skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
An excerpt of the paper taken from the "Open..." blog:

"In other industries, research continues up to a point where further research costs too much to be feasible. At this stage, the industry's output merely consists of replacing parts that have worn out.

However, in the software sector, a computer program that is fully debugged will perform its function forever without requiring maintenance or modification. What this means is that unlike socks that wear out, and breakfast cereal that is eaten, a particular software product can be sold to a particular customer at most once. If it is to be sold to that customer again, it must be enhanced with new features and functionality. This inevitably means that even if the industry were to approach maturity, any software company that does not produce new and innovative products will simply run out of customers! Thus, the industry will remain innovative whether or not software patents exist."

http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-software-paten...
I really like the idea of the site. But I think you need to differentiate yourself on the very front page by summarizing the theory there. If people think it's just a standard chat site and they don't bother to read the theory page, they'll have no reason to stick around.

Also, after I signed up with a username (and a blank password!) I was not able to see any text that I typed in the chat. Then when I came back later and tried to login as that same user, it just redirected me back to the front page of the site. When I navigated back to the chat, I wasn't logged in. This is all on Firefox 3.0.1/Linux.

Anyway, very promising. Keep on hacking!
Onlline aggregators are great but what will replace those deep-digging articles done by journalists?

And then I am not talking about tech stuff, professors and business people have an income.

I am talking about investigative reporters. How will they get financed?
Sheer Laziness
Not sure why people downmodded this comment. Government policies like this pose a real personal and business privacy problem. Any service that solves it in a convenient way surely has the potential to be profitable.
I might try it out. Every transaction I've ever had with Zappos has been ridiculously good. It's gotten to the point that between them and Amazon, I barely go shopping for anything except for groceries in the "real world" any more.
Get a room, you two.
would this work?

in main:
int x;
int *p = &x;
start writing random data to p, p-1, p-2, etc etc
return;
if nothing bad happens the stack grows up?
List of books used at top CS programs
Lemur CATTA - reading comprehension instead of CAPTCHAs
it has been going on for what, about 200 years now ? just about _any_ government has retained the right to inspect _anything_ that enters it's borders, citizenship notwithstanding. this is nothing new, it just applies to laptops (and friends) now.

i am not saying whether it is right or wrong, just providing some context. why the sudden outrage ?
The New York Times iPhone App - I Love It, But Here are 10 Suggestions
For homogenous variables (like two "int"s), I don't think you could make a strong argument for the compiler reordering them.
Not sure this is even possible with compiled code. Even so, you don't really change the buffer overrun attack vector at all by moving variables around.
What's your definition of "nothing bad happens"? And how do you recover if it does happen?
A course of pure mathematics, by G.H. Hardy (full text online)
It's not that it's "easy" to get funding compared with, say, getting a cheeseburger. But it's far from impossible. And I think that I could do it.

That being said, it might be impossible. And not relying on it would be a safer position. The point is, if it's easy enough to avoid, why not just save up the money, and then do it?

I certainly don't mind sharing creative control with fellow creators. In fact, it's absolutely necessary, and almost always a profitable move. Two people are more than twice as productive as one, by a significant measure.

YC doesn't take a huge cut, and the folks behind it are smart enough to know that the best investments do the best when they're mostly left alone.

Growth figures into my plans, but less than other factors. The way I see it, I'm in this for the love of creating things, and the paycheck is so that rent and feeding don't get in the way. At Yahoo, I have less say in what happens, and it's frustrating to see the wrong decisions get made. Being able to say "I told you so" rings hollow after a while. (To be fair, Yahoo is a lot less awful than a lot of other companies, and overall, a great place to work. I highly recommend it.)

In any transaction, it makes sense to put yourself in the best position possible. Selling 5% of a 10 million dollar company is better than selling 10% of a 5 million dollar company; same $$, half the price.
True that.

