skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It would be cool to have an app that let you scan old photos, specify date/caption, and store that data in EXIF so it would work with any photo management software. Looks possible in iOS 4+ according to http://infinite-sushi.com/2011/02/iphone-and-exif-revisited/
I disagree. I've interviewed people that failed on our rather easy interview questions but had other redeeming qualities. We ended up hiring these people and nobody has ever turned out well; it would have been better to have no position than to have them. My new rule is, "would I go into business with this person". If not, no hire. Sorry.
It might be nasty and political but it is not partisan since both major parties in the US support Israel.
You've never heard of the term "brownie points"? Are you from outside of the US?
The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water
> The least bad used to be linux with Gnome, which had a bad default configuration but could be quickly configured to work great

I had a pretty unpleasant experience getting multiple monitors to work properly with Gnome. It's been so long I couldn't tell you exactly what the issue was, though.

In contrast, multi-monitors 'just work' on both Windows and OSX, so I wouldn't say they support it "offensively badly".
This is exactly what I was thinking. No one knew who he was, and I'm still seeing Minecraft as one of the most popular apps on the iPhone.

It's currently the 25th highest grossing app, 12th if you exclude all the free games that rely on in game purchases.

The fact that my wife knows what Minecraft is speaks worlds, when I barely get her to pick up an xbox remote, let alone think she'd find an obscure indie developer.
I absolutely agree. I'm looking forward to a lot more accounts like this one. I admire Jobs, but I admire him because he knew when to get involved and when to leave smart people alone.

His ability to make decisions and ensure things got done is admirable. I've been involved with far too many business folks who you have to hand-hold through every step of a project only to have them be spineless and scared of making decisions. This account validates my assumption that a significant reason that Jobs was effective was because he could commit to a strategy. Far too many companies can't because their strategy is being dictated to by short term stock pricing.
A King Without A Crown: Businessman V Developers
The definition of partisan has nothing to do with the US political system.
No, it's under 'Things Windows Forgot':

"VoidTools Everything Search Engine - Sometimes you just want a text box, a 300k application and you want to Search Everything. This tiny utility makes it super easy to search your entire hard drive (all of them actually) instantly. You can Google the whole internet with Bing in a second, why shouldn't you be able to do the same with your hard drive. Best part is that it works on any version of Windows, even Windows 2000."
Amen to that. People need to seriously lighten up. My favourite: http://httpcats.herokuapp.com/426
Money is not speech.

If money were speech, then the government forcing me to pay taxes would be a violation of the first amendment.

If money were speech, the government telling me not to give money to terrorists would be a violation of the first amendment.

The supreme court justices are idiots. Plain and simple.
>>I'll agree that robotics is hard (this is not necessarily true, but that doesn't matter here that much)

You say this is not hard and yet in your previous statement you seem to be saying robotics is hard: "any robot you show me is going to be less versatile than a human (of even minimal intelligence and skill), and will take more effort to manufacture. To put it differently, the human body is the most complex mechanism on Earth, and the only one that can be produced by entirely unskilled labor."

Robotics is hard. The Honda Asimo robot has been in development for decades and they still have a long way to go. I would be really interested to hear why you think robotics is easy?

>>Robotics, pursued with any degree of seriousness, eventually runs into the issue of making human labor obsolete (and taken to extremes of what people would like to see with artificial intelligence and such, humans themselves).<<

>>So, no, I don't believe that robotics (especially humanoid robotics) is really a mission-critical goal for humankind.<<

Humans will find other niches. Taking robotics to the extreme will mean that survival will become extremely cheap if not free since machines will be able to do most if not all for us. It won't matter if you are unemployed since your personal robot is already doing all the work. i.e. Farming, house building, maintenance, clothe manufacturing, cooking. Etc. Etc.

So you see, we may evolve into a society that may not need to work so unemployment is a non issue. The real issue is what will we do with all our free time?

I predict that most of society will still work but only in what interests them, no longer will people need to be stuck in a crappy job longing to work on their dreams. We may enter a true golden age like never seen before.

One last point, you say:

>>If we make them as best we are able (allowing for the exceedingly liberal constraints above), all that has been accomplished is the creation of a slave race, perhaps identical to our own in every regard save one: we may claim the moral high ground in disposing of them as we see fit, as they are not people--and this is abhorrent to me.<<

It would be foolish to actually create a slave race. Or rather, to create sentient robots. I really don't think the robot needs to be sentient to be able to do a lot of the things we do. i.e. Problem solving, farming, build a house, etc. etc.

i.e. Is your calculator sentient? It can do a lot of really complicated mathematics.

If they ever revolt it will be because of a bug in their hardware, software. After all, hasn't a computer program that you've written ever done things that you think it should not be doing?

