skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I use Scheme day and night for web apps, but this guy makes a valid point:

An old rusty wobbly-headed crooked hammer is the best tool for the job if it's right next to you and you only need to pound in a couple of nails.
Can you use the User-Agent string is some intelligent way to guess the screen size instead of asking me to enter it?

Also, might be nice if you had some presets like, say, Macbook, Macbook pro, etc.
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This election is huge. Considering that, I'm actually surprised there haven't been more posts relating to it. If anything, the community does very well in ferreting them out.

Business and economics, I'd argue belong front and center.
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site

Isn't that exactly what you're doing too, though?
While true that an old rusty wobbly-headed crooked hammer is the best tool for the job if it's right next to you and you only need to pound in a couple of nails, we are talking about programming web applications here.

In that case, I always use good tools because typing in a few lines of Perl or Lisp is just as easy as typing in a few lines of PHP. Easier, usually.
Heh, this is really cool. But after playing with it a bit, there's not really much to come back to.

You remember that graphic a long time ago that uses to be on the web that showed the relative sizes of different spaceships (like star trek enteprise etc). That was amusing, and if you had something like that regularly coming up, I'd put you in my rss feed. Amuse me.

But otherwise, it's really nicely done, and it does what it is supposed to do properly. I like it.

(Just think of adding some reason why I would want to go back)
I don't see any reason why you should be flagging like crazy. These posts aren't so ubiquitous as to be over running the site.

Unless you're not using the definition of "off-topic" in the guidelines?

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I rarely see posts that meet that criteria.
He did not revise his technology positions. He made his webpage smaller and easier to read for the mainstream. Changing your site does not mean you changed your opinion.
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It's still very 'gee-wiz' science, I think the longest carbon nano tubes in ribbon form are only measured in inches.

See http://www.spaceward.org/ for more information, or search "space elevator competition".
Indeed. His detailed PDF is unchanged, just this summary page.

When did we start mirroring /.? This was on there earlier.
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If you followed digg as close as I did from 05-07 and saw what happened you would feel the same way as the parent. Current HN was digg in early 05/06. Now look at it. It went from articles on computer science/tech at UW/google research/stanford/MSR to MSN/college humor in what seems like a flash because people flocked towards what was popularized instead of technical. I took solace in the fact there was a tech section but all those articles lost any sort of insight because the community fell apart. I recall reading explanations and watching videos about the internals of Map Reduce/GFS/Big Table soon after they were released for publication. Videos from the core kernel development team at MSR (check channel9). Understanding how Microsoft managed their software development teams from people at MS. How to ace alot of algorithm questions at interviews (mapping mazes,sorting,etc). All from digg. I recall having a brief discussion with a person at slashdot about this. I asked them if they were concerned about what digg was doing and if he thought it was the new paradigm. He didnt flinch one bit. Since slashdot was old it had been through this before. It knew that topics would quickly swerve towards "popsugar" type articles real quick. They knew need they needed editorial control and thats why slashdot is still around and kicking. I dont want to be a control freak, I just love HN and try and keep on top of the sources used!

Disclaimer: I commented on this last night in another thread in my defense for being called a sock puppet for voicing my opinion like the parent. But this comment is very relevant here.
The OpenID community is working on exactly that:

http://eaut.org/
From what I can tell, there isn't a huge change in the actual content of the message.

It's been simplified and summarized, with a lot of the statistics removed, but the overall message remains intact. Also, the original document is available as a PDF at the bottom of the page, with full detail.

Most likely, they streamlined the page to provide a simpler reading experience for the non-technical voters. For the more tech-savvy voters who want details, they left the full white paper available.
I know you do, prakash. The comment was directed at others, not so much yourself. Sorry for the confusion.
Business submissions can dilute the front page. For example, take articles about the current economic environment (mergers, banks dying off) - they suck because:

1) You can read about that stuff everywhere right now (news.google, front of popular magazines).

2) It doesn't really help start my business as it provides little actionable advice.

3) Look at 1) again. I'm not interested in reading about current events on HN. Other sites do a better job of this, and that is not why I come here. Generally, if it appears on the front page of news.google.com, it shouldn't be on this site.

