skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Two things, I think:

1) Increasing numbers of political stories are tightly integrated with startup life and technology -- so Fred Wilson et. al. are weighing in, and that leads to followon discussion

2) Many people on HN are interested in talking about these issues. So, while Paul and the old-timers would rather not (and change the rules when necessary), there are always plenty of politically-related stories that do meet the HN guidelines.
> doubt that clinically diagnosed depression is something that solves itself naturally after x months.

> but some introspection practices (orthodox practices but also meditation) could be and they could provide a definitive solution.

I think you're arguing two sides of the same coin on this one. What's unnatural about introspection?
Even The "Smart" Arguments Justifying LinkedIn's IPO Pop Are Bogus
HTC Flyer 7 “Android Tablet Now Available In Market
I hear that people take substantially less vacation in East Asia.
Thanks, hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Dissect this comment to study a perfect example of how politics attaches itself to HN. "It's not about politics. It's about law and the legal limits of freedom."

Of course that's interesting to programmers! In the same sense as Eric S. Raymond's statement that real programmers are all cap-L libertarians who believe in concealed carry laws.

I'm a security professional and friends of multiple friends of Byron Sonne, for whom this was an important story. Heck, I think it's an important story. What I think is important for us to understand is that not every important story needs to be covered here. There is nothing HN can do about this story other than kvetch and speculate about Sonne's ex-wife. (No, really, go look.)

Here's an acid test for "law and limits of freedom" stories: is anyone going to disagree about them in good faith? And, in good faith, is anyone going to make a business or technology decision differently in light of that story? No? Then it doesn't need to be here.
The Truth About Why Path Turned Down A $100 Million Offer From Google
Regarding 1) Flash on Android doesn't run in the background.
Love these posts; even though the website is heavy on ads, I feel like the tradeoff is that you are opening up your ledger and letting us all glance at it. I have no problem with you wanting me to click an ad or two in the process.

You are genuinely producing content that is valuable to me (at the least, interesting). Thanks for sticking to your guns and continuing to do these series.
I get 23 days holiday entitlement plus UK bank holidays which this year thanks to Prince William adds on another 9 days.

Like some others however, I have dreamt about travelling long term so have handed my notice in, managed to secure some small freelance gigs and leave next wednesday for Bangkok, my holiday entitlement just wasn't enough ;)
Next-generation IPhone In A Curved Glass Screen?
Technically, both Propane and Briquette use a Webkit view, but behind the scenes Briquette actually implements the Campfire API instead of scraping the campfire site for its content. Briquette also supports Growl, multiple sites, customizable message alerts, and drag-and-drop file uploads. Searching transcripts is on the way for version 1.2.

We had been using Propane ourselves when we decided to begin developing Briquette as an internal project. We felt frustrated with the user experience it offered. Briquette is our attempt to provide a client which is more streamlined and pleasant to use. We're focusing mainly on the user experience for business use.

We decided to launch with significantly less features than Propane, but have slowly been implementing more as we figure out the best way to focus on the end-user experience.
> If you are providing them with just a key, you are still trusting them to do the encryption right. Better to encrypt it yourself, in my opinion.

I am encrypting it myself, in addition to the backup being encrypted.

> Also, even if you encrypt it yourself but upload it somewhere, it's possible that the encryption will be cracked at some point in the future (with sufficient advance of technology). So the safest way (in terms of privacy) is not to send backups offsite at all, or at least to make sure they're physically secure from anyone else getting their hands on them.

Yes, those things are true. However - this system is a blend of convenience, security, and disaster recovery that works for me. Nothing is foolproof, but this lets me sleep at night, and IMHO provides more than reasonable security.
Very cool! A perfect choice for this year, I think -- I'm delighted to see that this year's freshman class was 52% female, very much like the world itself!

HMC has come far from the early 90's when I was there -- it was still a male-dominated institution and certainly not the better for it.

