skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nice story, I enjoyed reading this ...

I find it very difficult to believe that they can feasibly force you to stop trading under the same name ...

was there any way you could have continued with different products?
It's a fad, nothing more than that.
True, threading precedes conversations. But threading is not the same thing as Gmail-style conversations.

If you have a two messages that belong to one thread but that you put in two different folders, a thread-aware email client will still only show one message when you view it.

In a conversion-based email program however, there exists no such thing as an individual message. There are only whole conversations. When you view a 'single message', you always see the whole conversation regardless of the 'folder' it resides in. Basically, it always collects all the messages that belong to a thread even if you look at one single lonely message sitting in your inbox.

Persona seems to go a step further and not only collect threads into conversations, but also collect all conversations between a set of people into people-streams.
G+ is also about giving Google a much richer social relationships graph than anyone has ever had. I can only wonder at the long-term effects of the information asymmetries that are developing. At least with twitter (and fb, for that matter) most of the relationships were public.
'Cardo' 16px: http://i.imgur.com/Ox8F8.png

Garamond 17px: http://i.imgur.com/ajLUj.png
I totally don't understand his argument. He doesn't object to allowing arbitrary Unicode characters in identifiers, because that's something programmers can opt in to. But he objects to allowing arbitrary Unicode characters as alternatives to notations like "<-" and ">=", because that's "for everyone". Huh?

If you're writing your own code, you can use or not use these as you please (just as you can use or not use exotic characters in identifiers).

If you're working with code someone else has written, you may have to put up with their use of exotic characters for operators like <- (just as you may have to put up with their use of exotic characters in identifiers).

He says that "various potential problems [were] pointed out, and presumably ignored" in an issue-tracker ticket that suggested adding one of these things; but all the potential problems I see there apply equally to allowing arbitrary characters in identifiers, which he's happy with.

What's the difference here?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding and the objection is simply "I don't like this; it's clever". But then the author owes us an explanation of why this is any more true for <- than for identifier names.
Show HN: justthetops.com - the top 10 reddit posts daily
Inspired by Hacker News Daily, I created a similar website for reddit. You can definitely see the inspiration as I borrowed heavily from the design of hn-daily.

justthetops.com saves the top 10 posts of the day for various subreddits. It is handy for not missing the most popular posts of the day when you are too busy to browse. It has really cut down on the time I spend on reddit since I can now catch up over my morning coffee.

Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
"Progressiveness in design" only works when people are actually able to view it correctly. Given the fluctuating state of HTML5 at present, I'm reasonably sure you're just introducing additional complexity and points of failure unless you are teaching exhaustively only the exact features that work correctly, everywhere. This is not a particularly large set.

Now, I'd say something very different if HTML5 actually worked correctly everywhere, or even most places. But here's the thing--indoctrinating people into a JavaScript dependency like modernizr to fuel your desire to use a standard that isn't completely implemented anywhere is, frankly, terrible: a much more important lesson to drive home is "look, use progressive enhancement," not "look, HTML5 is awesome!", and making modernizr a dependency is the exact opposite of smart. Yes, your "web agency" might do this--but that doesn't make them very bright, either.

It's rule #1 of responsive web design: start with the simplest base case, and progressively enhance from there. If you want to really teach people how to benefit themselves by being able to write this stuff, I'd strongly recommend starting there--not with the high-end "look at my buzzwords and adopt them." Simple is good--really.
Nginx has proved extremely useful and capable especially in memory constrained virtual environment. It effectively gives an easy way to move from a synchronous web server to an asynchronous one.
Designing sale button
Its not that clear cut. Did our brains specialize for reading, or did reading result from the fact that our brains are specialized to handle visual data better than many other animals?
I would guess that just like in Gmail, quoted texts get collapsed, signatures get faded. Basically, Gmail works, too, so this is probably a solved problem.