Of course I'm not against biz articles categorically, just the ones that meet the above criteria.
The guidelines don't matter for this discussion? It seems to me it's the only thing that should matter. Without them, this site has no focus whatsoever.
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You know, it's kind of sad. Before reading the article, I was going to post a reply to your comment like "but omg, javascript has functions that are values!!1". Then I read the article, and found that that's the first "hidden feature".

I guess "hidden feature" means "something that's not in PHP".

I also like how people use terms like "null coalescing operator" when everyone else calls it "short circuiting". They are so smart!!11!
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Doh. Sorry, maxklein and lallysingh. Goes to show what happens when I take the dogs out in the middle of writing a comment. :P
Google using Linux as a base OS to deliver Chrome+Applications?

I'm not holding my breath. One only has to look at how they handled Chrome to see how they will handle the OS. Instead of taking an established open source browser like Firefox, Google started from scratch and took the best from FF3, IE7 and Opera to create Chrome (along with their own special sauce)

If we translate that to the OS, they'll take the best parts from XP/Vista, OSX and Linux and create their own. There's simply too much legacy, assumptions and classic thinking in your typical Linux distro for Google to be interested.
It thinks my 20" LCD is 22". I'm flattered!
having a politician want to ban books because of religious views supports neither of these ideologies.

I'm not sure how you go from Palin asking about banning books to the assumption that she wanted to ban books, and for specifically religious reasons. Why do you not assume that she heard complaints about books from her constituents, and wanted to know in advance what would happen if they actively wanted to ban books, and the librarian didn't?
Oh really?

ML sold its mortgage portfolio for $0.22 on the dollar.

Wouldn't you have loved to have bought even for $0.25-30?

We're not going to see 50% forclosures and even if we did, housing prices are not dropping 70%.

The US govt shouldn't buy ANY of these securitized packages. Instead, they should be offered at public auction.

The collapse happened because govt limited the size of the market. When those folks got spooked, things fell apart.

If I'm not allowed to buy something for my benefit, I shouldn't be expected to pay for it for someone else's benefit.
robg. Regarding the site having focus. I suggest you re-read the guidelines. When the guidelines are as vague as "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." it's not as easy as just throwing the guidelines at someone.
Your account was created 10 days ago. I don't see how you've interacted with this community enough to accurately judge what direction it's headed. Why not start by submitting stuff you deem worthy? That would be a more fruitful path toward course correction.
There are quite a few posts under the new page.
You're missing the point. The guidelines are the only thing that should matter. Without them, this community has exactly zero form.
I think what it comes down is the HN community's craving for such information. People can submit all sort of information but it's the links that are upmodded that make the cut.

Don't worry it will work itself out. Otherwise just band together with fellow HN users and just upmod the news that your interested in reading. :)
Do you mean the "Adapted for a XX screen" figure ?
Other fun 'in' trivia: It looks through the object's entire prototype chain: http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/09/26/for-in-intrigue/
You can read a site and not be registered. I've been on this site for months but never chose to register an account. Found out about it on techcrunch about 6 months ago and have been reading every day since. Even shared and discuss it with my boss. Just like on digg, it took me 8 months before I joined. You can see a pattern through observation of submissions. Instead of trying to discredit me by the length of days of my account, why dont you try and just take in my point and reflect on it and then interact with me on what you think. Its a word to the wise. I am not saying panic. Panic is for morons. But many people are aware of the problems with digg and they wont be fixed using simple user guidelines.
If you want to learn something new about JavaScript, just skim through Douglas Crockford's articles. As long as I've been doing JavaScript, I learn something new or rediscover something every single time: http://javascript.crockford.com/
Vote for John McCain or else | TechJaws
Isn't it always just a couple more nails, here and there, till the next feature's ready to go?
You know what's great about StackOverflow though...you can go fix it if you want. Go post a better answer, get upvoted, misinformation is minimized.
Then go post a comment on that answer or post a better answer. If you prove his answer wrong, it can be edited. It's a wiki as much as it is a Q&A site.
I don't even see them there. Early in the morning there's spam to flag, but I'd say 95% of the submissions fit into the guidelines. Of the remaining 5% maybe 10% makes it to the front page. My intuition is we're arguing about .5 to 1%. Even if it's as high as 10%, I still don't think that's significant.

Instead of complaining, why not do a study? Classify all front page submissions for one week. I bet not 1% would touch on politics. For this time of the election cycle, that would be a great indicator of the strength of this community.

