skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My car loves me. I'm serious, it's like it knows that I take really good care of it and try not to overwork it when I can. You should see how it responds to my touch far better than any one else's when I'm driving it in the mountains or in inclement conditions.

I can tell when it's happy because it's purring, and when it's working too hard it groans and squeals instead. It lets me know when its hungry (oil change indicator), thirsty (windshield wiper indicator), sick (service needed indicator), or just plain out of breath (low tire pressure indicator).

I don't understand how some people can be so cruel and say that it can't think and feel for itself. They think just because a human built the machine that built this car, that they're automatically superior to it. They just won't take the time to listen.

I used to be like that, but one time... I killed a car. It was by accident and I really didn't mean to do it, but the sounds it was making when it was dying; oh god, the sounds. You would know cars can feel and understand if you heard them.
They've just released "share", works fantastically - seems to be a combo of BT and S3.
Thanks for clearing that up, just before I read your comment I was thinkg "Wow, that was fast."
Maybe some start-up will establish a foreign VPN service (in China or Iran) to help people in the US to freely connect to these services without fear of reprisal.
I think these are related. The kind of people who like to comment on some things — say, politics — tend to be less tactful. This drags the average down. Then, unless you're very lucky, people readjust their norms and start acting ruder themselves — and then you have yourself a vicious circle. I've seen it happen in a lot of places. It makes me sad every time.

I'd strongly suggesting policing OT posts more proactively. Like PG said in his essay about starting Hacker News, this is a social problem, not a technical one. We need to refrain from doing things that make jerks feel like this is the place for them.
I agree, Diego. I now find a few articles a day on the front page interesting, whereas before this seemed much higher.

It seems that hacker news may be getting too popular for it's own good. At which point, you start getting submissions from people who are more interested in promoting themselves or some agenda and finding ways to game the ranking system to get content on the front page.
I find these types of comments and posts unfair. Redbeacon started a business and worked hard on it for 2.5 years. While they probably had larger ambitions than to be bought by Home Depot, they likely spent a great deal of time thinking about this decision before making it.

You ask why they sold and admit that financial reward might play a role. But then you spend the rest of the post basically saying how it was a bad idea because they will be subsumed by this giant corporation. You don't think they heard this exact advice from many of their startup friends/advisors/investors? I'm sure they knew what they were getting themselves into.

Doing a startup is super hard and super stressful - most fail. I would hope our community would be more understanding of the decision to be acquired.
Fine; replace 'offended' with 'disappointed.' My point--which you seem to have missed--is the same.

I'm not addressing the issue of gender discrimination.

I'm saying that your rhetorical approach, which seems to be "loudly proclaim that everyone should magically see things the same way I do," is ridiculous.
But that only confirms who is commenting in this thread, not who is upvoting.
I'm travelling to the states next week. I have a lot of pirated content (books and music) on my hidden encrypted partition on my laptop and external HD. Should I be worried, and what are my options if I do get stopped? (I'm actually a regular user - this is a throwaway account for obvious reasons).
The ability to choose when to work and on what terms is a vastly greater benefit than mere consumption goods.

The "ability to choose when to work and on what terms" is nothing but the ability to purchase goods.

The issue is not allocation of green pieces of paper at all. Moving numbers around in computers somewhere at the Fed or BankAm's data center doesn't affect the world at all.

The issue is spending. Real resources are allocated based on where the money is spent. If Fred Wilson spends the money, then real resources will be allocated towards a social network/gaming platform for people trying to get in shape. If the government spends the money, those resources will instead be devoted to making bling bling for welfare recipients.

If you want to argue that the latter case is a good thing, then go ahead and argue it. But the issue is whether the money should be spent on Fred Wilson's venture rather than Obama's venture, not whether to increase or decrease Fred Wilson's consumption.

Incidentally, if you are concerned by investors putting money into foreign companies (note: I'm not), why are you not concerned by welfare recipients consuming goods that are made in China?
Your examples are things that can be measured. Also, if you don't need evidence, then I can say anything.
And that's why you can still charge a humorous amount of money to reboot someone's computer with a diagnostic disc in the drive.
Teacher Uses Barkles To Initiate Change
Yet the amount of karma distributed has been growing exponentially. The community is becoming too large to sustain it's quality. No offense, but the best days are past us.

Yes I realize there is always the inevitable discussion of "HN is declining" and like most things, perception is reality.
The Virtual Jackboot
The best thing that has worked for me is to exhale before I begin speaking. Before I realized this I had always started out with a lungful of air and it was just bad. I'd try to say as much as I could in that one breath and then gasp for another lungful and repeat. Once I started deliberately starting a speech with an exhale, it felt so natural and easy.

