skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>It was stated that this was a social experiment.

the phenomena of golden calf has been known for millennia.
Condense enough value into one spot/artefact, and you'll get some people attracted to and mesmerized by it, the people who can't control themselves around it, coming close and touching it, not necessarily to privatize, just to feel and be around it and be associated/connected with it exactly like it happened with Odio. It is strange though that the triggering threshold for such behavior happened to be that low (ie. for anybody working in hi-tech and living in Bay Area) - iPad/$600 - that is surprising result of the experiment.

>Diverting the money to a more worthy (in his view) cause

there is big difference between diverting your own money from buying coffee/movies/etc to a supposedly more worthy cause (ie. act of charity) and diverting somebody else's money (such an act has different names and none of which is charity). How much of his own money he diverted to such a worthy cause?
That's fucking retarded.
Old Dijkstra Essays Considered
Code Academy's 12 Week Intensive Rails Training Course
Hacking the hack of the hack: @Socialize has paid $625 to @Jonathanscard to promote our SDK Speed Challenge. That's enough for an iPad, @sodio! besoci.al/q2I0QE http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878875
I don't disagree with your point, but the 'study' is essentially an anecdote about two incidents, in which the difference could just as easily be about the group members involved; I think one cannot draw significant conclusions from it, as described.
I own two copies of this book, the best algorithms book you can own. One sits at home and another in my office at school.
I've seen a lot of hostility in this thread to the perceived egotism of this act. I've also seen some people who dislike that the donations were used for something other than their intended purpose. Since my initial reaction was that he's in the right here (accusations of high horse and such aside, I'd rather not go into that), I'm curious to hear people's reasoning on why they dislike this so much. So, some hypotheticals and questions...

1) What if it had been anonymous and "Ego free". Would you feel better about it if it were disconnected from status?

2) Most people would agree that giving to charity is better than giving a coffee (note I said charity, not Africa specifically. There can be some debate over whether aid helps or harms Africa, but I'm less interested in that now). If charity > coffee, why is this such a bad thing?

3) I understand the hostility to statements about "You should be doing charity instead" because there's always an element of hypocrisy to them, but if the statement is divorced from the person, isn't it correct? So why should there be so much hostility when it's put into practice in this case?

I'm not trying to judge anyone for their opinion here, I'm just curious about their reasoning since it differs from my own.
Very cool idea, though I'd be down for one that's aimed at the prosumer crowd. I've been wanting to print out 8x10 or larger photos for the last while but have been way too lazy.
Looking for data/viz startups for Strata showcase in NYC 21 September
Socialize seems to be a pretty big contributor to this, what's their stake?
Liquidness - has easily a thing can be liquidated, how easily it can be turned into cash. Liquidity - cash waiting to buy the thing and liquidate it. A "liquid market", though, is normally a market with lots of liquidity rather a market which can be easily sold.

The existence of money to be invested is what makes a stock markets liquid...

Money to be invested is the necessary ingredient of a "liquid market". And a liquid market is a complex thing to measure. A market can easily seem liquid if lots of shares trade. But if it's the same shares over and over again on a day-to-day basis and if any time a large block appears, the price goes way down, then the market has an illusion of liquidity rather than real liquidity.
Particle Debris (wk. ending 8/12) Analyzing the Shifting Sands
Mr. Odio lives up to his name. This is a truly odious act.
Sigh. The stock photo they pulled for the article is a PC Jr, who's 30th birthday won't happen for another two and a half years. Come on, folks. If you're going to write this stuff at least get the details right and don't hand it off to a 22 year old intern who's never seen such a device.
I had a friend receive an email thanking him for his gift card purchase (that he didn't make). Even more strange, it was a different name and not on his credit card, but apparently from his account. There's a ton of iTunes Store fraud out there.
I am confused... the point is made more clear by comparing game consoles to phones? How? Not to mention you're comparing 4 iterations of the iPhone to arbitrary console life cycles.

