skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What is the karma threshold to get down voting ability?
2011 SEO Ranking Factors
Ah, that makes sense. I didn't realize that the form checks IP addresses, though, in retrospect, that's an extremely obvious security feature to have.
Heh - well, some of them have pretensions to holiness
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226114/Goldman-Sach...

(I do know people there who are very nice also)
> Can multiple stones occupy the same square?

You're right I should have clarified. If multiple stones could not occupy the same square, the odds would remain as I first explained them (3x, etc.). I think in my stones analogy and real life, stones should be able to occupy the same square. In fact, there should be a positive correlation (ie, given that there's a rock in this square, odds of a second rock being there go up).

> How is it appropriate to equate/compare "the number of squares you walk through in order to pick up all the stones" to "the number of times a digit should show up"?

The odds of coming across 3 units of a quantity are 3x as hard as coming across 1 unit. When we write numbers, we are either:

1) writing a truthful description of how many units we see/own/ate/taste/touch etc. (I ate 2 bagels, I earned $5, I ran 10 miles.)

2) lying.

By "lying", I'm including things like writing a novel. Maybe a better word is "imagining". With numbers, we are either writing down true observations or we are imagining them. It's just as easy to "imagine" $9 million in your bank account as it is to "imagine" $1 million, while truthfully finding $9 million in your bank account is a lot more difficult :). This is why Benford's law doesn't apply for "imagined" numbers. By using Benford's law, you can quickly classify a number set into either "real" or "imagined".
Here's the Benfords Law snippet from the Radiolab episode: http://www.radiolab.org/2009/nov/30/from-benford-to-erdos/
Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic has itself also been forced into staff cost-cutting to survive the recession.

It has already announced an imposed pay freeze for its staff. Board directors will not take bonuses this year.

And the airline has filed to reduce its headcount by 600 staff - a cut of 7 per cent - though it says it has so far activated about 500 job cuts.

It's a bit like saying "everyone gets cake, oh and 7% of you are getting fired".
gitask ? gitask.com is open
Just type tigger tasks. Let me know if you have any more questions! EDIT I added that to the homepage to avoid further confusion :)
I really wonder how dictionary attacks will progress as word frequency and distribution is studied. "this is fun" has 11 characters, which has 310^15 possible lower-case combinations, and (using the 500,000 word dictionary), has 1.2510^17 combinations, an order of magnitude more. But, assuming a smart hash cracker, the size of the dictionary could be shrunk considerably. I believe most people use approximately 10,000 common English words (not including proper nouns or fictional words). 'this', 'is', and 'fun' would all show up under that scheme. Using a 10,000 word dictionary, there are only 1*10^12 combinations. Much less secure than an 11 character random password. A smarter cracker could apply sentence structure rules to skip odd, fragmented sentences (ie. "dog foot with happy").

Also, the article failed to mention the risks of compromised password databases. Sure, the attacker could just gain access to the actual files he or she wants while bypassing the login step, but the list of username/email and password credentials are a major threat to users. Most users only have a handful of passwords, and an attacker could leverage the one they know to find the ones they don't. Password managers are necessary for this reason, to provide unique passwords to each protected site. If password managers become wide spread, then why not let them remember arbitrarily long and complex passwords. It can't hurt, right?
The Constitution specifically authorizes federal copyright laws. "To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Optimizing MongoDB: Follow-up to my MongoNYC talk
Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter for June 27
yep, the broken-dutch vs clear-english appears to be my experience too - if I'm in the right mood, I'll tease dutch people by speaking full speed english around them when they don't want to speak dutch ;)
I like that a lot, thanks!
Tress would be the opposite of mortar protection - there would be more deadly shrapnel.
Show HN: My project 72hdeals - A different way to promote your products/web apps
SexyBookmarks v3 Series: The Problem
Django Hosting Roundup
Very interesting question.

I am probably not going to use it myself, simply because I don't want to be swayed by other people's opinions of any given comment.

Unfortunately, even without visible comment scores there's still some indication of how many votes a given comment has received.[1] But if you don't want to be swayed by the herd, not seeing comment scores is still a step forward.

The only disadvantages of not seeing comment scores I can think of are that without them the reader would be less effective at using the "wisdom of the crowd" to gauge the relative worth of comments, and his curiosity wouldn't be satisfied.

[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701906
Benford's Law seems like common sense to me.

Any time you are counting something it seems obvious to me that you'd have 1 more often than 2.
Google Voice Search in multiple languages
Awesome! 1st ed was invaluable to my co-Founder when she started learning Python for our startup a few months ago.
Coming from experience with the last version, it definitely does sneak up behind you around part 30. The pacing and attitude for programming is the reason why this is one of the books I recommend to people starting to learn general programming. Specifically for me, however, I need something a bit more concise as when I'm in programming mode I tend to lose focus when there's too much fluff.

