skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I suspect the only way to make this work would be for the "index" to actually be some sort of stream. It wouldn't be a "file" or "database". It would require probably on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware just to receive the stream and run a hello-world map-reduce(-esque calculation) on it would be my guess. It's your job to turn that stream into a queryable database.

As for your last two questions, there's nothing new whatsoever about them. Search engine pollution is ancient news.
No.

That was my tongue-in-cheek remark about C++. Using a subset of C++ is exactly the same argument people have been making for years. The problem with that line of thought is that you're never working only with your own code (that, and the fact that Scala is not optimized for your subset).

That's the bad thing with a language born out of lots of compromises -- while initially a pragmatic choice, if it's popular it only grows uglier and uglier until it becomes the bottleneck of the industry.

If you don't believe me that Scala is ugly, try explaining a "Hello World" to a beginner that was never exposed to programming, taking the sample out of the official documentation, preferably without resorting to a cargo-cult style explanation of "just do this".

Here, I'll get you started:

object HelloWorld {
def main(args: Array[String]) {
println("Hello, world!")
}
}

You have to explain -- (1) what are functions + (2) what are those singleton objects, with OOP sprinkled in between + (3) why functions have to be declared inside classes or singleton objects + (4) what are generic types + (5) the "main" entry point.

Compare this to the Python version:

print "Hello world"

Or the Haskell version:

main = putStrLn "Hello, World!"

Both of which only require an explanation of functions + the main entry point in the Haskell case. Yeah, the Scala version does more - that's the problem with ugly, it cannot scale from simple to complex easily.
The infamous "facebook login" search has some interesting correlations: http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=facebook+login&...

Also, there seems to have been a huge drop-off in this search over the last few months.
Had a year off traveling. First lot of interviews after that, everyone was very suspicious - e.g. wondering if the plan was to work for a few months then take off again. Fast forward two years when interviewing again everyone thought it was a "fantastic life experience". Basically employers saw it as a risk first time around, second time around it was proven that my intentions were good. YMMV.
Your comment criticized mtogo for criticizing someone's comment. That is irony.

Presumably, mtogo voted JeremyS down because his comment lacked substance. Because JeremyS is a new member, he then informed him of why he voted him down and what is generally proper HN etiquette.

You then weighed in for no apparent reason. If you were speaking from expertise, experience, or authority, (e.g., if it had been pg instead of you) your opinion would carry more weight and therefore be worth stating. Instead, it just added more noise to a comment subthread lacking substance.

The point of both my comments and mtogo's are to emphasize one of the things that HN users value most: a high signal-to-noise ratio in comment threads. Pull up threads from a few years ago and you will notice a major difference in the tone and the information density. We are both trying to help new users understand how to make Hacker News a better place for everyone.
Ruby, the Cloud, and Open Standards
That sounds rather like the DNS "NOTIFY" signal, which a master sends to its slaves (secondary nameservers) to trigger a zone transfer when DNS data has been updated. Without that secondary servers are forced to download the zone data e.g. every hour.
A New Facebook Profile Deactivation Policy
Who can tell? The ideological vasoline is smeared on the lens so thick I can't see the subject anymore.
Just to add, what are your ideas to promote such apps? We are looking forward to create a lot more.
If you have a business model that relies on throttling data capacity until your service becomes useless. Then you have a shitty business model. Period!
I have a newly registered domain with only a sparse page up as the index so far. It's been getting crawled fairly regularly by Google, Baidu and Yahoo. Google and Baidu are sending If-Modified-Since (Baidu is also sending If-None-Match) and are receiving 304 Not Modified responses each time they crawl. Yahoo sends neither header and is requesting the full page every single time. This is without any explicit cache headers set on my end.
first sensible comment here.

you know what, i dont know if I have the energy to do this

I just had a great deal of expectations about HN and it seems maybe its not the forum I had painted it to be

Thanks anyways. sorry about the bad blood. will take a look at the article

you are awesome!
I do not believe that Apple will stop users from installing software they didn’t get from the App Store. There is just too much legacy software out there

Apple is very good about ignoring legacy software. 6 years ago 100% of Mac software was built for PowerPC, and as of Lion none of that software will run. I can easily see them prohibiting non-store apps once developers have had a few years to make the transition.

it is doubtful whether Adobe and Microsoft (both crucial for the continued success of the Mac) will ever move to the App Store, even if pressured.