And personally, I think the world would be a better place without disclaimers anyway, so they might as well delete them outright. But maybe that is just me.
Clickable: http://www.justthetops.com
Thanks! Used axpxx3axYK3D4M2R
And Ireland. +1
Awesome! (used fDtzazT9U7SdXtny)
Gene found that produces higher levels of food cravings in Europeans
The vending machine isn't quite what the article makes it out to be. For starters, it's one vending machine in all of Google (as far as I know).

It magically appeared one April Fool's day, and has been attributed to some of the SREs in charge of keeping web search running, but credit has never been claimed. There was a rather funny "I am spartacus" thread about the vending machine that appeared on a major email list after one of the facilities or kitchen management asked who was responsible, ostensibly so they could congratulate them.

I no longer work at Google (though I used to work downstairs from the vending machine), so it's awesome to hear it's still up and running and being stocked. I believe, at least for a while, facilities/cafe staff were officially condoning it if not restocking it. Definitely one of the more clever pranks I saw around campus.
BETTER SOLUTION: Get on the cloud. 15 minutes to upgrade your server when load gets high and billed by the hour at the ram level you're 'using. Theres very little reason to stay on traditional hosting if you're running anything close to a serious startup.
Thanks, used ek6w8dNY4d6YGfWJ.
Show HN: My iPhone app Startup —new Social Networking Etiquette
First, I must thank YCombinator (the incredibly talented and altruistic members on this site) for inspiring me, and for helping me to better understand what it takes to build a successful startup.

My co-founder and I created an iPhone app, "Taking a Break," that allows you to easily schedule breaks from Facebook and Twitter, and it auto replies to all your incoming communications, while you are on break.

Our App just hit the App Store moments ago:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taking-a-break/id438835787?ls=1&mt=8

Please give our app a spin; and if you mention us on Twitter or Facebook, that would be awesome and much appreciated. And of course all comments are welcome—we need suggestions on how to help the app to go viral.

The Problem Taking a Break solves:
Currently, Facebook and Twitter users do not have a way of managing their accounts while they are away or unavailable. Users can either deactivate their Twitter and Facebook accounts or ignore incoming communications.

Taking a Break solves this problem (it introduces a new Social Networking Etiquette) by allowing a user to schedule breaks from Facebook and Twitter, and it politely sends auto replies to all incoming communications on behalf of the user, when the user is break.

http://takingabreakapp.com

Much Thanks to YCombinator.

My Google+ (where I definitely have my Hacker News Circle):
https://plus.google.com/114735865227085163844/
How is this different from Mog.com or Rdio.com (a service that I have had very good experiences with)?
Zilch to Private Beta Website in 10 minutes Using Django, Pinax, and Gondor
Stack Exchange Developer Compensation [pdf]
Circles aren't private groups, though. They're asymmetric. I don't have to know what circles other people have put me in. My circles are for me, not for the people I've added to them. I get Garry's point, but I think he is also overthinking how they should be used, and missing the point that circles are mainly about sharing. I can't share tweets with just the people on a certain list, or a combination of lists and specific people.

I agree there's a lot of potential value in the signals from public list-type structures; I even built a small app around that idea applied to Twitter lists: http://www.sabe.us . For what they are intended to be though, as far as I can tell, it makes sense to keep circles as simple as possible. Google has done a good job of reducing the friction to organizing people and then using that organization for granular sharing.

I do also strongly agree that G+ could use some sort of grouping functionality so people can organize around common interests, among other features. But I think this should be distinct from circles…maybe as "channels" or something.
The difference is between saying, "I feel a desire to change the World," and saying, "Everyone should do as I do because everyone feels as I do."
Japan Needs to Completely Phase Out Nuclear Power, Says Prime Minister
There are tech savvy accountants, and/or small business/startup savvy accountants. We tried handling it ourselves but that was a terrible plan: we didn't know about every little business tax we should have been paying, the whole double entry stuff and when you recognize money versus when you actually get it is totally bizarre to me. We now engage a small accounting firm focused on small businesses, who handle our bookkeeping, cash flow analysis, invoicing, taxes, CFO duties, paying the bills, etc... It's great!
To you. You're thinking free as in freedom, not free as in cost.

