skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
MLM Marketing Secrets - Five Significant Secrets and techniques 4 MLM Marketing
Thanks for the great overview
Isn't this knowledge very common? I think every second weed joke is about how you're not motivated to accomplish anything.
I've read the book, although it would be more accurate to say that I skimmed it since it was a bit over my head when I got it a year or so ago.

I am going through it again now that I've brushed up a bit on some of the math, and in anticipation of the upcoming Stanford course on NLP (http://www.nlp-class.org/), which is being taught by one of the authors.

I think that the material is still fairly relevant, especially in that it is a 'foundation' of Statistical NLP, and especially for someone relatively new to the material (like me). That said, if you take a look at the link to the course, the professors recommend a few different texts:

"The best textbook for the class is Jurafsky and Martin, Speech and Language Processing 2nd Edition (http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/slp.html), complemented by chapters from Manning, Schütze and Raghavan 2008 (http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/); other useful, good books include Manning and Schütze 1999, and Bird, Klein and Loper 2009."

I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this as well.
Being a natural optimizer, maximizing the value I get out of Twitter (and anything else) is an ongoing process. That process obviously needs tweaking if it made me unfollow @danielbmarkham. Daniel, you're one of my favorite writers, both here at HN and on your blog. You always find a way to get me thinking, no matter what you write about. Consider yourself re-followed.

I know that you and I, along with many others, have tried to do our part (with mixed results) elevating the quality of discourse here at HN. Now its up to many of us to continue that effort in under 140 characters. Based on my feed, it seems like that's always a work in process.
Show HN: Like-A-Bossify images
Is it odd that the most surprising thing about this article, for me, was that people start looking for summer jobs in November?

Also, why aren't people accepting every offer they get, then at the start of summer[1] send an email about changing their minds to everyone who isn't the best offer? Or even play offers against each other?

[1] or rather a reasonable amount of time sooner
The Problem with Data Driven Decisions
Is gamification of driving the answer to urban speeding?
I can only strongly agree. Every time I get a block I just start (coding/designing/planning/climbing.) When I fall off I've got more experience than when I started and eventually I'll get there. I've spent far too long staring at a blank sheet not even knowing how I'm going to go wrong.
For some reason the parser breaks with that factorial definition, but adding spaces in between `a-1` seem to do the trick:

let fact a =
if a == 0 then
1
else
(fact (a - 1)) * a

console.log (fact 5)

Now, it's true that the Haskell syntax does not make that much sense if there is no partial application. I think that the variadic-arguments-are-always-allowed nature of JavaScript is not very compatible with partial application though.
This state persists because there are good reasons for everything in style(9), even if most people don't know what most of them are.
I'm surprised this is coming from Spolsky. Spolsky's companies must be getting big.

Small companies can often only hire one person at a time and therefore need short acceptance windows. Small companies (< 50 people) often have only one specific position open. It is unethical to make more than one offer if you hiring for a single position. Therefore small companies often need short acceptance windows so they can make an offer to someone else who might want the position and fill the job.
There's no mention of the flip side of this. I only have one position, and I interview multiple candidates, several of which are good. If I make you an offer, I can't afford to sit around waiting for weeks for you to make up your mind: if you turn it down, chances are my other candidates are already gone, and now I have to start the whole process again from scratch.

Edit: fair enough, I missed that Joel was talking about the specific context of internships.
In iD games, there's a clean division between game-specific logic (which is usually in a separate DLL, haven't looked too closely at Doom3 yet), and framework/engine code.

On Quake 2, you could replace the DLL to switch between the regular game and capture the flag. An expansion with new mecanics could, theoretically, be done with only DLL code and new assets. You'd need to change the engine code only to add new kind of effects that it didn't support yet.

So yes, if you don't change any code, you'll only reskin Doom by creating new assets (it's usually called Total Conversion). If you want to add new game mechanics, you have to write some code.
> If I'm paying for it, I don't want to be a node in their network.

You are paying for music licensing and you get the delivery for free because of the p2p nature of their system. Traditional client-server delivery would've simply translated into higher monthly fees, which I am pretty sure would've not been any more popular among their average user base.
I did get same for my region. But the question is: do these figures show the real-world usage or rather a resource lag of aging languages--e.g. you have more PHP jobs than Ruby because PHP devs moved to other languages and there are still tons of legacy systems to maintain. There was also an interesting article (I forgot the author, Spolsky?), who said that there's a reason why resources for aging languages are more expensive than others => The developers have more opportunity costs when developing for aging languages.

Don't get me wrong: Java, C#, C++ are maybe not aging but their user base isn't growing anymore or not with the same strong growth rate like newer languages
Agree - just experienced the exact same thing. It was my #1 forever, and now isn't in top 5. Weird.

