skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How many people are going to scrutinize the voter list, or keep track of which people voted which way over time? And how many of the voters are really going to care?

I've probably voted thousands of times on various comments and articles on HN. Am I really going to care if someone sees that I voted this way or that way on some comment or other? I don't think so. I doubt many other people will either.
PhotoFit Me - The Open University
Life University + off course some dribbble, webcreme, smashingmagazine, etc... :D
I think it's partially because they manage so much money. I agree that they're overpaid, but maybe their funds don't think so.

Let's take a hedge fund manager who's making $10m a year. If he's managing a $5b fund, even if his performance is 0.2% better than that of someone who works for free, he has "earned" that $10m in terms of value added.

Now, why they charge over 1% is another question...
This was a long thread, and I have no idea whether my response will be noticed. But I've been around a lot of online communities, for a lot of years, and there is one thing that I have noticed. The key to sustaining quality seems to be barriers to entry.

It doesn't much matter what the barrier is. A commenting system that crashes and destroys conversations occasionally, driving away people who are not sufficiently invested. A focused remit that drives away most people who see the site. A small group that does not advertise. But I've never seen any community sustain itself in a form that I want to be part of without some barrier to limit who gets involved in that community.

I'm not entirely clear on what the reasons are. Is it that we can only track a certain number of people? Is it that communities can only sustain themselves if turnover stays low? I don't know. But I've observed the rule in multiple places.

Given that, I've been surprised at how well HN held up. It started with a good seed. People who find pg interesting have a reasonably focused remit. The site lacks a lot of silly bells and whistles. People mostly find out about it through word of mouth. But still in the end without some barrier to entry, any sense of community is doomed. At least if my experience/opinions/etc is accurate.
I'd say that's possibly a not so interesting comparison, in the sense that python and clojure seem to have quite different name-usage patterns, but some values that may interest you: the size of __builtins_, the basic types and functions would be

len(__builtins__.__dict__.values()) #=> 143

but then you'd have to consider the methods/attributes on each object

len(list(chain( *[dir(o) for o in __builtins__.__dict__.values()]))) #=> 4133

but then again, most of these are either the same method that keeps appearing via inheritance, or a different implementation of the same protocol, so you may want to collapse same-named objects

len(set(chain( *[dir(o) for o in __builtins__.__dict__.values()]))) #=> 250

which added to the names of the first iteration gives you ~400 names, about half of clojure.

But a lot of code in python is in the standard lib even if not loaded as __builtin__, sadly, I'm not sure how to list/load all the standard library in one go.
What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier
Multitasking has been available since iOS 4.0. iOS 4.2 was the first version of iOS 4 to support the iPad, though.
Dont.
Seedcamp's success rate
Trying to find some info on Seedcamp winners from the last few years. Where are they now, what sort of funding have they received post Seedcamp investment. Any info or leads would be much appreciated.
What do you mean "risk losing your SSL?" Do you mean the "turn off SSL so I can access this canvas application?" thingy? As long as you don't click that, you shouldn't have to worry - if you've turned on HTTPS browsing, it only sends your auth cookies over HTTPS, so you're not vulnerable to downgrading attacks.

If that is what you mean, how do you think it could be less scary? The idea is to strike a balance between security and usability, and if we'd love to do a better job of that where possible! (I work on security at facebook, though not the HTTPS implementation directly.)
It happened to me with 3dicons.com. I searched for it and about week (don't remember exactly) later, it was "taken".
agreed, about the disconnect between state of the art and industry application of CV.
Algae Could Be Key to Cleaning Up Nuclear Accident Sites
Yeah, I find it pretty annoying that you can't deep link a comment as well, but I'm not sure how to make it better.

What do you think would be a good way to add that functionality, given that the comment plugin is running in an iframe on a different domain (so e.g. putting a hash in the top url won't be readable by the iframe)?
0.01% of Wikipedia as a printed book
True that design cannot be "made" with a degree, but I hope by saying that you're referring to having "the eye." There is a great deal of philosophy, conceptual thinking, and larger design research that goes into successfully completing a design degree and being a good designer. Yes, you might be able to find it on your own -- but going to a good design school will really strengthen your ability to form your perspective.
I paid $850 for a round trip to the Philippines and what you would have left over is easily enough to live here for 6 weeks.
Emperically that doesn't work - if it did, thousands of college students would not be so late with assignments.
As a though exercise, how would you extend this to work across national boundaries without triggering the usual arguments against world government?
Sure, people are currently happy with the current state of affairs.