Of course, it also cost literally half as much even after inflation adjustment, but that's another story...
> The problem is that encoding in multiple codecs is prohibitively expensive...

So encode it to H264. It'll work in most browsers natively, and Flash reads it fine as a fallback.
Meta: Using Up/Down to express agreement and disagreement is fine. Its the HN way.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
Wow, somebody remembers something that I wrote four years ago. Cool!

And it looks like somebody below has saved me the trouble of pointing you to it.
Sounds like a perfect way to game the system and get three weeks off each year. Just take a full two weeks off during the year and then you magically get an extra week each Christmas ;-) If you know you're doing it ahead of time then you can easily factor in the reduction in salary.
O'Reilly Online Certification Programs
Agreed. I will never install it on any device I own, but I appreciate being treated like an adult rather than being told "You'll put your eye out!"
I'm a Propane user, but I'm not even a little bit attached to it. I really like Propane though. So, sell me on how you've improved the user experience with Briquette.

I mean, if you want to talk to a model customer for your product. Otherwise, good job, good luck, &c!
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Usability testing used to be cumbersome and difficult and that's where UserTesting.com really shines. By having real users browse and test your sites you will finally learn how they view your site, what problems they have with it and what parts work, don't work, or are confusing to them. This is key to improving any website and especially those selling a product or service, although it can also be applied to any field.
It's not the input (= work) that counts, but the output (results) that you get.

A year has 52 weeks. If I take 5 weeks of vacation per year that's 10% of the time that I have. So I will be 10% less productive (if I ignore increased productivity after vacations).

For me that's a reasonable trade-off. I don't live to work, but I work to live.

In addition, I suggest that you look at the per capita GDP of different countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...). If hard work would increase your output, you would expect the US to be at the top of the list. Instead, for example at the IMF 2010 data Sweden (which gives you 5 weeks of holiday per year) is listed above the US.
How do you know it was downvoted?
I'm considering taking a few of these mainly so I can put them on a resume. A quick search on Google and StackExchange seems entirely positive. Anybody here have any first-hand experience with these?
or, if the employer knows that if she finds a replacement for you, she will have to find replacements for all her employees, then she won't bother coercing you at all.
This is a very valuable resource.
FreshBooks, CrashPlan, GitHub, AWS (grudgingly - because I like building/running servers) and NetFlix.

I am more likely to drop 20, 30 or even 100 bucks on some software that I may or may not use daily - it takes a lot more to get me to commit to a subscription service - it has to provide ongoing utility and joy on a daily basis.
That may be the controversy you are concerned about, but for many, the key controversy has been Flash in the browser using a plug-in. Some concrete examples:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2010/02/21/my-take-on-the-flash...

http://www.roytanck.com/2010/02/28/my-thoughts-on-flash-and-...

http://mashable.com/2010/01/28/flash-ipad/

So talking about the Flash plug-in isn't a straw-man or a made-up controversy, it has been a real point of debate.

Note also that the terms of the developer agreement changed in a way that apparently allows the Flash cross-compiler, so the controversy you are concerned about has now been resolved:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1687857/did-apple-just-open-the-d...

All told, I think it was unfair of you to whip out the straw man accusation.
A different way of phrasing this is that the discussions about the TSA 100-200 days ago revealed that many of the newcomers here _do_ want to talk about civil liberties and see it as a big part of startup life. Before Paul changed the ranking to penalize TSA stories, they were common. Before Paul changed the interface to hide the votes on stories, it was clear that there was increasing support -- especially internationally -- for discussing it, and that the bulk of the resistance came from old-timers.

The sad thing is, I really think the only thing that needs to happen is for pg to make it explicit that these stories are within scope. It would revitalize HN and make it much more appealing internationally. I'm not holding my breath, though.
Fullbright-Hays Fellowship cancelled due to budget cuts ($5.8 million)
Don't Even Think of Sandals with Socks
Not just "not enough people flagging": I have an idea that there's some rule that discounts flags from users who flag too many stories.