Bad Google, bad.
Creativity, in most experts' views, is generally the marriage of novelty and usefulness. In order to accomplish something creative, one must go through a process of divergent thinking, to create many varied options, then convergent thinking, to narrow down the options that make the most sense, or fit the challenge (even if the challenge is only how to create something that is new and useful). Both in divergence and convergence, incubation is a very useful tool, but it is hardly essential in every creative process. So, no, creativity does not require isolation. However, it is my contention that imagination (divergent ability) may flourish when one is disconnected from the "outside world" for some time.
edit: grammar
Yep. Google is defaulting to https for everyone who is logged into various Google services:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-se...
What about Power-over-Ethernet support?
Schematical is an opensource Framework for building Facebook Applications. It comes fully equipped with a contest that you can set up on your Facebook Page and customize just like a Wordpress install. Please let me know if you would like to contribute. Other app types such as virtual gifts, polls, and quizzes are available upon request.
Ethics? Not wanting to burn bridges?
So accept the initial offer, do the interview with the #1 choice anyway, and if it works out, drop the runner-up. They don't need to be on your resume. The first choice doesn't need to know about any of this, though you might have to get creative with the interview scheduling.

I have no doubt that the scenario Joel describes is real, but anyone who gets screwed this way needs a bit more of the "dog eat dog" mindset. It's unfortunate the world works this way sometimes, but it's all in the game. I sympathize with any young kid in this position though, the unemployment rate alone has to make the prospect of turning down an offer, any offer, seem insane.
This seems a little short-sighted to me. It's noted that the company doesn't make the offer until they've had the candidate go through on-site interviews. It's not like they are making an offer on initial meeting. If both parties are interested, this should be acceptable.

Look at it from another perspective. The hiring manager has an open position to fill. They want to fill it with someone who wants to work with them. They can't leave a job offer on the table for a long period of time, just to have the candidate say no. Having that offer outstanding prevents them from making an offer to other potentially qualified (and more eager) candidates. An interested candidate should have no problem with a decision at this point in the interview process.

If the job offer is pulled because it is expired, and the candidate is really interested in the job, they should be able to get another offer if the position hasn't been filled by the time they got off the fence.
Now that Joel has covered how credible and ethical recruiters, and the companies they support, should behave - when can we expect to see them?
Why Black Friday is the best day of the year to buy a car
I'm going to take a bit of a contrary position, Ed.

Do I really want to live in a world where great thoughts and works of literature are squashed into 140 characters? Nope. God, I hope not.

I love being brief, pithy, and terse, but I fear that we look at Twitter as an optimization problem for one metric when in fact it is a completely different medium with it's own strengths and weaknesses. I am not trying to optimize Twitter for saying the same kinds of things I would say on HN. This would be like picking up a kazoo and trying to optimize it for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I am trying to optimize Twitter for exploring those unique types of things that Twitter is good at expressing. Different instruments and mediums excel at different things.

In either case, we're all probably going to have to figure this out as we go along. :) I imagine there is no correct answer to "What's the best way to use Twitter?"
Same on Windows 7 x64 with the latest version of Opera.

EDIT: Safari, too.
I was really surprised trying out the ubuntu client, I am used to very sub par implementations on linux but it was identical
Hello World In 20 Languages
Beautiful Christmas 2011 Wallpapers To Spice Up Your Desktop
It's Christmas 2011 once again..So let's celebrate this Christmas festival with my collection of beautiful Christmas 2011 wallpapers. Christmas is the time when the world is filled with joy and love. It is the most joyous time of the year. It is a big day for the Christian community and people from across the world partake in the festivities. It is the day of gifting and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas wallpapers are wonderful way to enjoy every minute of the holiday, especially with a cool wallpaper theme design. So send these Christmas 2011 Wallpapers to your friends, family and loved ones. Christmas is celebrated with high spirits in different parts of the world. On this beautiful occasion, Freemobilewallpaperworld.com offers Christmas 2011 wallpaper to spice up your mobile phone or laptop screen.
Cisco and Telia activate 120 Gbps net connection for DreamHack
I took a quick look at the code and noticed that error handling is not idiomatic Go. This might not be the best place to start if you want to learn Go.
The scripts are written a C++-like DSL, and are part of the assets. There's map scripts, weapon scripts, AI scripts etc. They process high-level triggers and events to handle the storyline, different behaviours, and so on.