Freeware isn't open source, but it is free, in some very real sense.
(In the UK) . I use an accountant who charges £60 per month for doing everything that needs doing (bookkeeping, annual filings, self-assessment, tax planning) for a VAT registered Ltd Co.

They use an online account package (http://www.accountsportal.com) which automatically pulls all transactions from PayPal, and I then send him all invoices etc in PDF form monthly, as well as a downloaded CSV of my bank statement.

Accounts Portal is pretty neat too, in that I can log on at any point and see all the financial details I need about my company.

Works out pretty well
Okay my bad, that looks very much like what I was asking for. I'm still wondering about the language, PHP might not be ideal :)

Thanks.
Apple has the game center where all your scores form your iPhone are automatically loaded into a public database with your friends scores. It's the same for Zynga and Facebook.

The problem is that your social graph on Facebook is probably everyone you've ever met. Google+, on the other hand, feels much more like using email. Circles are kind of like mailing lists which we use to keep in touch with real friends and colleagues. Incidentally, these are also the people we email photos, documents and presentations to.

Circles is at the heart of Google+ because it makes everything they own better. More and more apps are going to move into the cloud and I'm betting that Google+ is going let developers take advantage of this.
Twitter spam is really annoying, let's fix it.
Any other ideas to flush out the solution are welcome.
Swaddling Instructions Step by Step
If you are swaddling your baby for the first time you might find that using a regular baby blanket instead of a swaddle blanket can make the process quite a struggle. The experienced hands of caregivers in newborn nurseries or mothers who have swaddled their babies many times make it look easier than it is. The fabric that the blanket is made of also plays a large role in successful swaddling. Cotton is more comfortable for your newborn and makes you a master artist in a shorter time. A bigger size is also key to making swaddling less challenging. Here are a few short steps to easy swaddling.
Thanks for the tip, do you know if anyone else has had problem reading it on a mobile device?
While the cloud does enable you to scale your resources on demand, you still have to address the same issues I had to deal with (how to efficiently use those resources). Plus, moving to a mutli-server setup involves additional complexity in the architecture of the system, which I'd rather not mess with unless I have to :)
Daily deal site Eversave acquired for $30M
There was a post on here about it recent enough, but I don't think I saved the link. It basically suggested that it shouldn't matter what social network your friends are using - you should be able to seamlessly connect with someone who is using facebook from google plus.

I would expect that idea to apply to apps and the sharing of documents as well. If your friend is not using google plus, the document could be sent to their email instead, but the though process would be "I need to send them this document" instead of "I need to email this document to them" or even "I need to send them this document using google docs".
Is the Schema Creator really hella redonkaballs?
Are start-up employee's usually consultants/contracted?
Is it typical when being hired at a Start-up to not be a full-time employee but a monthly contracted worker?
No idea if this is possible, but what I'd like to see is just the subreddits that I subscribe to. Or possibly choose my own list of tops to see.
Some invites:

WsGEf4DdjjxxEyte, pJVGUTD4Vjn2LwhJ, fCD4SMwEf7JnwU9r, cmaqdqNDAHxZqYRe, ar3PMDrRkE22YWbd, dAXVxr4kk5b9NDT8
> And it would be catastrophically poor planning on the part of car designers

Why? I'm sure they don't like recalling their cars every couple of months to fix a bug, and customers don't either.
Used ed6AgEph6BZhL8ug - thanks!
Bob's list now has you on it
Give them some time, Facebook has been around for a few years now. G+ is just getting started.
Google's Existential Crisis
Report: Unauthorized phone charges cost Americans $2 billion a year
So ... social networking isn't "blue ocean", but office suites and app stores are? Huh?
Git is not wrong by itself, there's just an impedance mismatch between it's model and a usable interface model. For most purposes, the index should completely hidden.
Tell HN: Google+ is already getting over 1% of Google.com traffic
Source: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/https://plus.google.com

Alexa takes average of last 30 days on "Where Visitors Go on xyz.com" list. So the real number must be significantly higher than 1%.

