skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This strikes me very strongly as looking for justification for something beyond our control. "I can't change this, so I'll convince myself that I like it."

Let's look at the ability to upmod a submission. Upmodding a submission expresses approval of the submission, and signals to other users that it might be something that they would find interesting. Ultimately, the goal of upmodding is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

Downmodding expresses disapproval of a submission, and, again, its ultimate goal is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

While downmodding is vulnerable to a certain amount of gaming, that is a problem with its mechanics, not its principle, and upmodding is vulnerable to the exact same form of gaming.

If poorer quality items tend to get upmodded, and if there's no way to counter that, then the site's quality falls and eventually the site itself becomes the sort of waste of time that you're talking about.

Regardless, downmods aren't likely to be implemented at any point in the near future, and this entire discussion is a waste of time. I'm a little annoyed at myself for participating, but ... y'know ... someone on the internet was wrong. [http://xkcd.com/386/]

[Edit] P.S.: You miss your blog, don't you? :-)
I'd wait 5 more years to see improvements in the field. It is major surgery, and your eyesight is pretty important. I'd wait until they made as many improvements as possible before going for it. Wear contacts if you don't like glasses.

I was actually planning on doing this at 25, but then changed my mind. Even if there is only a 10% chance your eyesight will get screwed up, thats still too much to take a chance on
Your age also matters. I'm told by my optometrist that you shouldn't really think about LASIK in your 30s, because with current LASIK procedures, your vision will decline more rapidly in your 40s, than if you hadn't gotten this LASIK.

I'm seeing this with two friends who have gotten LASIK and are in their 40s and 50s. Whereas they bragged before how clearly they could see, they both have mentioned needing reading glasses recently.

I'm glad I listened to my optometrist.
You could make good money owning a news company by manipulating stock prices like this
I'd just like to add that YMMV, and you'll really want to ask this question of a qualified professional familiar with your eye medical history.

Asking the Internet will not yield you a good answer.
The title of the post is a little misleading. The point of the article isn't that SSDs are useless for laptops. It's that they aren't at a price point yet where they are attractive alternatives for typical customers.

Current SSDs are still 5x more expensive than magnetic drives per byte. And while their seek performance is great, their streaming read performance is mediocre and their write performance is just awful. Likewise promises of low power consumption haven't really been realized yet.
It all depends on the algorithm used behind the scene. Why would 1 downmod + 1 upmod = 0? Calling them up/down might be part of the framing issue that we're stuck with since the reddit days.

Fun property of a system with upmod and downmod: If every user mentally assigns a target score to a post (eg.: that comment should be worth 7 points) and votes always in the direction to reach the target, then the resulting score will be the median of all the targets. Statistically. That seems like a desirable goal, so maybe one should encourage people to vote that way.
Use contact lenses - your vision doesn't seem too bad (compared to mine - I have astigmatism but I can still have lenses) and they're much safer.
You're arguing the value of downmods from the perspective of improving the site's quality, which is not what I argued. I am simply expressing approval with respect to my personal happiness.

As to convincing myself, I am now convinced :-)
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Solution: a 'hide' button
I also loved. I didn't expect it would have such bad reception.
How many people have sound enabled on their computers?
Can someone point me to a study or stat on how many people have sound enabled on their computers.

We need to do some analysis for an app we're building which depends on sound being enabled.
why does PG leave out the search feature on HN?
Upmodded for candour, not because I think you were wrong. In fact, I think you simulated most corporate environments: peopel are silent when they agree but argue when they disagree :-)
Explain to me how this is different from RoR, other than the vague buzzwords of "speed," "lightweight" and "powerful" listed under the homepage.
The "show intranet sites in compatibility mode" thing is really just an acknowledgement that IE is both a web browser and a general frontend for internal business apps. Should anyone actually give a shit what kind of markup companies use for their internal apps?
[Edit] P.S.: You miss your blog, don't you? :-)

No. Exchanging ideas like this is not the same thing as blogging, no matter how much Web 2.0 people call the Internet a "conversation."
This is interesting. I wish I had something like this 5 years ago. I think Internet phones will eventually destroy SMS.
What about taking the Code Igniter approach of "in your face." Their banner reads: CodeIgniter is an Open Source Web Application Framework that helps you write kick-ass PHP programs."

How about something like that? Aggressive, confident, in your face, and it's not too silly. Just direct and to the point.

"jQuery is an Open Source JavaScript Library that helps you write kick-ass web applications."

