skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How about using the ratio of points to comments as a signal for articles, and maybe the ratio of up+down votes (i.e. number of votes, not net points ) to sub-comments for comments.

This gives you some of the effect of what I think would be the best solution -- limiting the site's scope significantly -- in that it would give you things which people found interesting but weren't so general that everyone felt they could comment on them.

I think this would work well in conjunction with some of the other ideas in the thread which reduce the number of upvotes people are likely to give (specifically, a cap on the number of upvotes and a visual cap on the display of upvotes).
And can you elaborate on why you would like to have that? (Except for having enough karma?)
Limit the number of upvotes to 1 per thread.
So the user has to choose the best comment.

This adds a cost to upvoting just like the "N upvotes per day" ideas (which I like a lot).
Well, the worst time to change technologies or perform version updates is when there is a fire under your ass to get the system working, but that is a minor screw up compared to all else going on.

This whole thing stinks of lack of experience. No one should repeat the steps these guys are taking.
Malaria on the Rise as East African Climate Heats Up
I had a child almost 2 years ago now, and the value of money didn't change much. The value of time underwent some volcanic upheavals, on the other hand.

There's an awful lot of crap that modern parents buy for their babies that's actually totally irrelevant to what the baby needs to do well (plus it's crazy expensive -- there's a massive "baby tax" -- where everything for babies is extra pricey unless you buy cheap-o brand -- that's kinda like the "wedding tax"). But babies don't need their own rooms, furniture, etc. etc. etc. -- they really couldn't care less about having all of this stuff of their own. They want their parents, and they want to do what their parents do.

But their parents are busy working harder so they can pay for the furniture, fancy "genius baby" toys, and fake baby versions of all of the things adults use, when the kid is just dying to use the things the parents already have, and interact with the parents themselves in surprisingly sophisticated ways (if the parents let it happen, that is).

Don't even get me started on baby food (hint: eat healthy, breastfeed, and when the kid starts wanting solid foods just leave out the salt and amazingly they pick up on how to chew right away!).

Having a kid isn't expensive at all -- monetarily -- unless you get suckered by the industry. (Note: Unless you need to pay serious money for schooling; then it will be very expensive further down the line...).

But in terms of time... well, everything changes. We're doing better & better at integrating her into our lives (rather than "now I'm watching the baby so everything else stops), but I'm a developer. There's no good way to involve a 2-year-old in writing code, so while the laundry may be done and the dishes washed, I tend to work a lot at night.....
You just banned 10 out of 12 of the 'pg comments on this thread. :)
I too am not really worried about the site. I haven't been around as long as some, but I've noticed more than anything that topics about startups that used to be exciting are now getting stale. We've learned new things from HN that leaves us looking for more and we aren't finding it yet. I trust in the community and those writing about technical topics to keep pushing the limit and teaching us new things. I don't want to see the mechanics of HN change too drastically.
Ah! Now we're talking . . .
PS3 Hacks|Jailbreaks| Free FULL Ps3 GAMES| PS3 Exploits|
Deaths per TWH is no real measure of safety at all when it comes to nuclear. Accidents affect not only human beings but the environment and indeed entire continents and the ecosystems thereof. Even today when they hunt wild boar in Germany many of the boar are found to have been irradiated as a result of Chernobyl, and hazardous for consumption. These events cross borders. It would be foolish to attempt to comprehend their relative significance in terms of death counts.

Applying deaths per TWH to nuclear is naive. It's an abstraction that in no way reflects the underlying reality, and which leads the general populace into mad ambivalence. It's the kind of rhetoric you hear on Animal Farm. This idea that some deaths are better than others. In fact, it's a question of asymmetric risk with outsized consequences. If you learn anything from Ben Graham or Warren Buffett, it's that that's not the kind of game you want to be playing, unless you're really smart like LTCM. You don't want to have anything to do with it, especially not if there is human mental apparatus, governments, and contractors involved. There are too many variables you cannot control, and they are not captured by deaths per TWH.

The second thing to learn from Graham and Doddsville, when dealing with asymmetric odds is that history is no reliable guide to the future. What happened last year or the year before, is no indication of what may happen next year or the manner in which we can expect it to happen. That nuclear catastrophes have historically not been catastrophic (according to the author), is no reason for the author to believe that they may continue to remain so.

