skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, yes. It's a very nice place to live, and part of the reason for that is how selective they are about who gets to stay there. So I can sympathize with the idea of really cracking down on illegals.

Anyway, compare it to prison: caning probably hurts a whole lot, and might take weeks to heal. And then it's over. Prison hurts less, but takes years -- during which the prisoner is subsidized by the taxpayers. If the US introduced caning as a prison alternative (for first-time offenders, at least) it would probably make the country a much nicer place to live.
Yeah. That's a pretty small percentage of people though. There are only so many DHH's out there...
PhpMyAdmin for sale ?
Ribbit sells to BT for $105 million
"he prefers developers who are capable of doing analysis work to those who aren't"

Thanks, far better way to put it than the OP. And Alan Perlis agrees: Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epig...
Additionaly,

def increment(key):
with lock(self.lock):
value = self.counter_table.get(key)
if not value:
self.counter_table.add(key, 1)
value = 1

Should be replace by:

def increment(self, key):
with lock(self.lock):
value = self.counter_table[key] = self.counter_table.setdefault(key, 0) + 1
return value

UserDict.DictMixin has setdefault method, therefore it is reasonable to assume that a dictionary-like object should have it.
But doesn't that stright-up violate the Law of Demeter?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Demeter
yes. Sorry, but it's also slower than evolution.

Using hover instead of click doesn't save me time, it wastes more of it.
I guess maybe I'd be more concerned about this accusation if YC wasn't one of the smaller players in the space. Simply put, people will go and make bad and self-harming decisions all the time (god knows I've done it), it's a constant. If YC is an unhealthy environment–and I see no evidence that it is, but perhaps the kool-aid is in my brain–then it's a relatively small one.

I mean, most people here realize they don't need ycomb, right? It's one of many ways to get some initial funding, but it's certainly not the only way or even the normal way. It's more of a publicity stunt for a new startup than a real viable path to large-scale funding (if funding is what you need).
Hmm. The hacker / developer dichotomy being set up here just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. At least for the values of "Hacker" with which I am familiar. I definitely consider myself a hacker. But I also know (and practice!) the value of working with the people who will actually use my software, so that I can make them happy. One memorable moment for me was the gratitude I received from a user who had made a request for a small feature. It was only an afternoon's work for me, but it saved her one week a month in make-work. Requirements analysis is a given in my mind for true hackers. Make something people want.
It's also incredibly slow, though. I think that is what axod was referring to. The UI gets in the way of what actions you want to perform.
Heart Robot is star of science event - has a beating heart, a breathing belly
Ah. In that case, it depends on the situation. If you're going to do something that depends on a property of an object, you're going to have to pass the property itself as an argument eventually. E.g. if you want to see if the ssn is a valid one, or equal to some other ssn.

I wonder if he's talking about some problem that happens with people who've converted from other languages, and that's why I don't understand it.
That does not mean performance is irrelevant, does it? Heavily used web apps benefit a lot from a fast runtime (it allows you to push the point where you have to split across servers forward quite a bit), and being able to do CPU-intensive stuff in the same environment when you need to instead of having to bust out the C or Java or whatever is very pleasant.
I hate the presumption that "real" developers need to know how to distill requirements. That's what you learn in school, but it isn't necessarily true, it depends entirely on where you work. I never talk to customers where I work, and generally for the requirements we decide as developers we do as a group, we don't need to trick non-techs into telling us what they really want. Somebody at every company is going to have to do this, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the developers
Semantic search? That's the first time I've seen that word used with Cuil.

But then I read the article and it says "semi-semantic approach (Cuil’s engine recognizes the relations between certain words on a web site, which helps it rank pages better)".

Semi-Semantic.. different from this misleading title.

And btw, "Hell, they even pulled the energy-saving trick: the front page of Cuil is completely black, in contrast to Google’s eye-poking whiteness.".

Hasn't this already been dismistified (i.e. it's only true on old monitors)?
Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008, biggest drop in 66 years
Are you saying that the person doing this has no conscious access to his or her own latent reasons? Or that this is just a random pattern like a Rorschach? I don't think it is a random pattern. There are far too many xx usernames here, relative to the other online communities I am a part of.
Silicon Valley isn't the only option for startups
When you launch, they say it's a cool new idea.
When you quit, they say it wouldn't work.
Why are people so inconsistent?
Further, his code contains at least one example of each and every pattern described by the GoF.
... In which BusinessWeek fills some pages and a consulting firm gets some PR by pretending it's possible to quantify things like "quality of life".

(People who take such articles seriously deserve to live in Zurich ;))
No, I’m not. However, “not bothering to show up for class and grade papers” is grossly inaccurate. Here’s a link to West’s radio interview with Tavis Smiley at the time: http://www.npr.org/programs/tavis/features/2002/jan/020107.w...
Glory days.