You do have to call it quits at some point. But why not wait until it's enough to actually coast on for a while?
Ouch, moving servers or otherwise being completely down when you get TechCrunched, without so much as a "give us your email and we'll tell you when we're back up".
Thanks, that's actually helpful.

Personally, I don't see "living off my savings" as a bad time to make mistakes. Webdevs are usually in short supply, and we're past the first speculative bubble, so "get a job" will likely always be an option. I can "retire" every 5 years :)
World’s Most Expensive Hotels
I had a dream last night that I was in a really swanky hotel somewhere (I had my own personal plunge pool with Jacuzzi) which has a see thru wall overlooking the Alps or some such spectacular mountain range. Also I was being waited on hand and foot, my every whim being
catered to. I was not really sorry when I woke up, But my dream did inspire me to do this post
about the most expensive hotels in the world.
This is one of the best texts on mathematics to have ever been produced. It shows exactly why Cambridge was, and remains to this day, one of the greatest places to study pure mathematics. The text also shows the brilliance of Hardy and why he deserved the Sadlerian Chair.
Google backs ISP-guaranteed minimum data rates
> Any others?

alloca()

Also, for the two-variable approach something like this should force the compiler to allocate variables in a required order:

int main()
{
int foo;
{
int bar;
...
}
...
}
I've been absolutely floored by the quality and quantity of comments and advice from all of you, here and on my blog. I've reworked my plans and expectations a tad, and gained a lot more confidence about some parts that I was shaky on. Thanks, HN!
Steve Jobs: MobileMe "not up to Apple's standards"
NASA announcement concerning perchlorates on Mars
"Under construction" is a phrase I have an immediate, strongly negative reaction to. I'm probably not alone. How about "Coming soon"?
I guess that's a bit of a GeoCities throwback. Changed it to "in the works," thanks.
Some advanced optimization may benefit from this sort of reordering. Alternatively, a compiler that reorders all local variables for "security" purposes may mix even just two ints if it's implemented in a dumb way.
I am not competent enough to comment on the design of computer chess programs, however, as a chess player, I can state that computers perform well in very tactical positions. When the positions are more strategic, such as a closed position arising from a large number of queen pawn openings (1.d4) and such openings like the Ruy Lopez Closed, the human's ability to take into account very subtle strategic ideas usually give the human the upper hand. That is why Kasparov tried to keep most of his games against Deep Blue closed.

What was interesting is when Kasparov played Fritz and Deep Fritz, he actually chose some very tactical openings and didn't perform too poorly. Then again, it's Kasparov. Kramnik had equal results.
SSD For Servers?
Really cool!! I put all my comments in the chat system. We really need to link this with hacker news so we can discuss things.
I think that the main problem here lies in meaning of "understand chess".

You can say that computers understand chess because they are able to consistently beat best human players. Or you could say that they understand it because they are able to play it at all.

Or you can say that they do not understand chess, because they use some combination of hard coded heuristics (and the evaluation function is nothing but that) and brute force, which is at first glance too trivial approach to be called understanding.
I'm under twenty-five, and know who Mitch Kapor is. Lotus notes, right?
It sounds like a great idea to me.
Ted, I don't know if you read news.yc anymore, but pressflip's front page could really use a tag cloud or something. One of the best usability tips I ever got was "recognition, not recall." People are much better at pointing to what they like than they are at generating a list of what they like when asked.
teenager lights up turnkey message board software, knows scoble. YAWN.

okay i am officially a geezer...here is my two cents: have fun playing webmaster but don't put the calc book down just yet. most of your "contacts" (scoble etc) are legends only in their own minds. by time you get to college, everything about today's web will be obsolete. booting up wordpress is not going to get you far in 2014.

but there may be a gem of widsom here. you might find that eating ramen, getting fat, and running up your (or your folks in your case) credit cards to pay your hosting fees isn't as nearly as glamorous as PG and the YCult make it out to be.

kid you may also be missing a very big boat. webtech is becoming an idiot's game. the larry/sergey of your generation will likely be a chemist or physicist. don't get too charmed by the web "business"
Interesting. Complicated issue indeed. I'd have guessed exactly the opposite about the lights. The light being on incrementally and continuously requires more fuel for the fire. The longer its on, the "bigger" the fire.

