skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No need to buy any fancy controller, your keyboard will do just fine.

There are lots of Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution clones in Flash, and while this one seems especially well made I still feel the whole thing is silly when you're just using your keyboard.

The physicality of playing is what makes these games fun and memorable: it's tapping your feet forward and left on a DDR pad or hitting sticks on actual drum pads or raising your guitar controller at a crazy solo.

Whenever I play these Flash versions (or even the Tap Tap iPhone game) I just think Hmm, I'm tapping my fingers in a pattern that matches these okay songs the developers found for free on the internet. And I can't move because my keyboard has to sit on my desk. This really isn't that fun.

I'm tempted to say the pattern matching mechanic is just an excuse to achieve the essence of the game, which is making people move. But that's probably not right because I recall PaRappa the Rapper on the Playstation was just pushing buttons and it did well.

So I don't know what it is that pushes a game beyond rote pattern matching into something fun, but to me these Flash clones don't have it.
While I don't think HN's been too bad in this area at all, the threat of a slippery slope bringing in the trolls is pretty real.

Perhaps an accepted convention of downmodding any discussion of the political aspects of the economic stories is in order? IMHO the economic discussions are pretty relevant to us (esp. things like the capital markets for our VC-loving industry), but this isn't an economics or political site, so the links back to public policy don't really fit here.
I just checked and could not find a single article about politics on the main page. Not counting those about political reactions to the financial markets crisis, but even those where only one or two.
But that's the beauty of OpenID - it allows you to keep your identity with the thing that you trust.

One of the future developments I'm most excited about with respect to OpenID is the ability to run your OpenID server on your mobile phone. Phones can already run web servers, and with IPv6 they'll be able to have public facing direct internet addresses. Voila, your online identity lives in your pocket.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

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.

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Seems to me there's room for the posts you're complaining about, but no room for this post complaining about those submissions. If you don't like them your charge is clear: Use the the 'flag' feature.
The postcard, like using a .edu email, is just a barrier to entry. The seal functions as a signature, and asking for it in a postcard would be very suspect.
In almost 600 days, it hasn't happened yet. Even as this worry has been constant, I have seen little to no evidence of this shift.

So how long before we can can the incessant worry? Another 600 days, perhaps?
Oh come on. The article is more than extensive enough. And just how much is there really to explore in the multi-platform angle?

"DirectX 11 will be supported on Windows, next revision of the Xbox, while OpenGL 3, if ever shipped, will be supported on all platforms which has X".

I'm interested in what other angles you can see here, or if this is just another subtle way of saying "DirectX wont run in Linux".
Actually, it's not supposed to be in the system:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm much more interested in the web platform here (versionista) than I am the particular content being tracked - this looks like a great tool with a ton of uses.
Why Aren't You Using JQuery?
Charts and Graphs Plotting with JQuery plugins
Don't let the comments dissuade you from voicing your opinion. I notice that you have 50+ upmods as I write this. Remember that people who agree with you tend to nod. Some nod and upmod. A very, very few write a comment. Whereas people who disagree with you are much more likely to write a comment.

p.s. <ASBESTOS>The only thing more lame than a meta-post complaining about posts are the meta-comments complaining that meta-posts are lame. GET A LIFE, PEOPLE!!!</ASBESTOS>
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.

Well said, worthy of an upmod for that one line ;-)
If the "system" includes the guidelines, then it's not within the system.

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Python inside LaTeX
How about a "No posts on the economy and/or politics" month? Say, November? :D

Anyone posting on said topics and ignoring the rule will get their karma points reset to 1.
I don't. Why should I?

Also, you may want to peek at the HN HTML source.
Congrats on such an amazing accomplishment. I have triathlon on my list of goals for the next couple years, with the eventual goal of doing the Ironman. Definitely looking forward to getting to that level.
It's interesting that you mention "black swans", as one of the reoccurring themes in the book is about "experts" being too close-minded and focused in their own field.
To me "hacker" is more a synonym of "curious" than of "coder", so if someone implies a rule of only submitting "coder news" they should maybe think of changing the name of the site too.
Could a grey market for iPhone apps survive? Probably not
I agree leave the Politics and Finances at Reddit!! I miss the hacking!
Thanks. Good plans =) Start training and see how you like it. Also, once you invest in a nice triathlon bike, you pretty much have to take it out every weekend anyway.
people had lives before Google?
This is our site, if we want more hacker news and less reddit, follow the new page and consistently vote up geeky articles.

The site has thousands of page views every single day, but the top stories routinely get less than 100 votes. The moral of the story: submit good articles and vote up on them. The ratio of voters to lurkers is probably from 1:100 to 1:300. Your votes count. The only way to avoid having an Eternal September is to participate and keep it from happening.

