skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sort of meta-related (in that I'm disagreeing with your facts, and therefore the judgement changes):

I disagree that most hackers are --TJ types. They are more likely to be -NT- with a bend towards INT-. The N is _the_ trait that tends to abstractionism, so it would make little sense for a hacker to be -S-- at all. If you look at the polls here it comes out in spades:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722

The reason that we argue is that as Rationalists, the truth is more important than anything except for the fact that there is a truth. It is why Rationalists are likely to pick up an Aristotelian view of the word (though that might be a tautology since I think it is an axiom of that worldview).

There is a reason why people are not usually grouped in the --TJ category (the broad categories being -NT-, -NF-, -S-J, -S-P). The reason is that the most important variable, the one that correlates to income, happiness, intelligence is the second letter. It fundamentally effects how you approach the world.
The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.
I don't know what "the human factor" is. Or maybe I should say, I don't think there is a single "human factor". Humans in a first world, upper middle class neighborhood coffeeshop behave very differently than humans in 1994 Rwanda, or the humans in the Stanford Prison Experiment. It's not that the humans themselves are different (or started out different), it's that the environment in one place encourages a different sort of behavior than the environment in another place. (I guess you could say I tend to favor Situationism over Dispositionism)
This article is 100% wrong. The IV is not a secret, must be know for decryption. In-fact counter mode simply picks a starting IV and increments. Allowing the attacker to manipulate the IV or reuse of an IV can be problematic, but a guessable IV is of NO HELP to an attacker
There is a difference between trolling, making a funny statement and saying a contrived opinion. On HN, all of these get down-voted equally.

Often time, I find something funny, say it as a comment, and get down-voted. It's not a stupid joke or something inappropriate, just a comment that'd make the reader smile. And I know it's hard to judge because I keep saying the score of these comments oscillating (I.e. people upvote it because it's funny, and people downvote it because it's funny (or they don't find it funny.))

About contrived opinion, that one is sad. There's a difference between something wrong and saying your opinion. For instance, someone saying "I don't like Backbone.js because x, y, z" will get on average a really small or negative score. Why? People who agree with this statement in small minority +x, people who disagree with this statement but agree that it was some good arguments and points: +y, majority of people who disagree with the statement -z. It just so happen that z>(x+y) with controversial statements.

Lastly, trolling is more about searching for trouble or pissing of people. For instance, they'll say "Wtf, stop wasting your time with perl. It's a DEAD LANGUAGE, WAKE UP". This kind of posts should just get deleted and the user warned and then banned from HN imo. Note that there're a couple of wrong things with this statement. First, it's extremely aggressive and provocative. Personally, I hate this but some well known people act like that and are really appreciated so I won't judge. Secondly, there's no argument or fact.. it's just trash talking without ground to base yourself on. Lastly, there's usually lots of words in caps and 'wtf' 'lol' 'trololol' which make it look unprofessional for readers of HN used to read well written text. (Ironically, I know this current text isn't well written but it's because english is not my main language, not because I'm trying to skip words or be unprofessional).

Anyway, what I'd suggest is to have a way to differentiate between theses.
1- A 'flag as spam/troll/non-respectful'.
2- A +1 (like what we have) to say this is an interesting post/comment.
3- A Agree/Disagree button to express your opinion.

So basically, someone saying "You guys are fucking stupid; 1+1=2" would be flagged as unrespectful but could still be valid and agreed by the majority.

But in the end, is it worth it? As they say in engineering, it it works, don't fix it. HN is not perfect, but I still enjoy reading the comments and I learn quite a lot.. is it worth trying to fix it for a minority of trolls or disrespectful people?
From the above article

"We do not provide – nor do we have any plans to develop – offensive cyber capabilities. Palantir Technologies does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so-called “cyber attacks” or take other offensive measures."

This is a true statement.
Does this remind anyone else of "Brave New World?"
Can you beat 99% of programmers? Try the FizzBuzz challenge
I've got some questions on that first claim. Where's this done? I was under the opinion that you'd need system support for that to work --- the GSM radio's not directly plugged into the mic. I'd expect an android hacker to have found it there, if it's being injected in from the carriers.

For secure locations, you have to surrender just about every electronic device you have, because they could be used to transport data outside the secure location. The same rule applies to USB sticks, hard drives, PDAs, ipods, etc.
No worries, I've done worse.
You can post, but by default no one besides you can see it. To the poster, it just appears as a normal comment. Turn on "showdead" to see posts from hellbanned users.
The downvote button means, literally, "this comment should appear less prominently, and its author should get a very small penalty for having written it". Similarly, upvote means, literally, "this comment should appear more prominently, and its author should get a very small reward for having written it".

