skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Photography is an artistic numbers game. When Michael Angelo plots out a creation over months, that's one thing. When a photographer grabs an aestetically pleasing bit of snuff porn in a lucky 0.5 millisecond window, that's another.

Terrorism, you'll know when it works...they'll be talking about it 7 years later.
Agreed, though it still does little to convey any sort of useful message. I thought this campaign would be targeting Vista as opposed to brand awareness but apparently that's not the case.
funnier than the first. still not that funny, though.
It's playing up to the mac ads.
I think its pretty clear where this is going. "Windows... for real people."
What makes something a winner is often very small. What makes that essay a winner is this:

You can't just say "Err" to the user of a stove.
No, I won't volunteer how I'm making it better, because that's not why I come to this site. If you want to relate it to HN and ask if my work makes it better, then no, it doesn't. My software doesn't feed starving children in Africa. But it makes me money and there is no shortage of good to do with an extra few bucks. That has nothing to do with this site though, so there's no need to elaborate.
I dunno... so far the ads have made me want churros and gourmet mustard more than Windows.
You manually tell the app what you are doing choosing the task on a Firefox sidebar.
iPhone 3G and now this

Apple are under pressure, these are not minor bugs, these are major issues

I guess they are pushing their products way before they are ready for a global release.
Are there any demo websites created using Panda?
The promise JavaScript holds for server side web apps is that a programmer is far more productive with a tool he knows exceptionally well than with several tools he knows just enough.
In this way, JavaScript can be used on both client and server and the programmer gets to be a real pro at just one language instead of two or more.
This is real value.
But...sea changes in IT happen for lots of unpredictable reasons. Just because you have nice rational for why it makes sense does not mean it will happen.
ironic that you're critiquing the use of javascript for css sprites when the article was written by one of the guys that coined the term and mainstreamed the technique.

edit: but yes, its a post designed for cut-n-paste coders.
If you want to do something about it, this is an organization that has global programs to feed and help save starving children around the world:

http://www.worldvision.org/

You can also check out
http://www.care.org/

How about this for a startup idea -- software tools to help empower non-profits to help those around the world. Tools to help them communicate together, coordinate logistics, respond where aid is needed best.
How did they get in that house? I mean if they're going to tell a story, I'd love some continuity.
would be nice to see a before and after of Paul Graham's essays - it would demonstrate how this site can "formalize" something informal :)
No. No, no, no. You do not "sucker up" and pretend like this has relevance by asking a rhetorical question. If you're going to preach, be honest about it, or better yet, find a different forum in which to preach.

There ARE start-ups designed to help the third world. I know of a few off-hand. Find them, link to them, start up a discussion. Do NOT spam this place. This is a place for programmers and hackers to discuss things they find interesting. That's kept it at a pretty high signal-to-noise ratio, even though that's slipping.

"The things of real value in this world are not monetary."

D'you know what? I'll treat you seriously here, if only to completely disagree. Money is a method of exchanging your ability for somebody else's. It's a bond between people when it's used right. You pay me to do what I do best, I pay you in return. It brings us together when we make a transaction. And so, when I'm making money, I know that I'm creating something of worth to people. And when I spend money, I spend it to improve life around me. Sound selfish? Sure. But my spending money gives somebody else money, and it lets them improve the world in their own little way. Everybody benefits.

We could debate this all day, and it would make for a nice little topic of its own. But you didn't start this thread for that. You started this thread either to gain karma or to distract people from actual HN-related threads, and you did it in the laziest way possible: by linking to a Google search for a generic term. No news article, even. That is NOT what this site needs.
What meaningful discussion did YOU add, before we started criticizing your submission? Nada.
This strikes me as really inappropriate for HN, almost to the point of being offensive. Judging by the poster's comments, he/she clearly believes that the founders on HN are "contributing" to the problems the world is facing by pursuing their dreams and starting companies. I would argue that just the opposite is true, for three reasons:

1. People with large amounts of disposable income have the opportunity to have a huge impact in developing nations. Many charitable foundations and global health & poverty efforts were started by people who made their wealth in a tech startup. Look at the efforts of the Gates Foundation, for example.

2. Some startups have actually targeted problems that "really matter" and are trying to do their part to have a positive impact on the world. The first example that comes to my mind is CO2Stats.

3. Technological innovation actually creates wealth in the world, and as someone else pointed out, we are seeing many countries emerge from extreme poverty, largely due to the influences of technology over the last fifty years. People like many of those found here on HN have driven those technologies and I'm proud to hang out on a forum with so many people who are hungry for their chance to change the world for the better.

