skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm absolutely shocked and disgusted to be be reading this discussion regarding being "hellbanned" only to discover that my account in fact has been hellbanned for the past 1.5 yrs without even knowing it!

http://news.ycombinator.org/threads?id=CrabDude
* enable showdead in your profile to read my comments

As you can see from my comments and contributions, most are extremely well reasoned and often entirely unique and invaluable contributions to a given conversation that to my frustration were inexplicably never upvoted or commented on, without any real insight as to why. I honestly am in shock and beyond frustrated that so much of my efforts and attempts to edify and contribute have been undermined by something that is explicitly allowed in comment guidelines. [1]

Specifically, the comment that is apparently responsible for my hellban, was on a post that linked to MY NodeKnockout entry which both won the competition category and received over 60 votes to end up on the front page:

HEY ALL! REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR US! WE'RE TRYING TO WIN THE INNOVATION CATEGORY!
http://nodeknockout.com/teams/starcraft-2-destroyed-my-marri...
AND RETWEET THIS WITH #nodeko! =)

Worse, this manner of comment is explicitly mentioned as okay in the guidelines. [1]

Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks."

And to any who would comment that my use of all caps elicited my ban, I'd respond by pointing out the use of capitalization is used "for emphasis," [2] in this case, specifically, enthusiasm -- unfortunately making the resulting ban all the more disgusting and frustrating.

To any in YC who have control over such things, please unban my account. I would greatly prefer to use it and retain all my contributions than be forced to play wack-a-mole in response to inaccurate rule enforcement.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps
6. Allow students significantly more self- and group-led teaching; especially with the rise in video lectures (a la Khan Academy, etc).

7. Have bright students from higher grades teach bright students from lower grades.

8. Embrace, rather than try to diminish, the natural bell curve of student performance and abilities--let students fall behind, and teach them the most critical skills before everything else. Who cares if you can recite the Gettysburg Address if you can't do basic reading an arithmetic. Let students get ahead; and don't burden them with arbitrary amounts of homework simply because they can do it faster; shove hard-to-learn things down their eager minds.
I do too; it's just annoying to have to manually highlight something in order to read it.

In general, a 1-line downvoted post is downvoted for good reason. For multiline posts, it's far more often a good post that people didn't like for other reasons. Those are the ones I take steps to manually highlight and read, and then upvote if I think it was downvoted for the wrong reasons.
This. I used to use it, too. We would start with trivial cases (one elevator, two stories), and gradually add more floors and elevator shafts.
We never, ever got to the interesting algorithms. It took a surprisingly long for people to describe anything remotely like a working, naive algorithm.

(of course, the most simple algorithm doesn't even use a queue! It just moves the elevator up until it hits the top, and down until it hits the bottom, opening the doors wherever there's a call request)
The separate school districts of Birmingham suburbs aren't exactly due to corruption... many of them emerged in the 1950s-70s as a way of evading desegregation.
Eh, if you say so. They seem sincerely crazy to me.
It's probably because they're using other filters as well and not only using score.

I.E., it would make sense they only want to hire people under certain age, or certain academic enrollment status... Who knows...
Are you suggesting HN's ranking algorithm biases toward YC-related content? Because that is a serious accusation.

I realize YC job posts can disable comments, and there is a separate tab for open jobs. That's no big deal because the behavior is externally visible and obvious.

If HN actually re-ranks articles to support YC content though, that is a big deal. And it's scary how that might subtly affect the Valley, given how large and influential HN is now.
This service is for new cars only.
Do hackers take the holidays off?
You could always set up some tests using jsperf.com. I don't believe it does memory usage though.

Seems like people are testing the sort of things measured in this article at the moment too eg.:

http://jsperf.com/jquery-multiple-id-perf
name: value instead of :name => value makes as much sense as p->q instead of (*p).x in C

As an historical note, here are the message (and matz’s response) where I made a proposal for the new syntax, back in 2002. It includes rationals.

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...

Matz’s response : http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...
To be clear, my "foundership" of a YC company wasn't publicly knowledge until 4 weeks ago.

My last comment isn't my greatest accomplishment. I'd hope that my behavior would be looked at in whole, instead of cherrypicked.

That being said, I was characterizing the general feeling of HN as a whole. Of the 100k+ readership of HN, very few are actual Zynga employees. So in that light, I defend my comment. There is a large anti-Zynga sentiment on HN and that sentiment is driven by media-fueled propaganda.