That's different from hoping that IPv6 will fail, like the original poster did.

btw:

- Tricks like HTTP host header partial rewriting cannot be done with HTTPS. Sure, there's SNI, but that doesn't change the bottleneck problem.

- One IPv4 per household will be possible in USA, but other countries have much less IPv4 addresses. There's just not enough of them, and artificial scarcity makes no sense at all.
What are those little Xcode tips & tricks you wish you knew about 2 years ago?
Rather than downvoting you to oblivion, I'll point out that "Restricting the problem to a fixed size input makes factoring an O(1) operation" makes no sense. Sorting an array of N items using a comparison sort has a lower complexity bound of O(N log(N)) in the worst case. Yes, of course that becomes O(1) if you say N is constant, but that's really not helpful at all.
You should really check out some of the up and coming (and highly supported) Interactive Design degrees being developed and offered up at some of the top design schools. Interactive Design is the greater study of how both product, UX, and visual communications design all factor into the development of technologically based products. One of the ones that has been getting a lot of attention recently is the Interactive Design undergraduate major being newly offered at California College of the Arts (CCA) - great school. Some info:

About the Interaction Design Program
CCA’s Interaction Design Program will prepare students to create meaningful and innovative designed experiences in the realms of work, lifestyle, and play—from computers and mobile devices to interactive physical spaces, games, and social networks.

By learning investigative research, systemic thinking, creative prototyping, and hands-on building, Interaction Design students will be prepared to succeed and lead in this exciting field. Students develop technical skills (wireframes, flows, visuals, motion) for interactive canvases such as mobile, desktop, car, game console, film, sculpture, clothes, and buildings. The possible applications extend to numerous industries, from business to entertainment, education, and health.

Program Leadership
Dr. Kristian Simsarian, cofounder of the Software Experiences Practice at IDEO and adjunct professor in CCA’s Graduate Program in Design, has been tapped to chair the new program. He commented, “Surprisingly, there is not yet a consistent source for talent in this field. CCA, with its interdisciplinary environment, impressive facilities, and great location at the hub of the digital world, is the ideal place to build a world-class interaction design program. I am thrilled to be leading this effort. My passion in education is to be a guide for students to create the future from their own insightful, well-informed, and personally inspired visions.”

Silicon Valley Connections
CCA’s Interaction Design Program was created with input from thinkers at Google, YouTube, Apple, Intel, Nokia, and IDEO. Such companies, as well as nonprofit organizations, will take part in vibrant exchanges with students through sponsored studios and other project-based courses. Students will also have internship opportunities, enabling them to gain professional work experience and contacts, and to define their individual pathways to their future careers.
"C Interfaces and Implementations" by David Hanson is also worth looking at.
While the graphics are technically well done, I was offended by this movie. Prior to seeing it, I'd decided that, for me, the real 'test' of whether I could consider this a genuine sequel would be in the landscapes...

Tron came out in 1982. Ken Perlin won an Academy award for his work on the procedurally generated textures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise) used in the movie.

The Mandelbrot set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) got widespread fame in August 1985, with that famous Scientific American cover. Tron just missed that graphical opportunity! So, I figured, any true student of CGI involved in the sequel would relish the notion of putting some sort of tribute to Mandelbrot into the scenery (here are some examples: http://www.fractalforums.com/3d-fractal-generation/heightfie...).

How mistaken I was... Yes, I'm really bitter about producers and artists who don't care to know anything about the history of their art. And they had the presumption to call it 'Tron Legacy'??
How long does the passive cooling work?
Thanks, didn't know about that.

Do flags deduct from the karma of the article submitter?
MiFi Hotspot sharing app did it for me.
Here is a wonderful post that details exactly this for you:

http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us-corporatio...
It is quite interesting to see how much work has been done.
I was told by a friend, not a prof. But now that I'm a prof I can tell you that most students look at you weird if you go anywhere near politics in a CS lecture. Or even into biology / evolution.
Same goes for www.whois.sc that links to www.cheap-registrar.com - a reseller of GoDaddy domains.
Another thought, who would stand to lose the most from implementing such a system, and how much power would they have to oppose it? How would you assuage or neutralize their objections?
Happy Webmasters Day
AFAIK, the LuaJIT entries use custom, optimized scripts.
Leaked Document Shows UK ISP BT Planning Alternative To File Sharing
I do not agree with the author's conclusion that the model of industrial research (MS,HP IBM etc) is broken. We need places in industry to do basic reserach, if everyone was focuses on engineering or product based research (Apple, Google) it is not good for the over all ecosystem. Many inventions are made by pure serendipity we need to give the brilliant minds the freedom to pursue their research based on curiosity and interest.
It's a pretty fast download. It's possible that folks are downloading the book every time they come back to read more of it.

