skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So what?

I sometime doubt why I've been living my life most of time by ignoring mainstream culture, being isolated from my relatives, with a few really good friends far below Dunbar's number that will help each other without questions, working 60 to 80 hours on non leisure stuffs, and living in the opposite side of the earth to my birth place since I was 15.
I even joined a quasi-cult organization once to see how does it work. It has been a quarter of century and I love it. Because I do what I want to hack in my life and I learn from PG that beside that I also need to figure how to make something that people want! And I still have some chance to know some very attractive females and keeping myself fit.

At least I feel much better now because I know I can survive under inhuman conditions so I just need to persist till I get my share of glory. Of course I may die tomorrow but I didn't live a life that feel pressure from peers, pointing hair boss and failed marriages.
Is this guy serious?
Second prize is selling for enough that the interest funds a comfortable lifestyle, whether or not you want to continue to work.
First prize is being able to hang onto control so that you can use what you've built as a base to do still more.
What part doesn't seem serious to you?

I spent two years reading RSS feeds of productivity blogs, trying to take their good ideas and get them to work for me. Yet, for some reason, I found that when I stopped trying to be productive and started working on things, my productivity skyrocketed.
Mr. Bunny's Big Cup O' Java

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Bunnys-Big-OJava-Bunny/dp/020161563...
It's Microsoft's operating system, if they want to pre-install certain apps, why not?

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Microsoft pre-installing apps, just like there is nothing wrong with Apple pre-installing apps on OSX, or Sun on Solaris.
If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose.

I certainly hope not. Google, as a private company, should be free to display whatever they want in the search results. Once we start litigating and mandating search placement it becomes a no-win situation. If site A is placed above site B, site B sues. If site B is above site A, site A sues.
Because in the US you can. Everywhere you go in the world there are a very smart individuals.

What makes one country more innovative than the other is its ability let smart people not only express their ideas, but also give them tools to easily turn their concepts into products and services.

Society plays a huge role as well. For example in America it is ok to fail at being an entrepreneur, or to fail as a researcher who spent 10 years trying to find a cure for a disease. No one will laugh at you or tell you you wasted your time. In fact people will admire you for your courage.

Money is the third biggest factor. In the US the private sector invests in just about every damn thing. And if you are lucky or incorporate your company properly you do not have to pay back one freaking penny may you fail to turn your idea into a profitable company.

That is why America is innovative. Capitalism at its realest sense.
Because having unpopular taste is bad?
Soon you get websites with people saying "Rate The Godfather 1 before rating TDK 10."
The best definition of a cult that I've heard was from some guy on NPR (no clue who, I was driving and came in mid-program)... he said, quite simply, that a cult is any organization who's ulterior motive is to have sex with minors. I'm sure there are counter-examples, but I think it fits pretty well.
With the exception of IM (since we're all over, IM's the best way to communicate), I agree with everything you've said.

In general, the less options the app has, the better. The less you can twiddle and waste your time on, the better.
Ah, gotcha. I don't know. On the one hand, I feel like applying and really seeing where this idea of mine can go. On the other, I'm not certain if it's the best idea, to want to test my concepts out so early. But four years' wait right now seems like pretty awfully long.
I'm a vegetarian too, but I'm not really offended at all. It's a business decision to save time and money because we make up such a small percentage of customers.

This is sort of the same way I feel about computer games. I'm a Mac user and almost all games are only for the PC. I really appreciate Blizzard for making games on the Mac, but I completely understand why there's no native TF2, Portals, or Guild Wars for me =/.
The article takes unfair stances against Windows/Linux, Firefox, and ad blocking. However, the last item, "manage your leisure time", is important enough that the whole article is a net positive. It's important to take time for leisure, otherwise it creeps into your work time and you end up getting nothing done.
There is certainly solid legal ground for arguing that Google giving preferential search results to itself is an anticompetitive practice. It would be different if Google didn't control the vast majority of the search market, but it does.

Let's say there is a phone book company that pretty much controls the entire market. Google's actions are akin to the phonebook company only listing businesses that it owns in the main pages, while listing everything else in an appendix. Anticompetitive practice, to be sure. The phonebook company might argue, "Well since we are so tightly integrated with out own businesses, it is much easier to index them. Our competitors ending up in the back is simply an unintended side effect". Possibly true, but it's not going to fly in court.

To be honest, I don't care if Google is giving preferential treatment to Knol. But please, establish some plausible deniability. The speed in which Knol is being indexed is far too obvious. I think it would be a damn shame if Google were to lose its hold on the search market because of a lawsuit.
I understand why people use Windows, and I understand why they use Linux. I'm a big fan of the Linux community, but I laugh at the notion that Ubuntu comes even close to rivalling OS X. Windows users are a lot less arrogant than either Linux or Mac users, and so while I'd advise them to switch, I don't like the constant anti-Windows crusades going on.