But anyway, great job.
Watch,transformers 3,dark of the moon,online,megavideo
watch,transformers 3,dark of the moon,online,megavideo
Own personal experience, I will tell you all that the Charter is the best way to three sites to download Transformers
Because Perl 6 is an incomplete language still in development that, in all honestly, has no chance of ever replacing Perl 5. It's been in development since 2000 and is a spec with no "official" implementation. Perl 6 is so different that it might as well be considered a different language. Hence, "real Perl" is Perl 5 and Perl 6 should be called something else.
Data Organization in 2011
Why is making job cuts something only an evil corporation would do?
The HN crowd mostly interested in promoting their web applications should probably check this out: http://72hdeals.com/developers

Your feedback is highly appreciated!
Template Metaprogramming for Dummies
I can't speak for other BSDs, but FreeBSD's cron is still derived from Vixie cron.
Hand hacking helps you play guitar
Almost all stores (Walmart, Best Buy, Gamestop, etc...) already do this and have for years.
Freelance Co-Founder for Mobile Web Startup
Hello Folks

I love products and love designing them. I believe that UX is the most important part of any contemporary web application. Products should be created out of need and not ideating in a vacuum. Smart startups are created on products that emerge from features that were once just 'itches' or random ideas.

I have one such idea. It arose out of a basic need for me and a dear friend of mine. We both love our iPhones but seldom agree on the apps to get. So we only had one common platform between us - The Mobile Web

Instead of raising a round of funding, I decided to build something first, so sketched out what the solution might look like. Showed it to a sample of our common friends & cleaned up the user flows till everybody 'got it'. Then I went about designing it right and tidying up things. We put our heads together and figured out the least amount of things to do to test it - Alpha Specifications.

We got another friend of mine to write some code using a mobile web framework that made sense for such a build. In 5 days, we were using our first iteration. It worked, it was wonky, but it worked. In 15 days, our Alpha 'just worked'.

Now, I want to take this to the next step. I want to work with a potential co-founder who develops for a living. So, if you get :

Startup level rapid development
Focusing on User Experience to win over users
Ten Real Users > 10,000 pageviews
Weekly feature releases using

LAMP
Node
Socket
Mongo/Redis
HTML 5
PSD/JPG -> XHTML
Google Analytics
Slicehost

Then, let's talk.

I am looking for somebody who can commit 90 days. I will guarantee the following:

100 real/active users for our product
$1,000 per month
$2,000 bonus at the end of the contract, if all = well

If this goes well, we can sit down and negotiate how you would want to proceed. I am open to paying you at a higher rate or doling out real equity in a real product startup.

I am 100% self-funded and I have done this before, I know what it takes to actually ship products to real people. I am more than willing to pay more, but I want to know that this is a decent idea and have a solid technology partner who can bring it to life. It takes about 60-90 to release an early-stage product and finesse things well enough for end-users.

I am not going to be the 'right fit' for most on here; that's good! I want that one person who just gets it - if that's you, I assure you I will do whatever it takes to make this the best product developing experience of your career so far.

Thank you for reading.

p.s. I love this community.
Protect Your Computer and Phone from Illegal Police Searches
Unfortunately, this is not a new issue:
http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=unknown+or+...

It has been discussed as far back as four years ago.
it's open with one and two Ts

gittask.com and gitask.com
"Random commandline utilities" sounds like exactly that; shell scripts use a lot of Unix commands, I don't know why cron jobs are mentioned.
Whoah, check out the distribution of the leading digit in binary!
Flare 1.1 (Mac App Store) with serial : photoshop download
Book Review: My New iPad 2
A Call for Strong Opinions in Software Development
El glutation, la fibrosis pulmonar y quistica | Blog Oficial de Salud y Calidad
Is this supposed to be a successor of the ruby quiz series?
guess I'll need to send them some tornadoes. Hope I don't miss and hit Kansas
For full function, the ideal citizen filming app should:

-- record audio and video

-- upload it on-the-fly (as it is being recorded) automatically

-- keep recording when the phone is locked or otherwise off/inaccessible to others, as it may be taken away from you

Openwatch meets 1 of those requirements. Still waiting for something that meets all 3...
I don't think they'd be worth any more or less than any given dotcom. Uniqueness is important (try searching for help on the R programming language without using 'cran' as a keyword), but links and keywords will I am sure get you further.
Ask HN: Payroll Tax Hacks
Hi there, does anyone out there have payroll tax hacks? C-Corp with only 3 founders, no other employees, and a small amount of money invested (less than $100k). We want to pay ourselves, and that's about it.

