skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> am I still driving at it all as hard as I can? Or am I getting comfortable and lazy?

I don't think that's a question of either/or. Its usually a battle between the two; it comes down to your ability to master that game. Especially if you work for yourself.
This is what I love about YC, there is a better hidden gems to noise ratio here than any other site I've been to. Kris please let me know when you're done with your framework. I would love to tinker around with it for my next project.

- Mathew
Yeah, our niche will out last those other niche(s)!

But seriously, Digg had a chasm to cross, I don't think HN can go mainstream.
Michelin’s Active Wheel technology in detail
This goes to prove that privatization of state services has anything to do with corruption.

The potential for corrupt organizations exists in all human organizations: Public and Private.

Even country of origin isn't a determining factor.

so privatization is NOT the solution for corruption.
kings of leon

http://new.music.yahoo.com/singleVideo/?vid=14315075
Last.fm, iTune's Genius, Amazon's recommendations, All Music Guide, TasteKid, ...
Acrid Avid Jam Shred - Aphex Twin
I support the idea of private schooling, but sometimes I wonder if this is what would happen if it became hyper-competitive.
I don't think the universe needs a me-shaped dent.

(Maybe a dentarthurdent, though)
The 6th Grade Financial Crisis
Sure, sent one for Grafly (http://grafly.com) as a test via email.

(Well, it's only $5 right now, but we think it's awesome. ;-)
It sounds like he's making up a shortfall of less than $200. If he teaches three classes of twenty students each, that's about $3 per student. Do you really think the average parent would prefer to save $3 per year, in exchange for ads on tests?
50 is fine (it's for each release, not just total).

That's many hundreds over time, which should be plenty for reviews/bloggers/etc.
I think it was Frank Tipler who wanted [[trans]humankind] to do an infinite amount of computation before the end of the universe - he might have limited that to a big-crunch scenerio though.
The free link info would spread like wildfile.
Plaid - Not For Threes
possibly. I have seen lokparitran become passive from close quarters, they seem to be struggling with leadership. Then lokayukta which is a govt anti-corruption wing does some decent work. I tried to send a link to this post to jagore folks. I do hope India sees a revolution sooner.
I think we're being a little harsh in this case and really overstating never optimize prematurely like it's some kind of religion.

Optimization is built in to most web stacks. Database caching for example. For rails this is convention over configuration when you're running with the production flag. Plus there's all sorts of other optimizations going on at every level, because it's suspected that even if a lot of applications don't need them, to not bake them in will cripple and add undo complexity to other apps. This adds tons of complexity, but it's well abstracted. And many of our apps don't need this... so it's premature definitely, but it's a pretty fast and fun stack to build with.

I think it is completely acceptable to perform certain types of optimization, even prematurely perhaps, provided the cost of these optimizations is low if you think there's a decent chance, or have a hunch that you could get into trouble if you don't. Experience teaches you which assumptions to make, but it's definitely not a perfect science. Sometimes you overdo it and there's a cost, but there's also a cost if you underestimate as well. It's an effort we make as developers to balance between the two.

So in this scenario, caching some pages to me sounds pretty acceptable, or at least border line. He implemented the caching in a very simple, basic, and well known commonly accepted way. No memcached or anything fancy, just static page dumps. He's running on a 256 VPS slice, which is pretty slim for a business, so it's not too hard to imagine he'd run into problems if there was even a small spike in traffic. Plus, his traffic is decent. I for one would probably have cached as well, at least the landing pages anyways.

He got in trouble sure, and as a direct result of his caching, but these things happen when you're running everything yourself. I don't think it's due to bad judgment.

This reminds me of another statement that is often taken to the extreme. "Launch quick and get it in front of people. Don't assume you know what your users want." I think it's a pretty good reminder once you start to go too far, but of course we all know you still need to make many assumptions just so you have a product. There's not much value in the canvas alone. These little gems like "Never optimize prematurely" won't do your job for you. The reality is too fuzzy, and that's why you get paid.