To check this, you could see how strongly browsers with built-in PDF viewers are being overrepresented in the logs--especially compared to some control web page that doesn't link to Learning Python the Hard Way (an unrelated blog post, say). (The point of the control web page being to measure the effect of people interested in programming-related topics using classier browsers with built-in PDF viewers.)
This article stops short of actually explaining how to interpret the text output. I just did a lookup on a domain I'm interested in, and I think it's expired -- it's registered with Tucows and it shows two expiry dates (XX-Mar-2011 and XX-mar-2012). This is kinda fishy since I checked the day before it was set to expire (~2 weeks ago) and the output never said anything about 2012. My gut tells me Tucows has renewed it for their client (or slyly making it seem like it's renewed). So... can I grab it yet?
First Gephi meetup in SF Bay Area
I think so too. I don't know whether submissions shouldn't give any karma, but in my opionion it should be limited. For instance they could start out with 0 points and the submitter gets a point for every 50 upvotes the story gets or something like that.
Another possibility would be to seperate submission and comment karma and may be have them limited in some way as well. There is currently a big mismatch, you'd need ~5 highly "appreciated" comments to get the same amount of karma one medium apple story "earns" you. This makes karma as - some sort of metric - less useful.

Regarding the "laughs" I don't really understand what the big deal is. I like a funny/sarcastic (read: not stupid) comment that shows at least some insight or understanding of the matter or just pokes fun at a particular view. This is necessary and healthy for a discussion.
Another movie that did reasonably well was Antitrust, using Gnome desktops for all the systems, though IIRC some of the commands used to undelete files may have been made up.
New App in review: CRM for the Services industry
I wonder how they handle the flash video streaming, and stuff secured via HTTPS (e.g. BBC iPlayer for iPad/iPhone). HTTP is easy to transparently proxy due to the "Host:" header, but HTTPS and many other protocols don't have anything equivalent. I suppose they could just have a lot of IP addresses and assign one for every host they proxy.

In general, I'm surprised such services stick around at all. You'd think the MPAA etc. would contractually require Hulu, etc. to routinely get accounts with such services, use them to sniff out the IPs and block them. I guess that means proxies aren't (perceived) a big enough threat. Yet.
local police != federal government
So... for those who missed it, what happened?
On OSX this will work for some Flash video implementations, but not others. (BBC iPlayer website: yes, Desktop: no; other UK TV channels: no) You can use https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle to transparently proxy all TCP connections (to whitelisted or non-blacklisted IPs) though. OSX and Linux only, though.
This recently happened me and I posted a thread about it here on HN. Godaddy responded to an angry tweet of mine, saying that they don't pursue this practice and asked if the domain was listed with their "privacy service". When they didn't respond to my reply to that, I emailed them. Customer relations replied that the domain is protected by their "privacy service" and they can't reveal who bought it, speculating it was an "individual".
> Did you watch the video? While I don't play violin, my wife's a composer (and plays viola & cello), and that 'electric violin' portion of the video was probably the most cringe-worthy part of the video.

I agree.

I'm a musician and compose. I also used to do live performances and loops in my more "experimental" music. This is an expensive toy for such limited use.

His target audience can't be classical musicians, because of all the nuances that go into physically playing an instrument. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge to realize this, so it makes me wonder why he or who in the world would suggest this. I've played simple virtual instruments and VSTs like this, and the dynamic range and capability is extremely limited. The only virtual piano I would play would be Synthogy Ivory. The keyboard on the Invisible Instrument app didn't even have more than one octave, as far as I was able to see.

Students wanting to learn an instrument would be hindered by this. Just for string instruments, learning how to tune and hold it, posture and the tactile dynamics is a world of difference. This toy would only contribute to acquiring bad habits, as you can tell when the creator begins to "play" the violin. Having said that, why would this app be for classical musicians?

If he incorporates a looping device or a sequencer into it, there might be a use for this within the rock/hobbyist/experimental crowd.

I don't like saying this, because it probably sounds really pretentious and/or condescending, but this is most likely for the non-musician; the person who is not interested in music. That is, it's meant for the person who has some spare time and spare money, or kids who get money from their parents and don't mind spending their money mindlessly.

Lastly, I think the only positive I can see in this is that it might be able to teach you theory. Otherwise, once you factor in the cost of the Wii Remote, it's an expensive toy that doesn't do much except trigger cheesy synthy sounds through Bluetooth.
Did that Wikipedia article disappear in the one hour since you've linked to it?