Regardless, the poster has obviously made a blanket judgment that none of us are aware or care. The truth is that many of us are aware and care deeply, but this is Hacker News, not Starving Children News. Welcome to contextual relevance.
You're exchanging one thing for another. You encourage discard clique mentality for mob rule. Each model has its flaws. And while forums scale worse, I tend to enjoy the sense of community I get there, which is something sites like THESE don't offer well.
100Mbps. 2010. Over The Air. Don’t Be Surprised.
Frightening bugcounts in commercial software
http://lwn.net/Articles/115530/

"Commercial software typically has 20 to 30 bugs for every thousand lines of
code, according to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab Sustainable Computing
Consortium. This is equivalent to 114,000 to 171,000 bugs in 5.7 million
lines of code. "

What!? That seems like a ridiculously high number. Can it really be true?
Would be interesting to see bugcounts for respective languages and years rather than having it all lumped together.

About Linux
"Our findings show that Linux
contains 0.17 bugs per thousand lines of code, which is an extremely low
defect rate and is evidence of the strong security of Linux. Many security
holes in software are the result of software bugs that can be eliminated with
good programming processes."

And Linux is written in C right? So the massive bugcounts in commercial software can't all be blamed on malloc and free...
Starving Children News? That's my favorite web site. Real upper.
I can see where they're going with this, they're getting buzz about the ads by starting off with something "bad" and then gradually making it "better" - perhaps a nod to Vista?

Anyway, the 4 odd minutes was worth it to see Gates do the robot.
Sony PsP WallPapers
palish! you are the bomb. i made it one day ahead of the public launch! i feel special.

i love hacker news.
I don't think this is an "issue" to Microsoft. I doubt that they want to officially support .NET on more than their own platforms. .NET is becoming more and more tied to Windows anyway, e.g. WPF.
Microsoft has much bigger problems than Vista. Their stronghold on the OS market is strong enough that they can probably stand 1 bad release. Only if Windows 7 screws up will they have real problems in terms of market share & bottom line.

The bigger problem for Microsoft is that they're just not cool anymore. Not for prospective customers, not for prospective employees, and not for prospective partners. That's why I think brand awareness is what they're going after with all this.
I'm sorry I was with you until you said this.

Most photographers don't get a good photo with each camera snap. They capture what's happening as it happens and go back to find it. So while Drew didn't capture any other photos - apparently - that took the nation's eye, this photo is still an excellent one.
what's your exit strategy? For example, if you were planning on getting bought let's say 100M - with a competing company, that might mean you might get bought for higher or lower depending on the timing. Assuming a bidding war, if someone buys your competitor first, the losing bidder might just buy your company for roughly around the same price (or higher) for PARITY. It probably helps to stick around.
There will always be some amount of demand for energy. If you pump a little bit more wind powered energy into the grid that reduces the amount of demand on coal, then you're doing at least a little bit of good.
its not that surprising. typically, there's less than 5 sets of eyes that go over any given chunk of code in commercial software. there's probably hundreds that have gone over every inch of the linux kernel.
Perhaps they got in through one of the...
What new thing do you think Fotonauts really brings to the table that the end user cares about? Not all innovations bring masses of users.
It's ironic. Just months after a much publicized retirement that emphasized "Microsoft after Gates", Microsoft wants to build some brand. And who do they bring back?

Is there Microsoft beyond Gates? More broadly, what does it take for a startup to outlive its founders?
On a scale of 1-10, how funny would it have to be for your next computer not to be a mac?

That's why it's a failure.
This post might have started an interesting discussion if it talked about microfinance, ICT4B, or any of the other numerous ways in which entrepreneurship and technology intersect with social good. Instead, it casts the HN community as the enemy and pisses everyone off. Think about your context/framing next time you want to make a post like this.
How big is the technology gap in this area between large players and startups? I've always wondered whether having a feature being more mathy/researchy makes it harder for a small team to handle. I guess if everyone is using OSS libraries it may even the score.
Ive got so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic. lol
Yahoo Hack Day Carpool?
I thought this would be a great spot for anyone to organize carpools for tomorrows Yahoo Hackday event.

Taking the busses+trains, takes 2.5-3hrs from my place in SF. I might just rent a car for the weekend, it would be nice to split the cost or to carpool with anyone going. My business partner will also be interested.
On the number of directors, please keep in mind that this is at the time the angels have invested, so the company is reasonably far along. You must have an even number, so the choices are 3 or 5. Three is workable, but does not provide much diversity. If you can recruit good directors, five provides much better opportunty for CEO mentoring. Basil from www.AngelBlog.net
Why are News.YC submitters/voters so eager to do Microsoft's marketing for them?
Oops. I meant can't have an even number. I know 3 and 5 aren't. Blush.
Ask Graham's Question: Are you still creating value? Take your eyes off the greenbacks for a second - are there still more-satisfied users at the end of your quest, or is it now only about the money?
Scala is more likely perhaps? Since it builds on the JAVA platform but is a much more flexible language(functional/OO hybrid) and offers several ways of doing concurrency(including Erlang-ish message-passing/Acor model).

