skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like the concept but I think it's missing something to get the user interested in the first place. HN has content I like from people I don't know. Twitter has random soundbites from people I can choose to follow. It looks like your app drops the interesting content part of the social-networking thing and the interesting tweeter part of the twitter soundbite machine so I end up being asked to be interested in completely random soundbites from completely random people. The example of the leaderboard on your post would be an unfortunately accurate prediction of the kind of content I'd expect. You really should try to get more interesting content on your sample leaderboard.

1. Maybe I'd be more interested if I knew or in some way could identify with the people sharing quotes. So what about names being visible. Or:

2. Maybe I'd be more interested still if there was a way to filter by group. Christians might be interested in random quotes from other self-styled Christians. Atheists might be interested in god-debunking soundbites. Technophiles might be interested in "android v. apple" slugfests. And so on.

3. Maybe I'd also be interested if event-specific or news-specific quote voting were possible. E.g., I'm at a baseball game and I can follow people from all over the park sharing observations about players and hotdogs. Or there's an earthquake, and I can follow stuff about that. In this respect, you'd be doing something that makes Twitter interesting rather than just the thing that makes it boring, and the voting would be a real addition.

Caveat: complete novice here, in awe of people who can so readily conceive and execute an idea like this.
Dr. Brian May on Freddie Mercury's creativity
Organizations like Yelp live and die on their accuracy and predictive ability. If Netflix recommends movies you don't like, you will use it less. If Zagat allows too much personal preference, it will no longer be the gold (Maroon?) standard of crowd sourced restaurant reviews.

If half the things suggested about Yelp are true, they risk their integrity at great peril.
I think this is a vocal minority. Sure, you hear all the time about this random biz owner who thinks Yelp is out to get him, but that doesn't account for the hundreds of thousands of biz owners who have claimed a free account and not cried afoul.

A more likely explanation of "extortion" is that the sales org hires 21 year olds fresh out of school who routinely don't make it past 90 days. I'd imagine some of these reps might resort to shady practices to fill a quota, but that's also why they don't last past 90 days. I think this is just a problem of needing a sales organization to make money.

Disclaimer: I used to work on the engineering team at Yelp, and I have the utmost respect for the intelligence and morality of the engineers on the review filtering team.
The network graph makes for interesting viewing.

I suppose it comes as no surprise that Linux makes extensive use of Git's features.
You need to show that the users are active on Yelp and they aren't afraid to write both positive and negative reviews to reflect their true experiences.

That shouldn't be necessary. I've written like, five reviews ever and they're all honest, I have a few friends that have written reviews and they seem to average one review every few years or so. Meanwhile I've seen reviews from elites that are well-written but absolutely pointless for me. Sometimes it's as if they're writing more to impress other reviewers than to actually give me any useful information.

Banding together and writing reviews with the sole purpose of boosting a business' online reputation is what really happened here, and Yelp specifically designed their algorithm to deal with those use cases.

Why filter the reviews entirely instead of just sorting them down or something? Especially if they seem more or less legit except there's a small bunch all at once?

Banding together to boost an online business's reputation really should not be cause for filtration. Fake accounts, bots, lies, and attempts to bury negative information are problems. A bunch of loyal customers who hear about yelp from the owner and want to write a review is quite simply not a problem and yelp shouldn't be doing anything about it.

And why discriminate against businesses that don't sell advertising?
We will soon have an answer, for sure! :-)
I thought this kind of attitude would appeal to anyone building a startup:

"Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.

To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out ... and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the group Queen."
A robot scraping yelp's deep data is going to be site-specific, and having to scrape another javascript variable is not much more than a slight speed-bump.
under DNSSEC, Libya would have been BIT.LY's CA.

True, but at least it says that prominently on the tin.
One thing that I use RSS for (well, I did before I switched computers...nothing really like Liferea for Mac) is reading webcomics. Irregular Webcomic, Darths & Droids, and The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, all in one place. (I would have done Freefall as well, but there's not an RSS feed for it.)
That's like saying our current road planning and funding is fine because we have the interstate system.
Off topic but...Last year I started work on the other side of the world at a large bank. The reimbursement policy clearly stated that for any flights longer than X hours (might have been 5), business class HAD to be taken and any non business class WOULD NOT be reimbursed even if it ended up to be less expensive.
Business owners soliciting reviews was the reason that (at least) one lawsuit against Yelp was dismissed, and I'd imagine flashmobs of high ratings are particularly easy to detect algorithmically.
That review that was filtered contained swearing. Does Yelp filter reviews like that? I'm sure there are kids that use the site, so that's a possibility.