With that in mind, "perfectly valid" takes on a different light. While sometimes downvoting does get used to reinforce groupthink, sometimes it just thwacks a comment with incorrect but authoritative-sounding information, or an off-topic comment, or a rehash of an well-known unresolvable debate (valid or otherwise), or in general a comment which will produce more heat than light.

In this case, I disagree with your comment, but I've upvoted it because I think it deserves more prominence and more discussion.

Can you give an example of the kind of comment which you think received unwarranted downvotes?
The last one. All of your comments are dead, but you don't know it.

If you have showdead on, sometimes you'll see perfectly reasonable comments that are inexplicably dead-- this is why.
I'll upvote because I don't think you should be downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion in a civil manner, and genuinely asking for input on it. But I don't agree.

It's not like we are talking about a small, rural town in middle-of-nowhere Alabama being cut off from cheap sewer access (we might expect this considering infrastructure costs of getting it all set up out that far away from cities). This is Jefferson County, which is the most populated county in Alabama. We've moved past expecting the bare minimum once we get into cities, and we expect a bit more competence from our local governments when it comes to dealing with these pretty basic issues. Without basic sanitation, we don't get large cities.
Working Without a Marketing Budget Isn’t the Same as Working Without a Net
what a disgrace!!! the richest country in the world can't provide running water to its citizens... what a shame!!!
That stands for Sagittarius A*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*
The real problem is that it's an amateur discovery, and the professionals are having none of it.

When something makes experts look questionable, expect irrational flamewars in response. Or derisive dismissal, at the very least.
It's a necessity for a civilized country.
I was terribly disappointed in Isaacson's book as well.

His entire account up until Jobs' return to Apple, and even mostly up to the development of the iPhone, was thin on detail, and completely familiar information to anyone who followed Steve Jobs' career.

I found myself wondering many times why he needed several years of direct access to Steve Jobs to turn out what was, in essence, a secondary research report.
Certainly from a libertarian perspective, water and sewage are not. For philosophers like Rothbard, humans have a natural right to not being aggressed against--but not a right to, say, health. Similarly so for authors like Hoppe and Nozick.

All of them believing in libertarianism for consequentialist reasons as well, they would probably view this story as testament to the failures of government, and what happens when it is coopted by businesses.

Edit: I also want to disagree with the other commenters that issues of 'rights' don't matter. Sure, if you're only judging things by their consequences, then that discussion is moot. But having a moral position against the coercion of government (I'm going to take your money to build sewers, roads, engage in multiple wars, etc) is a legitimate stance--even if you disagree with it.
Siren of Shame
A case someone made about Louis C.K. being an asshole. Downloading his content and watching it without paying != stealing. Stealing is a +crime+ punishable by heavy fine/jail time (depending on how violent), watching his stuff and not paying is just not supporting future versions. It's like going to a website and blocking all ads. This is not stealing. It is not supporting, consuming without desire to help the producer succeed.

However, this goes to show: If you are well known, it's more profitable to self-publish.
The kind of trust I'm talking about is trust in honest discourse. If I don't trust that others on a forum will engage with me honestly, then I am less likely to engage with them honestly. As a consequence, the overall discussion on the forum degrades.
Ask HN: What/where are the highest paid software jobs?
I'm talking about jobs that involve actual coding. Wall Street comes to mind. I'm wondering what else? Seems like some of the rich Middle Eastern countries would have a hard time attracting talent without paying significantly above market rates?
Twitter: A Lost and Found service for the world
Is this for real? Can anyone verify that this letter was in fact sent out?
Your trailer analogy is a good one.

It's hard for me to devote the time to a 4,000 word article (or whatever this is), but if it's going to be worth it, I'll do it.

The TL;DR version here has convinced me to go back and give this a read later, when I have time to give it my attention.
Interesting thought. I lived in Zambia for 6 years without running water and we got used to it. Fortunately for us, we had a gardner that spent half his day filling up our water drums...

My point is: I have been there and at the time didn't think much of it. But after living in the USA for 16+ years now, I can't even imagine being without running water.

So, is it a right or a luxury? I don't know... 17 years ago, I would have said luxury but now, my answer would be it's a right...
Facebook has an interesting solution to the content quality problem, and trolling is a very specific type of content quality problem. Positively reinforce good content and HIDE everything else. The "Like" button accomplishes this well.