Yahoo Net Loss (in thousands): $ (22,887)

Viaweb Net Loss (in thousands): $ (1,747)
Hi, I'm one of the founders of YouOS. Yeah, we're finally shutting it down. We haven't been working on YouOS actively since November 2006. Why it failed is a long blog post for another time (it centers around not finding a use for it ourselves).

Since then, Sam started thesixtyone.com, Jeff works at 23andme, and Joe and I recently sold our new startup, projectwedding.com to eHarmony.

It's this last item, logistically, why we're shutting it down at this time.
It might have the opposite effect. At the beginning of PG's essay, The Power Of The Marginal (http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html), he suggests that pleasant climates make work in spaces like garages possible. This encourages tinkering because space is available without needing official sanctioning.
Thanks. I am tweaking the experience as to not have the UI in the way. I see some of that as well.

Where is the slowness you have? The pics loading, or the hover reacting? I don't have any.. except when previewing the hovered sites and waiting for them to load.

the feedback is really appreciated.
So do you condone working such long hours that founders are routinely sleep deprived?
The genetic basis is there. First, I suspect the Flynn effect is simply natural selection in modern society; after all, if environment changes in the Galapagos can change the shape of birds beaks in a few generations, industrialization should make people better at desk jobs. And according to Gregory Clark, this has happened to Anglo-Saxons between the 1300s and the 1800s. [1] The same appears to have happened to Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians.[2] Keep in mind they, too, were once very disadvantaged in American society, but there's no keeping them down; both groups are richer than whites now, and had to contend with heavy discrimination on their way to riches. In fact, because of the belief all races should be equally represented, Asian students are heavily penalized in college admissions to make room for African Americans and Hispanics. [3] Finally, I wouldn't go so far as saying emigration eliminates gaps; emigrants aren't necessarily representative of a group, as they're the ones who are ambitious or desperate enough to want to leave. Mexican immigrants in the United States do not form an accurate cross-section of Mexican culture. Nigerian immigrants in United States have the highest rate of PhDs and Master degrees per capita [4], but that has a lot to do with immigration policies. It's a lot easier to get into the States with a Masters or a PhD, so there's selection at hand.

[1]http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/clark_evol...
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence
[3]http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=h...
[4]http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/05/nigerians-are-most-educat...
HP, Intel, and Yahoo Announce Cloud Computing Research Test Bed
Intel HP and Yahoo Work On Global Cloud Computing Research
What's a Bad Boss? Rant here.
The comments turned sharply negative once people had a chance to play with cuil. At the moment, the top story that comes up for 'cuil' on Google News is Time's front-page article trashing them.

I can understand the temptation to make a big splash, but they're following a familiar trajectory for aspiring search engines: overpromise, disappoint, disappear.
I agree, there's obviously a trade-off involved. I think the real issue is trying to identify RW-B's "Roles, responsibilities and Collaborations" in a design. There's (a) a piece of knowledge that a customer is involved, (b) a piece of knowledge that an SSN is involved, and (c) a piece of knowledge that an SSN can be extracted from a customer.

I suspect the issue here is making good decisions about which entities/modules/functions/objects/thingummies should know a, which should know b, and which should know c.
So... hackers create startups and developers work happily in the corporate world? I'm fine with that.
What the green lobby can't do, it looks like economic pressures might be able to do.

It's a pity that the gas prices will probably drive higher usage of cheap coal, instead of more environmentally friendly alternatives like geothermal, wind, solar, and (dare I say it) most practically, nuclear.

Edit: Interesting typo in the article -- it seems that this month's usage was actually less than this month's usage.
Sounds like the local laws were at fault, which begs the question; why accept money in the first place if you don't have a legal entity in place to use it properly?

Set up an LLC in the USA with that cash, or at least a non-profit that can accept donations (and therefore, make them tax-deductable so that more people will be encouraged to donate, instead of less, since um, googling the OSS project in question will now point to Atwood's post, which wouldn't convince me to give them any money at all).
Some of the story: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=511484
I would agree in some cases. I only said you don't use click to navigate because I didn't understand what your issue was. You can click out anywhere... On the title, the nav bar, or the web links. That will open in a new tab. Would that address the speed/clicking usability.?

btw, sorry to hijack this thread.
'Emotional' robot is all heart
"5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled."