You need to find more cases like this. Just one data point is not enough to draw any useful patterns.
> When you view unfiltered results, the per page number mysteriously changes to 10 per page. [...] Plus the results are pretty slow to load, quite slower than the results for filtered reviews.

Caching, I'm sure most unfiltered reviews are cached whereas filtered reviews are not and reaching out past the cache can be expensive. One way to mitigate this is to reduce the number of results you pull.

> Why do you need to enter in a captcha to view the unfiltered reviews? Why would they care if you were a bot only for the unfiltered reviews and not the normal reviews?

If you can write a script to deduce the filtering algorithm then you can by definition write reviews that thwart it. With less data, it is harder to deduce the filtering algorithm. In other words, a captcha thwarts high-volume review fraud.

> The filter algorithm seems to be clearly flawed and simply catches way too many reviews that should not be filtered.

I think most people seem to underestimate the difficulty of the problem. Unlike e-mail spam, which is easy for a human to spot, fake reviews are very hard for a human to spot. How can you tell if a consumer was provoked into writing a positive review so that they could get a few bucks off their order just from their writing? You can't, you can look at other statistical trends behind such reviews (such as a sudden wave of positive reviews), but you're only looking for side effects of the primary problem and thus you will never achieve perfect performance from a method like this.

Yelp takes the (somewhat philosophical) viewpoint that customers who are coerced into writing a review are less genuine than they would be otherwise. I believe that this view drives a lot of their algorithm and possibly threatens its accuracy in a way that is ultimately not worth it. I think there are a number of things that Yelp could do to make the users trust in reviews greater that don't involve filtering - one simple thing would be for a user's review of an Indian restaurant to show me that user's breakdown of reviews of other Indian restaurants.

TL;DR: This is a much harder problem than it seems at first glance, partly because of the nature of the problem and partly how Yelp has framed it for themselves.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Yelp, but no longer do. Everyone I worked with were stand-up guys.
That is one important contribution of Github, Bitbucket, Gitorious etc. to the open source world: the ability to browse a project's code instantly or near-instantly. Most SVN or CVS-based systems have an outdated, painful Web interface, buried under a thousand menus - assuming the project even sets one up to begin with. Even when you have a program installed on your computer, it's easier to browse the code on Github.
You poor poor soul!

My life has been infinitely enriched by the countless hours I've spent, many a dark night, in /usr/src/linux[1], with "Midnight Commander".

[1] A symlink, always a symlink.
I've posted about 6 reviews in total on yelp, 2 of which were immediately filtered for no reason. Funny how my positive reviews went through just fine and the rest got binned. If you're going to run a review site, at least let people give their honest opinions don't filter anything other then profanity. People should be able to share an experience be it good or bad.
How the Baby Bells and the government destroyed competition for DSL (2006)
In what way? Most users don't ever think about "javascript" as a thing. It might alarm techies, perhaps?
Yelp has more information on their web site about the review filter, soliciting reviews, false positives, and more:

https://biz.yelp.com/support/common_questions

It's easy to jump on the bandwagon and say "Yelp is evil," but having been a near-constant point of controversy, it's something they do their best to address.
Chromium* has undo. Fill out an entire form and you can undo, redo the entire form change-by-change. Not sure about the other browsers as I don't use them with any regularity

* Currently running Chromium 15.0.869.0 on Linux.
Maybe they realize that flying these days is a basically awful experience, and a 5 hour flight means more like 8 hours door-to-door so why not do a little to make it a bit more tolerable.
It sounds like PA is one of the worst states for basic human rights, like the freedom to travel. Who knew? That said, I suspect there is some way to obtain a drivers license. You may have to have it mailed to a friend or family member. But, the right to leave is a basic human right, so, there must be some way to obtain a license without having a home. This homeless law blog discusses some possibilities; it's not specific to PA, but it seems likely there is some mechanism for obtaining a legal license: http://homelesslaw.wordpress.com/#comment-1496 (I also found a few state and county agencies in PA with mention of drivers licenses and other licenses, though no specific documentation on how to obtain one; I guess calling or emailing would be the way to find out).

I'm not an expert on PA regulations, but I do know that I was able to do everything I needed without a permanent address, including getting a passport, drivers license, car insurance (GEICO offers a special insurance class just for RV full-timers, which is a blend of homeowners and auto insurance), and the postal forms needed for mail forwarding services.

And, one more thing:

"Also, even if I could, somehow, get a mailbox, it would create yet another red flag on my credit reports, because the credit agencies mark, as suspicious, any address which receives mail for many different people."