If you've used facebook for a few years, you might remember the introduction of the "Like" button. Facebook before the "Like" button was very different from a UGC perspective. People did a lot more bitching and moaning. People posted much more inane ramblings about what they ate for lunch lunch or random happenings in their day. The "Like" button created a positive reinforcement loop and consciously or not people started to try to post content that would get more likes. Someone being emo about their shitty boyfriend or girlfriend is probably not going to get likes, probably wont get surfaced in the news feed and will never be heard. Eventually when people stop seeing those posts they are less compelled to post those things themselves. Facebook describes this as the virtuous cycle of sharing. Someone posts something, they get patted on the back. YOU see their post and their pats on the back and you tend to want to do the same thing. If you have friends on twitter and friends on facebook, just put the two feeds up next to eachother. You'll see a HUGE difference in the types of updates that people post.
Can you point to the actual posts? Every time I've seen a hellbanned account, I have agreed with the decision.

In the interest of full disclosure, my suspicion is that the way you expressed these opinions ran counter to the kind of discussion people want to see on HN. I may be wrong, of course, which is why I'd like to see the actual posts.
I see Asana's name popping up more and more often. What do you specifically like about Asana?
We're talking about the time period leading up to the Civil War, aren't we?
Sounds more like whack-a-mole. But where do these moles keep coming from...?
I don't strictly disagree, but imo you're trying to generalize a personal preference for discussion styles into general observations, by using normative and inflammatory (is "inflammatory" like "trollish"?) terms like "poison" and "degrades", as opposed to "I don't like".
Discussion panel: Should you learn CoffeeScript?
Even if they're funny, posts that consist only of a joke generally aren't allowed. They'd be more appropriate for Reddit. Hacker News posts are supposed to have some substance to them.

(You're seeing fluctuations because not everyone knows this.)
Facebook adds suicide prevention tool
So I wonder...should I point and laugh or sit down and cry. It's not my country, and I would never want to live in the US. How a country treats it's least fortunate says a lot about the country in general.

I don't think lowering the standard of living is going to get us very far in this world. What we desperately need is for everyone to contribute to society. This is usually done by having healthy citizens with a high level of education so we can find better ways of solving today's problems.

But sure...two steps back, one step forward.
Textmate 2 Tips
My friend Kevin and I have started collecting tips on how to get the most out of Textmate 2. Any contributions welcome!
Anything you post can't be seen by others unless they've turned on dead posts in their configuration, in which case anything you post has [dead] prefixed on it.

Though it happens less than in other forums, wagon circling is definitely a persistent problem on HN. I believe it's only further exacerbated by the fact that downvoted comments are displayed in a difficult to read color, meaning that downvotes can effectively censor things the majority doesn't like, regardless of the merit of the argument. It's not as bad as on Reddit, where groups of people form downvote cabals to actively censor specific users or ideas, but it's still problematic.
Whether it puts food on the table or not doesn't matter. People spend their time here, when they could be doing other things (or earning more money to put more food on the table). Ultimately karma has a certain value to some people, whether or not it does to you. Just as I might not understand why some people will pay 10s of thousands of dollars more for a car that, ultimately, does the same thing as another car. "intangible" does not mean "valueless"

Anyway, for karma to be effective, all it has to do is have enough value to outweigh the (equally intangible) value of the satisfaction of posting something trollish.
There are probably a lot of talented engineers not in the top 1,000, but there are also a lot of non-talented engineers not in the top 1,000. I guess it's a reasonable cut-off. Thankfully it's not the only way to get into a great company.
Getting Gives: From Groupon to Conscious Capitalism?
How do you encourage others to do good in the 2010s? In a time when you can shop from your phone while on the bus while sharing photos of what you just bought, the tendency to narcissism is easier than ever to foster. So what becomes of selflessness in the age of such frictionless self-gratification?
>gardner that spent half his day filling up our water drums

Would you not consider this a luxury? I expect your gardner did not have someone filling up his drums waiting at home for him. I've been in natural disaster areas where water and power weren't available, we made do but it also became what we spent 1/3 of the day managing around (hauling water, getting things done before nightfall etc).
There was one discussion that I participated where I predicted that Apple would see declining profit margins due to increased competition. Remarkably this completely benign, seemingly obvious observation saw me declared a troll, and shortly thereafter yet another account was hellbanned from HN.

I'm curious--can you paste the text of that comment here if you still have it? It's possible that, for example, it was your tone that got you downvoted, not your message. Or it could have been the community perceiving you to be ignoring evidence, or any number of other things. In any case, this claim here isn't sufficient for us to judge the fairness of the response.
Downvoting is a sort of trolling too. People don't like unconventional opinions here. Say something bad about the late S. Jobs and you re certain to be buried. Even scientifically proven facts get buried sometimes. The problem is not solved. Let's try something radical, like, ban all adjectives.
That was my initial reaction too. But then I saw that the real problem is that they were gambling on derivatives to fund critical infrastructure projects. The obvious solution is more bailouts. The libertarian solution would be to let them 'stew in their own juices'. I suspect there is no 'right' answer because the people who created this disaster. can never repay the money, even if they wanted to.
Car insurance applies to the skill of driving. And the part mandatory by law is third party insurance. So essentially, car insurance is not for your protection, its for the person you hit. The concept of owner's insurance is so you can also pay for your own car after running into a pole - this is optional.