Does anyone have any payroll tax hacks? One (uneducated) thought I had was to not pay salary but use company money to pay for various expenses like dinner at the office. I read somewhere that doing one large payment of salary is cheaper than periodic payments.

Any ideas? Thanks.
I know this is way off topic, but "time-based one-time passcodes" mapping to the acronym "TOTP" bugs the heck out me. Why are the hyphenated terms not treated equally by the mapping? Argg... I'm going to be thinking about this for hours!
There aren't any bases literally in the middle of a sandy desert, as what are you defending in that case? They're usually somewhere on more solid ground. If there's dirt, there's material for building. There are no bases of any consequence in the middle of the Sahara. Iraq isn't Saudi Arabia.

Rammed Earth construction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammed_earth) is an ancient practice made easy with modern equipment. The tents the American forces use are better suited to a European climate, not the intense heat of the desert. They're also going to resist mortars a lot better than some flimsy canvas tent.
Agreeing with this decision doesn't mean that you believe that one's own 12 year old should be able to play the game. You can certainly believe that a decision about what games are appropriate can be left to parental discretion without believing that its the role of the state to act in loco parentis on video game selection and supersede parenting decisions.
I wonder if apps like this could be used to circumvent the recording consent laws in certain states. Instead of having the phone/app make the recording, it could transmit the video/audio stream to a central server in another state where recording without consent is legal. Plus you wouldn't be at risk of losing your recording if somebody takes your phone.
I would still recommend it, even to those who know how to program. A lot of the book is just non-stop typing as fast as you can. The benefit to me was how it improved my 'muscle memory' when actually sitting down to write something on my own. There was less stumbling over little things like -- "how do import a library again? 'require?' 'load?'"

As with most things, you get out of it what you put into it. For example, I wrote unit tests in one of the 'extra credit' assignments to explain a bunch of python's symbols.
Finding a mentor
for the past several weeks (as I was approaching my summer vacation) I've been looking for a mentor.

Besides putting an ad in my newspaper, asking my friends, and even visiting an old folks home I have been unable to find a mentor and don't know what else to do.

I've been looking for a mentor who has experience just sort of with experience growing a technology company. I'm 18 and would love some direction towards my ideas, thoughts, and personal development. Besides my thirst to grow startups, I already do website design/development consultation on the side, I have developed a microapp for launch soon, and I was even class president for my graduating year this year. I know I have what it takes.

the issue with finding a mentor is just, its hard finding someone with experience in the game and who won't, essentially, steal your ideas. I also feel a lot of the candidates might not be in the loop either.

I'd even be willing to offer a cut based on my success, I have what it takes. Its just a little direction doesn't hurt. I have no one in my family with experience in the tech scene and stuff. Where else can I look guys?
Apocalypto
The film aired in 2006 and took place in Central America, during the Maya civilization. The dialogue was even using Maya accompanied dialogue with English subtitles.
Anti-Spam for the Social Web
Nice idea. I work for a company that manages hundreds of domain names and SSL certs. Our sales people have some sort of system for managing these now, but we often run in to issues with however they're doing it. I'll pass your site to my boss to see if he's interested.

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to create folders where I could name it the client name and keep all of their domains there. For example if xyz corp had xyzcorp.com, .net, and .org, I'd like to have all of those under one folder. I'd also like to see a dashboard that shows domains that are expiring within 30/60/90 days.
Karma and voting allow for the ladder of features to be made available to users, e.g. downvoting, as well as the page positioning of threads.

[edit] The problem with numeric thresholds for displaying comments is that the numeric value tends to get larger the more popular a thread is - a 10 point comment on an obscure thread is typically of higher quality than a 10 point comment about an article which spends 24 hours on the front page.
This mentality kills most businesses. Will it help you acquire customers? Maybe. Will it give you low-end, pain-in-the-butt customers whose support burden is far higher than the value they supply to you? Yep, most likely.

Better for you to actually VALUE your product from the get go, get customers who also value it, and work together to make it better.

Think I'm crazy? Ask Groupon businesses how much repeat business they get from their cheap promos. It's the same problem.
I myself had no health insurance and no way of getting health insurance as a self-employed person

I'm self employed. It wasn't that hard to get health insurance. I guess YMMV.
Solar Project Turns the Desert's Sand and Sun into 3-D-Printed Glass
And a single (unrelated to AC expenses) cash heist of reconstruction money was $6.6 billion.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-...
a README on the repro would be nice... #justsaying
another good one:

7One study, for example, found that children who had just finishedplaying violent video games were more likely to fill in the blank letter in “explo_e” with a “d” (so that it reads “explode”) than with an “r” (“explore”). App. 496, 506 (internal quotation marks omitted). The prevention of this phenomenon, which might have been anticipated with common sense, is not a compelling state interest.
Operations AntiSec : Anonymous takes down Tunisian government site
I'd prefer that HN show the votes a given comment has accrued only after you've voted.