Not sure how limited the concurrency model of Scala is by the underlying architecture though.
Do people actually like javascript, or just like the fact that it is de-facto always present in browsers due to its prevalence on the web (I could ask the same question about flash). The vast majority of client-side js I look at is spaghetti. To be fair, I'm looking at random webpages, not jQuery tutorial websites.
4 minutes seems like a long ad, what does the short version look like?
there are real limits to growth

These?:

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
Music tastes link to personality
Ummm, why not just use VirtualBox in "Seemless Mode"?
The fact that we are talking about their ads means that the campaign is working.
Agreed. It's the second one (after reddit) I will actually use, and the first I would pay for - anyone know what pricing will be for going beyond 2GB?
I liked this :

Now with lots of AJAX!
Performance: Part I Develop a Monitoring Scheme
Password management finally possible (JoS)
Answering my own question: $10/mo for 50GB. Not bad.
It's smaller than you may imagine. Google's great advantage is that they were one of the first to realize that data tends to beat clever algorithms at a certain scale.

But for restricted domains there are many techniques that are well-known in academic circles that are not yet mainstream. A "mathy/researchy" feature only requires people versed in that research and math. It is surprising how many jaded IR graduates there are in the valley, looking for an interesting problem to solve.
I don't get what's the point. What does it matter if a variable is private? This is not a prison, if you want a private variable, just don't use it.

Why go through all that hoopla?
Performance: Part II Address Scalability Before Its Too Late
First, I think the News.YC crowd is least likely to be swayed by MS' marketing.

Second, I don't think this is "doing Microsoft's marketing". You'll probably find a fair number of critical comments too.
<flame retardant> I'm fairly tools agnostic. YMMV </flame retardant>

Microsoft is actually putting out some Geek friendly tech in the last couple of years. If you need to Develop on Windows, there are some pretty interesting tools to play around with.

I use PowerShell as my main shell on Windows. IronPython and IronRuby are pretty cool ways to poke around .NET libraries. I've heard some pretty cool things about C# and F# as well. I do still use Unix for sever boxes, however.

They actually have some good programs for startups and ISV's as well. You can get a whole mess of Microsoft licenses in an Action Pack for $300.

But, as I've said, YMMV.
My Yammer works fine.
Is this an intended use: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/11b.html ?

BTW, he's right about the URL. Wonder how much the squatters want for it?
This article is interesting, but I think it is too shallow to get any deep understanding of causes of forking as a phenomenon. A case study on /that/ would be kick ass, and quite a treat in terms of both software engineering methodology and oss anthropology.
Guy failed at Windows 2003 test
It's great that dropbox launched (MIT pride!) but were they really the "missing link" that made this possible? What about something like WebDAV? Also... looking at PasswordSafe, it doesn't seem to integrate with the browser, which makes it a bit of a pain to use for websites.

Finally -- would you store your (encrypted) private ssh key on DropBox? Because I'm not sure I would, and this is basically what Joel is suggesting.
I like Javascript, and given the choice I'd use it server-side as well. It's an excellent language; very minimal, lends itself well to concise but powerful code, and can be made to do pretty much anything given a decent API.

Most of the Javascript you look at is terrible because most of it is copypasted from tutorials dating back many years, when Javascript was, at best, not very well understood or known, and not the domain of serious applications. The modern libraries like jQuery and Prototype definitely exemplify how Javascript could be though.
# is a good suffix. Clever branding.
C# code now (officially) runs under Silverlight on OSX. Mono/Moonlight is receiving direct support from teams at Microsoft.
it's not all that slow, 0-60 in 5 seconds. not blazing fast, but faster than most cars on the road.
Well, it's not borrowing another language engine (I'm not sure what that would even mean), but server-side Javascript with OS integration is becoming more feasible: http://www.aptana.com/jaxer
Tracking Lehman's Wikipedia Edits Thru Current Crisis
I trust DropBox as much or more than Bank of America why?
_"..the authoritarian model is fundamentally a better one than the democratic model"_

What I got out of this article was just that democracy isn't the only way that works even today. It helps us remember that it's a means for us to eventually find better forms of government.

_"Democracy is susceptible to populist acts. Much of the private property in developing countries was owned by former colonial powers. A democratic government would be very tempted to dabble in nationalism (and nationalization), risking external regime overthrow."_

Who said that democracy can't just happen in any society, it requires a certain degree of maturity?
It's not as much about the idea as about the execution.
But your idea has been validated. And so has your idea-generation. Quit your 9-5 and start off on this full time.
Semantic Advertising = Long Tail Monetization
Though RAM is volatile it is possible to get data off of it. I've heard of techniques of using extreme cold temperatures to slow the clearing of data.

