skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't believe the number of web frameworks out there. If anything the amount of comments just illustrates how easy it is to roll your own.
I had a couple of thoughts, but hard to imagine how effective they might be:

1. Limit the number of votes users get a day/hour/time_period - This might make people more discerning (in general, but also perhaps where they put their time).

2. No karma for story votes. Still have voting, but just don't count it (either that or have it as a separate score) -- Possibly make people more focused on comments on a few more sticky topics rather than a constant stream of topics... Right now the karma system (perhaps) encourages more and more articles.
What humans do to recognize each other is totally different from "biometric authentication" as the term is used in computer security.
Take two of the Seagate saga
How about a slow feed that I could check once a week and only get the week's 30 best stories?
If you have to ask, you've passed the point where it is.

Reading the news is the kind of thing you do to fill in interstitial time that is not fungible with other activities, not something you do for its own sake, or should ever "make time" for, or that is ever inherently important. There may be important news, but the defining property of news is not importance, but newness.

I think that many here (and elsewhere) likely suffer from (to some degree) a kind of information-age malaise akin to scrupulosity (obsession over sinfulness). It's a condition where people feel anxiety over not being completely informed, or at least informed enough to have an opinion on every subject.

How often do you read an article (or bookmark it, or InstaPaper it, or tag it "toread", etc.) not because you want to read that article, but you feel like you should know more about that subject? How many unread items do you have in your RSS reader that you keep thinking you're actually going to read someday? That's what I mean.

It's an impossible task, but trying can very easily consume all of your time. You "just" have to learn to flip the switch from input to output without ever feeling "done".
#3 is a good idea - Although time might be difficult to calculate reliably. Page views might be a better metric.

I sort of have this system already - I watch my karma and try and use that as a negative feedback loop (i.e. try and keep in the same general increase as other peers).
Every start-up that relies on someone else (eg. Twitter) for part of their core competency is subject to the whims of that company. The risk of that happening is something that every developer must consider. Places like the App Store are relatively safe, one would think. Google closing down services certainly brings up questions as far as developing an API utilizing less popular services.

This reduction also creates opportunities. For example, Evernote made it easy to import Google Notebook data, thus gaining off of Google axing Notebook.
I'm a co-founder at a startup called Boffery, a visual diary for people's sex lives. (Think Geni.com for sex.)

The sex angle alone doesn't sound terribly important, but our long-term plan is to license the technology to other social networks -- or, and this is terribly unlikely but obviously tempting, become a large-scale general-interest social network on our own.

We have a spec, an early prototype built by our one developer, a forthcoming angel investment, a thousand people on our beta-tester waiting list, and a plan for getting to revenue (but not profit) by the end of the year. If you're interested, I can introduce you to our project manager. E-mail me at nick@toomuchnick.com.
From the article:

In its report, “Newspapers in Crisis: Migrating Online,” the research firm estimates that newspaper advertising revenues dropped 16.4% to $37.9 billion in 2008 and expects that by 2012, those revenues will tumble to $28.4 billion - slightly more than one-half the industry’s revenue peak of $49.4 billion in 2005.

Since 2006, ad revenues have declined quickly, eMarketer said, adding that it expects a 15.9% drop in 2009 that will pull ad revenues down to $31.9 billion.
I get the concept but my problems with the app are

1) what's the point?

As in, really... What's the point? Success for Twitter users is to get people to recognize their brand/personality and not so much piecemeal tweets. Just reading individual tweets of random strangers is boring. And if I wanted to read topical messages I would just use summize.

2) why is this engaging?

As Twitter increase towards more to conversational styles amongst its users, an out of context message is jarring. To the point where I have not much interest in perusing your site. In fact, if the person is interesting at all I would much rather just follow them. But a Twitter user recommendation engine this is not.

3) how do I know this is working?

The instructions to find the missing word makes it awkward. How do I know the missing word is because of the app in play or because the original Twitter user wasn't dyslexic? It's also too much of a chore to parse and reparse a 140 character sentence to see if it's broken. Brains don't work that way--we automatically self-correct sentence subconsciously.
You're halfway correct. This question went away 3 or 4 years ago, but in the other direction.

Everybody independently figured out that 35 DIV tags half-nested into each other is actually MORE markup than a table, and it's less readable. So we all went back to using Tables for stuff that looks like Tables.