I agree with you, Prakash, I was really surprised to see a "pics" link make it to the front page. I thought about flagging it, but I don't know if that is appropriate or not.
The Politics of Fear -- Holden 2008 (918): 2 -- ScienceNOW
Is MySpace Music An Antitrust Lawsuit Waiting To Happen?
PHP vs. Lisp?
David Heinemeier Hansson, 37signals: "Friday Keynote"
David Heinemeier Hansson's keynote at RailsConf Europe 2008 on Vimeo
And replace it with. . .?

Grades? Those inflated things?

Recommendations? Wonder how long it will be before a family sues a teacher who gives a poor recommendation. HR managers already overwhelmingly provide positive feedback about former employees.

Work samples? Awesome, except that you could get someone else to do it for you.

Activities? Well, too many students are creating shell activities where they hold leadership positions. No meetings, no members to run against you for president, no hassle, no mess.

Not that the SAT is much better considering the test-prep that goes on and the fact that the College Board no longer indicates different test conditions.

Creating effective screens (both for school admissions and employers) is very difficult. You can create positive correlations between things - for example, those with higher SAT scores tend to be smarter. Doesn't mean that you don't have random idiots with high scores and smart people with low ones. But there is a positive correlation. As such, employers and schools will use that just as a life-insurance company would use the fact that you're a smoker to correlate with a greater chance of dying young. Some smokers live very long lives, but there is a positive correlation the other way.
On a related note, I too was one of those people who had lives before Google, and maintained a Yahoo mail account for over 10 years now. Until recently when Yahoo locked me out of my account for no good reason.
I'm sorry (I'd love to poop on this) but this little gem:

"Therefore, if you collect a bunch of Web 2.0 engineers in San Francisco, the inevitable outcome is the OpenSocial Foundation: a nonprofit organization that only exists to support an API for programming social network applications."

Is hilarious. +1
Collages use SAT scores because they are a better indicator of student performance than highschool GPA, or student’s involvement in outside activities etc. They might not split the population on the correct racial or economic fashion, but the simple fact is they are a strong indicator as to who will finish their freshman year. Compare the number of people who dropped out of collage with an old SAT score above 1400 to those with an SAT score below 1400 and you will see a dramatic gap.
How companies should hire developers
Next software for the masses? How about three-dimensional design
ScottW, what's with the violent rejection of this article? Was this article Political? Yes. Does it deal with 'hacker culture'? Yes. Should it be discussed? Certainly.

What's important to remember is that while we are hacking away at our latest Facebook App, politicians & lobbyists have been hacking away at our culture. Indeed the PATRIOT ACT was probably one of the greatest hacks against our Constitution whereby it greatly altered how some things functioned. These issues that Obama brings up will affect you, me and the next generation of hackers to emerge.

Don't encourage the apathy that has come to plague a generation of American's and at the very least don't be apathetic about the government that regulates the things that you care about because one day you may just get screwed over.

I apologize for the general assumptions I've made about your character but the character of your remark was disconcerting, maybe you could explain a little further in detail why we should be "piss[ing] off with this stuff here"?
The World Probably Doesn't Need slotMusic
It could be that the incessant worry has kept it at bay for 600 days. It's hard to tell.
No you wouldn't. You'd just be focusing less on internet-based software businesses and more on biotech, cleantech, nanotech, and other hardware-type businesses.
> Of course, there were a lot of false positives from people who took prep courses and worked their asses off (but, as a former princeton review tutor, I never saw more than a 100 point gain in any student no matter how hard they worked - and most were lucky to get 50 points).

Is that a "false positive" from a school's point of view? The goal is to predict who will do well in college. You can do well in college by being smart (quick comprehension, good memory, good brain for math, etc.) or by studying hard.
I have been flaging things like crazy. People just ignore flagging off-topic submission, the same way people don't upmod enough.
I kinda agree with the politics.

It seems HN users like US politics, thats fine. But as a guess I'm sure most like p0rn too, it doesn't mean HN should be full of it...

(OK thats a pretty bad example, but you get what I mean...)
Eureka TV Show
If you are looking for a website where you can free download Eureka episodes other TV Shows, movies, games, and mp3s, then this fantastic website is for you and it is very easy to use website.
Good point. People should upload a lot more often.
Well, I'm not in the Valley, neither intend to go there, but such articles always make me feel a bit depressed.

I've read at least two dozens of this type: pretend that geeks/programmers are like normal people, let's network, communicate, make friends, go out, chat, whatever.
Let's smile, be optimistic, and enjoy life. Let's make a career, be a boss. WTF? Really. C'mon. Are you talking to programmers or salespeople?