I think there are papers on this referring to it as "Low temperature data remanence"
Eh, the problem will get fixed eventually when in 5-10 years everyone upgrades to Vista and later OSes which come with .NET. It's similar to the IE6 problem. People aren't willing to upgrade their old machines and Microsoft can't force a Windows Update without incurring the wrath of antitrust prosecutors.

Segmenting the download into smaller chunks isn't a panacea either. As a case point, take a look at the Tablet SDK. To redistribute that to non-Tablet, developers have to choose between 6 distinct components and check whether each one is on the system (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819420.aspx)... no user's gonna know whether they have the "Ink Divider object" installed. Having big versioned checkpoints is definitely the clearest from a user and development perspective (e.g. "make sure you have .NET 3.5").

So in the meantime, all Microsoft can do is keep working to make .NET better.
I recommend an IR and/or NLP book.

Check into Jaccard distance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaccard_index

You might consider looking at WordNet for generalizing words...
Okay I'll bite... what were the Ruby web frameworks before Rails?
It's a branding thing for the whole company. The idea is to slightly reduce the ickiness some people feel when the name comes up. Not to directly sell anything.
Teeth Whitening
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Will these people be mentioning the same URLs, by chance? :-)
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Microsoft's had JScript and JScript.NET for server programming for a while and recently added Managed JScript:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript

It's never really taken off, though Microsoft always pushed VBScript over JScript and C#/VB.NET over the managed JScripts. I used server-side JScript a little back in the old school ASP days and actually found it pretty confusing having both server and client code in the same language, though it sounded appealing in theory. More to wrap your head around.

I do admit a second love with client-side JavaScript after the recent resurgence, but I definitely don't see it displacing Python, Ruby, or even Perl anytime soon. The core language is nice, but it's got a long ways to go.
Actually when the first ipod (1st and 2nd) gen came out, it was simply miles ahead of any of the competition. It had more than 128mb of storage data and it fitted in your pocket (there was one alternative from creative which, well, didn't fit in your pocket)

It came with a horrible mp3 manager until itunes was ported to windows a few years later, but I was okay with that since the ipod was so awesome.

The device was way more important than the software.
I'm pretty excited to read about it. I learned like half a lecture on conjugate gradient stuffs, more just like, "its this optimisation thing..etc". It'll be nice to have a look through it and get a better idea as to what it is and how it works.
Actually, they were sued over OEMs and netscape.exe, if I remember correctly.
Steve Jobs Talks New iPods, Health
Loudcrowd: some serious alpha goodness
osx86 isn't exactly new.. neither is this article, dating from Nov '07.

Besides, running Tiger or Leopard on a machine with 512mb ram and a 900mhz proc is going to be very painful. Not to mention the 8gb hdd max.. An OS X install (with Xcode so it's useful) will fill that up on its own without any additional files.

(Unless the Eee 1000 Series is out anywhere but Taiwan yet? In which case, the Eee might run OS X decently, but I still don't imagine it being worthwhile to spend time on.)
But depending on the encryption scheme, a single byte changed in the unencrypted data can result in the entire encrypted image being different.
I actually wanted to take screenshots on the iPhone the other day, and wondered if there was any software which would allow me to do so without jailbreaking it.

This sounds like a little bit too much work though :)
Why does everyone think people will pay to 'control' their network? None I know 'pay' to restrict IM, IRC, newsgroup posts, etc, so why should this be different?
For the web site, I find that I can switch to an SSL/TLS-delivered log on page by clicking the unsecured front page's log on button without entering credentials. However, the SSL/TLS-delivered page is broken in that some elements used in its composition are not secured. My understanding (not may area, so feedback welcome) is that this opens up security concerns; those unsecured elements allow the possibility for the page and its functionality to be compromised.

I really dislike the more recent trend to "fancy up" submissions of secure information. Give me an SSL/TLS-delivered page with a valid certificate and which the browser can confirm as being (entirely) secured. Don't hide the security behind scripting and the like and ask that I take it on faith.

UPDATE: I tried again, and this time the page was completely secured. So maybe my original concern is not present; however, it would appear that the site may be unstable to some degree.

Again, not my area of expertise. But I figure here is as good a place as any for feedback to reach the developers, and/or to be corraborated by others' experiences.
Anyone know where it was shot? It looks like somewhere around Seattle. West Seattle maybe? Magnolia?
Text messages are the new long distance...
Speaking of which, we ( http://www.memengo.com ) created a two-tier password manager:

one tier is an iPhone app. Handy for debit card PIN codes, luggage combination locks etc.

the other tier is a cloud service with AJAX front end.

both tiers support client-side AES256 encryption. iPhone app can be synced to cloud, or used stand-alone.
New site aggregates iPhone App news, reviews, and videos