So you could make a magical weapon writing just scripts, for example. But yes there is a limit in the flexibility, if you want to make a completely different kind of game you probably have to change the C++ classes as well...
On Paul Erdos:

"After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[12] Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use."
I think this can also be an issue with firefox, or at least it used to be.
Reminds me of William Deresiewicz's speech at West Point on leadership requiring solitude. For anyone who hasn't seen it:

http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
Addressed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197531

(btw, it's an honor to cross swords. You're one of the people I most frequently CTRL-F on any threads even vaguely related to economics or finance)
Category 1:

- Simple Heuristics That Make Use Smart by Gigerenzer, et al. (http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/0...). I have heard good things about this book but have not read it yet.

Category 2:

- Think Twice by Mauboussin (http://www.amazon.com/Think-Twice-Harnessing-Power-Counterin...)

- Influence by Cialdini (http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...)

Category 3:

- You already mentioned Michalko, but his other book, Thinkertoys, is also very good (http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative-Thinking...)

Category 5:

- Switch by the Heath brothers is excellent (http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385...)
Wasn't the US once known as "the land of the free"? When did they lose it?
As to his second paragraph on "preconditions to be creative": Again, no. Amabile (1983) in "The social psychology of creativity" postulated three components of creative performance: (a) domain-relevant skills, (b) creativity-relevant skills, and (c) task motivation. Yes, you may need sufficient knowledge in a specific domain to increase your chance of acheiving creative "eminence" within it, but it does not preclude you from doing so if you are not an expert. One must understand the science of creativity before they can say they have creativity-relevant skills, which this author unfortunately does not seem to have.
Well get them a copy of Windows 7 for thanksgiving then you cheapskate :)
Other people have touched on your price and quality/usefulness of the app, so I'll ignore those.

You're conversion rate is around ~0.3%, which actually isn't that horrible for an unoptimized site. Between 0.25% and 0.5% is pretty average for newly launched app.

In terms of marketing and copy, you need to work on your message and audience. Who is going to use this? Probably not techy people who know how to use Photoshop/Illustrator.

Perhaps grandmothers wanting to draw something for their kids? Or kids drawing something for their grandmothers? Either way, neither of those audiences know or care about "jQuery". This is just one example of how you need to optimize your message.

With that said, I wouldn't put time or energy into promoting this further. There are a lot of great drawing/illustration programs, both online and offline, so its a pretty competitive market.
The nice thing about Twitter is that it is what you make it. You can choose the style of Tweeter to follow and you can Tweet how you like.

Incidentally it's amusing/interesting that the comment policy on the blog is the opposite to what he expects from Tweeters.

"if all you have to offer is general platitudes like how happy you are to have found my site and what a wonderful place it is, I will delete your comment and report your comment as spam"
Citrus – A LibreOffice Interface for Today
FWIW I've raised this issue. Not sure what happens to those but something should come of it.
I absolutely love the guys at 37signala. In particular, their writing style. I recently bought Rework and it was an incredibly easy to finish book, fairly short, but at the same time packed full of more information than books I've read that were twice as long on the subject.

I like the ideas put forth here. Sometimes we forget about these basic concepts like the fact that we deserve to be paid fairly for our work. How simple is that?! I know I lose sight of it all the time. I've been in business for a year (2 weeks is when my 1 year anniversary is) and I now charge ten times as much as I did the first month I started and I still have to raises prices a lot more. This isn't a good thing. It's bad because I obviously undersold myself because I lost sight of the fact that I'm giving something valuable to someone and I should be well paid for it. Instead I felt guilty for charging when I was enjoying my work.

Most of their writings on business is so simple but profound (to me at least). From what I've read, it all boils down to making sure you're being paid for your work, always see if there's a better way to do things, and your business should grow into itself instead of fitting into someone else's mold (e.g. Following business advice that doesn't apply to what you're trying to achieve just because everyone else is doing it and that's what you "should do". ).

I also love the fact that they're Chicago boys. I always root for the home team, haha. I have a friend who knows Jason Fried and I really hope I get an introduction one day.
Here's the original repo with Fabien Sanglard's patch applied on top of it.

https://github.com/uxp/doom3.gpl

Just like his concern, I haven't tested building this on windows (VC 2010), so this repo needs to be cleaned up before it should be merged back into the main repo.
Citrus UI: Overview
Fair point, but this article is aimed at students looking for full-time jobs or co-ops, most of which become available at roughly the same time, many months from January.
I seem to remember reading that the speed is of your connection is tested, and the amount of data sent is customized not to slow your connection down.
SOPA would never happen in Europe
Most such companies have far more than one position they're trying to fill. Small startups generally aren't recruiting at college career fairs.
I don't know about ethics, wouldn't everyone understand if a person's situation changes in 6 months? That's a lot of time.