I hope this doesn't sound like a harsh reply. I do agree that there are many cases where people go crazy with optimization, features, etc, and it's good to have a little mantra like "Never this, never that". I just don't think he's guilty of any of these in this case is all. The cron was a blunder many of us have experienced. It cost him though, and he's learned that lesson well now I bet. I always learn best from my most costly mistakes.
these corrections have lasted a historical average of 17 years. The current one started in 2000 so we have another 9 years to go.
That is a great track, and the entire album is excellent. My favourite track other than Graveyard Girl is We Own The Sky.

And so are their other albums, Before the Dawn Heals Us and Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts and Digital Shades Vol. 1 and... hell, all their albums are good.
Google is making a big mistake to associate budget with revenue. That will align people (the most important resource) with old, established products--i.e. the past instead of the future. By starving the future Google will become reactionary rather than trend setting. Just like Microsoft and Oracle did.
Last and only time I saw NIN was Dec 1994, fourth row via out-of-state Ticketmaster, at the old Boston Garden. Marilyn Manson opened up by spiting on the security crew in front of the stage while shaking his rubber pants with 24" prosthetic inside. The NIN set starts and we're all standing. I turn around, within 60 seconds, and my chair is gone. Folks had started ripping the wooden seats from the floor to make an impromptu mosh pit. It worked well except for the stray chair still intact.
My programming playlist consists of mostly

– M83	Electronic/Shoegaze
– Ratatat	Chillout
– Eluvium	Ambient/Classical
– Sigur Rós	Post-rock/Ambient
– Mono	Post-rock/Ambient
– Explosions in the Sky	Ambient
– Air	Ambient
– Brian Eno	Ambient
– Godspeed You! Black Emperor	Post-rock
– Jesu	Post-rock/Drone
– Mogwai	Post-rock
– String Quartet Tribute to Coldplay	Classical
– Yongfook (Jon Yongfook Cockle)	Ambient

Mostly ambient, post-rock, drone, and chillout. Either no vocals or ambient vocals. About 280 tracks in total, about 25 hours.

Hit shuffle on that, and I have myself a killer well-mixed playlist in terms of variety, tempo, and genre selection.
Google officially rolls out CalDAV support for Calendar
Literally a graphing (only) calculator, or do you plan on expanding functionality?

I would be willing to help implement features that emulate my TI-89. Carrying something that useful in my pocket would be absolutely amazing.

(integration, differentiation, solving systems of equations, polynomials, etc etc etc)
Thanks for the link, it's all so obvious now! How can you ever go wrong when you're the one who gets to define both the end result and then fill in the means of getting there?

Of course the evidence will always point to the end result, because you're the one who made up the damn end result in the first place! Evidence can always be twisted and shaped to fit your view when you're the one who gets to define what the picture looks like.

This isn't about whether the evidence points to the picture, it's about whether or not we even have the right picture in mind. It's pretty clear that since the end result (Macro-Evolution) cannot be empirically observed in action, it is a contrivance of man of which it's existence is still unknown.
Neat. Now I don't have to give out iTMS gift certificates anymore.
Top 10 Web Dev Blunders of 2008
Ramaze by Example
Ask HN : Startup and exclusivity contract 
We are a startup surviving on small contracts. We also developed our own product and today we received an offer from a reseller to be an "exclusive reseller" in his niche (+ a percentage on each of his sales). Do you have links, stories or opinion to share about that kind of contract for a startup?
What a poorly-chosen title. It took me a while to realize that "gears" is the verb; it's not about Google Gears. Non-title capitalization could have avoided the ambiguity.
Poor kids' brains may behave like they are damaged
Substitute the word "adult" for "consumers" in what you say,

"Adults will take as much credit as offered to them." (No, they won't.)

"A stable solution will effectively put the decision of how much to borrow in the hands of someone else: Banks, Governments etc. not adults." (Wrong again.)

etc. By contrast, if you replace "consumers" with "children" then it still makes sense.