Firefox I really dislike. It's better than IE. No doubt about that. But it progresses with ideas slowly, it's a terribly cluttered browser, I dislike the idea of building a super-powered web browser, and the developers and the community are both extremely distasteful. While I'm not not a huge fan of using Opera myself, it's a much better browser and I absolutely respect the devteam. And I think that if you genuinely want just a speedy, damn fast web browser, Safari's the one to pick. It discourages mass fiddling, and that helps me stay on task a lot.

Ad blocking I'm fine with, but people put such emphasis on it. People who use AdSense spend more time telling me how great adlessness is that I find myself wasting more time ignoring them than I do ignoring ads. And, of course, for Safari the adblockers cost money, and I find that paying to remove ads is just immensely silly. I mentioned adblockers just because that's a feature that a lot of people seem to spend their time on.

(Sorry if I write long responses to small statements. It's a bad habit.)
Yeah. I'm doing some intern stuff for Aviary right now and really, Skype is the only efficient way to talk back and forth. But for most people, long-distance communication is not going to happen often, and I didn't think it necessary to write a more long-winded clarification in the article itself.
There is some evidence that your ability to make good decisions is depleted as you make decisions:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tough-choices-how-making

(No matter how fun the act of decision making is)
I would like to try podolico.
Scala currently answers every one of the author's beefs, except for reflection. Scala runs on the JVM and is a Functional/OO Hybrid language that supports static typing and type inferencing. Bottom line - full Java interop and removal of Java's high cerimonial cost without the speed penalty imposed by dynamic languages.
its mainly to go to higher orbit where money is not that essential. In present situation for most of the founders; money is important part.
Google Maps is also integrated into the Google search. Any time it detects that you've entered a mappable location it provides a Google Maps link. If this feature were removed by, say, a lawsuit by Mapquest I think that Google would become less effective, and everyone would suffer as a result.

That's just my personal opinion, however. I had (and still have) no objection to Microsoft bundling a web browser and media player in Windows, and yet they've been hit by antitrust charges.
Come on now, let's not go overboard here and compare YC to the Manhattan Project or Apollo missions. Doing a start-up is hard work, but we're talking about a slightly different scale here.
What should I do with my life?
I can code, that's pretty much all I do but I'm unhappy. I've got an entire life to life to live, I simply can't give up so I'm going to have to do something with it.
What should I do?
Read this:

http://www.pobronson.com/index_what_should_I_do_with_my_life...
Making sending money as easy as sending email.
Where did I compare them?

My comment just pointed out that the definition of a cult used in the blog post falls down badly when applied to famous successful projects (which we can presumably agree were not cults), and is therefore either being misused or broken.
It still remains that pages on Knol are getting much higher rankings than the pages themselves warrant. I wondered why the front page of Knol had such a random collection of content links - it seemed very ungoogle - now it looks like SEO that's damaging the reputation of their search engine.
public class Test
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
for (String s : args[0].split("\\s+"))
System.out.println(s);

System.exit(0);
}
}

Snore. Guess where I stopped reading. Right where he stuck a completely pointless System.exit(0) for no reason except to boost linecount (linecount being the evilest evil known to man)
if it wasn't, they wouldn't have lost all those anti-trust suits
I think it's funny that the article discourages installing an ad blocker because it would take too much time, yet encourages switching operating systems and browsers without regard to the time it takes to learn a new system.

As far as ad blockers for Safari, I use http://safariadblock.sourceforge.net, which seems to be completely free and does a decent job.
The solution is to apply the YC principles that fit for you and still live your life and to not get overly caught up in the message and let it block out outside reasoning.
Yeah that strawman gets a bit tired.

Reminds me when steve yegge was comparing languages, he complained about not being able to just type "quit" or "exit" in the python shell, unlike ruby. Focusing on the trivialities really doesn't help other then make the author feel smart like they have reviewed a langugae.

(BTW, you should try getting out of the haskell ghci shell, man, that thing just doesn't want me to quit).
This guy is presumptuous, ill informed and appears to have a thing for blanket statements.

Hi, I'm currently in YC for the summer. Although I certainly don't speak for everyone in YC, I think I'm somewhat more qualified than the author who has never been in the program and who apparently receives his information from blog posts and hearsay.

Most of his assertions apply to startups or any intense forms of collaboration (as PC noted) in general. Although we work a significant amount of hours, it's not as if we never get out. I've gotten to know many of the other cofounders very well outside of YC. Additionally, is it really work if you enjoy what you're doing? I rather work 60-80 hours per week on something I like that challenges me, than 40 hours per week on something I'm disinterested in. As for the pure speculative, link-baiting stuff:

"Young, impressionable and inexperienced entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice their health, happiness and creativity while pursuing wealth."
This is the second company I've started. It's my business partner's second as well. Many of the founders in YC have worked at startups or run their own businesses before.