If we're talking about pure numbers here, there are more substantive comparisons to be made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_pho...
Seeking venture capital for a Web start-up
The standard workplace expects you to concentrate on work for 8 hours a day. Barring the occasional firedrill (which provides enough stimulation) I struggle with it too. Does nobody else surf the internet when they should be working? Do people actually work for a solid 8 hours (not just be at work, but actually working?)

I think the idea of it as a bell curve is a good one - ADHD is supposed to be the poor bottom end. But I do wonder what average really looks like.
The Anatomy of a Transaction [pdf]
Maybe my startup is different than others, but I have to do everything at least some of the time. I can't imagine a startup ceo saying "I refuse to do X".
You have to wait until the event is over to get the money, right? It seemed to me that with PayPal, if it didn't get frozen, the author of the article would have gotten his money before the event started and been able to use it to pay for the event's expenses.
How to steal from Heroku
I love Heroku. I especially love their sign-up process (give them your email address, click a verification link and you're ready to go). No captcha. No SMS verification.

What stops someone from buying 1,000 email addresses, and hiring someone to create a 1,000 Heroku accounts? You get up to 100 MB of slug space to run code and host static content.

Does Heroku not care about this sort of malicious behavior? If so, why do they not care?
I'd hate to accept $10,000 via paypal and only get $5,000 out of it. At least with bitcoin there is a chance it will go up in value rather than down.
"Ask HN" needs topic categories and an ability to filter by a category, i.e.

http://news.ycombinator.com/ask/programming
http://news.ycombinator.com/ask/launched
http://news.ycombinator.com/ask/meta
...

Throw in an index page for categories that shows new/total counters for each one, and I know I will use it a lot.
Massive Conversion Boost Review
Interesting that Paul & Akshay decided to take over another YC company rather than run with their own idea.
Early clones were using direct copies of the BIOS, not merely reimplementing it. The same was true of the ROM code in a bunch of contemporary Apple ][ clones. That sort of thing is never OK, even in free software communities.
I love how low-level D3 is. My biggest issue with other visualization libraries is constantly wondering, "can I do this?", or searching around for specific features, but with D3, since all you're doing is manipulating the DOM with some data, you can do whatever charts and visualizations your imagination can conjure up.

It took me three days of intense study at the JavaScript console, but I managed to build some seriously cool dynamic data visualizations for text comparison (that I unfortunately can't show off yet). Anyway. Use this library, it's killer.
Very promising idea!

One thing I noticed that wasn't quite clear:

When I tried to create a new project in the second step, I typed in a name for the project and hit 'Create Project'. The page reloaded telling me, "There were some problems with the project you tried to make". I eventually realized it was because I hadn't selected the folder my project was in. Expect your users to be as absent-minded as me =)

Also, I added .ai and .png files to my project folder but it was not able to find them when I updated the dropbox files through the pixelstew UI. I can see them on my local dropbox folder and on my online account.

Good luck with the launch!
In my experience, hackers don't normally keylog themselves. That's the kind of thing they'd rather avoid — it could be especially disastrous if your computer were stolen like this.
Starbucks Card Social Experiment Hacked by Entrepreneur
Also, there's enough info to find the guys Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1019527331
> What happened to it was that credit card companies discovered that they could gain additional customers by removing that risk. The end result is now that most or all credit cards cover the cardholder in the event of a fraudulent purchase.

What happened was that after defrauding customers became common practice, Congress passed laws regulating the credit card industry and putting the fraud onus on the party with the most ability to prevent it, the credit card issuer.
You're going to run into big trouble with the health department from day one. Cities are shutting down and fining kids lemonade stands.
Congratulations. You broke Johnathan's Card. But more than that— I think you made a valuable point.

Lots of people who were exposed, maybe for the first time, to the idea of a stranger doing something nice for them for no reason, and then to the idea that they might then do something nice for a stranger in return, have had that illusion shattered. There is no act so charitable that somebody won't steal from it.