Yet the Washington Post article has based its argument on the premise that you can even measure deaths per TWH. You cannot count deaths directly and indirectly related to a nuclear accident. We have learned that much from the history of these accidents, and it would be ignorant and insensitive to claim otherwise. Take for instance Chernobyl, does the author truly believe that only 50 people have already died as a direct and indirect result? Even the most conservative numbers reported (deaths actually incurred) are higher, and show significant variance between sources:

"Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously; the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000 while a Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more. A UNSCEAR report places the total deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

From those to whom much as been given, much will be expected.
I was actually basing the amount off the 1 yr. Does the gov't pay interest yearly on t-bills or only once they mature?(sorry if this sounds stupid, but I've never had enough $ to think about buying any)
Exactly. As a lot of other comments have mentioned, using URLs would have been a better idea, but its irrelevant now. Assigning the same IP to a different machine would have been a perfectly acceptable (and most straightforward) solution. I fail to see why they didn't choose to do that.

We're all interested here in learning from tinygrab's mistakes, not criticize them after the fact. Why patronize us with that "would have taken _months_" quote instead of giving some technical details about what really the problem was?
This topic has been covered before, see this

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2069477
The article seems light on details but wouldn't writes still cause a bottleneck?
Short and snide are by no means mutually exclusive.

I can spend all day writing a post that has no substance, garners upvotes (in today's HN climate) and is as long as the day, but that doesn't make it good, or worthwhile.

Many of my short remarks are actually more to the point, or are asking a relevant question, or are politely correcting errors. It takes considerably fewer words to do this sort of thing than it does to be mean, while trying not to look like it.
Screen distance from the user greatly impacts the usability. I would also add that if you have HN (or Reddit) open on one of those monitors, you probably aren't going to be more productive.

For the benefits of those on HN, here is my answer to the question on Skeptics-StackExchange:

==

Having championed the purchase of five 30" for the equity research officers at Itaú Securities, I have some anecodotal evidence to share, which pretty much invalidates any study regarding 30" monitors.

Here's the deal:

A 30" monitor is pretty large and its distance from the user GREATLY impacts its usability. For a 30" monitor to be usable it needs to be placed on the desktop at about an armslength to be comfortable and productive. For many desks, this distance is an impossibility, especially corner desks where the monitor is catacornered.

Most people when they use an external screen place it just behind the keyboard. This does not work with a 30" monitor, as it is too close and you end up shifting your head up and down and laterally far too much.

This effect is significant enough to invalidate pretty much any study that doesn't take this into account and control it.

At Itaú Securities all five 30" monitors were first used on corner desks with the monitor catacornered. The major factor which determined if it was useable was each analysts body posture when seating at their desk. Those analysts which sat slouched in their chair and leaning back when they were modifying their financial models in Excel, loved the monitor and said that others would be allowed to use it when you pry it from their cold dead fingers. Those with good posture ended up sitting far too close to the screen and since the monitor was catacornered, they were unable to adjust the distance to be comfortable. None realized that monitor distance were the reason for their discomfort. All that sat with good posture abandoned the 30" monitor and return to their crappy 19" monitors. It was only when one of the monitors was relocated to a non-corner desk and placed at the very back of the desk when we realized the impact of monitor distance and comfort.

Anyways, I've never seen this particular issue with larger monitors discussed anywhere with regards so I figured I'd share it here. I'm sure this issue is equally applicable to multi-monitor setups.
T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil.
38 years ago he made the first cell phone call
Unfortunately you cannot download the source code, the link is disabled. And the GPL license he says he is using requires that the source code must be available for download without any restrictions like "send me an email" or "create an acount".

Edit: I sent him an email :)
Don't let yourself spend too much time with any single person. Say, "I guess we should both keep working the room", exchange business cards, and move on.
Welcome to the future. Sadly, we don't have jetpacks or flying cars yet.
Reddit solved this problem by splintering into different communities, and let them self-select.
Maybe a 2D vote. The up-down dimension we have now, and another to say why the up/down vote. This would combine the up/down with a Slashdot-like Troll~Insightful dimension. That would be some useful feedback.

Sometimes I don't know if I am being downvoted because I am being too vicious (I get carried away from time to time) or because I am just completely wrong.
The Kuro5hin solution of displaying averages plus number of ratings might give information in that direction, factoring out into two different numbers the average quality people thought the comment had, from the number of people who rated it. Not quite the same as a threshhold maximum, but it produces an asymptotic maximum instead. It's also, imo, useful to have them as two separate numbers, because they convey semantically different information.
I'm still dumbfounded as to why Evernote doesn't allow you to link to other notes.
Ha. It would certainly lead to less comments overall, but maybe that would be a welcome timesaving. Who knows, people might even start pre-emptively addressing counter-points for their arguments and the whole debating process would be greatly contracted. (am I at 50 words yet? maybe 30 would be better...)
Charge people a (modest) sum to participate in HN. Say $10 a year. I don't know many regulars who wouldn't easily pay that money, but I doubt too many trolls would.