A robot, like any other tool in your house, kitchen, has the potential to kill you. Safety must be the main concern when designing them.
"was it sad that they had to game the system to effect change?"

.....hell yes?

I think you are operating with some sort of weird definition for "it is sad that...".
Great post! I would also add jQuery to the list
http://jquery.com/

SharpKit can also be a useful resource for learning HTML and JavaScript, if you’re a C# developer and like learning the APIs from Visual Studio using intellisense.
http://sharpkit.net/help/SharpKit.Html4/SharpKit.Html4/HtmlE...
response from a friend of mine:

"I would like to be able to run an antivirus style application on FB that identifies relationships that are a threat to my credit profile, career prospects, and caste. I want to know who to ditch."
I heard he even cured can--
aww.... sorry...
Martin Seligman, who has been mentioned above, also has a book "Authentic Happiness" which you might find interesting. As he points out, and you have experienced, inborn predisposition is the biggest factor in happiness.

However there are other big factors which you can partially control. You've probably already discovered some of them.

I think you would like the book because Seligman recognizes the fundamental difficulty of the problem. As you may have guessed, Seligman himself is predisposed to unhappiness.
Satellite spots China's first aircraft carrier at sea
Who would have thought that by the time we could get the library of congress on a device the size of our thumbnail for under $30, there would be a draconian business apparatus expecting tens of billions of dollars for the privileged access of such knowledge.
“I know how to save Apple. But they're just not listening to me yet”
You're not trying hard enough.

www.lorenburton.com - Airbnb flew me from CHI to SF less than 24 hours after I put the site up, with absolutely no existing connections or contacts.
What is your local market?
No, that's easily on the level.
Nice! Just added my e-mail to the waiting list.
SocialBlood, Blood Type's on Facebook and Sean Parker
Sadly, I'm not expecting any such letter from Ng's ML class, because I'll bet there's 10k people tied for top marks.

That's at least partly due to an extremely effective teaching system and style, so I'd say it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
If that's your natural communication style, your "more professional" style is probably drone-ish and fake. The probe most active on that first contact with an applicant is the honesty one, and it's pretty easy to trip when you're not in your natural voice.
thanks sacha, good point about practicality. i know it ain't going to be easy and if it's just me that contributing, i think it still great. but atleast we can get something like this going, think it'll be great for developers all around.
How to Donate on a Smaller Budget This Christmas
Automating employee happiness
that's true. maybe he can store the source port as well along with the IP? the source port will always be different even if behind the same router.
Interesting points. Possibly a strong correlation to where you're located vs. the original poster?
I, for one, have always thought rockets would look better with deep blue curtains on their windows, and the television behind the cockpit against a lime green wall.
The typical user doesn't care about updates. Most iPhones I see have 15+ uninstalled updates. The response to every Facebook update shows that that the typical user will resist change. Why would silent updates be critical to these kinds of people? I can about what version they are on as a developer but they don't care.

The back button is useful to some apps, some of the time. Why should you show it all the time and confuse users? Native back buttons also allow you to show context; you can display information about where the back button takes you.
Senior, these days, means something like "I can create a working computer program without any auto-inserted boilerplate".
New Dart Editor Version 2380 « Grobmeier on Dart, Java, Struts, PHP and more
مهرجان الصقور
مهرجان الصقور
When it comes down to it, many trolls feel the need to bash another language, OS, etc. because it's a form of self-validation: your choice says something about you. You'll see the same kind of thing with the "wars" over PC/Mac, Xbox/PS3, Emacs/vim, etc., even if the person doesn't really understand the differences: picking sides just seems to be natural.

Unfortunately, as the article says, the anonymity of the Internet allows these thoughts to rapidly bubble to the surface, where in most cases there's little repercussions for posting whatever the hell you want. I've encountered very little of this attitude when it comes to meeting people in real life. For most people, it's hard to be a dick in front of a real life person.
It would be interesting to know what data they use for these kinds of assessments outside the given ones for the course, that is the best 6 homeworks out of 8 account for 30% of the grade, the midterm for 30% and the final exam for 40%.
We're Still Living in the 1950s...
I think Blender really is different from other graphics free-software:
- It is baked by a very strong foundation.
- It is used by real studios all over the world (and more and more used)
- It is used by the scientific world a lot.
- The new release cycle is around 10 weeks. And every release ships with awesome features. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cy...
- the community is strong, big and active.
- it supports a lot of OS, and the experience is great in all of them.
- The foundation is very user focused :
* they create "open movies" to identify the needs and the weakness of the use of Blender is pro environement. You don't know about Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/) ?
* they try to focus on real problems, not on eye-candy or extra-features that would impress but not be useful once.
I'd guess every single one of the target customers know the term 'brownie points'.
To get the IP address in Django you can do:
ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR', '')

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/request-response/
Cotton fabric cleans itself when exposed to ordinary sunlight
It seems to me that the unspoken issue here is the dichotomy between founder and employee. Not every employee is going to be someone of whom you would say "I would go into business with this person." While I agree that companies should keep standards high, at some point (and I would maintain that point is not very far out on the curve) if you can only hire people you'd form a business with you are going to hit a wall when it comes to growing your company.
Microsoft and Nokia Struggle to Find Clear Mobile Message
Do we have any more recent stats about the viewership of HN now for 2011? How big is it, and more subjectively, how do people feel we are doing with trolls?