I thought we copied you on the memo. Sorry about that!
Struts2. Very lightweight and its gets out of your way.

Since it is Java we get to leverage some of the incredible Java libraries out there like Guice.

We've tried a few other frameworks. We build our prototype in web.py. Very simple, but I couldn't get used to not living in IntelliJ.

We tried a previous project in Rails, but it did too much 'magic' for us and the scaffolding seemed a bit too brittle.

To be fair the last time I used Rails in production was in the 1.1 days, so it's been a while.
Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but most significantly wealthy people I know read the newspaper (usually, several newspapers), and I think keeping up-to-date on the world around you is an important part of being a successful member of society (regardless of whether we define that as monetary, intellectual, etc). As such, I would have to say that this is really a gift to the 18 year olds.

I often try to explain to my friends in Northern Europe (who are in their late teens, early 20s) that the average American doesn't read the newspaper. They really don't believe me, but then they start to think about it and realize that this is one of the reasons we have such a ridiculous political system. When you have a large populace that doesn't read, their source of news is entirely through sound bites; thus, everything becomes dumbed down and sensational (for example, Howard Dean yells at an event and is suddenly no longer a viable political candidate? WTF?).

You can't have a working democracy in a land of illiterates.
Use a good CSS grid framework like Blueprint, Bluetrip, or YUI. They make most supposedly "tricky" CSS layouts (like 3 column liquid) quite easy.

And of course, remember that it's not necessarily an either/or decision. Sometime part of your page really is a grid, and really should be a table.
The burden is on you to find evidence that an employee's work is slipping. They prima facie have zero obligation to you to justify their off-the-clock activities. Even informing you of those activities I would take as a token gesture of goodwill. In your specific case you have not given any evidence of failure to perform on this employee's part. You've projected your own insecurities onto this third party but not demonstrated any issue actually being present. If this employee's work has objectively suffered then can his ass and get on with life. If his work has not deteriorated then you've got your example right there. Sitting under your nose.

Quit worrying about what this employee can or can't do. Pay attention to what he does or doesn't do.
Just for funsies, here's a pastebin that shows the CSS for a 3-column liquid layout in its simplest incarnation, and then a second set of rules for the same HTML that produce a 2-column fixed layout, with space for a horizontal navbar.

http://pastebin.com/f51ee9672
That looks really cool; how's that been working out? Is that in production? If Ruby had Gambit Scheme's serializable continuations, that would be pretty interesting times.
Agreed, it was a huge failure to clearly think about designer's problems.

We have decades of experience with real layout models in both traditional graphic design software and in developmental software that has layout manager.

And nobody thought that being able to flow several columns on a webpage would be useful?
I believe the sustainable model for media distribution is to micro-charge multiple time for the ability to timeshift and placeshift content. A convenience tax, so to speak. Physical mediums are antiquities in our digital device world.

Those eggheads over at YouTube/TiVo/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft surely must be working on something like this. I mean, how else do any of them justify their salaries?
There is another distinguishing factor about the Group 2s that I really wish the article had brought up; some of them honestly don't give a damn about the product. The product is an end-point, and after that they either need to find another project to work on or they become unemployed. Even if there will always be more work, the risk of appearing idle during a project transition, and thus redundant, looms always. So, the goal becomes pushing out that end-point as far as possible without making the project so impractical that it is canceled.

This pile of process and paper is not a necessary evil to them, but something they want to actively encourage. If they could spend anywhere between 3 and 24 months having meetings, doing design specs, fleshing out requirements, and going through 2^n revisions of the same, they'll push for 24 months regardless. They don't do this to be actively malicious to the company or the product, but because they don't care about the company or the product. To them, it is just another job, and the point then becomes to keep it and get paid for doing it as long as possible.
You could teach her that "fuck" is a good word to express a specific emotion. Using it all the time risks other people thinking she is vulgar. Using it at just the right moment can be very effective in conveying her thinking.

I have a new daughter, and this is the approach I'm going to try. We'll try to convey that there are no bad words, per se -- only more or less appropriate times to use words. We'll also point out others' likely reactions.

I still remember how in University a friend of mine who "never" swore got everyone to pay attention when she finally did say "fuck".
IIRC some of them (the pythons) met at Oxford. I think at least one may have a higher degree of some sort.
What humans do to recognize each other is totally different from "biometric authentication" as the term is used in computer security.