Then again, if anyone revives the term "___ rock star" it would probably be the jQuery team. They have done some uber amazing work on this library.
Word of advice: get the best surgeon out there. Don't skimp-your eyes are worth more than the money you save.

My SO worked at the #1 west coast lasik office. She said that a lot of people came in for corrections 2-3 yrs after their original surgery because they went to "budget" eye centers. The cuts were sloppy, quality of original surgery was horrible, scarring, etc.

Also, don't put blind faith in the surgeon's claimed years of experience. Many surgeons do not work full time and thus have less experience than those that do.
How is this guy on the front page of HN???? I hope this isn't turning proggit :(
You may consider the gas permeable hard contacts that you wear when you sleep, and remove them when you wake up. It gives you about 12 hours of good vision. Aside of the daily procedure and extra containers when traveling, it is basically life without glasses or contacts. I have been using these for almost 10 years.
I had it done about 3 years ago so I could drive or use a camera without glasses. It lets me buy el-cheapo reading glasses & sunglasses (previously needed prescription), so I can have as many pairs as I want. (I'm over 50, and Lasik does nothing for accomodation).

My night vision is actually better than before. This is because I had to wear glasses before, and if they weren't prefectly clean, I would see halos & streaks. I had difficulty keeping my glasses clean.

There was one minor unexpected side effect. I do some work with lasers & optics, and since the surgery, a laser focussed to a tiny spot looks to me like a cluster of spots, which is an annoyance.

So lots of benefits, and no real complaints. However, looking back on the experience, I'm shocked at myself for doing it, and taking the risk that I could end up with serious vision defects. I was lucky that I had a good result, but my attitude has changed since then. I doubt I would make the same choice now.
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[downmodding things I don't like] is getting emotionally invested in them.

I have this experience too, even for comments. On reddit, where downmodding a comment makes its down-arrow blue, it increases my attachment to it (partly because it makes them more visible - unlike HN's greying out).

Every so often on reddit, I'll downmod to express my frustration, but then later put it back to neutral, because I don't want to be attached to it. I rarely downmod - and it even more rarely stays. I think this approach is not common.

Is the issue of downmodding front-page because of the quality of recent HM articles? I'm finding HN less interesting over the past week or so (one symptom is the many recent meta-comments - including this one, unfortunately). I was thinking it's due to the US holidays...

[thesis]: not having a downmod button is a good thing if you believe that you should be channeling your time and energy into things that matter.

I agree. It's a bit like positive thinking, in that by attending to things that can help you, when you need something you have at your fingertips useful things - as opposed to filling your mind with things you don't like, when you reach for something, all you have is rubbish (or worse, arguments for why something isn't worthwhile).

But then there's the problem: what if HN starts suggesting many articles that don't help you?
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Just a quick update here -- I'll go through all of the applications sometime later today or tomorrow so that I can hit most of them in one batch (rather than trying to track them as they come in).
My wife and I both had lasik done around 10 years ago. My eyesight was 20/300 and hers wasn't much better. Neither of us has had any issues whatsoever. I'm a programmer and she works in an office with accounting software. We were around 40 at the time.

At one time, I worked on medical computers for eye surgery and witnessed several myself. This type is painless. Why anyone could not watch TV or use a computer for a month, I don't know. Mine was done on a Friday morning and I was back at the screen Monday morning.

Both our vision is still 20/20 though we both are getting farsighted as a result of age, not the surgery. We do not use drops for any reason.

Lasik does NOT correct farsightedness though I was once told this can be done now, I haven't looked into it.
I thought the newer procedures use a different method?
I wouldn't mind a placebo downmod. Just to get those feelings out.
> Ultimately, the goal of upmodding is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

> Downmodding expresses disapproval of a submission, and, again, its ultimate goal is to increase the perceived quality of the site.

Don't have much experience with people, do you?

People have multiple, often inconsistent goals. Improving someone else's site may be one of them, but it's rarely the highest.
No at work, Yes at home.
"Aside from auto-complete, [Google's single text-box] interface hasn't significantly evolved in the past 10 years. But it needs to. Really."

This seems to be the default view but no one ever says exactly why. If it needed to evolve, really, Google would have evolved it already. Type in what you want, and the computer finds it for you.

Ironically, "type in what you want and the computer finds it for you" seems to be exactly the interface that Wundrbar and Ubiquity are implementing. The pattern recognition of the query to front-load/limit the results can help, but it's still the same interface. Admittedly, being able to interact with the site as part of the _results_ is a MUCH better feature than the "show a screenshot of the destination web page" feature meme that a lot of sites seemed to think was valuable but actually has limited utility.
Laser eye surgery is a good procedure - if you're right for it. The problem is that it's also a money-maker and that means that (doctors|hospitals) have an incentive to qualify people who aren't good candidates. So, do you trust your doctor to turn you away as a customer if you aren't a good candidate? Good doctors probably have very long waiting lists and much higher fees (since it isn't an insurance covered cost and so fees have more variance).