If that's true, then when the number of political stories reaches a certain critical mass, everyone who flags all political stories will have their flags ignored.
There have been an enormous increase in people productivity since the days of your grandfather and father, due to computers, cell phones, way better batteries, better machines, better chemicals, etc. What your father could accomplish in a year, you can do in a month. That's the reason competitive economies, like those in Scandinavia, can give employes 25-30 or more days of vacation per year. The payment received during vacation is higher than the regular.

The problem in US is that the majority of profits from the increased productivity went to the CEOs and the major share owners. Taxes paid by rich people have been decreasing constantly in the last 50 years.

Every study I've seen shows that people taking 2 weeks or so vacation are more productive than people who take no vacation.
Richard Dawkins likes to say that atheists and Christians are almost identical. They have both rejected the existence of huge numbers of alleged gods; the atheist just adds one more to that list.
Point is that it doesn't matter if the apps sucks (haven't bothered to look at them) - he has made something people want, which is what we are talking about here on hacker news.

Sometimes what people want is very, very complicated -- real-time collaborative document sharing and sometimes it is hello word with a random number generator attached (bingocardcreator.com).
This is not quite the same thing as "politics" but when it comes to certain issues under discussion I often feel like I'm forced into a choice between:

* A unequivocal angry response,

* Leaving the community entirely.

This is because on certain topics there are loud elements of the "hacker" community whom I disagree with so fundamentally that I simply cannot tolerate their viewpoints going unchallenged.

I've been able to mostly unlearn this reaction when it comes to actual politics, but on race or (much more frequently, here) gender issues it remains fully in effect.

To a certain extent, I'm at wits' end: I get a lot of value out of HN but when a topic like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571874 comes up it absolutely destroys my mood and my productivity.

And there's no good answer -- stories like that absolutely should be discussed; it's just that the discussion so often disgusts me...

(Edit: all of that rambling is to say that politics stories naturally have the same siren call of some sort of 'moral' obligation to speak up for one's point of view.)
Apache Jmeter
I guess that what puts me off is the "TL;DR" expression itself. It passes a judgment both on the content ("it was too long, so I didn't read it") and the readers of the comment ("since you don't read stuff that's long, here's what it's about").

I'm certainly not criticizing hammock's summary. As these things go, his is pretty accurate. But the best you can say about a summary is that it doesn't really add anything to a discussion -- that's what makes a good summary.
Live on less than half of your net(take-home) pay and save the rest. Now for every month that you work, you are also saving a month's worth of living expenses. After two years of this you have two years of fuck you money. Two years is enough time to learn python or something else significant.

Your savings can last even longer if you get a $10/hr job such as waiting tables part-time.

Work daily on developing marketable skills. Work daily on communicating how your work impacts the business you're in. Imagine your boss asks you tomorrow, "Why shouldn't I fire you right now?". What would you say?

Always have a resume prepared.

Once you have done this you can go up to your boss and tell her you are taking two months off and you won't care what she says in reply.
It probably initially went sub-1.
Hot Runner Systems
> Eternal September happened. There aren't enough old-timers hanging on and flagging off political stories to keep up with the newcomers.

Unfortunately, I think this is how it all started on reddit. I think somewhere in late 2007 - early 2008 the front page of reddit started to get filled up with political stories. At first I ignored them, I was just down-voting them hoping that the usual "Lisp is great! | No is not" stories would make it to the front page again. They didn't. Then, it only got worse, with all the LOL Cats stories, then the memes, the IamA posts, and again cats, after which I lost count.
Recent remote file inclusions for analysis / hijacking
Now leftnode has somebody to blame if the plan backfires.;-)
I went through similar emotions (but for very different reasons) when we started Matasano and (concurrently) had to sell our house in Ann Arbor, find a place in Chicago, deal with multiple weeks with me onsite at a client and packing our house, and coordinate and communicate and hold things together at the same time.