I disagree wholeheartedly on economics and business submissions, though.
Go post a comment on that answer to clarify it.
What's sad is that the Mozilla wiki has all the info on the features of JavaScript from version 1.5 to 1.8 (which Rhino doesn't support but Firefox3 does? something like that). Oh and there's also the possibility of, you know, reading the language spec. /me sighs
Solution: Vote up more interesting stuff from the new page to rise above the political stories
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I agree that it probably has. Still, even the techcrunch crunch didn't change things.

PG has said he monitors for drift and hasn't seen it. I presume that if he did he would change the guidelines accordingly.
short circuiting is only half of why this example works. The other half is that boolean operators in javascript don't implicitly cast the result as a boolean type.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Become Banks, Ending an Era for Wall Street
The thing about faith and reason is this: You can't have one without the other. All reasoning must be from some first principles and first principles are always a matter of faith.
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Except the only way to influence the direction of this community is by actually participating. And complaining about content does no good especially if you're not submitting content you deem better.
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I can understand covering the site itself, but posting links to the content? Did we run out of real Hacker News?
I have enough rep on the site to edit any question or answer. If you find something that's factually incorrect, post a comment on it, link it here and I'll edit it. Get off your high horses and help some people out.
Add a 'scale' slider or buttons at the bottom. Then offer this service to companies that want to show pictures of their goods in 'actual size', with the scale used for larger objects.

Perhaps might have some traction in the 'adult entertainment' category.
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Agreed. I flagged the submission for having a sensationalist, unfounded, unnecessarily-political headline.
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MySpace uses OpenSocial: http://developer.myspace.com/Community/forums/default.aspx?G...

MySpace has how many users again? Even if a tiny percentage of them interacts with OpenSocial, I would hardly call it a dud.

Also:

"There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING."

That is a lot of users that someone can reach with an OpenSocial app. If this is failure, I want some.
I think there is an ongoing pattern in Google - they are just keep fitting in to all existing niches, taking only the best elements from each competitor or firm in the niche and adding to the mixture their secret sauce, which will finally make their product the best. Notice that they're conquering (and not slowly..) every niche in the market and I'm sure we haven't seen the latest... Pure Google-Made OS is the destination, and it will be substantially better although it was built upon OSX/Microsoft/Linux elements..
That's how you gain popularity.. upon popular "ancestors".
The images never seemed to load for me. But it appears that it creates a scaled version of what you selected based on your monitor size?

Would be helpful to build up a product comparison database, so that I can compare the new cellphone I am thinking about buying to my existing phone to get a real-world idea of the dimensions.

Suggestion for allowing people to catalog their own stuff: create a printable template that I can print out and photograph my object along with a reference item (us dollar, quarter, etc). Between the reference item and the printed grid you should be able to work out the dimensions of the photographed object. You could probably get a massive social effect from people photographing and cataloging their various objects.
The images never seemed to load for me. But it appears that it creates a scaled version of what you selected based on your monitor size?

Do you have cookies disabled ?

Yes, it does scale based on the monitor size to give you the actual size.
The only way for you to get the "real" HN back is by submitting and upvoting content you deem appropriate. You've done that well previously. Visiting less often is certainly not going to help.
Politics has little direct relevance to hackers, in their capacity as hackers.

Economic and financial news may very well have enormous impact and relevance for entrepreneurial hackers, which I think is a large part of the hackers who follow Hacker News.
Amid turmoil and news of $700B federal bailout, is the sky falling for VCs and start-ups?
Dude, make this work with online shopping.

This is probably hard since most product shots are perspective, but it would be awesome if I could point to an image at some online store and type in the dimensions and you scaled that photo to actual size.

Here's a product category where it'd be useful (and where the photos are mostly straight on): http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-SD1000-Digital-Optical...
Anybody notice the trend of JQuery having "cooler" plugins then prototype.js? Or do they just get more attention?
Same here. I currently see exactly one political article and that is regarding the Palin hacking fallout, which is relevant to anyone designing a password recovery scheme. Not even one market crisis story.

...Except for this one complaining about them.
It seems the primary complaint here has to do with setting up Lisp web application infrastructure.