Does this mean that by inaction, its ok cause work to be done, even if by reasonable action, one could have prevented it?

Could the elevators simply move by themselves, stopping at every floor. Would it be permitted to ride them since they were simply "left on" and you wouldn't have to press any buttons, and they would have made the trip anyway?
can someone transcribe it for me ...
Related Info
Erlang is not magic fairy-dust that suddenly makes you app scale. What makes Erlang different than most languages is that it does not get in your way when scaling becomes necessary. There are fewer leaky abstractions and hidden "gotchas" that will end up making your life hell. The fact that it happens to come with battle-tested frameworks for handling a lot of the dreary details for code and data distribution along with strong fault-tolerance features are nice benefits to be able to draw upon.
If using ambiguous questions and brainteasers gets Google
good employees, then surely using even more ambiguous
questions and even harder brainteasers will get a company
great employees, right? I propose the following
interview questions:

1. The Fibonnacci sequence starts with 0, 1, 1 and each
subsequent term is the sum of the preceding terms. Write out
the rest of the sequence. You have 30 seconds.

2. The problem with American democracy is that the qualities
tested for during the election process (charisma,
fundraising ability) are unrelated to the qualities
necessary to be a good leader and policy maker (integrity,
sound judgement). Briefly outline a better system of
government that is equally fair.

3. How many golf balls will fit in the average blender? Will
they blend?

4. Observe that 8 = 5 + 3, 10 = 3 + 7, 12 = 5 + 7; show that
all even numbers can be expressed as the sum of two primes.

5. Imagine you are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your
mass is proportionally reduced so that your density is the
same. Now, how much would you charge to wash all the windows
in Seattle? (Note, you can't hire anyone to do it for you,
they'll just squish you and keep all the money)

6. Consider the set of all sets which do not contain
themselves. Does this set contain itself? Answer yes or no.

7. Using only three sentences, explain to an eight-year-old
why she cannot have a puppy. (Cue entrance of crying child)
holy shit lets not pump up their titanic egos any more
Can you back any of that up?
ADDENDUM: My comment is a joke that refers to a simpsons episode. I have the bulk of the series completely memorized, and so I can summon up an appropriate quote for almost any situation. Since most people don't know what I'm talking about, they are likely to pull a quick google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=There%27s+a+black+widow+at+th...

What do you see? My stupid comment. WTF? Obviously, ynews is rated extremely high by google.com. This seems like a design flaw, since any idiot [1] can post here. The quote comes from a very funny sequence [2] in the simpsons when homer subscribed to a questionaire-only magazine:

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF16

[1] eg: me, drunk off my ass

[2] The sequence was funny, the episode was stupid
The eval function contains more accurate knowledge of what matters in chess than most humans.
This is why puzzle CAPTCHA's are wrong
$10,000 is the limit for transporting undeclared "financial instruments" across the border.

This can be in the form of cash, certificates of deposit, bonds, stocks, and I suppose anything else that has the semblance of real money (gold, etc).
So you launched your startup here first (last week, month...). Now how is it doing?
Several startups were launched here and usually users provide valuable feedback to founders. If you launched your startup here last week, month, year, Can you please share how you are doing now? What were your major obstacles? etc...

Thank you all,
Steve Jobs makes the right move, vows to fix MobileMe with new boss
based on the abstract i think it probably says something like "eventually computers don't get any faster so better algorithms are the only way to improve software"

amirite
Yes, these days, people are free to choose. However, after trying the alternatives, I think Perl is still a winner.