This is definitely not true. Credit card payments might get flagged if the billing address is a forwarding service (though it has not been the case for me; I've had trouble ordering items shipped to addresses other than my billing address, but I've never had a payment refused because the billing address was a forwarding service), but your credit report will, in no way, be effected by using such a service. I promise you it will not "red flag" your credit reports.

It sounds like you've had a bad run of luck, and it's gotten you feeling like a victim on all fronts. It's understandable. I feel beaten down by bureaucracy sometimes, too. But, you do have some fundamental rights in the US, regardless of whether you have a home or not. Get the ID thing sorted, and everything else will start to fall into place. If PA won't help you get that sorted, raise hell until someone does help you; contact your local state representative or city mayors office or write a letter to the head of the DMV or the local newspaper. You have a right to have an identity. You can't possibly get out of homelessness without one.
I'd be surprised if linux has more people hacking on it than RoR does.
Ha, I can take the criticism just fine man. I can also defend my writing, which is all I'm doing.

And no, I definitely don't think my post was top-quality writing or analysis. It was my second blog post, so I'm far from those labels. However, I'd place it a notch above a fifth-grader.
Looks like he's using it as a temp place while master.kernel.org is down:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1187888
Earth of Love
Any company should have a reimbursement policy anyway, just as they should have HR policies. It avoids charges or perception of unfair treatment.
US: Consumer confidence takes a dive in August
Is it also open source?
sounds as bad as the BBB.
Not yet, but we may open source the code when we publish the paper.
Thanks, this was definitely really good feedback. I am going to mull over on where to go with this. I do agree some sort of user engagement is necessary, being 100% anonymous is not interesting.
Thanks! I thought that post was silly, and it doesn't address my point. You'd do the same thing with a compromised .COM cert that you'd do with a compromised Verisign or Thawte cert, whatever that might be, because the vast majority of .COM sites are certified by one of those CAs already.
My old job consisted mostly of maintaining and adding minor tweaks to mature codebases. Working on my own projects has given me a chance to do clean-slate architecture again. The things I've been working on (machine learning, DSP and OpenGL) are a lot more interesting and challenging than the corporate CRUD apps I was working on too. I have to be ruthlessly efficient with my time now that I can't count on a salary, so I've gotten a lot better at focusing on getting features done fast.

Travel itself is somewhat incidental to all this, but it's given me a tremendous incentive to make this experiment work because I want to keep traveling. Exposure to new cultures has also given me some ideas for new projects and given me a lot of aesthetic inspiration.
Clever... not quite god like, but close.
What the film industry can learn from Steve Jobs
Banding together to boost an online business's reputation really should not be cause for filtration. Fake accounts, bots, lies, and attempts to bury negative information are problems.

How do you algorithmically distinguish between the two? To Yelp, someone who signs up for an account and writes one positive review is the exact same thing as a script written to create bots that go off and write one positive review. They're both identical. And the bots' behavior can change to write more reviews to prevent looking like a bot. Business reputations take time, so when Yelp's algorithm sees "this business has been around since 1975, and 100% of its positive reviews just came in over the past 10 months, where 100% of its reviews were previously negative before that", that should be a red flag. I can't find the age of Frank's dog training business on Yelp; I searched and I didn't see it listed. So I can't say for certain whether the age of his business on Yelp had to do with the algorithm flagging the reviews.

And why discriminate against businesses that don't sell advertising?

Yelp is letting you bump up your flagged reviews if you pay an advertising fee. If Yelp's algorithms don't trigger any red flags, positive reviews should show up unfiltered on your page whether you pay for advertising or not.
Broken window fallacy. Jobs aren't really being created. The people in question are doing the economy a service by facilitating the correct valuations of these assets, so their jobs are bringing value to the economy, but it's value they shouldn't have had to bring in the first place. The net impact on the amount of wealth in society is still hugely negative, as is the "jobs" impact.

(These people are the cleanup crew, in the "broken window fallacy" story they are the ones making the new windows and installing them. They aren't the ones who broke the window.)
The turn around began before '07, and it wasn't the iPhone that started it. But that is a good point, Ill bet the story would have been quite different if the iPad came first.
I agree. I'm open to the possibility that this is a widespread phenomenon, but a handful of frames, some of which don't even feature much orange, are unconvincing.
Discover French Jewelery
But there are easy methods to see if your review was filtered - you just look for it with a different account.