I became a programmer because I don't want to talk to people. I want to sit in a dark corner, be left alone, communicate in e-mail. I want tasks coming in my inbox, files going out my outbox. I don't want to communicate, don't want to network, don't want to pretend I enjoy life, don't want to "go out", and don't want to become a boss because that would mean more communication.

And basically these articles imply that I'm doing it wrong. But why? This isn't just misanthropy, it's about the intelligence difference. If I talk, I want to talk to people who are interested in, and capable of, discussing subjects like the philosophy of Hume. Because such people don't exist in the workplace, I don't want to communicate more than necessary. I cannot stand "chatting" and "socializing" and other low signal-to-noise ratio stuff. I have a brain, I want to use it. All the time. Similarly, I don't want to pretend I enjoy life, because what most superficial people mean is that they had a good meal or something, in short, something utterly insignificant. Perhaps true happiness does exist, but it's so rare that it's rather insignificant, the honest and intelligent man's approach to life is that most things are unpleasant, but we just have to do them anyway. Absolutely no point in pretending to be happy. Not being happy isn't misery, it's just the honest acceptance of the way things are. It's one of the most annoying habits in England to ask every five minutes whether you are OK. What am I supposed to answer? Neither OK, nor not OK, it's just life as usual. The problem is not with striving to be happy, but with a very superficial definition of happiness - that you are supposed to be happy if nothing bad happens. I think it's just pretending.

So, at the end, I don't want to communicate. At the end of the day, I don't want to be "successful", because that's again a very superficial thing. I just want to make a living and concentrate on important things, like understanding everything. And these articles make me wonder: am I doing it wrong?
Does a submission count as a post?
I've definitely seen a gradual shift in the last 600 days. If the shift continues gradually, then yes, this site may be Reddit-lite in 600 days. If the shift accelerates, it could happen sooner than that.
I remember attending a talk on the space elevator (besides the Japanese project), and they were thinking about using a laser on the ground to shoot at the bottom on the elevator to power it up.

If it works, the trip up the elevator will probably take a couple hours, if not the whole day. When you have a bunch of people idling around for a long time, they'll want to do stuff. And in doing stuff, they might want to spend money. I can imagine the space elevator selling a part of its limited space to a store selling binoculars to look down at the earth. Or maybe some other entity like walmart or starbucks.
Ask YC: Feedback please - Actual size visualization webapp.
I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp.

WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein?

What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand.
I constantly check the new page to vote up & flag items. As some other have posted, more people should vote up.
I read this story several years ago in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/02/57536). I think I read it again in 05 in some other magazine. Most of them like this one, at first says how amazing it'll be to ride, then talks about how hard it'll be to build, throws something about carbon nano tubes and some cool diagrams.

Makes me wonder whether they are just recycling old content or if their has been real progress. (I went to the site of the company that is referenced in the Wired article to be building the space lift and its just spam!)
The author compares using a language and web framework he knows to one he does not know and never tried.

Feel free to guess how the rest of the article went.

PS: Why do people feel the need to post about subjects they don't know?
If you want better content, submit it yourself and upmod it on the new page.

I do that pretty much everyday.
Simple mental math tricks
Serial Port Communication in C#
The serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time.
Wow, the top answer really doesn't understand first class functions at all.
Download Eureka Episodes
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CSS Sprites2 Refactored: Building an Unobtrusive jQuery Plugin
I have to agree with you here, although the only reason I visits Tom's anymore is for those mega CPU/GPU charts so I know where my card/chip fits in the scheme of things.

Interestingly the home page doesn't feature that intrusive left hand column ad.
Shameless plug for my site but might be relevant here:

http://news.mandalorian.com

Another slinkset I've come across that might be useful is http://www.justhackit.com

Maybe we need dedicated sites for politics and economics.

I like the principle of Hacker News, but think that with the ties to ycombinator there is an entrepeneurial element that whilst related doesn't strictly go with the hacker element in all cases.

Thankfully unlike Reddit this place hasn't turned into 4chan, complete with old memes.
This is going to come as a shock, sit down if you can: people had lives before the Internet.
I don't know why the second-top one has so many votes, it's completely wrong.

var x = 1;
var y = 3;
var list = [0,1,2];
x in list; //true
y in list; //false
1 in list; //true
y in [3,4,5]; //true

That last expression is false. This is because the "in" operator does not check for values in the list; it checks for keys. Try this:

javascript:alert(3 in [3,4,5])

The only things that will be true for "X in [3,4,5]" are 0, 1, and 2 for X (since these are the natural keys for the terms in the array). More specifically, "in" in general checks for members associated with objects (e.g., keys in an array, methods of a class, etc.):

javascript:alert("The setFlag method " + ("setFlag" in {setFlag:function(){}} ? "exists" : "does not exist"))