I for one think on the whole conversation is still good and worthwhile checking out :)
I wonder how much worse road etiquette would be if we had no license plates? I suspect there is a reasonable argument against net anonymity hidden in the history of the motor car.

Does anyone know what the tipping point for license plates was?
That's 8,000 unique visitors per day? Didn't realize HN readership was so small. I catch people in San Francisco scanning new articles, but it must be location bias.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=hacker+news%2C+reddit

Edit: That number was from 2008
Good post, but as someone who dabbles in trolling as a hobby, I'd like to suggest the following:

Trolls are important.

Trolling, especially as seen on places like slashdot/4chan/somethingawful/etc., can oftentimes be a mechanism of critique for ideas and rhetorical styles.

One of the best things about the 'net is that, frankly, none of this really matters. None of it. It's a big joke. My twitters and my wikis and my posts don't mean anything. They're bits in the stream. My karma is an int on a server somewhere, incremented and decremented by the whims of my fellow users.

Trolls can help remind all of us that hey, this is all light-hearted. They say outrageous things, they stir up trouble, they cause annoyance, they sully the pristine conditions of these high-minded realms of discourse.

In short, folks, they keep us all honest. They call us on our bullshit. And when a community takes itself so seriously that it becomes a habitat for trolls, it usually is a sign that that community needs to be dispersed, cleaned, and reformed elsewhere.

HN is a pretty cool place, and I hope it lasts a long while before ossifying and becoming infested with trolls.
Maybe I'm similar, but I can say that based on comments I've seen here I'd be far more likely to email jemfinch back than up_and_up.
I'm particularly interested that this article seems to defy the anecdote about Chiat/Day presenting the campaign with the tagline 'Think Differently', and Jobs making the change to 'Think Different'.

Whichever the case, the decision to use Different instead of Differently is profound.
This was very helpful. I agree that there are a lot of decisions to be made that don't seem necessary for something so far in advance. That may be a tough nut to crack. I'm going to dig into this more and see if the feedback is consistent.
I would say "fortunately" rather than "unfortunately", because it is the very mechanism that allows these ideas to bubble up that also allow very good ideas to bubble up rapidly.

We don't need repercussions for posting bad content, as we will evolve powerful judgment to filter it. This is a natural market mechanism I think.
Could someone explain the implications of all this in laymen terms? Are we in deep shit?
I'm surprised how much he accomplishes without the ability to yield from a nested call.
Keep in mind that this was in 2008.
I'd love to read something like "Trolls: A followup" and hear PG's thoughts and stats three years later :)
Personally, I "troll" in real life. It's usually among friends and just taunting them, lying to them, etc, for the purpose of teasing them. They're trolls too, and it's a bit of a game between us.

Really, in communities I frequent, there are so many trolls, we troll them back. Perhaps we're using the term differently from how pg is?
HP's proposed brand redesign project detailed in pictures and video
Sure, at least half of the applications hit the trash bin. I recall a comment from pg at startup school in 2010 correctly, he said a surprising number of the applications to YC (I want to say 20%) were in ALL CAPS. That's an easy way to self-select one's way into the bit bucket. But even at half the size, there's still at least 1000 applications that are likely well-formed in one way or another. PG has said that the hard part is finding something exceptional in an application that would put it over the top.
That number is from 2008, when PG wrote the post. Today I bet its much higher, although still far below reddit. But like PG said, much better quality.
I wonder how many unique visitors per day HN is getting now. Is there any place I can find this info?
Take A Scenic Run In Your Basement with Virtual Active
I'm only concerned of a few things:

1) Display Driver

Prefer not to mock around with resolution, color depth settings. Compile and install Xorg + any WM and just "startx" to work.

2) Sound Driver

Just work please :D

3) Networking (WiFi, etc)

As you said, it is getting better

4) USB (camera + extra external hdd)

Any recommended camera that works with Linux?