The other thing is with the ums. After finishing a sentence, I just pause to gather my thoughts and resume talking. One trick I've read in many places is to have a cup of water with you so you can take a sip if you need a couple of seconds to pause.
I think we'll know its disruptive when it actually disrupts something. On its own, without subsidies and other crutches.

And that may have happened with special assistance, as many other disruptions have.

But its still not a sure thing. There may be other technologies that might have gotten there first. But since we've biased investment in solar so much, such alternatives may never develop.

We did something similar with the automobile in the US, giving it advantages and subsidies like free roads. Is it any wonder that more efficient ways of getting around withered?
Not technology related, but /r/listentothis is a great way to find new music with a fairly eclectic mix. For gaming related news and discussion, /r/games is a good alternative to the image macro flooded /r/gaming.
"Ultra" in name only: the failures of Intel's Ultrabook rules
Except married people receive dramatically better benefits than single people.
I believe innovation is the next logical step to widening your appeal. You make new and interesting advances when the work you're doing is for a different type of person or project.
Think of the quality constraints of /r/askscience

Quality is discourse, not peanut gallery, vacuum sucking commentary that builds on puns, memes, insults and karma whoring.

Inflammatory comments often devolve into nothing. No insights, no evocative call to action. However, constructive assertions backed by reason are not inflammatory and equally capable of evocative statements that can be challenged.
On the other hand, and from what I remember from a conversation with someone who works on the UK National Grid, Solar and Wind power have the advantage of predictability; which in many ways is just as important as availability for large-scale power infrastructures. (That's short-term predictability, generally < 1 hour).

As they've been saying since the 1950s, fusion is only 20 years away to solve all our problems anyway.
I agree, I too am glad to have found HN :)

To me, a hacker is much more technical in nature. Reverse Engineering, Assembly, homebrew, etc. are all keywords that come to mind when I think Hacker. The "programmer in his/her dark basement" is a decent stereotype to describe what a hacker meant to be when I first found HN.

Your definition of Hacker is equally valid though! I don't think there is an accepted definition for the word, which makes the name all the more misrepresentative to the portion of the population that has a differing definition of Hacker than the HN community/culture.
You're making it more complicated than it needs to be. When you're valuing a perk, the cost to the company should be ignored entirely. Any perk should be valued at what it's worth to you based on how often you'll use it, not what it costs the company.

You should definitely ask questions to see if there are reasons you wouldn't use it, but attempting to put that in the contract isn't going to work. There's no way a big company is going to complicate their facilities planning by making separate agreements with employees. Better to just assume it won't last forever.

Personally, not having to either cook or shop for dinner if I don't feel like it is worth quite a bit to me. To someone who goes home and eats with their family, it's not worth as much. I'm not going to put a dollar amount on it because I think that's just adding false precision to the calculation.

By the way, studies show that people often don't value the right things when they do a detailed calculation. For example, a short commute is more valuable (in terms of happiness) than an extra bedroom on the house, but many people will take the longer commute if they overthink it. [1]

[1] http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/blogs/happiness...
Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard about it. Apparently a lot of other people didn't either if it's on the front page right now.

Still, I can see them needing more time to ramp up before making any strategic changes angled at displacing the studios.
Creation (via this studios play) and distribution (via Prime) are making Amazon well positioned in the content wars.
Automated theorem finding in propositional calculus
thepiratebay is Swedish, not Swiss.
And which side would you take in that debate?
This would seem to imply that comments are somehow "superior" to stories, and I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.
The whole deification of pg by some people on here is pretty weird if you ask me.

I don't see any "deification" of pg, personally. I see people being very respectful and grateful for him, for providing this site (which he certainly does not owe us) and for being an active supporter of the startup scene and promoting entrepreneurship. He also has established credentials as a sharp technologist and all-around smart guy, so why wouldn't he be respected here.

That said, you are allowed to disagree with pg, and people do it from time to time. It's not like you get auto-banned for not agreeing with everything the man says or anything. But you can disagree with pg (or anybody else) in a polite and respectful manner, without being rude or inflammatory.

"ass" doesn't seem to be that extreme...rude yes...but not that "bad"

It was uncalled for and it goes outside of the norms this community tries to maintain, IMO.
I wouldn't mind moving the articles whose discussions have completely gone to seed into a separate subforum.