If you get a bad doctor, they could screw up and leave you with a scar on your cornea or something like that. A family friend of mine is a laser eye surgeon and often has to remove these scars that have occurred because of other doctors.

It's a great surgery - if you're right for it.
Awesome, so they don't use flash anymore? Whoops nevermind...
Politicians are slimebags, news at 11.
I note that HN also discourages historic downmods. I can't downmod any posts older than a day (but I can upmod them).
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Why to have downmods on comments then?
Obligatory: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html
No, it's just that this design is lame and obnoxious. Look at Why's (Poinant) Guide to Ruby (http://poignantguide.net/ruby/). That's an example of a design that's kinda wacky and out there, but also good.
I've been touring the world lately, doing huge amounts of drugs, destroying hotel rooms, having sex with random hordes of hot women, and making giant piles of money. Given that lifestyle description, I think it's pretty obvious what I do for a living, but in case you're still wondering: I'm a JavaScript Rockstar. And yes, I use jQuery.

Excuse me, I have to go have more sex.
Despite the harsh criticisms by others here (and right on, the site is link-bait), the site points to a paper in Journal of Theoretical Biology worth reading.

The thesis of the paper is that binocular vision evolved to see through clutter such as small leaves near one's face.

“X-ray vision” and the evolution of forward-facing eyes

Mark A. Changizin and Shinsuke Shimojoc. J. Theoretical Biology. July 15, 2008.

Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18682253?ordinalpos=1&...

PDF: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=...
Infact this is one thing which really does work well with most people. Since good programmers are already working part time on projects which interests them, it becomes really easy to allow them to moonlight and join as full time a few months later.
The kid from Ratatouille:
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071227/webhead-look-a-likes-the...
Scientists create DNA tubes with programmable sizes for nanoscale manufacturing
Fully agree with you. Some of the apps look great. I bought an iPhone as its the best out there for what I need, but I'd definitely get an Android phone if it proves to be as good. Now I need to find out if there's an app like this for the iPhone. If not, then we should create one!
There is something to this argument depending on the application you are writing. Abstractions are good, but higher abstractions mean slower performance. For some applications, some frameworks may not offer significant performance degradation - but for others, it does. So, first question is - what % performance increase can you expect by removing frameworks and hardcoding things? If you can get a 10% performance boost, then that seems to imply 10% more requests per server and a reduction in overall operating costs -> increase in profit. MMMM profit...

The next question is, how good are you and your team at the root language? One poster scoffs at servlets, but I've been coding in java for over 10 years and doing work on servlets for several years now with no other web frameworks and there is not much barrier to entry there other than the annoyance of writing stuff by hand. It depends on how stable the features on your application are as well as your skill. If you are still rapidly iterating over different options, then working without a framework may be premature optimization. If your feature set is stable then maybe it makes sense to remove the framework before you go live to a slashdot article?
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RSS and site feeds are the DVR of the internet.

Just thought I'd get that one in there. If you need to market it to someone, call it that.

Come to think of it, that is a smoking hot idea. There really is no TiVo of the internet feed reader.

You don't star your subscriptions. Your feed reader doesn't crawl out on the internet looking for more content like what you're already "recording". You can't set up a wish list... and there's no real clearinghouse of feeds (listings) or the semantic links between them (read Coding Horror? you may also like Joel on Software). I know the analogy is not perfect, but it sure seems like fertile ground...
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This lightweight mobile phone of 87 g will be launched in two eye-catching shades of Silver and Black supporting a 1.9 inches wide screen with a colorful TFT display of 65K colors.
You just can't stop "blogging" can you? :)
If internal sites are written for a buggy platform instead of a standard, it makes it harder to change browsers inside the company. Marketshare! Lock-in! Innovation!
How do they get the inventory of nearby, local stores?
You talking about enkin?

I read that they are apparently working for Google now.

http://androidguys.com/2008/08/26/googles-not-so-secret-stra...
Guys, if you have never had Lasik, or never looked into the surgery, you really shouldn't give the OP false information.