I can't account for why others have been hell-banned or downvoted. But from my experience being very contrarian in my own way, I haven't seen that at all. In fact, I've seen the exact opposite.
Aren't the rich always going to get richer, no matter what? Holding all else equal, the rich have more capital to put to work than the poor.
Rothbard is an interesting one in this case, though. He didn't think things like water were a right, but he also didn't think that most current corporations legitimately owned their property, since its acquisition was tainted (in most cases) by deep entanglement with government. He wasn't entirely consistent on the remedy, but at times he agreed with leftists that it was legitimate for workers to expropriate their employers' property and reconstitute factories/etc. under new ownership, though he disagreed on the reasons why. This entanglement between JP Morgan and the Birmingham government is an illustration of why he came to those kinds of conclusions (viz., that JP Morgan's "property" is illegitimate, accrued in part via aggression as an ally of the state).
2011 'Internet of Things' Awards
In short, you can't stop the group think.

Continuing from this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3354448

I'm not even sure if I get the point of trying either. I mean, I believe I have provided at least some value to HN, but every time I've "been unafraid to call people out", all I got was a bunch of crap for it.

Although you say we shouldn't lose hope, I think I already have. Its frustrating to have to deal with people claiming everything is the next new previous thing or the new black or the new white or the new Apple or the new Google or whatever else meme you can think of it.

I find startups intriguing, I like deeply scientific and mathematical discussions, I like hearing about stuff going on in the open source world. You'd think HN would be my thing, but there are simply elements of the HN community that rub me the wrong way and no matter how much you try to stop them, no matter how many times you down vote them, they just keep coming back stronger than before.

Honestly, there are just some people here who'd be happier over at 4chan than here, and I wish they'd just go.

BTW, I expect to get downvoted for this, and I don't care. I don't sugar coat the truth, and I'm sure as hell not going to start now.
wrt #5, For bigger conversations, after the conversation i send an email summing up what i think is expected of me and what i expect of others. It's really helpful for managing that kind of thing.
Wanted to type out "Thank you!" Really excited to use this feature! I would be interested to read a blog post from you on general insight on the technology, and maybe any general guidance.
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There has been some threads where any comment that was not a praise of Steve Jobs and Apple was downvoted. Sometimes I feel fragmentation on HN, was is upvoted in a thread is downvoted in another.
I too don't know Ruby and passed. My approach:

1. Google to see if Ruby has a for loop. It does. "for i in 1..100" looks like a good start.

2. Google for a switch or case statement. Don't like what I see. Google for an if/else. Looks good. Guess "if i%15 == 0 ... elsif ... end".

3. Google to make sure the mod operator is indeed %.

Done.
Let’s Build a Simple Video Game with JRuby: A Tutorial
> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them.

Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits.

> imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding

Bad analogy. Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. Imagine if the old, established kickstarter projects didn't have the ability to browbeat me because they have more money for ads.
Good question. Instead of submitting a resume, Unrabble allows job candidates to create an interactive profile, which helps candidates stand out from the crowd far better than an old-fashioned resume does.
http://lamernews.com/
More generally: (Normal Person) + (Wrong Situation) = (Oops)

See: Banality of Evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil

and, http://www.radioopensource.org/hannah-arendt-and-the-banalit...
Strictly speaking with a restaurant your largest expense, rent, is ongoing rather than upfront. Your point in general is valid, though I would argue that for someone truly motivated to make a point, it's not impossible to start with smaller businesses (incl. non-software businesses) or a bunch of savings and progressively work your way up to kick-starting larger business.
I don't always troll, but when I do, I use a sock puppet.
It's part of the language's overriding design philosophy of pervasive OO. As much of the language as possible is implemented in terms of objects and methods, including seemingly syntactic things like "private", "attr_accessor", the top-level scope and all member access to other objects. It's all objects and methods under the hood, but you shouldn't have to think about it in those terms. You're not supposed to be concerned with how the accessor for an object's name is implemented — you're just supposed to feel like you're accessing it.