I spent some time (maybe 6 months) with Python recently. The first few weeks you're amazed at how uniform and regular everything is. It's so simple! But then after you've gotten used to Python, it starts to wear on you that there's no shortcuts for things that you do n times / day. And it's not just that Perl saves you typing, it's that Perl doesn't annoy experienced programmers by making them do every single thing the uniform (and longer) way over and over.

Another thing is naming. There are various clumsily-named things in Python. For example, "dictionary"? It's a hash. "Tuple"? I don't blame Guido, because I don't believe he's a native speaker of the rat's nest we call the English language, but it almost appears that some things are named different from the Perl-equivalents just to be different. Anyway, what you find after having used both Python and Perl is that Perl really does have that smooth well-worn "I use this every day and it fits like a glove" feel, and a lot of that has to do with well-chosen names for things, and operators that look like what they do.
Reaching the $5 Million Club Takes an Open Mind
I would agree with you, on the whole, that some wealth disparities in the US are the product of government corruption.

Of course, in order for a government to become corrupt it must first become powerful enough to be worth corrupting. It is my observation that governments most rapidly gain power as a reaction to perceived economic disparity: the New Deal, SOX, the IRS, the SEC. These were all once government 'solutions' to economic inequality and remain today some of the most powerful (and arguably, corrupt) organizations in the world. I would argue that almost any time you find a corrupt organization generating illicit wealth, you will also find a well-meaning person who proposed the creation of that organization to 'solve' economic disparity.

It is true that there are wealth disparities that are created through government corruption, especially in the short term. But historically that corruption is ultimately enabled (perhaps accidentally) by those overly concerned with the problem of wealth disparity.
This reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room paradox.

Imagine you had an English speaking person providing responses to mandarin stimuli in accordance with a function that mapped every input of mandarin words to a mandarin output. Most people would agree that he doesn't really 'understand' mandarin, even though he can 'converse' fluently in it.
> I’m also not advocating doing large projects in Perl.

Actually, you can nowadays. With Perl 5, use strict, use warnings, use Moose, write tests, and have a look at modern Perl best practices.

And, of course, Perl 6 should be quite well-equipped for handling large projects right out of the box, ... once that box gets here. :)
Well, putting my natural instinct to disagree with most of what Joel says aside, I've never liked that approach. Those are the kind of questions that make me think I probably don't want to work at wherever I'm interviewing. If I really needed to solve that problem, I would probably look up the answer. I certainly wouldn't make a whole bunch of estimates that all have ridiculous margins of error; that shows a willingness to problem-solve coupled with an inability to recognize your own ignorance, which isn't a super combination
However, isn't there a saying "don't attribute to conspiracy that which could be attributed to stupidity" - not sure which applies in this case !
Wow. I could never solve this in my first try...let alone in 29 seconds.
"JavaScript really isn't about OO. Or strong typing. It doesn't need to be."

Yet, ECMAScript 4
I don't believe that the point is IP. I remember when traveling Europe, a number of customs officials demanded that I turn on my laptop in order to prove that it was real. I think that the concern is that an electronic device could be used to conceal a bomb, or a similar tool.
Searchmor.com : search engine
Find mp3 players and other accessories using Searchmor.com
Too speciesist.
To sum up the criticisms I've seen on TechCrunch - the site is down, it's just a Wordpress install, difficult to monetize, inexperienced team, the company's acronym is TIT, etc. With all that said, he learned a valuable lesson. He learned how to deal with the angriest people from one of the most self-critical industries in the world (IT). I'm no therapist, but many of the comments on Slashdot, Reddit, or TechCrunch seem to come straight from a guide to the DSM IV. If he learns how to deal with criticism like that, then he's set for life and I'd bet on his next venture succeeding.
The Chinese are concerned about their public image. The US, not so much.
It's easy to write off HN outrage as mere classism; of course that completely sidesteps the question of who is right and who is wrong. I'm certain that there are a significant number of people here who agree with the author, or some subset of the author's views, and that there are a majority who disagree. To state that is to state that "black people want affirmative action" or "republicans will vote for mccain." It's statistically true, in a vague and general sort of way, but doesn't really say anything about whether or not we should have affirmative action or whether or not mccain should win.