FWIW, that's more than what maps.google.com gets.
Clickable: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/https://plus.google.com
We use the hosted version of Quickbooks and contract with a bookkeeper and an accountant. There is enough red-tape involved with running a company that we found it easier to just pay someone to take away the pain. We also chose quickbooks b/c we didn't want to be too innovative on something that wasn't strategic to our business.
Ask HN: Are there any sites where businesses can collaborate with suppliers?
Good Morning HN,

I have been tossing a few business ideas around in my head for the past few days, and one that I am thinking about is a kind of social network for businesses and suppliers.

Without going into too much detail, the site would let businesses create a profile and then connect with other businesses on the site. It could be used to find suppliers and maybe incorporate a rating system so that businesses know which suppliers are good and which ones aren't.

The site could be used to manage the supply-chain as well. Say a company has 4 suppliers. Instead of contacting each one through email and working in a disorganized manner, the suppliers would communicate directly with the company through this website. If there is an issue with a shipment, the suppliers can let the company know promptly and the website would help them find alternative suppliers.

I don't really know the first thing about business to be honest. Does anyone know of a site like this that already exists, or any reasons as to why this would not be a good idea?

Thanks.
Yeah I hear tons of people saying 'check if KeepAlive if on, your site will be much faster if it is'. Not the smartest general remark about configuration of web servers to make :)
There you go. What's a "branch tag"? What do labels do in "trees of nodes"?

Mind, I don't mind tackling this kind of complexity when I do algorithms for getting something done. I'm perfectly capable of understanding what you mean if I'd really invest the time in it that I should. But why do I need to do such (relatively) complex yet abstract thinking when I want store a README, undo a mistake and then share it all with a colleague?
I feel like the first bit is an argument over semantics. Does conversion mean I sold something? Does it mean I got someone to perform a desired action?

You're right on the next part. It is a significant time and effort investment. The theory is that I'm saving myself money and time spent developing software no one will use. And the Zen Master said, "We'll See."

Thanks for the encouragement.
What about isolating the popular URL and temporarily serving a static version of the page?
You could be right, 'cuz I don't know the legality of "selling an mp3 player that looks like that mp3 player some other guy sells" and certainly not in Australia. However, I mean the use of the legal system as intimidation instead of arbitration, which is what happened here.
I thought I was going to see the numbers :(
I think his argument is that if you wish to create a variable called ©, that's up to you. For some reason, he objects to the language/standard library allowing ← in addition to `<-`.

I think I would definitely object to `<-` to be replaced by ←. It's inconvenient to type. On the other hand, as an alias, I am not sure what to make of it.
Please don't disguise your referral link behind a url shortener. It is pointless and insulting.
Google+ and the Enterprise
I have been using this since early alpha and I have never had any slow issues. In fact it plays faster than iTunes
Multi-server? Nope, single. Same as you have now, just with added flexibility on ram with 2 clicks I can handle a huge server load with ease, then drop back when done. That way I don't waste time on low level optimization tasks and can keep to what I do best. Building things.

Seriously, there's no reason to stay on a traditional style server setup and you'll never go back once you've tried it. It can be pricey once you ramp up, but give it a shot as you can literally pay by the hour while you play.
Since they're looking for feedback, I'd suggest changing either of the "Simple" or "Innovative" labels, as those words are not necessarily antonyms.