Other languages have been moving in this direction, too. Objective-C has dot notation, C# lets you define getters and setters, Python has the @property decorator, Scala has special "magic" methods and quirky syntax rules to make this work, etc. All of these serve the same purpose as Ruby's optional parentheses: To make simple method calls less inherently "heavy".
Fake App Becomes Real
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>a big component of these kinds of fights is test of your patience

This is a good insight. At some point you manage to carry on despite all the bad feelings, and you're simply dragging yourself through the last bit of crap that's holding you back. I recognise that my patience is limited, so I've set myself a goal that I can attain before it runs out (getting out of here and back to a sunny country).

It's frustrating to know that many people said, while I was going through the worst of it, that going back to Australia, back home, would be running away from my problems. One thing I learnt during it all was that everyone gives different advice. You're so vulerable, and no matter what people say, you often follow it. It took me at least one year, if not two, to not take advice too seriously, except that which I gave myself. It's nice to get some control back, even though the things I can't control (my thoughts and feelings) still make life difficult.
It's been good to just vent a little even if it's to strangers and in public, though mostly anonymous.

What I find difficult is that I don't really know many people that are willing to simply listen.

Mostly people brush off how you are feeling with "everything heals with time", but all you need is "yes, you're feeling absolutely rotten right now. I understand." It's the people that really can relate that stop ignoring you're current situation, as if it didn't matter because something better will be there eventually.

So much more to vent, but I'll save it for someone else :)

Home stretch. Just 2.5 more weeks, and I can quit my job and then the rest is just logistics.
Suicide is a selfish act

Is it any less selfish of others to force you to stay around and endure terrible pain (physical or emotional) because they need you? I certainly agree that you can and should get help, but I also think that there are cases when the "suicide is selfish" people are the selfish ones. Though, I'm sure that they're not as common as the cases where the person should have sought help instead, I don't think its helpful to somebody contemplating suicide to say that they are being selfish or doing something stupid. If it were me, it would probably make me feel worse.
People have gone to prison over this scandal

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/09/five_men_convicted_in_je...
Trust on the internet is dangerous. You should exercise your judgement and not let it be impaired by a perceived absence of trolls. There are trolls, flamebaiters, astroturfers, bots, vested interests, paid posters and spammers everywhere on the internet. Once upon a time, appeal to authority arguments actually influenced most of the population. Let us not go back there, it is better for us all if we don't trust everything we see and hear.

I'm a very trusting person. I don't lock my doors, for instance. But I exercise, or at least I like to think I exercise, a healthy scepticism without falling into paranoia. You can never really know or understand what everyone else's motivations and intentions are and you should remember that fact at all times.
Absent a 60-member supermajority, passing a bill in the Senate requires both parties to at least agree to let it come to a vote. Passing a bill in the House does not require it to be palatable to the other party, the Senate, or the President, nor is it required for it to have any realistic hope of ever becoming law.

I didn't really mean for this to be an unpleasantly partisan post, just a statement of facts about the situation in Washington as I see it. The current Democrats in power have many flaws, but I see no reason to think their goal is to avoid action, because a lack of action would provide no benefit to them.

To argue that the House has genuinely tried to get things done during this session, I would think you would have to assent to one of the following two things:

1. Even with a divided Congress, it is not required for both parties to work together in a bipartisan spirit of compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

2. The current House of Representatives has genuinely tried to work closely together with Senate Democrats and the President in a bipartisan spirit of compromise to pass meaningful legislation.

Do you believe one of these things?
I think it's going to be slightly better than doing nothing.
Where does he come up with the percent chances of these passing? Is this just assigning a number to whatever the author feels like inorder to fake some sense of credibility?
I live in Birmingham, so I need to correct a couple things. First, the "illegal" tax has been around a long time. In this particular case, it was overturned on a technicality [1]. However, because the state government is hostile to Birmingham, it has been impossible to replace the lost revenue. However, that's relatively unimportant, because the sewer budget is separate, and funded only by sewer system revenues.

Secondly, the construction problems, common among massive public projects, really weren't the problem. The problem is that County Commissioners were BRIBED by bankers into taking out unwise interest rate swaps in 2003. I believe all five commissioners from that period have been convicted of corruption, particularly Larry Langford, commission president. [2]

The reason for the bankruptcy is less that interest rates rose, but primarily the freezing of the market for municipal bonds during the 2008-2009 recession. Bloomberg explains, "After some bond insurers incurred losses on subprime- related securities, threatening the credit ratings they used to guarantee other Jefferson debts, investors in 2008 dumped the sewer securities on banks that had agreed to act as buyers of last resort. That triggered contractual requirements for the county to pay off $850 million of the debt in four years instead of the 30 or 40 under the original agreements, according to government records." [3]

So it is clear that BOTH bankers and our local politicians are at fault for this problem. Both acted illegally. Our politicians are in jail, but the guilty bankers are not. So, yes, I think JP Morgan should pay a substantial penalty for this.