Really, whatever solution we come up with needs to punish people according to the rules as they stood at the beginning of the game. No new ex post facto rules, please. Banks and (some) adults bet on black when the wheel went red. Let them pay.
YC Interviewee Looking for Support
To All Hackers:

We interviewed with PG and team a few weeks ago and got some great feedback. We are now looking for some talented web app developers to come on board to support us. We are building a really cool personal/social CRM product.

If you’d be interested in talking with us you can reach me at sid@myroloweb.com. We’d love to hear from you guys.

Sid
Tool.
I always start with Vicarious ;-)
:) Those were very motivating words. Thanks.

On nagging about India, I have felt it myself esp with one controversial debate that happened over Chandrayaan post. I do have good words but it has just so happened that there is more to whine about day-to-day feeling helpless (just how u explained in a comment above) than feel good or hopeful.

I chose to start a venture in India instead of moving to the US or Europe like my many friends did in the name of higher education, then job.

I do whatever good I can do for the country within my capabilities - helping people at individual levels to rise up. As you might have noted I do get highly opinionated and get into lot of trouble even government officials. So I see myself probably not smart enough with getting things across in a nice way, hence incapable of bringing a change at large.

Yes, we need a revolution. If it does happen and in a righteous way you would know I would be part of it. (Note there have been many attempts). But would I be the one who starts it probably not.
Ditto, sometimes I put Be, Electric Circus and Like Water For Chocolate on repeat. Kanye's new album is pretty hot too.

Other than that, a little John Mayer or Coldplay doesn't hurt when I'm tired of spanish guitar music. I try to keep it eclectic.
The end result (Macro-Evolution) cannot be empirically observed in action.

Neither can God.

I do feel bad for you, kirse. 10 years ago I went through the same dilemma, debate and denial. If you want to be rational, you have to learn the evidence. If you learn the evidence and you apply rational, even-handed criterion to the subject, the conclusion that evolution exists and at least partly explains our modern world is undeniably apparent.

You literally have no rational leg to stand on. Your argument that the conclusion was made up and the data forced to fit it is so obviously false that it's almost laughable (few theories are as rigorously opposed as evolution has been, if there were any significant holes the scientific community would tear it apart).

This isn't about whether the evidence points to the end result, it's about whether or not we even have the right end result in mind.

This is exactly 180 degrees from reality. If the evidence points to a specific conclusion and that evidence can be replicated by diverse, neutral, competent observers the conclusion is true regardless of if we like it or not. Science isn't about picking a result then gathering data to support it, although if you hang out with the ID crowd I can see why you might get that impression.

If you want an example we can look again to heliocentricity. It was not a popular viewpoint, but the data forced people to accept that position, despite the fact that it went against all the contemporary common sense and religious belief (and despite the fact that it's difficult to observe contrary evidence without a lot of bookkeeping and some optics).

P.S. I didn't answer your question earlier because I've already answered a very similar question in debates dozens of times. Your crowd really needs a revised playbook, because you can basically google ever question as presented and get a powerful rebuttal to your every potential argument.
Right this minute, the album Worlds Collide by Apocalyptica. Two of the songs are just amazing:

Helden, with vocals by Till Lindemann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhq9n8gq4-0&feature=relat...

Yes, this is a cover of David Bowie. And it's vastly better than the original.

SOS, with vocals by Cristina Scabbio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WHEqpoADTY&feature=relat...

A little while ago was some Bob Dylan.
The Mad Scientist Bringing Back the Dead... Really.
Frequentists vs Bayesians
BTW, I'd love to meet up with any HN folks here in Palo Alto. Drop me a line at jesse@20bits.com or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/farmerje
Corruption:
1. What happens when bad incentives aren't identified and eliminated.
I just have Pandora with about 40 artists that I liked. Also did the whole thumb up and thumb down for most songs, so it usually just plays the things I like non-stop
Google's chief economist has been quoted as saying Google has a "GDP beta" of one. So this shouldn't really be a surprise.
The end result (Macro-Evolution) cannot be empirically observed in action.

Neither can God.

Don't feel bad for me, because I am just as happy putting my faith in the existence of God (an entity that cannot be empirically observed), as you are putting your faith in the existence of Macro-Evolution (another process that cannot be empirically observed).