This only affects people who have written legitimate reviews, that have been filtered. It does nothing to prevent an automated system from doing anything.
You already have it, at this time and in the foreseeable future the main linux repository is not hosted on github, only a mirror like gazillions others. For sure :-)
Thank you for the paper reference. It looks like O(1) detection is possible but is possibly expensive. With a periodic deadlock check you end up having to tune the periodicity and be able to write a very robust deadlock handler. For ex: what if one module ends up deadlocking leading to huge buffer overflows in a queuing system. What kind of periodic interval can you recommend that would be generally applicable, how should the deadlock handler react in such a situation etc. periodic detection will make the deadlock handler harder to write.

> Java's Date/Time classes have a broken design

They might be. But none of these are JVM issues per se. These are merely Java library issues. Add a library that fixes the issue. The slide deck is apparently about top 10 issues in the JVM. Deadlock/date are problems that can be solved by a library. Some of the issues in there are Java language issues and not strictly JVM issues. The pauseless GC slide is a ridiculous simplification. The slide deck is an obviously random hodge podge collection of disconnected scraps. It is a waste of time to go read through it. The intention of my comment was to save other people's time as the slide deck does not have anything interesting about Top 10 JVM issues or anything close. It is also somewhat disconcerting to know that the speaker is a VP at Oracle though possibly not in charge of JVM development.
All the information comes from:
http://www.prosperlogic.com/syntaxposter/

(Click on the main image to go there.)
Ask HN: how to price your software contracting services?
Right now I'm working as a software contractor with a few other people. I've had some experiences where the client sets the price for the project completion, and I just deliver, and other more vague agreements where neither party is happy because I get underpaid somehow, end up working many extra hours because the client never really knew what he wanted, etc.

So now I've made the rule that I always need to make a proper proposal and then contract for clients, to explain explicitly what will get done, and for how much. However, I have NO IDEA how much to charge for specific services. Right now I'm trying to help a magazine put their content online and store user comments... Simple stuff like that. Can I bill my general services at something like $30/hour? How about the graphic design component, would that cost more or less?

Another example. Say I am building a mobile phone app (Android) for a client. Again, I have no idea how to price these... Before I've just gone for a fixed rate for the whole project to be completed, but that's never worked out to more than like $20/hour, which I feel is pretty low.

So I could use some general advice with how to price my services, and maybe get some ideas what others are doing. The best way to describe my current position would be a freelancer who's trying to start a small development firm. I'm relatively young and experienced I'm guessing though, since I'm still in college.

Thanks.
Blue/Orange contrast is used because red/green has too much of a Christmas vibe. Complementary colors look good. Its not like its a conspiracy.
Days like today make me consider building from source. Until I sober up, anyway.
This has been posted previously here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901175
I don't think Linus would have any qualms about using proprietary stuff. c.f. the whole BitKeeper fiasco.
Best practices to speed up your web sites (from the yahoo guys)
A set of great best practices to improve speed when loading web pages
Today's Google Doodle
Lessons Learned from Entering Node Knockout
For that matter, our current system of numbering years hasn't been around that long.
You could also travel for a year or less at some point when you are young. Also, working abroad is a great potential way to get some travel experience while not falling behind.
As said above, it's only Win32 that's broken. NT filenames (e.g. \\?\...) aren't limited by MAX_PATH.
I refrained from making this comment, before, but I guess I will now.

We should, as well, be running the hell away from VASCO. At a minimum, their due diligence during the acquisition of DigiNotar was lacking. To the extent as the parent company they inherently have responsibility, they have also failed. I don't care if the acquisition is recent; in security, that's no excuse.

Their citation of the monetary figure as reason to consider the matter "minimal" could be read as a further example of their contempt and/or disregard for the responsibility they shouldered with the DigiNotar acquisition.

TL/DR: Stop saying "DigiNotar", and start saying (or also say) "VASCO".
Ask HN: Amazon Startup Challenge Assesment
Hi, I am planning to submit my startup idea to the 2011 Challenge.

Do you have past experience with the challenge and suggestions for participants?

Thanks.
Only 6000 years? Well, that's nothing next to the Chauvet Cave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave ), where they found 35000 years old paintings...

This is actually a weird coincidence to see this on HN tonight, since I watched "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Forgotten_Dreams ) this evening. Having two hours to spend in Paris before a rendezvous, and seeing the great critics, I thought "Hey, I'm not usually into art / paintings / museums, but let's give this a try...".

The documentary was fascinating. The paintings look so fresh, it's as if they were done yesterday... But they are 30k - 35k years old. This really puts things into perspective...

It's hard to explain, but the effect was kind of similar to watching a Sagan video ( http://saganseries.com/ ). Instead of marveling at the size of the universe when compared to our tiny planet, I was marveling at how short the recorded history is when compared to the thousand of years of prehistory. I knew about this theoretically, but it never really hit home before...