My favorite forums are ones that don't allow the discussion of politics or religion. The same is true for real-life discussions with acquaintances that you don't thoroughly know yet. There is nothing to be gained from a discussion when everybody's emotions are fully inflamed.
The post is right about distribution being the biggest challenge, it is not about how movies are being made, is about how can you shift the industry model into another distribution channel.
It's also worth noting that (in addition to the other flaws you noted) this is a single-round game, where strategies often can be aggressive and deceptive while still being successful (i.e. see most court cases). When dealing with business, most leadership usually involves games that are multi-round and go on for years. Everything depends on you not being a dick and building up friendly relationships.
None of them are sitting in jail right now.
you may need to figure out the difference between Swedish and Swiss
This is related to my Ask HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498229

My question was asking if there may be a correlation between the quality of the content and the actual name of Hacker News being misrepresentative due to the ambiguity in the definition of "hacker."

Which I asked because my thoughts seemed to wander a bit too far from what you were asking.
If the UK is anything like NZ, it is a great time to be a .Net developer. Unfortunately if you like working in a unix environment with languages more prevalent in OSS, finding work can be difficult.
I had an idea of my own, but it actually outgrew size of single comment, so I made a blogpost; it can be found here: http://emempi.blogspot.com/2012/01/better-world-for-movies.h...
Accelerating Javascript via SIMD
In the perspective of many people here, downvotes are to indicate that you don't think the comment contributes to the conversation in a positive way. For example, I upvote comments I disagree with as long as they make the point well and give me something to think about. Similarly, I downvote comments I agree with if they're snide or poorly constructed.
Over a decade ago I started developing serious, chronic RSI issues in my hands and wrists due to keyboard/mouse time. I tried changing seating position, etc, and it helped a little.

What really helped though was getting some handeeze gloves. They are fingerless, snug fitting lycra gloves with a double layer of lycra for the cuff. Don't know exactly how they work, but it sounds like it could be a similar principle, and they helped a lot.
Ask HN: Do you read the "newest" section?
I was wondering if it was just me or if there are actually a lot of people reading off of the HN firehose on the "new" page (http://news.ycombinator.com/newest)

For example, my everyday routine is:
1. When I wake up, visit HN front page and read.
2. When that's done, visit /new (http://news.ycombinator.com/newest)
2. For the rest of the day, stay on "new" and refresh forever.

Maybe i'm just an abnormal info addict. Was wondering what the general behavior of the community is. I'm especially interested because I'm curious about how interesting projects get voted up to the front page: whether my cool project can reach the front page without asking friends to come vote it up--if it's cool enough, will the people monitoring "newest" like me vote it up and help it reach the front page?
I created an Octopress theme for Tumblr?  Should I release it?
There would have to be a buffer overrun in the text message handling code plus a way to exploit it in 160 characters. That sounds difficult, unless I'm wrong about the fact that the carrier enforces the limit.

I could maybe see doing it with MMS or iMessage. The more I think about it, the more interesting this question is...

Has anyone heard of any exploitable flaws in a phone's SMS software?
What part is magic? I'm saying to take the testimony of women who are either in the field or have attempted to join as evidence. Were you just nit-picking at my use of "it's not up for debate"?
> What is a test movie?
> An Amazon Studios test movie should be an inexpensive, full-length movie
> that tells the whole story of the script in a compelling way, with very
> good acting and sound.

Somehow, I don't think this will work. "Make a movie, to make a movie" doesn't seem like an attractive offer.

I'm not a filmmaker, but from what I understand, it is much more convenient to send out a script than it is to produce and edit a movie, and then send that out. Going by what's presented in Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia" [1], sending out a script sounds very easy, and very common, and it sounds like the people who receive scripts will actually read them to determine if they're good. It sounds like there is a lot of professional feedback.

I don't see how Amazon Studios is going to improve on that, or even match it. Getting feedback from professionals is very different from getting feedback from Youtube junkies.

[1] http://jordanmechner.com/category/prince-of-persia/
BigCommerce launches $2m fund for start-up developers
I read a book and a bunch of research on sociopaths and then to serve the HN community I spent my own free time to do a write up.

I cite an extensively researched high quality source, which actually addresses and supports every single statement I made.

And then you have the arrogance to tell me I didn't cite a single source?

Not only did I cite a source, I wrote a fucking essay based on real research, based on established high quality experts. Where is your evidence? Where is your research? Where is your support?

This is a discussion forum. Do you go around harassing everyone who says anything for sources? 99% of posts do not cite sources on Hacker News.

BUT I DID!