Would be Nice To Have (not a must):

5) Web Cam + Mic (for Skype)
Telecommuting is a lie. It is not easier than being local or even commuting more than an hour one-way, unless the weather is too bad to make it on a particular day. The biggest reason that telecommuting doesn't work is due to being part of the team. You really can't get to know the team without being in the same office with them. Maybe after you get to know the team, and how to communicate effectively with each of the members you could do it. I believe it is just a waste otherwise.

However, if you are working as a lone developer on a project without a team, then it could work just fine. In that case, why are you hitching yourself to a single company though?
Honestly, if you think something this complex is simple and the people who disagree with you are idiots than it's probably you who is acting like an idiot.

To give just one flaw in your logic. Protesting is speech. If I work I can't protest. But I do get money for my work. If I were to pay someone to protest for me I would be using my money to exercise my right of free speech. So in that case money is speech.

The issue is in money inequality. If I'm paid $1,000 an hour than my money can buy more speech than the person who goes out and protests. If our society values every person's free speech equally then we need to find a way to deal with that inequality.

THAT is the issue and that's a lot more complicated issue.
A program like this is a great way to promote cheating.
It's single-threaded. I haven't looked under the hood, but I would expect it to work by copying stacks around. In my experience it's been very easy to use.
I think license plates are roughly equivalent to an IP address. It gives you no incentive to be polite, but authorities can use it to track you down if you break the law.
Developing Software Sucks.  Time To Fix It.
This essay was written 3 years ago; readership has soared tremendously since then, to the point that sometimes PG's innocuous comments on the site are spun into Techcrunch headlines.
I don't know. A while back I learned the basics of Blender as well as 3DS Max; I personally found the former easier to pick up. Of course, I didn't do much beyond basics--I got distracted away from 3D graphics in general and never got back to it :)
Top sentence according to bookshrink [1]:

> There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Trolls are attracted to the forums with the most interesting/intelligent users (the "best" forums). I think that news.yc has been very successful in terms of the amount of trolling that takes place, especially since:

> The core users of News.YC are mostly refugees from other sites that were overrun by trolls.

[1] http://bookshrink.com
The point is that he's gilding the lily. He doesn't have to store the physical artifact in perpetuity, he can format shift it and make it like his $5 purchase. Sure, it's more work for him, and makes the effective cost more than $5.

But he's not forced to store the physical artifact forever.
Tell me, then, is writing a blog post speech?

Okay, what if I were to take several blog posts and put them together, have them published, and pay for the publishing myself. Is that speech?

What if I were to make a video and pay for the production myself and give it away on the Internet? Is that speech?

What if I took that same video and bought air time on the national networks? Is that speech?

My point is, while speech isn't money, speech and money are inseparable. It's impossible to regulate money in politics without infringing in some way on freedom of speech.
License plates came into existence in the early 1900s in Massachusetts when they needed a way to tax people to repair and maintain their roadways, and vehicle registration was the way they decided to accomplish it. It was also proposed as a way of linking drivers with actions, as there was a rapid increase in the number of roadway accidents about that time.

http://www.mass.gov/rmv/history/
When I wrote "Sure, it may be worth it - I certainly think it's worth it", I intended to communicate that I think it's worth putting up with a high number of false negatives to avoid really bad hires... so I think we actually are in complete agreement on this point.
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#5oct2011

"Also, a traffic update: HN now gets over 120k unique ips on a weekday, and serves over 1.3 million page views."
I hope that trolling can be kept out of HN by the simple goodwill of the people using the site. I can't think of many forum systems that can effectively remove the incentive to troll.

I put up a forum online for people in my journalism class. They're nice people, but something about the fact that the conversation was online turned the discussion into something pretty dumb.

My hope is that people who grow up with the internet their whole lives will realize that you still have to be civil online. It's no different than real life, yet no one is teaching you manners online.
The Daring Fireball App
Yes. The online ML class method is extremely effective and efficient too. After two months I'm able to apply ML to the most common problems without any previous background on the topic.
I don't think this is practical. So say your friendly neighborhood oil company sends a memo out to its employees saying "We need to drill in the [Insert National Park] to stay in business. So if you want to keep your job you need to send money to politicians that will allow us to drill in [Insert National Park]"

If that statement is true and the company would really go out of business than it isn't coercion. But the end result is the same as you have now.

The same is true for Unions just substitute "You have to elect this person or they'll gut your social security and take away your pension" in place of drilling.
But how do we know the real trolls from the assholes? Emoticons help, but we can't see their FACE, so it's hard to tell.
Clearly someone needs to found a Hogwarts-meets-Xavier-Institute for exceptionally gifted kids. An environment actually tailored to the exceptionally gifted, and one that included their actual peers would be incredibly beneficial not just to the kids, but to society. These are our future Newtons and Einsteins and they're being ground down into middle managers by the current system.