As soon as Macro-Evolution is empirically observed, then I will accept it as fact.

But for now, it's apparent we agree that it's simply a matter of where we're assigning our faith, I'm more content believing that the correct picture/end result is that these complex systems had a designer.
From the vids I saw, the main benefits of getting a .Tel domain is so people can easily retrieve your contact by going to your .Tel site either on their PC or mobile device. This information, in turn, can easily be updated by some kind of admin panel by the user, which in turn is updated by anyone else retrieving the info.

Couldn't this same thing be achieved with a simple script and a database? I fail to see the utility of going to a .Tel domain rather than company.com/info or something else. Is it just to bypass the need for hosting?
Another impressive DJ that caught my eye during the YouTube Live event: Mike Relm. I haven't heard all his stuff but his mixing on Live was pretty impressive.
If you wish me a happy birthday with the intention of "promoting yourself" (trust me, I'll know) then yes, even #5.
Something to let you use all your Firefox add-ons (AdBlock, Foxmarks, Greasemonkey) from inside a locked-down IE6/7 at work could be pretty suave.
If your definition of adult does not include most of the population over 18 (or 21), you should find a new word. That one is taken.
You beat me to it. Though technically they dropped the "Google" from the name, and now it's just "Gears".
RDP is actually a little better than VNC if you are using windows (imo)

personally, I do everything in Linux in a shell. The only GUI I use on a regular basis is the web browser. With SSH, unless your connection is just horrible, it's difficult to tell if you are working locally or on a box hundreds of miles away. But if you want a GUI, that doesn't help you. Use RDP.
amen! godspeed is a must have.

i definitely prefer repetitive or ambient, non-lyrical music. sometimes i'll even put on sleep-music albums

a couple albums in particular standout:
* philip glass & ravi shankar - passages
* kawabata makoto (of acid mother temple) - infinite love
- i think this album is tuned to my brain's beta wave frequency. its like sonic ritalin
* robert rich - somnium

for more energy i usually look to montreal. godspeed and silver mt zion always please. a little bit lesser known is "do make say think" who are one of my desert-island bands.

and sometimes, just sometimes, i just have to listen to dancey trance music. check out onnomon (who is also, by the way, my brother and an old timey hacker)

as a side note, i mostly use rhapsody for online music. its just straightforward and easy... well worth the monthly subscription fee. if only the site was a bit faster.

as far as free services go, i really like the spirit of last.fm but pandora's recommendations are consistently better.
Also, if I'm a terrorist I'm not thinking as far ahead as OP did here. I see something move, I unload at it.
Ask HN: Edit vs Delete
You've just written a dumb comment. Someone has taken the time to point it out (downmods included), and you realise the comment is stupid.

What do you do now? Edit the post and put in an apology? Delete the post and through silence deny it every existed?

Perhaps I'm cynical, but isn't deleting incentivised? Fewer people will read the comment, you will obtain fewer downmods, and it's likely only your responder will remember what you wrote.

But isn't it more honorific (grabbing for a word there) to man up and apologise, even within the allowed delete time frame?
I love Ramaze because it lets you write Ruby without any magic. (there be no dragons!)

# helloworld.rb
require 'ramaze'

class MainController < Ramaze::Controller
def index
"hi world!"
end
end

Ramaze.start :adapter => :thin, :port => 3000

# ruby helloworld.rb
# curl http://localhost:3000/ => "hi world!"

Don't even need a webcast to understand that.
Why Apple is great at interfaces when others are not
Yeah the credit score thing is pretty useless. After I graduated college, I had about 30K in student loans and 10K in credit card debt(used one of those 0% APR offers).

I just started repaying the college loans, and made 3 or so payments on the credit card...and my credit score? 763(that meant that there was a 2% rate that I would be delinquent)

Granted I didn't have any collections or anything like that...but still thinking that someone with 40K in credit card debt and no job had only 2% default rate just seems wrong.
"Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."
Joomla has been lagging behind the curve for some time now. They have tried to change this with their new 1.5.x releases and I understand that this new branch has done much to address the issues that Joomla has had for a long time, but they already lost me before that.