1: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/03/alabama_supreme_court_ru...
2: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/case/jp-morgan-investment...
3: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/alabama-s-jefferson...
You should write (essays, or tweets, or blog posts, but please, not "content") because you have something you'd like to say. Maybe it's a new idea, maybe it's a comment on someone elses idea, but it shouldn't be thought of as a product.

Think of the better writers on the internet (Maciej Cieglowski, Paul Graham, Glenn Greenwald maybe?) None of these dudes create "content"
Same here, nice discussion indeed.
On a different perspective, if you may, ...

We don't walk enough, that's a known fact.

Elevators are bad for your health. Take a walk.

However Delevators are good because most accidents happen when you go downward.

Hence, Elevators going up should be for really older people only (unless you're in a hurry or carrying something heavy or already in good shape...).

Fight for Delevators!
I think the implicit assumption is that he was referring to the more social aspects of the internet (forums, blogs, etc.).
I feel a little lame submitting this myself but thought the community would find the content interesting and could use some feedback on the site in general (7 months into the project).
I did them all and got 100% everywhere (except in HW6). I am kind of disappointed. May be the quizzes are part of the grading?
Technical tweaks may also help. On Reddit, votes on your comments don't affect your karma score, but they do on News.YC. And it does seem to influence people when they can see their reputation in the eyes of their peers drain away after making an asshole remark.

After points stopped being shown on comments this point seems ironically moot.

Any chance of getting them back? Personally I think it's the worst decision in the history of HN.
Bitcoin and Digital Cash: A Vision of the Future
7. Or not-so-bright students from lower grades. Heck, all students from lower grades.
I'm a Brit here to say that any assertion about the state of American education ought to include consideration of video games, many of which come from the US.

Games are, after all, highly educational. They represent an environment with three attributes:

(1) choice,
(2) rapid feedback,
(3) safety (you don't get punished for making mistakes, academic or social).

Note that all of these are crucial in the business of making and correcting errors, which is what learning is all about.
I don't think the US education system is as bad as everyone says. I think the metric that we use to judge our system against other countries is not accurate. The US has had a high level of economic activity and innovation for decades. I think that points to a strong education system.

I think recent attempts to make our system more like Asian systems (more homework, more testing...) will do more harm than good.

There is progress to be made, but I think trying to mimic other countries education systems is the wrong approach.
It’s my life
NYC to test wireless emergency alert system, tomrrow 12/15/11
Probably the trailer, as we think of it in the movies, is too expensive. Trailers are shown to and amortized across a national audience, and I assume are placed in front of movies where the audience will have a positive response.

That said, I see static local ads in the discount theaters. I suppose a theater owner would show any ad that was paid for, but most movie theaters are chains and probably make large deals for the trailers, just like they do for the movies.

Or something.
Carwoo is a service that matches customers with dealers.

Why should there be any dealership ads? Brand/model ads make sense, but customers on the market for the best deal ought to be able to quickly find which dealer in a convenient radius is willing to offer the best deal. No hassle, no misleading price quotes, no bs.

Disclaimer: I bought my last car via carwoo after reading about it here and I will definitely use it again for future car purchases.
What politician are you referring to?

And just for the record, I really like Birmingham. It's a good city. It has had some really terrible politicians, but despite that, it's a really nice place to live. (Though, I must confess, I don't have to pay a water bill).
Regarding #7:
Why? I would have absolutely hated that in school. How does having a kid who's good at Algebra teaching a younger kid who's not so good at Algebra help the kid who's good at all?

If he's already good at it, teaching it shouldn't help him that much, and now he's wasted time he could be using to learn more things himself (see your own #6).
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The Joker Test
Looks like the bankers did agree to forgive $1 billion and refinance another $2 billion. The higher rates are part of the plan to avoid bankruptcy even under those terms, though.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44552659/ns/us_news-life/#.TulFl...