Say I accept an offer in December, then get a better one in May. Wouldn't the December offer be understanding of the fact that hey, I'm gonna have to change my mind here.
EU Opens Dumping, Anti-Subsidy Probes Into U.S. Bioethanol
JQuery is just a browser API
I'm not sure I said the opposite in the article. Could you point that out?

I thought I said "..We don't have to agree on stuff like politics, religion, life, the universe, or any of that. Hell, I would like it a lot better if we didn't! When I tweet something and we start up a little sidebar conversation, I get the feeling I am part of a larger community. That's what keeps me using Twitter..."

In either case, the point of the article was that different communication mediums are useful for different things.

Sorry -- I hope I don't sound defensive. I just was a bit confused that you took away that I wanted people to agree with on Twitter. Far from it! I am looking for office mates. Who wants a bunch of office mates that all agree on stuff? Sounds pretty boring to me.

At the end of the day, yes, Twitter is what you make it. It's really cool to see how different folks use it in completely different ways.
Spaghetti-Western Coding [2008]
ONLINE MOVIES: Desi Boyz (2011)
A bit of a nitpick, but it would be nice if the facts were PEP8 compliant so they encouraged good code style as well as showing off Python features.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is a very well written book which highlights perceptual issues of representing space. It also does a great job of mixing in developemental psychology to help you understand how a human's representation of the world changes as they grow older.

One of the best examples from the book explains why hands in children's drawings of people are always so large. Essentially, as a child focuses more on complex details (each individual finger) they unconsciously enlarge the object in order to fit in all the detail. Its a good illustration of our perception of scale vs scale relative to other objects.

There are plenty of other great observations about the way humans think visually in the book as well.
A large Seattle company gives at least two weeks to graduating students. The new graduate market is fairly specific, though, with lots of fairly interchangeable people coming on market at the same time.
There ought to be a database of tech companies with shady employment practices, period.
In the context of student interns, you're in the wrong place to fill that position. Either that one position is important enough for hiring a Real Professional, or you'll survive not having an intern for a few more months.

Having a single position that's critical to your company but attempting to fill it with an intern is disingenuous and perhaps even unethical (you're underpaying the intern based on the position's value to the company; you're not giving your shareholders actual value by hiring someone inexperienced; etc.)
I saw that line as a distraction from the larger point the author was trying make. There are many capitalists who view this any act of censorship as foolhardy and destructive. Among laissez faire the whole IP debate is not at all settled.

For the record I am a staunch capitalist and I see SOPA, the MPAA/RIAA, and censorship in general as reprehensible.
> To me, Twitter is a bunch of people all standing in a room all talking to themselves, hoping to start a conversation.

Best description I have heard to date.
It's not a new message from Joel. This was originally posted on his site in 2008: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html
Spolsky's companies are getting big, but this article was written a long time ago.

He worked for Microsoft, so he has some experience with a big company, and he has definitely spent a lot of time thinking and reading about big companies.

I think he wants to get the right number of employees but he'd rather have people genuinely interested in his companies than play the game. I think he also notices that some of the most promising candidates stop looking due to accepting one of these exploding offers, so he isn't able to conduct a thorough search.
Good list. I'd add 'The Checklist Manifesto' by Atul Gawande ( http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/d... ), about how experts with decades of experience in highly complex tasks can still benefit from simple, short and obvious checklists.
Egypt protests: Mass rally in Cairo ahead of election
Actually, search is always subjective. If another site which delivers news for hackers - even if they don't call it "hacker news" - rises in quality, popularity, or X other factors, it may be that users want that site over HN when they do that search.

I agree that in this case hacker news should be higher and that this is a bug. But just because hacker news is called that doesn't mean that query might feasibly be better served by another site. To assert otherwise is pretty surprising.
Creating Effective Website Navigation that Works
Seems a minor point to me, the monthly fee is relatively small. For example I would happily pay the same fee if instead of them providing the application they just gave me the right to download anything from their catalog from bittorrent sites.

Your upload bandwidth is more limited than down though (although how much does the average user really use upstream anyway?).

It should be easy to use a firewall to throttle the outbound traffic on whatever port spotify uses.
Pherhaps you could just block it altogether , does the service still work even if you are not sharing?

I wonder what the legal implications of this are though, could the RIAA or similar at some point decide to start suing individual spotify users for sharing their music even though the record companies have some agreement with spotify in place?
You know when you hit the Readability bookmarklet and say "god this is just beautiful", this is one of those situations.
PVS-Studio: analyzing Doom 3 code
He’s discussing the kind of company that recruits using mass-interviews of college students. Some are small companies, but most are BigCos with cubicle farms to fill.