You take money from yuppies to give to charity. The people who run the charity take 10% off the top to pay the bills— they have children too, you know. When the food actually gets on the ground, local warlords come and take half for themselves.

The yuppies still drink coffee, the charity still pays its salaries, the warlords still try to kill each other, and children are still starving to death. The experiment has changed nothing— except that a few of those yuppies maybe believe in the idea of random acts of kindness just a little bit less.

Point well made.
I've said in other threads, I think the average Facebook user would be put off commenting on a post where "joebadmo" is a participant.

I don't see anything wrong with having a division between real people and brand/pseudonyms. I think this is one thing Facebook got right.
Your example URL looks like a typical short URL. Sounds like an opportunity for a service that provides custom QR codes with a short URL redirect to your real URL.
It would be neat if this was all in JS and required the user to put in his face.com API key. You could add a context menu on an image and then replace that image w/ a Canvas w/ the image and the mustache on top of it.
Ok, the PyPy FAQ says: "Yes, PyPy has a GIL. Removing the GIL is very hard. The first problem is that our garbage collectors are not re-entrant."

Is it really necessary for the GC to be re-entrant to run the interpreter in parallel? Couldn't you have the interpreter running in parallel and then when there is a need to run the GC you have a global GC lock that prevents all threads from running - a stop the world GC. The application runs for a longer time than the GC, right? So it would be a win and a step in the right direction? I believe the early Java mark and sweep GC was like that, and then later Sun developed several different kinds of concurrent and parallel GCs.

> Official PyPy Status Blog

Oh I read that every time they write something. :) But I started reading it in late 2010 and I haven't gone back to the archives, I guess it's time to do that. Thanks for the links.
Huh? You can run as many apps there for free (the app automatically shuts down when inactive. It's not stealing, it's part of their business model.
Environmentalism is over
Sequencing of cod genome reveals unique immune system characteristic
Damn - I spent a bunch of time setting all this stuff up myself about a month ago. Good to know this project exists and is ready to rock for my next GAE app!
I absolutely agree that the "death of a thousand Droids[cuts]" is likely to play out again in the tablet space.

I think we're even starting to see the early signs:

- 7-inch tablets

- Stylus-specialized tablets [HTC Flyer, Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet]

- netbook convertibles [ASUS Transformer and Slider]

- cheaper tablets [by removing storage, features, etc.]
Disgusting idiotic court system. If you're arrested guess what, it's public record. The fact that you can find that online is perfectly legitimate and frankly if you don't want people to know about it, don't do it.
I disagree. Shame is a good deterrent to theft. Naming and shaming the thief could prevent future crimes.

Furthermore, I don't see how putting someone's information on the internet is comparable to physically depriving someone of their property. The latter has obvious effects, and the former may not even cause much harm. It would have never happened had the thief not stolen the laptop, so I'd say the ultimate blame rests on them anyway.
> You can have any name you want on your own website and run it any way you want.

And unless you manage it like it's your second job, no one will visit it.
I love how his site is now down... I'm sure some one in the HN community is responsible... thank you.
Trivia: Akshay, one of the founders of PicPlum, previously built mugasha.com, to which I (and probably many others) owe a lot of our coding productivity.
Yes, some specific names are currently unique, but naming in general is not unique, so you can't rely on it to uniquely identify a population.
Don't want google to let everyone find that you flout the law? Easy solution. Don't do it.
Your last point is really interesting.

I use a desktop at home and a small laptop on the go, and everything I need is always on both computers. Files, bookmarks, browsing history, you name it. I can just log into either computer and keep working. The advent of cloud-based synchronization tools makes it very easy for people to juggle 2 or more computers. So instead of fighting over the "Desktop of laptop?" question, one can get both and not suffer any inconvenience.

After all, what would the average North American middle-class family do if they needed a vehicle that was both large enough for the kids' hockey games and fuel-efficient enough for the dad's long commute? They wouldn't settle for one mid-sized car; they'd buy a minivan and a Prius.