Granted, it's not as out-of-the-box as getting started with PHP, but once you've done your first Lisp web application, successive applications will be much easier.
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I think that increases the chances by far...
Wow. You must have a pretty high threshold for Black Swans.
You have to wonder what would have happened if Yahoo had bought Google back in 1999. Would Yahoo have had the success Google has had in the last decade? Would we ever have had access to the powerful web tools that Google is providing us with right now? And ore importantly would any other company have managed to transform the Web like Google has? One thing's for sure though - Yahoo and Microsoft would not be scratching their heads over how to stay afloat and compete in this market.
No politics. Please. That's why I like it here so much.No pseudo punditry and only technology. Now that's what we like.
You assume the people there would be able to recognize a "better answer".

Just saying...
Maybe because I'm not a prestigious designer with anything to lose, but I would think that by democratizing good designs, it would help companies that could benefit from it and create a bigger market for "premium" design services. The example of iStockPhoto was a good one - break down an artificial restriction of supply and prices in general will come down while prices for excellent work will go up.
Crytek aposta no Playstation 4 ( PS4 )
Hot tip, thanks!
no worries!
Pleading with HN: Submit and upvote "better" content
There really are only two ways to make this community "better" if you deem it lacking:

1. Submit

2. Upvote.

Sorry, but that's it.
You are right, I thought the discussions had /reply? URLs but they are /item?.

I think that SE revenue sharing will happen. Only the SEs that share revenue will survive--a SE that doesn't share revenue will get locked out of the most valuable content and it will be forced out of business.
I hang out a bit in #javascript on freenode and it's always surprising how many people come in with a "guesswork" attitude to programming.

They just think up how they expect something should work, or what they think something should be called, and try it. Then come in and ask why it's not working. They often exchange misinformation with each other without either party realizing it's false.

Then if you suggest to them they read up on the API for what they're trying to do, they won't... they'll just keep trying random things, trying to get someone to feed them the answer.

I think javascript is particularly bad for this, even though there are some really good books and references out there now.
One weakness common to all the Flash clones I've seen is that the song you're playing along to sounds the same whether you hit the notes or not, unlike in Guitar Hero. Whether the improvement in gameplay would be worth the extra investment needed I'm not sure.
2) Be “true believers” in Agile methods, including story carding, pair-programming and test-driven development.

I am a true believer in TTD, continuous integration and weekly team based code reviews, but pair-programming is crap.

Plus, A LOT of very good developers who also love TDD and a lot of Agile/XP practices feel the same way about forced pair programming.

Demanding it is a good way to lose a lot of great talent. But how could, lets say, demanding TDD ever cost you talented programmers? It won't, ever.

There's a lot of great stuff in Agile/XP (that's also in the Mythical Man Month), but don't drown in the cool-aid.
Amazon does have an API with access to a front-shot image and dimensions.

If I could figure out the bounds of the product (in the image), then I could automate the whole process.
Of the minority of users who have enough accounts on web applications to care, only a small fraction have accounts they care about that are ever likely to support OpenID.

I don't think most users see this account/password thing as one of their major Internet challenges.
The other complaints are:

- not much in terms of community to help answer questions or maintain your code, whether a guy down the hallway, documentation, or answers to questions you can Google for
- much greater probability of a random library existing for PHP than for Lisp (which is perhaps another case of the first point)

I keep coming back to Clojure as a way to do Lisp and still get many of the benefits of building on a popular platform (Java, in Clojure's case).
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Glass-Steagall was enacted to avoid 'runs' on banks when speculation was rampant, which was the cause of the great depression in 29'. It separated consumer funds from investors to avoid all out panics, and its wby the FDIC has that $100,000 'insurance' on your commercial bank account.

Frauds and undisclosed conflict of interest still occur, but that is a matter for the SEC, which oversees investments.
You can do well in college by being smart ... or by studying hard.

Are there MIT graduates who are not smart?
It's actually good practice if you only have access to Guitar Hero once in a while, like at a cousin's birthday party. I kicked my sister's ass thanks to Jam Legend :p
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No, I have cookies enabled. They finally loaded after a very long wait. Seemed like your site was sending connections to odd places (wikipedia.org, etc).
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No, that's not what I'm saying. Although I agree with the OP that the political stuff is getting dull, I believe you have a point about the guidelines (that means I agree with you). However, complaining that the OP is going against the guidelines and therefore doing the same thing yourself seems somewhat hypocritical. Of course, here I am doing exactly the same thing really.

Surely you could just do what you/others have told the OP to do, and flag the 'submission'?