Not sure what is behind the paywall, e.g. commenting only, or commenting and upvoting. You can try a few combinations.
Even the best of us have been tempted to toss out a snarky comment or mean response from time to time. There are comments I've made that I wouldn't have posted if I had been challenged to improve it before posting. Since there seems to be a correlation between one sentence comments and snark, perhaps a "Are you sure you want to post that?" prompt would help for short comments. Maybe show the same prompt for comments that contain certain words?
"Anyone who's smart should be able to contribute w/o passing some sort of exclusionary bar."

The difference is that to get even one or two stories a week on the front page of Digg, you basically had to devote your entire life to the site. Whereas getting 100 karma doesn't take more than a couple weeks of casual use.
The problem lies within the deeply nested threads that continuously go back and forth between a few select people. Most of the mean/dumb comments on the first level thread are downvoted or flagged and moved to the bottom. This makes it easy to read the high quality comments - just look at the top.

The problem occurs when you start reading into a nested thread of comments. Users will sometimes argue 4 or 5 times back and forth, often becoming mean and uncivil. What results is a somewhat personal discussion among a few people that doesn't fit in with the rest of the thread. While the quality may actually increase the deeper you go into a thread, the relevancy to the original thread decreases (which matters most).

I think that this behavior is what is hurting HN's overall quality. Uncivil and deeply nested threads like these are hard to keep track of and deeply get out of control.

The solution:

- hide deeply nested threads (greater than 3 or 4 comments deep) and
let the users choose to show them

- promote commenting in higher threads (this will come as a result
of hiding deeply nested threads)

- hide or lessen the visibility of threads consisting of comments
from only 2 or 3 people
Reading the post and responses, I noted that screen curvature was important at higher screen sizes.

I use a 27" iMac at home (2560×1440, 109ppi), and find the extra screen real-estate very useful. My only gripe is that a screen this large needs a little curvature on each side, otherwise its left and right sides become slightly less pleasant to work with in comparison to the center.

I'm also someone who needs things on-screen to be physically big. OS X still feels very pixel-optimised as opposed to vector-driven in its UI, so everything shrinks on a higher-PPI display. Linux on the other hand scales itself much better.
The fundamental ideas come from existing languages, nobody is trying to contradict that. Clojure builds on the past, but its rich abstractions for concurrency and persistent data structures make it unique.
Wouldn't that ban a lot of tech companies' current actions? Ie, isn't everything happening now in Silicon Valley etc a <i>current event</i>?
It's actually around 10% faster at a bunch of things. :) This includes some DOM APIs and just raw JS perf, depending on your platform.

Responsiveness will be improved in a different manner. We are working on a bunch of improvements for later in 2011 that should make a big difference. I think Firefox 4 is in general much better than 3.6, and I expect to see parallelism, responsiveness, and reliability continue to improve.

The big ticket items are multiprocess browsing and better debugging APIs--we have an issue with developer extensions causing performance problems. This is not necessarily the fault of Firebug or any of the other extensions. We need a better foundation for them to build on, and it really hurts us to give developers a slow experience.
I wish I could go back and add this to my YCombinator app (without it being marked as late) as "something I have discovered" as it's fairly original semi-scientific research and more interesting than the answer I originally put.
It's about creating something simple but decent for V0.1 - then letting your customer's metrics guide you on how to improve it
Valid points, but I think for any worthwhile comment it's easy to 'extend' the content beyond a single line. For instance, if you're asking a sincere question, you could provide some hypothetical answers, or state your reasons for asking - basically increase the level of mutual comprehension in the entire discourse.
Maybe the problem is that I _have_ been in these guys shoes (anyone that has been awakened at 3am with your system completely off line and bleeding money raise your hands).

The fact that it is a volunteer effort is pretty much irrelevant. One does not make worse decisions when one volunteers his/her time.

Rather than nitpick your points against my "full of fail" comment I will say this: The people involved had several choices to make in all of this, before and after the hack. Pretty much the key choices were mistaken: Not having a good backup in place. Not giving a second's thought to how to restore. "Taking the opportunity" to perform a major version change (to an unfinished version, no less) while the system was completely down. And on and on and on.

I really don't get why it matters if it is a volunteer effort or not. Volunteering does not mean "do low quality work", nor does it mean "not mission critical".

Had this all been handled differently, it would have been a "why we were doen for a couple hours yesterday" blog post instead of "why were barely working, and will be for the next few weeks".
Code Cards 1.5 for iPhone is now in App Store
It reads like a terrible script from one of those "House on the Hill" type of movies. I keep waiting for the evil mastermind to introduce himself and explain why he's brought everyone together.