Happiness/Creativity? I went from working a 9-7 office job I wasn't interested in to working on my dream project.

Health? Due to increased schedule flexibility, I've actually been able to exercise more and eat better. I've lost a good 5 lbs.

"They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic..."
You should have been at my team's first meeting; it was like this, but the opposite. Informal founder feedback sessions have been similar. The carebear environment the author described wouldn't work anyway - the VCs would destroy us.

"They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled."
Isolation? My parents just visited this past weekend. I still keep in touch with all of my friends even if many of them wear the hat of beta tester. If anything, I've been able to keep in _better_ touch with my friends because they're all curious about what I'm working on. Talking about a startup is a lot more fun than talking about a 9-5 or 9-7 for that matter.

Without YC I'd still be at my same old job trying to work on our startup on the side. This is not only difficult to do, but very slow as well. YC essentially moved everything up a year or two and allowed us to work on what we love while being surrounded with a bunch of brilliant people to bounce ideas off of and anxious investors to present to. What more could two cofounders originally from Ohio ask for?
Virtual Property Law:  Part Three in Game Law Series
Find

1)Someone you love and you would die for

2)Something you are passionate about(such as building cool useful things) - when people say good things about it, you would have found what to do with your life
I think it had a random collection of links because Knol is tiny and that's all they have. I'm sure it will change as they grow.
It's sad to see this trollish content rising to the top of news.yc.
The courts do not always assess right and wrong -- they are concerned with legal and illegal, which isn't the same thing.
Just show that N=1 or P=0. Problem solved. Next?
The way he "compared" them was to say the list of criterion applies to both of them, and that it clearly shouldn't apply to the other things. What's wrong with that?
It sounds innocent enough, but it does point to some problems with their search ranking. The quality of their search results has to be far more important than Knol.
Do something else! I find that the more you deviate from the coding mindset, the more you find a need to get back to it. Push coding away until you find yourself passionate enough about something that it draws you back.
Ask HN: graphical html editor that doesn't corrupt data?
Hi gents,

I'd like to try a visual HTML editor. The last time I look at these applications, they didn't meet two basic requirements:

* Do not create corrupt(invalid) data

* Handle any introduced corruption by identifying the it immediately after it's introduced.

Has anything changed? None of the editors I've looked at seem to indicate how they work one way or the other.
HUGE thanks! BTW, I've been experimenting with web-based software running on a desktop with XUL/WebKit-based clients that run their own in-process HTTP server (I've used CherryPy) and I like this approach: HTML-based UIs are way easier to create than typical UI widgets.
Ridefinder has been around for a very long time and it hasn't really taken off. Don't be afraid of them.
The Google Knol Threat to Content Businesses
What you shouldn't do is use the answers here as a means of living your life.
Mac? PC? Linux?

In any case, you best bet is Dreamweaver. But consider this... pretty much all of these editors are useless when you're working with dynamic web pages. That's why MS has killed FrontPage for example. Your best bet is to use a nice CSS editor (CSSEdit for example) and a good text programming editor (vi/emacs/textmate).
Knol is Google's Wikia
He's using the accepted psychological definition of a cult. The reference is right there in the post.
So how do you fix these outliers? Dark Knight is still #1 and The Godfather is still #3.
I wonder if it would be possible to change the dollar amount to the actual dollar amount that has changed hands.
Well, hang on. The USA is probably the most hospitable environment for business in the known universe. Not only is it harder to start businesses in most other countries, but expats face additional restrictions on business activity in most places. So if you want to start a business, stay in the USA. If you still want a change, the USA is a very diverse country, you can find all sorts of cultures just by moving a couple of states in any direction.

Challenges can also be found by giving yourself some handicaps.I knew a guy who was a moderately successful programmer, who sold all his belongings and hitchhiked across the USA.

If you want some sort of adventure that will test your sense of yourself, try someplace very different. India, Africa, China. Best handled with a buddy traveler, but they are not so hard to find.

Extreme short term, you can try Burning Man, that's on in a month and it will definitely stretch your imagination.
Forget 200, I don't think Cheney will be remembered even 50 years from now.

Quick: Who was Harry Truman's VP?
He's talking about the fact that independent workers (MicroISVs, startups, freelancers, web workers, etc) are, unlike normal salaried workers, are stealing from ourselves when we goof off a lot. Needless self distraction is like stealing money from yourself.

On the salary side of the fence, you're increasingly seeing people who are tasked with a fixed list of stuff to do rather than punching a clock for an even 40 hours a week. In this setting, needless self-distraction is like stealing free time from yourself.