Why wouldn't they? Apple would certainly be willing to give them a break on the 30% fee if needed.
Anything that has the quality that you don't "get your money's worth" is by definition bad. Simply stating that something as general as "support", which is run differently at every company, has that quality doesn't aim to prove any point.
9 Things You’d Never Imagine in a Landfill
Exactly what I was thinking. I have no desire to listen to my friends' music.
I don't understand. Are there statements you think are factually inaccurate? Or do you just not like the spin?
By FAR the best of the disrupt videos. Thanks Paul for giving us a glimpse behind closed doors.
I found myself disliking the slanted editorializing of the interviewer more than OSC. She's seems unhealthily intent on wallowing in victimhood, and delights in the power she has - "I prefer to get my digs in when I write the piece up, like this. It's a way of fighting back without ever having to face my tormentor head-on." - when whomever she's beating up can't fight back. She has become the bully herself.
What many here seem to miss is that this looks at coincidences in the timing of searches. This is not "within-subject": it's not that people-who-search-for-x-also-search-for-y. Rather, it's WHEN-people-search-x-other-people-are-also-likely-to-search-y .

That being the case, can anyone come up with an explanation for this? http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=accident&t=week...
That is to be expected. `If-None-Match` and `Etag` are a relatively late caching strategy, that is done at the server (or edge) side.

Have you tried serving your pages with `Expires` and `Cache-Control` headers? I you give it - say - a timeout of a week, then a well-behaving client shouldn't retry before that time has went by.
OK adevv, what I'm about to say might sound snarky but is in fact serious.

The way you're talking is paranoid and incoherent, and sounds a lot like the way a person with a mental illness would talk.

If you've been feeling strange lately then perhaps it may be a good idea to see a doctor, or at least to talk to some of the people in your real life about the feelings you've been having.
Ask HN: What do you think about the startups at TC Disrupt Office Hours?
Might be too vague, but it would be interesting to exchange ideas regarding the startups pg had office hours with. I know I had plenty of thoughts going through my head!

Dydra - offering a graph database as a service

Vidappy - apply for jobs by video

Data visualization startup

TvTak - setting out to make every television interactive

Flytivity - introduce people at airports

LuckyChic - a social shopping network for women
Office Hours video: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/absolute-must-watch-office-...
what about the ones who go to gmail.com?
In my humble opinion, it is not unreasonable to judge a person by their publicly stated opinions.
Everything? You make it sound like he's a child rapist or something.
Has he ever tried to violently force his worldview on anyone? No. Is he a criminal? No.

That's a pretty low bar.

Is he trying to advance his own agenda, like anybody else? Yes.

But again, that's not the bar. It's what your agenda is that is at issue. Otherwise you don't differentiate between anyone since everyone is just advancing their own agenda.

It treats the reader as a mindless lump unable to think for himself.

That doesn't make sense. It presents facts and an opinion. That's pretty much the standard used in most forms of effective communication on the internet (and TV for that matter).
I never even heard of Backblaze until now. I used to be a Mozy user until they went ahead and pulled the "Yeah remember how we said unlimited? lol jk." card. Downloaded Backblaze now to give it a try, so far it looks like an amazing deal!
hmm... why are all programming fonts terminal style, or monospace fonts? Well I guess it's to ensure proper indentation and alignment of lines of code. I guess that explains why code looks horrible when you copy and past it into an HTML page without changing the font.

hmm... thinking out loud.
Freelance and job doesn't count. Should be a single project that provides a service or sells some product.
But where do you draw the line between "Opinions with which I disagree" and "Opinions which make you a bad person if you hold them"?

I tend to classify really silly opinions as "loopy" rather than "evil", as long as they don't actually advocate violence or similar. OSC has loopy opinions, not immoral ones.
> don't understand why a decentralized, open, free index is a bad thing.

It's not, it's called the web.
> I was under the impression it worked ok for Android 1.2 phones and up.

It works OK in the "You can run a repl on your phone if you don't mind waiting a few seconds" sense. That's a far cry from "You can build a usable application with it."
Yes, but did you see how low the prices are?
unable to comment again
Thanks; it's very helpful to see some hard numbers. That's quite good--I expected it to be much higher. I don't suppose it introduces any noticeable startup delay, does it?
If you could include a tournament ladder that requires a paid version of the app it might work.
"The Alexa Web Search web service has been deprecated and is no longer available for new subscriptions."
http://aws.amazon.com/alexawebsearch/
MedicalJustice is an EXTREMELY slimy organization. Not only do they sell these damn contracts but they also take "extra legal" measures against doctors who testify on behalf of a patient in a medical malpractice trial. (http://blog.medicaljustice.com/?p=2048) AND they post positive reviews for doctors across the US. (http://www.ratemds.com/social/?q=node/49926) At least four of the doctor who have received reviews from them are themselves members of Medical Justice.

Its like they're saying, "Don't rate your doctors, let us do it for you!"
BlackBerry developer counterfeits "Cut the Rope" iOS App, claims copyright
The author misunderstands what Card is trying to say in response to her questions. Also, she evidently misunderstood Ender's Game quite a bit as well.