EDIT: This makes the keyword considerably less useful (since indexOf doesn't work for the Array object in IE--although jQuery has a way around this), although it can be used to replace the less elegant

if (typeof object.method == "undefined")
TTTTTT HH HH A NN N KK KK YY YY OOOOOO UU UU !!
TT HH HH A N N N KK KK YY YY OO OO UU UU !!
TT HHHHHH AAA N NN N KKKKK YY OO OO UU UU !!
TT HH HH A A N N N KK KK YY OO OO UU UU
TT HH HH AA AA N NN KK KK YY OOOOOO UUUUUU !!

I'm visiting hn about 10% as often as I used to, but I didn't want to be one of those "not hn" complainers.

Can we please have the real hn back? I miss it so much.

(Please, let's talk more about programming, less about everything else.)
"They are looking for XP/Agile people and this simple requirement will excite many talented developers,"

Well it wouldn't excite me. Perhaps they work when you are building a product, but in billable consultancy they don't. It's just not somethign customers would accept. Neither would they accept Waterfall or anything like that, of course. They simply want to tell you their problems, get quoted a number of days, and then do it. The don't want to get billed neither for up-front big design planning nor for writing tests or story cards, nor double the time (pair programming), nor for anything else. Just 1) explain the problem (for free) 2) program it (for charge). This is how they think. And you won't ever convince them to do otherwise.
Yeah, that's a pretty bad example!
InfoQ: Erlang - software for a concurrent world
Problem is, of course, this election is huge news. Considering that, are even one in a hundred posts here touching on those issues? What was it last year at this time, one in two hundred posts? That's a difference of 1% vs. .5% of submissions. Frankly, I highly doubt that 1 in 100 posts, right now, touch politics unless your view of politics is so jaded that it infects things like economic collapses.

There may be a shift, but if those numbers are accurate (and I think they're conservative) we're seeing an over reaction to a very minor issue.
F# in 20 Minutes - Part I
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ericschmidt.com/

..the site has not been updated since 7 years. what a "great" news submission
Today is OneWebDay
Feel free to guess how the rest of the article went.

Free tip: It involves ignoring all the shortcomings of PHP and highlighting all the shortcomings of Lisp.
This is really scary. Hidden features??

Was this posted to show just how much misinformation and dumbing down there is at stackoverflow?

As if we need more misinformation about javascript on the net.
+1

I think I am going to have to write a sarcastic reply to this post. "PHP is much simpler! First, you have to setup Apache just to get 'Hello world' working with PHP. That's OK though, because installing and configuring a web server is fun and exciting. After that, you can start work. Of course, you have no libraries, so you get to write everything from scratch. While you're doing that, be sure not to use $i as your loop iterator, because there is no lexical scope! Do you need closures? They don't exist! You don't need that for web pages, though; web pages require you to write spaghetti because it's just plain easier! Anyway, eventually you will want an editor with decent syntax highlighting and perhaps a REPL for prototyping. Oh wait, PHP has neither. That's OK though, because PHP is clearly better!!11!"

I could go on, but I'd rather summarize this with one word: "blub".

Oh, let me add one other thing. He says MySQL is a single apt-get away, but installing SLIME and Emacs was "too hard"? On my Debian, emacs22, slime, and cl-swank are all an apt-get away. In fact:

$ apt-cache search '^php5' | wc -l
51

$ apt-cache search '^cl-' | wc -l
168

That's OK, though. If you know PHP and have no ability to program or learn anything new, CL probably isn't for you.
Make money from your mobile apps 
I am bringing to market some mobile applications for S60, iPhone and WM and I can help you either finish and bring to market, port - or just publish your mobile applications.

Drop me a line if you're interested. beth (at) signal2productions (dot) com
Haha, I love the concept! I'm not sure how often I'd go back and visit, but it was certainly an amusing little distraction.
Agreed, I'd love hear what you used for the back-end in rendering the image sizes.
The NOSPEC campaign vs. crowdSPRING
Very interesting site - the interface is very clean and works well.

Nicely done!

Maybe have the threshold for abuse a bit higher (I added the giant cookie and reported it for abuse).
Ludwig Enterprises Inc. (Pink Sheets: LUDW) | TheSubway - Stock Trader Blog
Oh no, in the US system the swing voters are the key. There's always some demographic that isn't on either side and it's they whom the parties secretly try to court. In 2004, it was the 'conservative gay.' I'll leave you to guess what that means.
Well, it's essentially Javascript.

It stores the ppi (pixels per inch) of the image, and the ppi of the screen and scales accordingly