EDIT: Never mind, correct link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget
I'd love to work for a startup that just comes up with stuff like that.

One of my post-exit fantasies is to start a company that solves eccentric billionaires' (and casinos, Hollywood, and large corporations) crazy decoration problems, by designing new types of computer-controlled fountains and nontraditional displays, algorithmically-generated dynamic landscapes, etc.
Topolsky is an interesting case because he's actually been on tv shows as a guest. His identity is beginning to become more then just the website he's attached to. I think he'll be able to easily bring readers over to the next URL.
They made a computer-drawn character using footage of himself in earlier films, and (somewhat like Avatar) his new performance drove that character via motion capture.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1644706/tron-legacy-star-je...
It took me a couple of weeks before mine disappeared, and during that time I had run searches to double check the availability. The domain name was totally random so it feels extremely far-fetched that someone happened to register it just before I was about to purchase it.
Congratulations Zed - whether the numbers are inflated by multiple downloads or not, that is an absolutely amazing result, and hugely encouraging for others planning to publish tech books online. I suspect you underestimate how much of that is down to you being a particularly skilled author, however :-)

Have any other HNers had similarly big success publishing tech books online? Anyone make significant money doing so? Would be curious to see whether this is a new, relatively untapped market here :-)
I'd never read your write up before. Thanks for that.
That's a fan thing, right? It doesn't look like a real trailer.
PayPal can be used internationally, but it has some caveats.

Simple recurring billing works quite well, except that you have no control over the subscription. Only thing you can do is to cancel it via PayPal interface. Multiple plans become quickly painful.

There's also Adaptive Payments API, which is available for non-US companies. PayPal doesn't really trust you: subscriptions are limited to one year in length, but you have the control of when and how much is billed (within limits of the "preapproval"). Adaptive Payments API is quite painful to use and is challenging from UX point of view. It's probably cheaper to incorporate in the US and use some other merchant gateway than to implement PayPal Adaptive Payments in your software.
There is an interesting point-of-view in the comments:

"Microsoft is different because it is a monopoly-supported research lab. The old Bell Labs had a monopoly underneath it to support it: costs AT*T incurred to run it could be charged back to consumers. In this case, the monopoly is windows/office, but that will slowly fade. So my belief is MSR will eventually go down this road, it just may take 10 or 20 years. Some friends of mine there also believe this."

In the past years, I have seen different research works funded by Microsoft Research where is notoriously difficult to use other technologies (e.g. based on FLOSS) than the one distributed by Microsoft. It seems to be a limitation factor to innovation or research because you restrict yourself to an existing technology or product line. Is this still research?
There is clearly a need for a very simple CRM app targeted at small services providers such as electricians, plumbers but also developers or designers!
elai we're always trying to reduce cost, the reason for it being a bit higher is because we have the business features (it's like GVoice+) - maybe a 'dumbed down' version is in order?
Apply late so you can have that awesome story of being the company that barely decided to apply after the deadline and then went on to be the next Facebook ;-)
The problem is that people who say it's a "functional organization" problem are both correct and incorrect at the same time.

The kind of problems described certainly seem to have been exacerbated by the way they are structured. But all organization structures have their own problems, and the issues caused by (say) a project based organization* might have been even more detrimental to success.

The most professionally managed organizations I have worked for have generally been matrix orgs (sort of functional, with projects 'borrowing' resource for a year or two at a time) and that worked pretty well, but only because they burned a lot of time and money managing the process. In many cases it may be cheaper just to live with doing it imperfectly.

*Lack of product integration, break up of technical pool of talent, even bigger resource fights, duplication of effort, lack of communication, and zombie projects amongst other things.
How about alternatives to services that are in Canada.
There's also the need to provide a good default, particularly for those readers who don't know they can resize text themselves.
While I agree with you, keep in mind the replies to that particular trolling comment are actually useful.

I personally have been looking for the name of the writing style used in certain articles posted to HN (from Atlantic Magazine, Vanity Fair and few others) since I really enjoy reading these types of articles and they seem to push certain psychological buttons making an engrossing and interesting (not to mention easy to remember) read.

Now I know this writing style is called "narrative journalism" :)
Paul, is being accepted in another 'incubator' a black mark? We submitted early this time though.
really? Wow. Did you attempt to contest the names at all? (Considering they likely weren't valid?)

// The .com.au space is much harder to register a domain for than .com
Google Reputation Attack