Perhaps "Simple" and "Complex" if that's what they're going for. Or "Traditional" and "Innovative" if they are referring to the novelty of the method.
Hey, looks like I found one that got skipped. I just used cMe2tK5ycNnSDqJx

Thanks for the invite.
US intelligence agency wants to know how your overtaxed brain works
That's what the page caching plugin does. It puts a static file in nginx/apache's search path, so it never hits PHP
As far as I can see, there's no problem at all, except if he wanted to make an identifier which contained ←. And now if you want to parse Scala code yourself you have to add these characters too and be Unicode-aware. I don't see that as a bad thing. And I like how such codes look when printed.
Thanks, I used this code fCD4SMwEf7JnwU9r!
Is Facebook worth 100 billion?
This is a good idea. Promise them reviews on yelp/google/urban spoon. Promise them a write up in a small local paper or neighborhood publication. Get creative.
Thanks to emerging low-cost satellite launches (like from http://interorbital.com/), fun projects like http://sat.mur.at/ are already in the real of being possible. I may be an hopeless optimist, but some relatively low-bandwidth hacker-operated satellite network within 20 years is not totally impossible.
This is the most critical bit. We run our website (totally disconnected from our webservices, naturally) on a 256 MB VPS and frequently handle top HN stories on our wordpress blog (which runs on a host with several of our other PHP / static subsites).

Key points:

• Make sure that wordpress supercaching is on. You can verify this by looking at the last line of the HTML that comes back which has a timestamp for when it was generated.

• Turn off KeepAlives.

• Set MaxClients to 8.

• Use monit to check to make sure it can connect and restart apache with a kill -9 if it can't. (This is optional, but helps if you have some random thing that ends up taking a very long time to execute and eats up connections.)

With that in place even a much smaller server can easily handle a HN top story without breaking a sweat.
Well technically, sugar costs more per calorie than fat. As one gram of sugar is 4 calories and one gram of fat is 9 calories.
I am using Simfy in Germany. Pretty much the same except for the crappy iPhone app.
Fleet Commander: Amazing Star Wars video game developed by U of I researchers
This is pretty fantastic. The author is not presenting a lot of new information, but he is bringing together a ton of information from great sources, and he presents the patterns in a clear and concise way. This is an essential read for any developer that is trying to get into javascript in a more serious way, but they kind of have the feeling that they're in the "deep end".
Author here.

Even in languages that allow for them, Unicode chars in identifiers are rarely used. They carry some costs that may matter a great deal: they can make certain tools unusable with a given codebase, they can act as hurdles to contributors, and they can act as hurdles for users of libraries ("what the hell is ε?!", etc). However, if you know your audience, and know your contributors, and generally know what you're doing, have at it.

All those same costs apply if you're using Unicode characters as part of your language's syntax, and the user confusion issue is exacerbated if the characters are entirely equivalents to other bits of syntax that approximate what the Unicode chars may encode precisely.

For example: at least some parts of Akka switched over to using Unicode arrows instead of the ASCII approximations[1]. Will contributions to Akka that use ASCII arrows now be rejected? How many times will Akka leads have to point surprised potential new contributors to whatever part of the Scala spec allows for Unicode arrows? God help the poor soul that would like to do some Akka hacking on a Windows box. Etc.

All this is worth the slight prettification? Presumably, the answer is "yes". As I said, we can all make our own judgments.

[1] https://github.com/jboner/akka/commit/554bb3eb293fe083dcc4fd...
Scale may be a factor. If you're working on a large web project, you're too busy implementing and taking advantage of what the framework has to offer. When you're just doing "Hello World", it's overkill. You wonder what's going on under the hood because there's not much else to look at at that size.
If you still need an invite, Klout is giving away free tokens:

http://klout.com/perk/Spotify/SpotifyFreeAccounts
Tech Boom or Bubble? Here's the data.
That's a good idea. But perhaps the same thing could be done with qrcode or NFC, which could be printed on a ticket, or linked from an eticket, and the content could be downloaded straight to your phone over wifi before you leave.

Ticketmaster and iTunes (e.g.) will already have your payment details too.

Wouldn't a quality live recording need some post production though? I would have thought it would at least need to be mixed by a pro.