The real problem I have with the authors is that they operate from the presupposition that operating a business (which, on a transactional level is really just free exchange, like exchanging fish for books) is somehow unfair. The authors are neither party in the exchange; they are providing neither the fish nor the books, and are merely standing from the sidelines, saying "You should not exchange six books for twelve fish!" which is of course none of their business.
The only other way I can see to do it would be to have some sort of a middleman who decided the amount of fish being traded for books, and he would probably take a cut off the top for his 'service'. In gradeschool we called this 'bullying', but one man's moral outrage is another man's fairness I guess.
Are you implying that the front-controller pattern is bad?
Exactly how do they plan to let employees sell stock without accidentally becoming a public company?

they sell it to banks and/or investment firms who are basically buying a futures contract on a facebook ipo. the employee loses their rights to sell these shares, the bank gains the rights.
A Ruling May Pave the Way for Broader Use of DVR
Most likely, it involves private internal trading between employees

doubtful. this is not a new practice. banks and investment houses have been buying options in private companies from potential shareholders for years
yeah, its true cuz i say so. are you the guy who trolls around the web asking people to cite everything they say? and yes it is trolling
Kinetic Sculptor Powered by Wind. by Theo Jansen.
oh they didn't learn that much.

one big mistake they made was trying to reply to every troll on TC. anyone with a brain knows you go in there, make ONE post answering the obvious intelligent questions (that you can answer without looking like an ass), and bug out. their "exec" reponded to every post on the board and made himself look like a halfwit chasing trolls. basically he got owned by TC posters
"$120 in the last 10 months"

--That's not a lot. Assuming Tipjoy will take a percentage of that, they will need hundreds of thousands of users to be able to have a viable businness.
agree. though the site doesn't sound impressive, what he's doing is still way better than going to school or figuring out ways to get alcohol
Please put some line breaks in there -- your post fouls up the rendering of the whole page of comments (it makes the page too wide).
Great concept. I would start by putting everything into the dashboard page. Perhaps borrow from the look and feel of the Wikipedia main page, in terms of fitting everything into four different boxes. The theory page isn't necessary; I know it's only for HN readers, but once the site is good enough the concept will speak for itself (it already does for the most part.) Choose a snappier name. This has the potential to get really big. (The YouTube of conversations?)
Killing SMS
Markdown is probably the simplest and prettiest of the text markup formats.

And to answer your question, it's easier to hit the asterisk key than to reach for the mouse to hit the "italics" button.
LMS Software
An ED Global LMS is a software package that enables the management and delivery of on-line content to learners. It is designed to manage user learning interventions. Most LMSs are web-based to facilitate "anytime, any place, any pace" access to learning content and participant administration. Typically an LMS allows for learner registration, delivery of learning activities, and learner assessment in an on-line environment. The ED Global LMS lets you publish courses and place them in an online catalog. Learners log into the ED Global LMS using a browser, select courses from the catalog and launch them.
Surprisingly, today's very rich say that money itself wasn't much of a motivator. Once you've got food in your belly and a big-screen TV, the mere prospect of more Benjamins isn't enough to get you leaping out of bed at 5 a.m. Rather, rich folks often make their fortunes after they make up their minds to solve a problem or do something better than it's been done before.

Very true for me and I'm sure a lot of the HN community. Once you get past a certain point with money it becomes an after thought, then you have the freedom to think of other things (like big ideas) that will make you more money. The rich get richer for a reason...
This is the hacker demographic I will be targeting should I become wealthy enough to finance my own YC-inspired investment firm.
Projects and companies change over time? Wow!
SPOT + Fire Eagle + Twitter = no problem
Another book to read that I recommend to all my friends:
An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning: Numbers, Sets and Functions by Peter J. Eccles.

You can find it on Amazon.
Mitch Kapor is definitely more well-known.