The proportion of people who are "always on the go" is rather small.
The main issue with lemonade stands and other 'pop-up restaurants' is that they are open to the public. With Housefed, you actually have be a member to attend an event- or part of a 'private club.' At least in SF that is the critical distinction they are looking for. As long as the public cannot just walk in off the street (and therefor a risk to the general public), it should be fine.
"the average Facebook user"

I think G+ could aspire to so much more than being an average Facebook clone.
Thoughts on RESTful API Design
Is this paid for by your employer, Microsoft or are you just doing this for fun?

Apologies for the blunt question, but you've often run anti-Google, anti-Apple stories and are well known as a 'kept blogger'.
I think I will. I'm fairly novice at CL, and it would be good to learn it.
The FCC’s Open Source Stance and the Case of the Vanishing Blog Post
I just deployed version 0.0.7 that skips any images of less than 45000 pixels (300x150px or equivalent). This will help with the load but you won't see the moustaches on smaller images.
No wonder the card's been empty every time I try to use it (I'm on vacation in the States). People like you steal the money. Fuck you, and fuck your script.
What I worry about with many of these recovery stories is that you're probably not humiliating the criminal, just some unlucky person who bought the computer on Craigslist.
I'll second that aside.
As an aside to this aside, I noticed that the paragraph starting with "Higher frequency generally leads" is wrapped in closing </p> tags, as opposed to the <p> </p> (the things you notice when you highlight text as you read!)
Learn Insanely Powerful Marketing with Cellular Roaming | MZine Articles UK
HN Jobs: NYC startup Minus.com is hiring mobile developers
Minus is hiring! We are on a mission to simplify sharing and to create the simplest universal sharing platform.

We are seeking tech fanatics, passionate enthusiasts and self-driven individuals in our New York City midtown office.

Positions

We’re looking for full-time in the following areas:

Mobile development
iOS and Android developers experienced with deploying consumer apps

Design
Adobe PS, AI, CSS/JS and UX experience

Marketing (Interns only for this position)

Benefits

Work with a small but passionate and experienced team ( http://min.us/pages/about )
Make an impact on product design and directions
A chance to disrupt the industry and create a category of our own

Interested?

Shoot us an email at info@min.us with your info, work experiences and let's get started!
Show HN: We turned the Google Shopping API into a game
Trying to make the world a better place. :)

And we just launched our social API and SDKs that add a layer of business intelligence to any app via a drop-in social platform. Think Google+ Circles meets Flurry SDK in any app. http://www.GetSocialize.com
The only time that I've ever really needed a laptop was at college. I was constantly on the go, always in a collaborative environment with others, working on projects or assignments, etc. But when I got home and needed to really hunker down and get something done, then in went the VGA cable and USB peripherals.

My Thinkpad doesn't get a whole lot of use these days, I've gone with a desktop to suit my needs and I keep the laptop around for those odd times where I travel.
I had this very idea a few years ago, and did nothing with it. Glad to see someone running with the concept!
Now I'm tempted to get a TurboGrafx 16.
Even if Wayne decides not to work on RVM anymore, he deserves huge kudos for what he has helped create.
Flickr is an amazing resource for sharing and using Creative Commons licensed photos. We use it extensively in creating museum exhibits. I hope that Google+ makes it easy to search and share photos with Creative Commons licenses.
Anecdotal, but I'm put in mind of one new user's experience where they accidentally "sent/addressed" (keep in mind, I have no direct experience with Plus) a message/post to all of their circle contacts or somesuch. IIRC, the message basically just said "Hey, I'm on Plus now". I don't recall whether the broad addressing was mistakenly made or the implications of the broad addressing not understood. Either way, that one message was allegedly enough to get the person's Google account suspended.

Um, no thanks.