I'm just about done with this anti-intellectual community because of people like you. Inserting [citation needed] after every post you disagree does not contribute to the discussion. I'm a highly educated expert on this subject with exemplary sources that are entirely based on hard science and little know-nothing blogger peons like you follow me around saying [citation needed] EVEN WHEN I CITE GREAT SOURCES.

Time to check out of HN.
Could be, but for now their official stand is:

The goal of Amazon Studios is to work with Hollywood
to turn the best projects into major feature films.
Europe is a country and everyone speaks french there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANTDkfkoBaI

:)
Upvoted. I'm with you, and don't understand this seeming 100% pro piracy attitude. I am 100% against piracy in every form, but also 100% against aggressive government involvement in nearly everything. But if people are blatently stealing or providing a platform based around theft, they deserve to be punished. And governments are the only system of punishment that exist. SOPA and insane laws are not the answer of course but I don't understand this sad Hacker News trend where people downvote anything they disagree with. Downvoting is meant for trolls and irrelevant posts.
We do all of those things to Humans too, it's not that we don't show empathy to animals, we don't show it to anything.

Rat 1, Human 0 ?
Neither of those business models explicitly condones piracy. YouTube and Flickr also reward users for popular content. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and it's entirely legal - as long as you comply with DMCA and don't knowingly contribute.
I used to frequent a forum that had a "Flame" section that would automatically adopt threads that got out of hand. While I like the idea for a few reasons, one my favorite aspects of HN is its simplicity.
I think it'd be interesting to compare the current site with the site showing only posts submitted by users that have been members for a certain number of years.
I'm stupid, here's my(our) execution, which book(s) should I read?
I block ads because I hate being bombarded by random crap I am never going to consider buying. You can hate me for it (hell, I monetize some of my own sites with ads) but I really don't care.

For a lot of services whose ads I block it is mainly because I am already paying a fee to get access and yet I still have to be bombarded with ads. Hulu is the worst offender in that department.
"Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and TV industries. Microsoft seemed like a technology supplier to IBM before eating their lunch, and Google did the same thing to Yahoo."
Six Lessons in Entrepreneurship
They could use a new book, they've finished reading Brave New World a while ago.
I think its actually Edwin Edwards (fmr Gov of Louisiana) who said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."

Your version sounds like an apocryphal variation.
Assuming you are right about social insurance, that means the lowest quintile pays 12.8% of income in taxes and the top 1% pays 32.8%.

You can't assume that non US companies are going to be paying US style income taxes.

True. For example, a company based in Gurgaon pays fairly little in taxes. On the other hand, they need to provide their own roads, water and police services. (This is partly why Gurgaon is thriving - corporations seem to do a much better job of this than the Indian government.)

You might be right that some nations provide a better benefit/tax ratio. But the solution is not for the US to tax their corporations, the solution is for the US to provide more cost effective government services.

I agree that we should equalize taxes across income sources. My simple proposal? We should eliminate all corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, cap gains, etc, and put all income into the same bucket. But this is unpopular since it makes it more difficult to raise taxes - individuals immediately see higher taxes and blame politicians, rather than merely seeing their jobs go overseas and blame investors, or seeing prices rise and blaming walmart.
Question is whether it used to be harder. The story you tell are all big operations requiring lots of cash to keep afloat. New studios can run at fairly low cost especially with the post production power we have today.
While it is essentially to be civil, too much agreement and mutual back-patting can lead to chronic group think in a community, where anyone deemed to be contrarian is instantly down-voted regardless of how civilly made their arguement is. I see a lot of this on HN.
Programmers have much lower social status than the Professions. Programming has poor job security, entails long hours if you want to make decent money, and often requires you to work with socially inept peers.

The higher status that programming gets, the more women I expect to enter the field. Not less.
Hartl's book, site, and screencasts made Ruby on Rails genuinely fun. As a designer without any formal training in development I recommend this book — especially the paid screencast version — to everyone curious about Rails or trying to get into development.

Thank you Mike for making such a great product and for sharing so generously with the community. I know several people that learned rails through your work.
Ask HN: Stolen iPhone. Can see on Find My iPhone. What should I do next?
Goto cops? Says last located 5 minutes ago. Somewhere in Queens I think. I am in Manhattan.
What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?
From what I have seen longer messages get sent as multiple segmented texts.
'soccer is the great equalizer' might apply when you have kids playing. But at a pro level, I'm sure you can agree it's clearly not the case.

You misread my last sentence there. I should have made it more clear. My point is soccer is NOT regulated, unlike NBA/NFL which is regulated.
I scan the newest feed about half the time that I visit the site. We're all info addicts here. :-)
Why is the government regulating the business model? These crimes are far too vague to be sensical.