentioned elsewhere, the "everything else is a right of the states or the people" clause is in the tenth amendment.

Edit: AND in the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Calling All Ascetic Buddhist Rock Musicians (fixing HTTPS)
Whether switching back and forth between two tasks makes sense really depends on the kind of tasks you're doing. Sometimes you're doing something with unavoidable delays, and you either work on something else or you don't do anything.

I agree with the general thrust of what he's saying - if you're not blocked it makes more sense to do one task at a time to completion instead of having a bunch of them going at once. But it's really rare to have a job where you can always do that.
seriously??? can your mom successfully post and ad on CL, including verifying her email?

and can she bold the important words in the ad? even the newspaper classifieds, as dumb as they were, made that easy for the most basic user.
HD, streaming, Facebook/Twitter are now mainstream in India - Cricket World Cup
Is this making some usability mistake? It seems like it has straightforward HTML that will work fine if the spiffy stuff isn't supported.
Amazing point. Unlike an above commenter, I often spend more time on a site like HN because so much more of the content seems "interesting". However, this isn't the right metric, and you are spot on with that.
I suggest that the existence of civil liberties in many countries has to do with the example set by the American war of independence, and the French revolution (which was itself inspired by the other one).
No, plenty of people do it (myself included), just don't spam and be a HN'er of good standing (i.e. posting your own articles shouldn't be your only activity here)/
I would say no. For a while now Apple/Twitter/Facebook have dominated TC. TechCrunch has shifted from startup/funding focused stories to more mainstream tech news.

HN will always have an awesome community that TechCrunch never had. HN is a place to exchange ideas and read about what's going on in the startup industry.

I sure hope this place doesn't become the new TechCrunch...
They calculate the positions. Though recently the railway implemented a system in their trains that seems to use GPS to inform passengers on realtime arrival times. So perhaps in the future they will make GPS data available in their API.

The railway company is kinda behind on how the world (of data) works, and they have for a long time considered this kind of information as exclusive information that nobody else should be able to access. Despite being government owned..
A strawman argument is one which you specifically constructed for the purposes of knocking it down.

A strawman fallacy is a fallacy in which you replace your opponent's actual argument with a strawman argument, and then assert that defeating the strawman argument defeats the opponent.
I think there were a few times when we had blips higher. In the late 1800s and early 1900s and during the space race. I can't find specific data on it, so it is possible that re-written history has led me astray on this point.

I also think, given the pipeline visible in research, we will have a resurgence in a decade or two.
i don't think it's just envy that makes entrepreneurs mad. CL is also quite litigious (but in a hypocritical capricious way), which is generally out of step with the rest of data-is-free, api-driven world.
Yes, unfortunately.

HN lately is much more about entrepreneurship and startup PR than it is about crafting software.

Not that it's bad, it's just that the ratio has gone out of hand. I question wether "Hacker News" is an appropriate name for this place anymore.
My fake discipline comment is a direct response to the havoc wrought by attempting to place a normal distribution, which worked so nicely in insurance when dealing with things like lifespan, on top of a chaotic system like finance. Long Term Capital Management, Value at Risk, and other models from very, very smart quantitative minds who simply misunderstood the problem space and almost took down the world economy. I call that a "fake discipline".
for now... CL will shut them down. or maybe they won't. investing your time in enhancing their data is a complete crapshoot.
Good point and rundown of the situation but I'd say the expectation of a new approach to law appearing will only be fallacious if we let it be by accepting the way things are going.

Laws on the books tend to be tied very closely with specific implementations.

Yes, the law as it currently exist is based on being able to preserve "differences that don't make a difference". It's developed incrementally, inductively and by analogy. The phenomena of generic information, of information that isn't tied to a physical manifestation, is anathema to the whole English Common Law tradition, the basis of our system of laws. Is a string of bits a song? a device for circumventing security? Hate Speech? Protected Speech? The law as it exists needs to answer this and yet can't answer this because the law needs a context and the free flow of information implies there no set context.

And so the legal system is going to be either be further and further removed from reality or institute an entirely totalitarian system to maintain its expectations.

Because generic information really doesn't consist of a series of "new devices" and "new contexts" but rather is a single, abstract and indivisible process; either every unique string of bits is free or it has an owner - which is it?