Ender was suited to be a brilliant military commander precisely because he hated killing so much. A more bloodthirsty commander would have fallen for certain traps, committed certain errors of judgment that Ender was immune to. The nuance here is that Ender's strategic advantage came from a tremendous empathy with his adversary.

In the end, Ender had to be fooled into destroying the Buggers precisely because of this empathy. He never would have been able to commit a genocide if he thought it was actually a genocide, but he could do it in the context of a video game.

And, for what it's worth, the childhood bullying delivered by Ender's brother was also a function of Ender's love for his brother. We see very soon that Ender is capable of tremendous violence, but he tolerates mistreatment from Peter because he loves him so much.

It is this victimhood which endears Ender to any reader who has felt victimized, by showing that in some cases there is great physical and moral power beneath the surface.

The author of this strange hit piece is clearly trying to rile up various reactive political groups against Card. Sure, card is a Mormon and appears somewhat socially conservative in his personal beliefs. He is clearly not homophobic and became defensive when he sensed that the author was trying to broach the subject which had probably caused him much pain.

Sure some people believe that anyone who doesn't advocate same sex marriage qualifies as homophobic... The author of the Salon piece clearly thinks that state recognition of same sex marriage is hugely important.

I'd argue that through his books Card has done far more good (by enlightening people about important moral issues) than any harm caused by his traditional view (restricting the word "marriage" but not the state sanctioned bond between two people).

The remarks about Card yapping and flirting suggest a very immature person wrote the article. Clearly at a certain point Card was trying to be polite and let the interview finish without incident... something that was framed as "shutting down"... Bizarre stuff.
Volunteering as a way to build your network
I reject the burden of proof you are implying. I'm saying this is such a terrible article it's not worth anybody's time to read. An article with the same factual content but less of the author's obvious issues may very well be worth reading, one that isn't an obvious hatchet job. I have no idea what the factual status of the article's various claims are. Indeed, that is my point; as a hatchet job it is basically information free, because hatchet jobs are untrustworthy.

I don't care who is getting the hatchet job. They are never useful, or worth your time. I have no idea how deserved it may be or not, no more at the end of reading it than at the beginning.
PG seems like a really smart guy. He was able to point put the pain points with very litter background information. He reminded me something my college professor used to tell me "Always try to surround yourself with someone smarter than you". I wish I know more people as smart as him.
Illumination Software Creator: http://radicalbreeze.com/

Target Flex, Android, iOS, maemo... in a visual "block" environment.

I haven't tried it myself, but could be useful for you. It's available in the ubuntu software centre as well.
Hateful and discriminatory seems like a decent line to me, but hey, its a judgement call. Decide for yourself.
Most actually do via the user agent string in the request. You can't stop a malicious bot this way, but you could kill most bot traffic with a rewrite rule, presuming robots.txt isn't good enough.
How's Haiti's new entrepreneurial prime minister plans to grow the economy
I don't understand how this makes apps crash and burn. Can you explain how does Angry Birds crashes and/or burns when it can't access the internet? Can you explain how a fart app will be broken when it returns a fake contact list?
> "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative".

I can't agree. Speaker for the Dead (and sequels) characters have a lot of complexity in their arcs – perhaps because they're mostly not children. I'd say the Speaker series is a perfect example of how to create characters with nuance, depth and multiple motivations.
This is correct. One loophole is to have the displayed price be the +5% one, and then give a (possibly advertised) cash discount.
Are cloud-based electronic/digital signature services ever secure? 
See this site: www.docusign.com.
This service seems to generate online the necessary keys for digitally signing documents and stores those keys for users on their servers. Isn't this a broken scheme as the private keys were never in the possession of user? Will non-repudiation be applicable to such signed documents?
I found it tame, even-handed, and surprisingly content rich -- but that's probably because I've read Daring Fireball and TechCrunch.
Wet Clammy Feet Are a Thing of the Past
CloudFront, again, is much more expensive than services like Akamai. I you site isn't doing much traffic right now, but you think it will in the future, you can discuss contracts with them that have clauses like "Akamai will be my only CDN provider for the next two years" rather than having initial monthly commits. CDNetworks (whom I currently use, as I find even Akamai's "cheaper than CloudFront" too rich for my blood) also rolls forward unused data to future months during your contract. CloudFront, seriously, is very very expensive, and simply does not have enough nodes or functionality to actually be worthwhile as a CDN.
In some ways, hacker news can be worse than TV, too. When I watch TV, it /feels/ like I'm wasting time. HN can feel like I'm doing something useful.
Ask HN: Have you lost your passion for Mozilla Firefox?
I have been using Firefox since the early days but over time, there are some parts of it that I have grown to hate. I really hate their printing support on Linux and Mac. Firebug is a great tool but I feel it is beginning to suck compared to Chrome's developer tools. Have any of you noticed any other longstanding bugs with Firefox? Also, do you think Mozilla is still in line with its core values with the increased competition it is facing?
You should definitely read: "Start Small, Stay Small": http://www.startupbook.net/