From a hackers POV who is interested in maximum flexibility, and using the most modern tools for the job that also promote standards compliance, I think there are much better options out there, such as Drupal (staying in the LAMP space). Joomla just feels more clunky and legacy to me than other options. I also really disliked past experiences I've had with the Mambo CMS and Joomla is a fork of Mambo. There is also more of an "industry" around selling add-on modules and templates for Joomla, where as just about all modules/templates for Drupal are free (as in speech and beer).

Joomla would be "as easy to update as a blog" if all you are using it for is to run a blog. But to be fair, this is generally true of Drupal and other similar offerings as well.

Neither Joomla or any other CMS is a "SEO miracle, bringing search results up several ranks just [by] being installed" this is complete bullshit. It comes down entirely to how the template that the site will use has been designed, how the content of the site is organised, marked up and optimised, and all the other normal issues that surround SEO. How well all this comes together of course comes down to whether the people doing the design/development know what they're doing.

From a "business guy" POV - who assumedly cares little for such things as standards compliance and maximum flexibility (he has a specific function to fill only) - in the end, There would not be a lot of difference between Joomla and another similarly featured CMS, as long as the guys providing the technical skills know their shit. Depending on your priorities, Joomla is not inherantly crap, nor is any other CMS a magic bullet. Just make sure that these guys offering services to your friend are of the afore mentioned type who know their shit.

But to me, if someone is recommending Joomla as their primary offering, this does not inspire confidence in me that the people doing the recommending have their "finger on the pulse" as it were.
I'd just leave it. I left quite a bit of silly comments, but as the volume of stupidity scattered across the internet increases, the awareness of my thoughts does too. It helps me learn to develop my own viewpoint and respect those of others. If anything, leaving it up will show other people alternate opinions and will potentially allow others to learn from your mistakes.

edit: I edit mostly to add information that I forgot to add when posting rather than modify the existing post. And I love how wonderfully reflexive this comment is!
"boutique consultancy"? I'm not sure whether to applaud for a precision application of language or cringe at the pretentiousness of a deluded grab at prestige....and of course on their main page they call themselves a "Customer Experience Strategy consultancy".

Of course, I'm American, so maybe I'm just too unrefined to properly appreciate their own eloquently enhanced customer experience strategy. ;)
1. Site Meter Crashes For IE Users

Blunder? That's genius!
Looks interesting, but I don't know if their architecture can scale as much as appengine.
What a ridiculous question. You, sir, are a moron.

Edit: I suppose I got a bit carried away there. Please accept my sincerest apologies. What I meant to say was that this is exactly the kind of insightful question I love to see on this forum. Huzzah!

Edit: Where's the delete button?

Edit: Shit! Fuck! Ass!

Edit: Again, my deepest apologies.
So basically your 30% goes to Loopt.
Is anybody else having trouble with the upmod buttons?
Just within the past week or so I've noticed something annoying when trying to upmod articles on the front page. Most of the time, instead of registering the request in the background and letting me get on with things, I get sent to a URL like http://news.ycombinator.com/vote?by=epall&for=383929&dir=up&whence=%6e%65%77%73 which just shows a blank page. I have to hit Back to get back to the articles. Is anybody else experiencing this bug?
Brevity … is wit.
C Corp with doubly-taxed dividends...

Do you have an accountant that works with you? The CPA I run to whenever I have a question has a lot of his own boiler plates he has accumulated over the years and has a list of lawyers he has worked with for other companies.

The best resource for finding someone local is someone else local.
Its a 4 second fix that makes it look better. It's not a recommendation for common practice or a long term solution.

You're telling me this doesn't look better than it currently is: http://i34.tinypic.com/2iaelav.jpg
Honourable. Honorific doesn't mean what you think it does.
care to share a source on the 17 year claim?
Mac users: Please take Technologizer's Mac security survey
The byline should be "how to write a blog telling people how to startup, even though your startup has like 8 customers, until your blog is way more popular than your startup."
Twitter's bad news is a bad business
Thanks. Will remember for future usage.