Of course, the definition of "needless self distraction" is sticky. But no matter how you define it, you probably do it too much (and so do I!).
Firebug.
I'm using CherryPy, and I'd be very interested in hearing more about this. Feel free to send me an email.

I think the biggest hurdle in a Luminotes desktop port such as this would be replacing PostgreSQL with something like sqlite.

Another option would be to throw out the existing server entirely for the desktop version and use something like Google Gears.
That's pretty interesting. I find the cube scary to look at, for some reason. Makes it hard to read the text.
Microsoft's Sphere display in action
By that definition, I know a lot of guys who are cults.
1) I hate myself too much to let anybody close to me, I am working on this though.
2) the kind of things I code I have been reasearching for years and working hard but nobody seems to care, everything has already been done before too.
USANA New Zealand
USANA New Zealand Distributor
ok, reading.
I guess I should, I can't really think what though. any ideas?
Can you take a year off of school?

I feel like a very large number of startup founders that ended up successful probably would not have seen much evidence that that would happen within two or three months.
I wouldn't blindly follow malicious advice but really I do need to find somehow to snap out of this so I value what others might say.
thank you for all your commments so
far.
This article just reads as whiny and bitter.

... also it wasted my time. I could have been productive!
Knuth, "the art of computer programming"; Knuth, "Concrete mathematics"; "GEB (Gödel, Escher, Bach)"
Searcharoo - Search Engine Crawler in C# / ASP.NET
that can't be all true - isn't some of it as radiated energy in RF spectrum?
Space-Filling Curves in Geospatial Applications
A lot of the rumor seems like bunk, but I still think that apple is going to be coming out with new laptops just after their free iPod Touch student special. I think I'm going to buy a macbook with an ipod touch on like, sept. 15th and if they come out with new laptops in september still, just return it and get the new laptop. I'd love a new macbook form factor - Its just not quite what I want now, but if they made it a little smaller and lighter, with a better screen i'd buy it right now.
I think his ideas apply on very broad terms to lots of institutions and organizations that relied on certain forms of information transmission which the internet is now competing with or that could control what information got transmited.

Forms of information trasmission
Audio radio, music, telephone
Images tv, movies, animation, pictures
Text newspapers, magazines, books, software

What information got transmitted
Price tickets, car dealerships, advertising, hotels, housing
Location maps
Services yellow pages
Work headhunters, recruitment agencies

and more ...
Ask HN: Running your web app on top of a python http server
When I noticed (via firebug) that Cuil (http://www.cuil.com) uses CherryPy as their web server, Three questions popped up in my mind:

a) Is it a smart decision?

b) Does it explains why they were down so many times in the last 24 hours.

c) Does anybody else is known to be using python servers in production instead of python application integrated via (cgi/fcgi/mod_wsgi) with apache/lighttpd/nginex and alike?
Lao-Tzu would argue that being of lasting significance, is, well, insignificant:

Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.

The people who made TCP/IP and HTTP are among the greatest benefactors to humankind in the past 20 years. Yet hardly anyone knows who they are, and I doubt they will make the history books. Because they were so successful, their achievement now seems like an impersonal product of the age. If only!

All the internet entrepreneurs, all the ones who became richer than Croesus - their achievement was to become gatekeepers for a zillionth of the wealth that the Internet and the Web have bestowed on the world. And then they became targets for other people, who had piled up maybe a zillionth and a half of that wealth, and people like Arrington can't shut up about them.

If you want to change the world, and the people know your name, you're doing it wrong.
Its extremely delicious tropical fruit juice in flavors like Mango and Peach that has a heavenly mouthfeel and drinks way too fast. "Fruit juice" alludes to like welches or something similar.
I've heard it's not worth the money.
My thoughts are its not really about trivial stuff but more about refinement.

A programming language with refined defaults and tools is better than one without.
Fellow Ohioan (still there) here.

Want to work independently in some capacity or another on a programming project but I don't really seem to be brimming with ideas.

Any particular ways you utilize to be inspired for project ideas?
What if you assume everything is average and you give more weight toward the finally rating for those individual ratings that are further from the norm? This means people couldn't game it by following the crowd, following the crowd gives the entire crowds rating less weight.
Women in Linux
Blockbusters popular with the avid Internet users have always started at incredibly high ratings only to slowly fally to the right place. The LOTR movies were in top-10 once too.

I suppose IMDB might try to account for the initial voting wave being raving fans and dampen the initial votes, but why would they? Personally I've reloaded the "Dark Knight" IMDB page half a dozen times to see if it was still at #1.

The most popular topic on the IMDB message boards is "This does not deserve to be in top 250" or "Why is this not in Top 250 why some-other-movie is not?". People like to keep an eye on rankings and to comment on them.

The main practical use for the ratings IMHO is to get a list of movies within each genre sorted by the rating, to see if you missed something people thought was great.