It's very prescriptive on exactly how to do that.
It really seems that software development isn't immune to this effect. How many times have you heard people say "Good programmers are never on the market"? It just bothers me that people don't get that sometimes bad things happen to otherwise qualified people.
You don't have to put quotation marks around hard; one of its definitions is an adjective meaning painful or difficult to endure.
Is Google Planning an E-Book Rental Service?
While I am a very faithful person (not that you're not, but just to be clear), this is shockingly delightful and I think your business sense is top-notch.
mine started crashing on me at least 3 or 4 times a day. I eventually completely switched to chrome.

The only thing really keeping me is firbug.
Impressive. I could almost see the bayesian filtering taking place inside pg's head when he went from saying "scrap that idea" to "maybe there's something here" on Flyify, once he realized this honestly was a real problem for the founder and that maybe he just wasn't part of their target demographic. (Not saying it's viable or that pg thought so, but he was open to the fact that it could be).

Not only great at shooting down leaky abstractions, understanding different customers but also at being non-judgemental - a rare combination.
Until there's evidence of abuse, why do "regulations need to catch up to Uber, fast"?

The ideal of course is regulators are proactive in regulating, rather than waiting for the horse to bolt before deciding the door should be kept closed.

The Ubercab situation is a strong signal to regulators that the landscape is changing and they should be considering changes.
I'd pay anything to sit down for 8 minutes with pg and have him rip through my idea. It's pretty obvious why YC companies have such a big advantage. He knows exactly the right things to say, and he did it in a way that didn't make any of them feel bad, but rather inspired them. Totally atypical for an investor.
Eve has had many scaling problems largely because it's difficult to write high-performance game servers in Python.
Check out 'A Memory of Earth'.

(Or better yet, don't. It, enders game, and enders shadow all did it. Three strikes and you're out imho, certainly when one of them is the book the author is known for)
Thanks for the link, however the writer seems rather smugly superior over the (discovered to be) troglodyte she is interviewing.
> Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason.

_Delirium, could you please provide a citation both where Thiel openly stated that he wants to destroy universities, and that he wants to destroy them because they "promote politics he dislikes"? Thanks in advance.
I think we're talking past each other. First, I'm talking about capabilities, not aesthetics. Also not on the list of things I'm discussing: teach-ability.

Second, you asked for Java+1 ... then you post a code snippet that's pretty much exactly that, and tear it to ribbons. Let's be consistent.

On scaling from simple to complex:

There's a wide variety of techniques used to create abstractions, which (speaking generally) is how to tackle complexity. (Modules, OO, message passing, functional abstractions...)

On this front, Scala is remarkably uncompromising: The language designers have chosen to provide as many of those techniques as possible (and even add a new one or two of their own along the way).

Maybe that's overkill for scaling from simple to complex -- but I can tell you it's incredible for scaling from complex to really complex.
This is why Inconsolata beats every font. Because there's a 'mistake' in it, and it can be fixed because of the licensing. This stuff gets me very excited.
The Google guy does not work in the head office, and isn't in charge of policy. He doesn't understand that search -> ads is what earns the Google riches.
Hear, hear. I didn't find anything in this interview that identifies him as a "terrible person". Yes, things he says are unpopular on the internet, given the internet's demographics - young, liberal, etc. But I think someone who calls him a "terrible person" based only on views he expressed hasn't met many terrible people in their lifetime.

And before I get accused of being his fanboy, I can't stand Ender's Game. I think it's the most overrated piece of garbage in history of sci-fi.. sometimes it reads like a work of a 12 year old. Terrible writing, worse, incredibly naive plot, I have no idea how it can be considered a "classic" and works by far better sci-fi authors like Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley, Henry Kuttner, Alfred Bester, etc are unfairly forgotten.

Having said that, I think the Card's masterpiece is the insults he wrote for Monkey Island game... now that's a great piece of writing!
Can anyone recommend a P2P VoIP other than Skype?

I suspect that it wont be long until MS "improves" Skype and it becomes useless.
We do have an online leaderboard. Is that what you are referring to ? For the paid version, we were thinking to remove all the ads - price it around $1.99 ?
I think one thing we do have to improve is the speed of the submission of a word. Seems like its quite slow on older gen phones.
Queen humilitates President Obama at Buckingham Palace by refusing toast
Sitting on reddit may be slightly better than TV, but not by much. I'm considering limiting all "light" reading soon.
But his number 10 is Courier, which he basically says he doesn't like; surely it ranks higher than that. I'd say it's not entirely dissimilar to Proggy as well.