Yet on Hacker News, the recruiting grounds of said cult, this post (information contrary to the teaching of said cult) has ascended to the top?
good find. The only SEC document that was a pleasure to read was the Google S1. Lets see how this one is.
Good question. That being said, I'm a long time Demeter Scofflaw...
I really like the idea, but when checking out pushuptheweb.com...in firefox3 on linux the icons (that show a demonstration) do nothing when I click them...when I fire up IE7 in vmware my script debugger yells, "Object doesn't support this property or method"

Is it because I am using up to date browsers? I still want to see a demo...

This isn't going to help my grandma upgrade her browser.
This is click bait. As one of the commenters on the original article points out, all this means is that Apple may use a _chipset_ that's not manufactured by Intel but will continue to use Intel CPUs. This is hardly worth reporting.
Of course these things should be investigated. Would we want the Iranians to investigate unknown aerial objects in their skies with little radar return? Probably not, but it's the smart thing to do.

I love UFOs because they represent transient, non-reproducible aerial phenomenon. Yet during the times we make observations, it seems we're able to do so in a variety of spectra. It gets directly into the question of what reality is. Is it what credible witnesses perceive? Well, credible witnesses can mis-interpret phenomenon. But if we don't have credible witnesses, we've only got reproducible experiments, which obviously doesn't work with transient phenomenon. Does that mean we have nothing of value here? No -- that's crazy talk. When people see things, their observations have to mean _something_.

Some folks talk about finding materials. I'm not sure that isn't changing the subject -- the point is how we deal with unknown aerial phenomenon, not objects found on the ground. Heck -- it all could be swamp gas for all I know.
How To Finance Your Company: Organic vs. Investment
Exactly. You don't get progress without arrogant bastards re-inventing things every now and then. Overeager re-inventing is often a recipe for disaster, but categorically dismissing it is too simple.
I'm saying that trying to surmise what someone is thinking from their choice of a two-character handle is like interpreting a Rorschach, which is not the same thing as saying that the characters themselves are randomly generated.
Man, does this hit the proverbial nail on the head. I am a big proponent of education, however, in my experience, a formal education is not a perfect fit for all. I wish there would have been more emphasis on how to make a living doing something one enjoys and not just academic legerdemain in the form of "get a degree and you'll get plenty o' dough and be happy" when pursuing a trade would net potential millions with no crushing student loan debt. Thanks for some excellent thoughts on our school system.
I think this analysis of the situation is excellent:
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/Summers.HTM
You imply that the institution’s conservatism is undesirable, and that the faculty was unjustified in resisting Summers’ desired changes, but what qualifies you to make those judgments? Also, “tried to crucify him several times”?
Like almost all rules in that list, this seems way too broad -- often enough it makes more sense to pass some more primitive value, even if you get it from a property.
It depends on the application. Notepad I held no feelings toward. But I will fight to the death to protect my use of TextEdit.

And you seem to forget, unless I'm misreading you: a part of using an application is the experience it provides. What are you saying will beat Mac OS and Windows? Google Docs? Buzzword? Hardly.
Face Swapping
The Bigger Questions Behind The Scrabulous Shutdown
Speaking of the news.yc community and not of the founders, what if the perception of cultism keeps the quality of postings here from deteriorating rapidly? Most of the level-headed ones here do not buy into that percept and vote and comment independently and intelligently. The inevitable band of pg worshipers do amplify the noise, but could that be the cost of keeping the unaffiliated, median slashdotter away?
While it's true that you can't copyright a game, you can copyright parts of a game. For example, the game's artwork or the official Scrabble dictionary. I haven't actually played Scrabulous, but if they used the exact same board layout, that might be copyright infringement. Or, if they used the official word list, that might be copyright infringement.

You can also copyright the text describing the rules of the game. But, I doubt they'd be so lazy as to copy that...

And, of course, you can trademark the name of a game. As you said, Scrabulous is probably too similar to Scrabble.

I think it's possible to legally make a Scrabble knock off (not a lawyer, though!)... but, if Scrabulous had used a non-derivative board, word list, and a completely different name would they have gotten so popular?
What sort of other clues?
it's called WWW and it's not an OS
It's a different group of people that speak up each time.

Group A doesn't care about looking at shut-downs, only at the "blooming opportunities of the Internet." They talk all the time about cool new things. Group B doesn't care about blather, but when Group A asks why something isn't working they'll explain it.
I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but Australia is far from depressed economically.

I'm guessing by large portions, you mean the underpopulated areas of Australia? Around 80% of our Australia's population is spread amongst less than 20% of the Land Mass, and most of this is centered around coastal areas.

The underpopulated areas have economies that are far from depressed too as a direct result from our resources boom.

For example, The following redirects to an Australian real estate site
http://tinyurl.com/5e2vhl

Karratha is pretty much a country town - but rent there is around $2000 per week ($1920 USD) for an average 4 bedroom home. A couple of years ago this simply would not have been the case.