Showing them before you vote could sway you to vote one way or the other.
Spot on. This isn't about prudishly getting rid of all nudity and violence. It's not about believing that people who play violent games necessarily become violent people. It's about the fact that our brains are wired to seek order and identity in the actions that we do repeatedly, and game mechanics are a poor subset of the way the world really works. They are a poor way to train your conscience.
I almost missed the links in that blog post to the other discussions. They are

http://blogs.perl.org/users/alberto_simoes/2011/06/perl-perl...

http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2011/06/perl-perl-5-perl-6...

http://blogs.perl.org/users/mithaldu/2011/06/why-are-people-...

http://jjnapiorkowski.typepad.com/modern-perl/2011/06/perl-5...
Cloud Jargons of the Week: Cloud Business News Roundup
So if one agrees that drugs should be legalized then I should be excited about my 4 year old daughter using crack? They're not even connected things.

Games in particular would be easy for younger kids to get if they knew an older kid who could buy them. When I was 18 I would have bought anyone a game because I like games and don't seem them as harmful. Maybe that isn't the best thing to do (I wouldn't do it now probably) but I definitely would have done it at that age.
I pay $100 a month for insurance and make $150 an hour contracting. I'm guessing that I would lose way more money in taxes by taking free healthcare in the Netherlands.
Penn Students Leave School to Launch Coursekit With $1 Million Seed Round
Oh! I didn't mean to blame you! I'm well aware of Chrome's various issues, but this one was new to me.

I didn't mean to detract from an awesome project!
> And, regarding your main point - duh. What would the result of that poll have had to have been to make it a compelling (e.g., actionable) argument for comment points?

I'm not sure, because I don't have a clear view of all relevant data. For example, I might weigh obvservations of improved discussion against the poll results. I'm not sure how overwhelming the majority would have to be, but if there was one, it would probably at least sway me to to do some more investigation.

And pg's comment was:

I'm curious if there has been any drift toward a consensus.

A three-fifths majority isn't really consensus.
And you wonder why you can't hire enough good employees, and why there's a mismatch between skills and jobs. It takes a village to raise a child. The village can provide an invaluable service in reinforcing parenting decisions.
Mobile developers defecting from RIM
I would like to see some video (not screencast, video) of your 12 year-old son

(Note I have raised children who now range in age from 30 to 11, so I have dealt with things like this for a few years)

I am cautiously in favor of people selling a video game as you described to whomever they wish. Or not selling, if they have moral qualms about it.

I am not in favor of my 12 year-old son playing a game such as you describe.

You do see the difference between a parent making a reasonable and informed choice, and having it made for them?

hey want you to give him the Ativan

I am not a doctor, this is a question honestly asked. Wiki claims Ativan is not addictive for short-term use.

From my POV, you give the guy the stuff to relax his inhibitions, he spills the beans. Or you don't and some deniable non-Americans torture him for the same information.

Can you explain your thinking on this? If not, that's cool, but I am honestly curious.

video games develop a shitty moral compass.

That they do. But that's why we have parents.
What does this have to do with legal regulation versus voluntary self-regulation?
Are you a coder? It can be interesting for you!
If the human race is to develop anything it has to be the ability to create ethical and moral structures without some higher order whether that is religion or the state.

Your argument pales in comparison to what the state teaches.

Just to give you one example.

It's ok to mold truth into whatever your political needs are. I.e. how the western countries basically hand picked data to claim that Saddam had WMD

Games aren't isolated silos anymore. They are social spaces where the same issues we deal with in our every day life unfolds. To claim that the game mechanics or the game theme is the moral compass is simply missing the point.
Young Hacker GeoHot Scores Job With Facebook
This is an interesting idea - especially the API aspect of it. Have you considered partnering with some well known players to help launch the service?

Especially given the negative experiences people have with Groupon I think some social proof to show people the positive experience would be useful.

I'm not sold on the name either - 72hdeals? Are all deals 72hours long? I'm not sure I get it.

Good design.

Overall I think this could be a very exciting idea and potentially disruptive!
In NL? You're required by law to have health insurance and the insurance companies are required to give it to you. Assuming you're there legally.
Vico 1.0 submitted to app store, and new dev build released
Two new iPhones coming from Apple this September
Startup tips: Selecting the right idea
The Billion-Dollar Startup That Almost Never Was
That's exactly the attitude those proposing name changes want to dispel. "People ask for name changes so they can show the rest of the world just how alive Perl 5 really is."