P.S. I concede that the original article is specifically about the "+1" feature. However, I -- perhaps mistakenly -- view this all as part of Google Plus.
This idea and business model fail to rock my universe, but it immediately rocketed to the top of the front page, so they must be doing something right.
I wish they had added the Atari Lynx, and maybe some of the NeoGeo consoles.
The current dominant thinking (at least on HN, fed by sites like DaringFireball, Marco or Asymco) is that the iPad super-special and will be the dominant platform because it's everything everyone would ever want. You may have seen the mantra "There is no tablet market, but there is an iPad market"

I welcome everyone to put their money where their mouth is, I can always use free money :)
You can write games for iPhone, therefore it is a gaming platform.

Also AFAIK the four generations of iPhones can all run the same software, which in a way makes it equivalent to a single console lifecycle, since consoles are never forwards compatible.
The value proposition of "take photos of baby with iPhone; grandparents get them automatically in the mail" makes so much sense to me. Glad to see PicWing living on.
A lot of bits wasted here about semantics but not a single one raising the multiple racist allusions on the linked blog post.
I'm sorry but that claim has no credibility with me. Setting up the proper cron jobs, server-side components, and verifying that everything is working under a variety of circumstances will take much more than the 5 mins it takes to install Prey.

Just because you've already done it and you have a pre-rolled solution doesn't mean you didn't invest that time, and don't fool yourself.
It's not perfect yet, but it is fun if you like price is right style games :) I'll probably be deploying a bug fix right after this comment, but thought you guys would dig seeing an alternative use of the Google Shopping API. Made by a few HNers. Hat tip to bcroesch for a lion's share of the work.

EDIT: Oh, you guys might dig this too. I would think there's some Sodoku fans on there. We made an image based Sodoku all in html/css/jquery. http://cityposh.com/contests/apple-tv-25-for-itunes/poshokus...
Ask HN: Is there any academies in San Francisco that teach Ruby on Rails?
I saw this http://codeacademy.org/ and thought it looked great. Wanted to ask if anybody had recommendations for something similar in San Francisco.
Wow, that is evilness to new highs. First they dont allow google adsense on apps, then they ban 3rd party virtual currency, then they ban G+ ads on facebook, and now this. This company is going straight to technological hell. In any case, it is foolish of them to think that this will in any way harm the growth of g+.

If G+ proves to be a good platform alternative, we 'd rather quit the fb platform altogether and force users to migrate than put up with this stuff all the time. FB has managed to turn lots of developers against them.
Sounds like it could come with some headaches (bots, google thinking the wrong things about your site, potential for your users to get scammed, etc).
What a great idea. Something like Hacker News, without "How is this Hacker News?" posts. :)
Marco's source for Android sales: Daring Fireball.

Another source, reported by BGR, has Android at 20% of tablet market share.[1]

[1]http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/12/android-steals-20-of-tablet-ma...
I can sympathize with you. But even suspect credit fraud is also "purchase first" "warn later". Refusing to let a new device purchase anything without a thorough check is a ridiculous idea.

They could always do something like what Steam does - the first time you try to buy something with a new device, you must enable it by typing in a code that is emailed to you.

Apple's new-device-detection algorithm doesn't seem to be perfect - I was vacationing and bought an app, and it was flagged as a new device (I got the mail for my purchase), despite it being the same one I've been using for a few years.
Well, that is understandable due the network effects business model[1]: a platform must be proprietary—controlled by a single company—for its provider to capture value created through network growth

Of course, there is the alternative: sharing the market than conducting an expensive winner-take-all battle, but as the current market leader, it surely wasn't in Facebook's intereset.

[1] http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com/2011/07/business-mo...
I was being sarcastic when I said that adding iPad sales to the graph would make it meaningful since a comparison of 2 to 30 doesn't require a graph for digestion.

The point of the graph is "these tablets don't sell for shit, here, compare to sales of stuff which didn't sell for shit either"

Yes, a point that remains lost on me considering you could stack this year's tablets up against a myriad of 20 year old devices and make an equally meaningless comparison.