So if you were joking, fair enough - if you were serious... then you're pretty much wrong.

Thanks :)
T. Boone Pickens Sells Entire Yahoo Stake, 10 Million Shares
The web is not an OS. The web is a layer that operates through an OS.

The distinction is important to make, because it demonstrates both the web's greatest advantage (the fact that it can reach across many computers at once) and its greatest weakness (it will always be slower than the desktop equivalents).
The developers still have to interact with people to figure out what they need to create. The people that they're extracting the information from may still be techies, but determining what you need to build is still key.

And this is where I think the article falls flat on it's face -- In my opinion, I think one of the key features of being a hacker is the ability to look at a situation, analyze what you need to build, and come up with a minimal and elegant solution within the constraints that you determined. That requires communication and analysis.
So they had one guy who didn't ask any upfront questions, but delivered something. They have another guy who did ask upfront questions, but didn't deliver anything. Why choose the second over the first?
The headline is now "Scrabulous Shut Down on Facebook".

"UPDATED 11:00 a.m.| Facebook says the decision to block Scrabulous for U.S. and Canadian users was made by the Scrabulous developers, not Facebook."
The picture of Copenhagen is actually from the Freetown Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania), which is located inside Copenhagen.

While Christiania is a huge tourist attraction for Copenhagen, I don't think it's fair to use its picture as a representation of Copenhagen.
I'd say the best frameworks and tools in general appear as a byproduct of a bigger project. It's quite hard to start with a mindset of "I want to build a framework that does everything."
mad,mac,dam,cam,cad,ma,am,ad, bullshit(wait what?)

http://www.wineverygame.com/wbg.php
The point was that a bunch of their "users" don't actually use the site, they just never bothered to logout
The Interface Hall of Shame
Maybe he didn't know he had those skills before trying...
You can't copyright the rules to the game. Any distinctive design elements can be copyrighted. But if those elements are dictated by the rules then they still cannot be copyrighted.

Honestly I doubt that Hasbro could successfully pursue a copyright infringement case over Scrabulous. Scrabble has a very generic design which is mostly directly implemented from the rules. Hasbro's best bet would likely be a trademark claim. Though, if a court determined that "Scrabble" has become a generic term for an acrostic game then they could actually lose the trademark. That's a serious danger, just from my own personal perception.

The DMCA is a lousy way for Hasbro to try to eliminate Scrabulous. If I were Scrabulous I would send a counter-notice, at which point under the DMCA Facebook would be required to reinstate the game. Then take it to court. Hasbro will have a hell of a time making this one stick.

Edit:

The safe harbor and counter-notice provisions of the DMCA are the only thing I like about it.

Hasbro is the current Evil Empire of the toy industry. I would not mind seeing them taken down a peg. Long live the underdog!
Why do you assume that the changes in the Galapagos occurred over "a few generations"? My understanding was that the separation occurred thousands of years ago.

If industrialization has been driving human evolution, it has probably not been in a positive direction. Fertility and IQ are negatively correlated in contemporary industrialized societies, so if anything, this would propel the opposite of the Flynn effect. The dark comedy Idiocracy is essentially about this.
The Swiss venture leaders 2008 meet Y-combinator
Sorry, but all your comment does is pretty much confirm the article. Dismissing criticism as "trolling" is exactly what a cult member would do.

Even invalid criticism warrants a proper rebuttal, if at the least to educate those leveling the criticism as to their errors. The fact that it has risen to top stop this morning only serves to illustrate that there are many things about the YC process that people don't particularly enjoy.

Why those things are either a) misunderstood or b) essential to the process is the way to properly comment on the article.

EDIT: Wow, look at the downmods! So much for discussion being valued!
A database for medical implants. Is this a startup opportunity?
Who's fault is it that we don't have more nuclear plants?
With Ruby threads you get the worst of both worlds. They are preemptive and user-level.

1.9 will introduce native threads, which aren't much better. Each native thread requires megabytes of memory for its stack. Co-routines require only 64k of memory.

Concurrency in Rubinius should require even less memory overhead as it is stackless.
Big Sensor a Small Step for Cameras
On the ScrewTurn website, I can read: "ScrewTurn Software - Developers for Passion". Whatever that means, I don't see them spending the money they got to hire someone.
Historical data may as well be misleading because the profile of a user is not "static", simply because there's a human being behind it (and sometimes even more than one, but that's another story). His personal and professional environment, his wishes and necessities, the context of his life may change from one day to the other. The assumption that the past queries of a user will improve the results of his current queries is at least questionable (especially for former programmers that start selling reptiles...)
Anything to get folks off those old relics of browser, I'm game for.
This looks like it's for real. Damn. I want to ride a dark energy bubble.