For whatever reason, my mind latched on to Ed Harris' character from Apollo 13 saying "work the problem". I made a little mantra out of it and levelled myself out with it.

In the end, I found it a bit like exercise. You're feeling lazy. There's a cold beer waiting for you in the fridge. Sweating for 45 minutes is daunting. It takes a lot of focus to get started. For the first chunk of time, you're spending a lot of mental energy just keeping yourself on task. But eventually, the momentum of what you're doing takes over, and by the time you're done, you don't want to stop.

I had to work onsite in a different city from Erin during our move, and I'm pretty sure I had the better deal, since I had something that took my mind off all the drama and she didn't.

Maybe it can work that way for you too; treat work like a respite to get your mind off the personal drama.
Semantic analysis: Anger management
Acceptance Tests with RSpec and Capybara
Thanks Dylan! We had a lot of fun making it
From Europe here: My close friend is running his construction(!) business successfully and taking 5-6 week vacations every year plus easter and other holidays.

When most of the country sort of closes down there is not much to do for any businesses. Except relax and enjoy life.
SMS API-Delivery Receipts in a multiple server environment
Make something people want. Not "build the next Facebook". Not "be the next Andrew Mason or Mark Pincus". Not "prove your mastery of social UX by founding the next Quora". Nope, just make something people want. You never know where that will lead to.
I don't know about SV in particular, but I've worked a several tech companies over the years.

Yes, usually HR can make exceptions. But you need a good reason, like "at my current job I have 3 weeks of leave accrued, I want to not lose that if I come work for you".

But having an engineer who accrues vacation at a different rate than other employees hired under the same circumstances would be quite exceptional. It would stand out in their records and they might not have a good way to justify their decision if they were questioned about it "why is troles taking so many vacations?".

During the hiring process, it's probably not a good idea to act exceptional in the amount of vacation you plan on taking! It would be easier to negotiate on salary.
iPad Usability: Year One
Why is this on HN? Please, bring back the no politics rule. If you want to talk politics on the internets, there are plenty of other sites out there.
Wow, that really is incredible... I really can't imagine not being able to take a week of vacation for fear of losing my job...

Do you guys in the US get time in lieu? My job is 40 hours a week, and if you work longer than that, you can take the time off later. So working fifteen minutes longer every day lets you have another week off (paid) every year, in addition to the four weeks paid holiday you get.

And since holiday time accumulates, you are encouraged to take most of it every year.
Political articles are kinda about startups, in that America's ridiculous politics makes it a less attractive place to start startups. That said, while I love a political rant, even I steer clear of them here on HNN. Life's too short.

The only politics that interests me in terms of arguable relevance to HNN is anything related to the patent system, or other direct litigation/legislation of technology.
Overall, vacation times are similar.
Lately, I've been less bothered about the download sizes of updates, and more bothered by the update-install times. Takes under a minute to download the usual 100-1000MB update, but then it's 5-15min to install it, be it ubuntu, ps3 firmware or xcode4. Providing bigger stuff on readily usable squishfs images instead of tarballs, even if vastly bigger might actually make my update times shorter.
"There are a lot of bold claims here, but 'automated XSS protection' smells the fishiest to me."

No, there's a variety of ways to accomplish this. You just have to give up the ability to smash strings together with no thought about what kinds of things they are. The fact that smashing strings blindly together, then desperately running along behind it and trying to clean up the resulting mess, is basically industry "best practice", is the biggest failure of the programming community since buffers that overflowed into executable space.

It shouldn't "smell fishy"; a framework that makes it easier to write XSS than to write correct code ought to be what "smells fishy", but here we are.
If You Love (Or Want To Love) Sales, Watch This - with Fred Bliss
I'm in the US. I work remotely for a large healthcare company. The benefits are terrible, the pay is mediocre, and there are no opportunities for advancement, but it allows me to work from home with limited oversight.
Hacker Group Switched to UFO Hoaxing
Hacker Group Switched to UFO Hoaxing
"If hard work would increase your output, you would expect the US to be at the top of the list."