And, at the same time, it also sounds a whole lot like every chat and message board I've ever been in.
A Lean Tale of AppStore Battles and Evil Tyrants
focus-follows-mouse is pretty much impossible to use with the menu bar being in the panel. When you need something from the menu, you have to try to avoid moving your mouse over other windows while trying to reach the menu so that they don't get the focus.

You can disable the main menu bar by removing the appmenu-gtk package.
Comment collapsing ... with 260 comments on this submission it's such a very long page that the voting activity is going to be concentrated in the first thread/s.
The only problem with the StartupGuild on Yammer is that I'll spend even more time on social networks and less time on getting actual work done ;(

But I like it!
I downvoted you because I have found this to not be the case in practice, and I find that setting some minimal comment length is not correlated to increasing the quality of submission. Casual snideness will still occur, and one-liners are not a problem in and of themselves. The context of that one-liner is, and a minimum comment length should not considered a judge of quality or context.
Yea I should remove that. The reason it's there is that people often copy&paste that text for use in other places, where it helps :)
I don't see why the same program has to run on PyPy, CPython and Python3. Isn't the idea to do different implementations for each language. I know technically they expose the same (or a similar) language, but they're dissimilar under the hood.

I'd imagine the implementation varies across the other languages by more than just syntax.

The point that worries me the most, is the amount of microoptimisation being applied to these "benchmark" programs, making the results more or less pointless for real-world use.
It's true that it's arbitrary; the problem is, there's no non-arbitrary alternative, so it's a weak charge to make.

Unless you're going to allow every language to converge on simply blasting some bytes into RAM and executing optimized machine-language code and watch all the languages cluster to the exact same location give or take how long it takes to load the machine code, you have to draw some lines about what's a "real" implementation and what isn't. If I were running it, I'd be even more strict and insist that the solutions must be "idiomatic"... and what's idiomatic and what isn't would also be arbitrary, because there is no escape from the "arbitrary". Yet the end result is useful. Not totally determinative, but it's not anywhere near "useless" either.
The comparison photo of Steve Jobs is from 2004 though, so the analogy he is making still holds IMHO.
Strong moderation is the key to a successful online community. The number of high quality users on HN, it should not be difficult to find a few that would be willing to do a good job of strong moderation.

a group benevolent dictators is needed
I was afraid of something like this when I saw you reply to something I asked with the phrase "if I'm still here."

Please don't vanish completely.
Cloud fight Amazon Cloud Drive vs. Google Docs vs. Microsoft Skydrive
Whoever thinks someone didn't change the code on the server might also be kidding himself...
I was thinking the same thing which is why I didn't mention the length idea. However... what if users over say 1 year and with a high comment average were exempted?

To add to that, lionhearted posted a comment about inevitable site decline because of open membership and equally weighted voting. What if only accounts over 1 year could vote (or diminish their vote weight)?

Wouldn't instituting a min. length requirement and taking away new user voting improve the problem significantly?
Rational planning means taking into account threats into your business plan.

If you have an established company, I'd suggest strategising on how you can survive a bubble burst event and the resulting downturn in investment, spending from new investment backed companies and so on. The bursting of the bubble will have opportunities for a well positioned business - less competition, more reasonable prices for advertising on other sites, for example. Be careful with debt your company can't pay back if the bubble bursts, and keep a majority of people who want panic on the board.

Until it bursts, there is lots of money to be made from the bubble for appropriately positioned companies.
Just to throw a wrench into this:

It has been shown that changing environments improves performance and memory. So moving around the house, or going to different locations, can improve productivity as well.

Using a ton of big monitors keeps you chained to your desk and a desk chair.

I use a 13" laptop but I use 9 OSX Spaces and constantly switch between them. I do think that it's nicer to have more screen real estate, but it's a tradeoff between that and mobility.

As it is now I move constantly throughout the day. I will do some work at Starbucks then take a break by walking a few blocks to another coffee shop. This provides a lot of outdoors time and lots of different environments. There is a lifestyle benefit here for me too.

Even if I just stayed in my home or office, I would not enjoy being chained to my desk. When I work at home I rotate between the bed, the desk, the bar/barstool, the recliner, the couch, outside on the balcony, and even standing up sometimes.

I believe this boosts my productivity and keeps me refreshed. Anyway I'd love to see some studies done not just on screen space but on the benefits of highly mobile working.
An explicit voting protocol may help. Personally, I would like to see "No downvotes for disagreement" made official.
Google is hiring the people with all the questions
Sounds like the single level replies is a big problem for some users. If the replies are single threaded, why is there a reply button on each reply instead of just at the bottom?