Like someone mentioned, your result will completely based on two things: your surgeon, and your fit. I have been nearsighted since the 3rd grade, with astigmatism, and getting Lasik done 1.5 years ago was the best decision I have ever made. Here are a few facts most people don't know:

1. Noone has ever gone blind from Lasik surgery - this is a old wives tale
2. You have a higher chance of getting infection by wearing contact lenses than getting Lasik surgery
3. Almost all complications are due to inexperienced surgeons, and they are all correctable
4. You will still need reading glasses when you get old, lasik doesn't correct that. Once your vision have stabilized, your eye sight will not get worse after Lasik (besides the need for reading glasses at old age).

This is a surgery, so find the best surgeon in your area. Find someone who has done over 10,000 pairs of eyes, fly to another city if you have to. Don't try to save money -- it's your eyes! I did mine in NYC, and it cost me around $5k for both eyes (2-3x the going rate), but I also had one of the best surgeon in the area.

I had dry eyes for quite a while after surgery, but it went away after 6 months or so. And I only experience dry eyes when I am on the computer the entire day (when you are using the computer or watching TV, you don't blink as much), if I am out playing sport, it's perfectly fine. But keep in mind, your eyes take a while to heal completely -- it took mine 6-12 months, and now my dry eyes are gone.

Halo and glares are also typically caused by dry eyes, you put a few eye drops in, and they will be gone. And with newer technologies, halo and glares could pretty much be eliminated now days.

Hope this helps with your decision. I definitely recommend it.
Is another programmer your startup's top need or your top need?
At the same time startup people have to cut their costs to the minimum.
Do you mean Ortho-K? (Not sure if that's a procedure or a brand name).
So the real winner(s) got bought by Google...
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This was the alternative: http://flickr.com/photos/psauerbeck/2809426844/sizes/o/
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It wouldn't surprise me at all:

- His cost of capital is undoubtedly very low. Lending $4-5m to someone with that much money (and secured on property!) is practically risk free.

- He probably has access to a lot of good investment prospects.

- Tax breaks on mortgages will make the gap between cost of capital and likely return even larger.
(+ Sometimes there are simply not enough parenthesis :)
What is the probability that gcd(n,m)=1?
Until you went to jail.
I had it done about 5 years ago and it was the best money I ever spent. Not sure why people say go for the best Dr.. What you really need to do is go for the best laser as the laser does all the work. The Dr. just swabs your eyes and lets the machine do the work.
maybe because it's not so hard to use "site:..." on google.
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See my comment above, chatting with people that have similar interests is not blogging. And had I put this in my blog, it would have been off-topic.

I probably would have written it up as a draft, left it for a few hours, then deleted it as not being a net positive for what I was trying to accomplish.
My point of view is that I only care about the quality of articles on the front page. If a downmod button would increase it, I would agree with such proposal, but I'm not sure (as you said) that such would be the case, and anyway I think the flag button does already work in a way like a big down button.

What I do believe is that content can get better if people actively submit more articles (so spending a little more energy in the site), not only by voting the articles in the new queue.

Anyway I have the feeling that the quality of articles in the site isn't always getting worse... these days I'm quite happy about it.
I guess one way would be to require the user to type in the price of the object they're reviewing, to seed the database... although that would only work well for a community with a lot of Android cell phones.

Now that I think about it, a database telling which products local people are comparing would be pretty valuable to local stores... They might be willing to trade pricing data for search data? Or a "featured" listing position?
Is it illegal? As far as I understand it's the business model for Mark Cuban's sharesleuth.com (although he fully discloses that's what he does)
> The problem is that it's also a money-maker and that means that

...and that means that unlike highly regulated surgeries that are performed my surgery monopolies like hospitals, the rate of improvement in laser eye surgey has been astounding, as has the drop in price.

It's a nice contrast - sort of like comparing web 2.0 startups to massive EU-subsidized plans to create "a European Google".
Joined. Real name is Devon Hillard
Using site: on google is a terrible alternative to search on YC. Google's ranking algorithms might work for the web at large but it doesn't work so well for searching HN. SearchYC does a pretty good job at searching YCombinator and I would like for such a feature to be integrated into this site, but I'm guessing PG has better things to do with his time.
I'd like to have a button that says "hide from my view".
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My father's been through similar (well, except the corneas), and he said it was the best thing to ever happen to him since his post-op vision is so much better. It wasn't lasik for what it was worth, mostly just to fix very badly detached retinas in both eyes and cataract surgery.
Im sorry, why is this on first page?
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If I remember correctly a company has to give them permission to use their name on the client roster, which leads me to think that most of the time it's more than someone's pet project within the company.
Thank you for creating the list. Real name: Gary Rosales