Ceteris paribus, but ceteris are not paribus. Additionally, nominal GDP per capita is a pretty horrible way of measuring worker output; are Norwegians nearly twice as productive as Swedes, or do they live next to a gigantic source of oil?
Operativní leasing
Iceland’s Volcanos Erupting Again--Affects on Travel
Desktop apps aren't dead, but I sort of hope things trend this way. I had fun playing with mobile stuff, but... I don't like the idea of rewriting everything 2/3/4 times.
Without bindings to hosted mobile functions, like sensor access, etc. you are just making a website. So that's an argument for why mobile apps won't go away.
Until today I have never heard of a US company forcing employee's to use "forced shutdown" days - which I'm interpreting to mean the company telling people they have off on a certain day - as vacation days, and this is the second time (at least) it's been mentioned in this thread.

How common is this exactly? Because this sounds like a company that is really, really screwing it's employees.
Python Software Foundation News: The Python Core Mentorship Program
I wrote an article titled "Platforms are for Suckers" back in June, 2010. Fred jumped in the comments and wrote:

http://spencerfry.com/platforms-are-for-suckers#c-2172711

"spencer

i don't totally agree with you

clearly the web is the platform you want to be building on long term

but building on platforms can get you to scale more quickly and less expensively than building on the open web

if you asked mark pincus if he'd have built zynga on facebook if he could start all over, he'd say yes without even thinking about it

if you asked betaworks if they'd have built bit.ly on twitter if they could start all over, they'd say yes without even thinking about it

if you asked howard lindzon if he'd have built stocktwits on twitter before moving to the open web, he's say yes without even thinking about it

the trick is to understand that platforms are a means to an end not an end in themselves"

I think his comments above may flesh out the point he made on stage (although I didn't see the live video so I can't say for sure).
I was not one of the downvoters, but I was not surprised to see the downvotes. I can't figure out in what way that comment added to the discussion. "I am assuming he was Doing It Wrong" with no additional commentary on what this affects or the implications therein. Regardless of the truth of the comment, it just doesn't seem to be a very useful one.
The sexual harassment story was so over-the-top that it didn't bother me in a "sign of the times" way. I feel bad for some of the people who chimed in to defend the man-o-centric maleocracy on that thread, because I'm confident that 98% of this community --- and closer to 99.9% of the subset of this community that hires people or Pays Money For Things --- finds those threads repellent.

But I know the feeling; I'm the same way on the piracy threads, and I know from private conversations with other "well respected" HN people that I'm not the only person that gets exasperated by some of the most popular ethics on HN.
Ask HN: What are the unofficial (i.e., official) rules of HN?
I've been on HN for roughly a year, so I've got a general idea of the "rules to live by" on HN; however, every so often I feel like I missed a huge rule. (I was one of the ones to post a TSA article. :] )

So, HN, what are the rules I must know, every new HN'er must know, and every old HN'er that doesn't pay attention must know to keep HN a place that is profitable and worth our time?

Here is a list I've come up with:

1. Don't +1 comment; up-vote it. (Or other variations of "I agree.")
2. Step away from the politics machine, or somebody could get hurt.
3. Only comment if you have something of definite worth to add; avoid flamewars at all costs.
4. Don't be stupid. HN doesn't like stupid. We downmod stupid.
5. Do keep your comments as short as possible, though, the random 300 word comment that actually adds value with every word is perfectly legit.
6. Do post interesting stuff, just don't flood the /newest page with them.

What would you add/edit/delete from that list?
Yeah, not the OP though. Which is the point I was obliquely getting at.

Conversations are not algorithms, you don't be default consider the most general or pathological case. I'm not saying this to PG.