Withholding financial goods from a person based on their social interaction is different from suspending their driver's licence because money is a need and is directly related to the very survival of a person. Money, in our society, is a very fundamental requirement; driving licence is not. So this idea imposes a very real threat on my very existence. And thats why its an infringement on my civil liberty.

Judging a person's financial aptitude based on their social actions is dangerous. Not to mention the fact that social interaction isn't currently scientifically quantifiable and so all the conclusions you draw from the data are essentially opinions of the experimenter, nothing more.
Which is why as a buyer, I never even get close to giving a real answer to this question =)
The Catch 22 of Web Publishing
It is neither hyperbole nor needless negativity to say that reading online mostly sucks. Whether it’s the flashing, floating ads, the articles pointlessly split into five pages or the poorly-chosen fonts, one occasionally gets the feeling publications are deliberately trying to elicit a second Luddite uprising.
His only flaw was cancer...
I've trolled. I blame two things: frustration, and myself.

I would get frustrated that there was no reward (and often there was punishment) for correcting errors in others posts. It's incredibly rare to see a rebuttal followed by the original poster simply saying "I was wrong about that, thanks for the information." It's far more common for the OP to simply insult you, or mischaracterize your argument, or otherwise engage in nonsense as their response.

I would get frustrated that comments and posts are promoted on style, not substance.

I would get frustrated that substance was judged inaccurately; often resulting in people whose knowledge was either entirely absent, or only Google deep arguing fiercely with people who'd worked and studied the topic for years.

I would get frustrated at the general lack of respect for truth, for civility, and for each other.

I would get frustrated at pedantry.

I would get frustrated at double-standards and hypocrisy, with people posting uncited nonsense, but demanding citations from their opponents.

I would get frustrated at debate opponents who would willfully misrepresent their opponents side in the argument.

I would get frustrated that semi-plausibly-deniable passive-aggressiveness was accepted by moderators, but direct responses to that aggression were not.

I would get frustrated that sticky lies beat dry truth every time, in votes and moderation.

And once I got frustrated, I lost respect for the forums, but I didn't leave them. I liked what they could be, but not what they were.

So I trolled. I disrespected people who, I felt, were being assholes in one way or another and thus "had it coming".

This wasn't a great response, and for this I blame myself.

I should've done something more constructive with my time. The forums are going to revert to the mean with or without my help; there's no need for me to accelerate the reversion.
Gmail and Dropbox Together at Last
Not that I care anymore, but why was this account banned anyway: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ignifero ?
Sounds like you've got some good ideas, I figured you might :-) I dunno how I'd characterize Enjyn, probably a good experience but basically a failure. I think I allowed myself to be persuaded by my partners (against my instincts, but I probably wanted to agree with them) that kickstarter's ascendence didn't really change things for us that much and that we didn't need to completely rethink our plans and pivot before we'd launched. That's just one key point though, and I don't pretend it's the biggest or most significant mistake, just the earliest point when I think I knew in my gut things had changed and allowed myself to be talked out of it.
How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia
I thought we were talking about 220 some-odd years of history as a constitutional republic.

Still, until Lincoln was elected and states started seceding, they did manage to pass routine funding bills. So that puts them one ahead of the current bunch of goons.
How does "doing most socializing online" equate to "there you're not doing much at all" in your mind? Again. Very wrongheaded.

>No one has a problem answering their phone --as long as you don't call them every other hour.

It's not that there is a problem answering their phone, it's that it's much more polite to either carry on your conversation via IM if it doesn't require voice (and I have a hard time thinking up things that do), or at least ping them first before you start burning up their phone.

>...you're just commenting on other people walls

Did you forget about the entire IM framework that facebook holds? Also, wall comments are immediately flashed to the other person if they are online. Carrying on public conversations is a common occurence.
'In these tragedy-of-the-commons types of scenarios, all can be willing to agree to a change of the rules, so long as no actor gains immediate "unfair" advantage.'

That, sadly, is why I am so pessimistic about political change via the current advocacy model. Tragedy of the common's type situations can often be avoided if enough players can agree to a some convention or code of behaviour. The problem with special interest in politics is that even if every politician could agree that the current way the game is played is destructive, special interest would actively work against reform.

Change under the current system is reliant on the altruism of those in power to limit that power.