How is it different? Your acquaintances do not sense general factors of Wmfness based on your height, build, voice, accent, verbal expressions, face, hair-color, hair-style, hair-length, facial hair, clothes, accessories, gait, hand-size, foot-size, body odor, etc.?
FTP mounting as a filesystem was the big thing? Wowzers.
It's great that you got it up and running so fast, and it's noteworthy the way your marketing it. I like the concept of a "microwebsite" ... they've been popping up all over the place recently ... but I don't like how they are inextricably linked to a blog post about how "this is the way to do it" and "simplicity is key" and all of this other stuff, as if the OP believes he is God's gift to the internet.

"Stop bloating your shit, and you'll be able to do shit fast" -- I'll keep that in mind next time I have an idea that requires two buttons on a webpage. Hopefully I'll manage.

Finally, there is really nothing new about this, other than how timely it was put out. Other than that, it's clearly a gimmick that I wouldn't be too proud of. Imagine if I created a site that said "click here to win a free 6-pack of beer" and then went on in a blog post about how "people like the idea of getting free stuff" and "what people like better, though, is getting free stuff with minimal effort." And then going on and on about it, as if I'm the expert.

I don't know why I'm being so harsh.. this is just what's coming to mind. It's nothing personal, I just don't like this gimmicky stuff, I guess :)
Also spam and eggs are common metasyntatic variables, and references to the pythons in comments is encouraged.
I got hauled into the Principal's office in grade 4 or 5 for yelling "SHIT!" in the playground. The Principal asked what my parents would think when they found out that I'd been swearing. I told him that they wouldn't mind, since it was appropriate in the circumstances. He let me go.
What's the solution to this? No matter what you do, without a validation system (eg: verify email, credit card, etc), there's no way to differentiate between people.
I think this is just geek angst passively breaking out.

Why would people care about MPAA or the RIAA except for the passing glances of those acronyms while going through the morning paper or during a movie pre-commercial? It serves them no purpose to care about those organizations unless they're being sued.

Mommy dearest doesn't know what Pirate Bay is, much less torrent files. But if you tell her that she can get stuff for free, then by all means she'll jump on the deal. Getting her to think that this is some epic battle between good and evil is just Hollywood fantasy.

And quite frankly, this attitude of "oh, I'll just keep stealing until they get it" is just counter-productive.
Ask HN: What are the best Arduino starter projects?
My arduino Duemilanove arrived today, and now I'm on the hunt for things to build with it. I've seen a lot of things online, but I'm wondering... What are the best projects to start with?
Would you be satisfied if it was only as successful as the Pet Rock?
Since when is it hard to do a three column layout with CSS? It is in fact quite easy, and always has been. What has been hard is three columns with a liquid center column that works in Internet Explorer without hacks. That's a Microsoft problem, not a CSS problem.
It's the itunes model all over again.

People want media in easy-to-consume form. They want it easy to browse and get.

Most will pay a nominal sum for it. Some will not.
Choosing one's operating system is not merely about possibility, it's about productivity.

If a system is simpler, and has fewer and more robust APIs that work for more attached systems, then in theory at least it will be less work to program for, the programs will require less maintenance, and tasks will be accomplished with less friction.

The question, of course, is whether this improvement is sufficient to warrant the many headaches of changing operating systems; in general, it isn't, which is why Plan 9 failed.
I wrote my own CMS/framework which I started about 8-9 years ago, so I use that. In my main business I sell a "pro" version of it as well as customization/hosting/etc, and naturally it's also the framework I use for my startup too. For those that are interested:

http://www.sitellite.org/

It's in PHP 4/5, GPL licensed, decently clean code (in 8 years there's obviously some cruft at this point :), but also has a few nice things built-in like a full CMS on top of it, multilingual support, a couple dozen modules that save some time, ORM library, and the ability to setup A/B tests just by editing a page, which is starting to come in handy these days.

Some challenges of rolling your own are that you have to write the documentation, and provide support/training/whatever else since developers aren't likely to be familiar with it (unless it's open and gains popularity). Some things to consider when weighing your options... :)
I started a project like this once, but never finished. Contact me if you want my incomplete "Perl to Python phrasebook." My goal was to help unfortunate Perl programmers migrate to Python.

One thing to look out for: things that are functions in some languages are syntax in others, methods in others, and complicated recipes in others. You need to give people sample code. For example, look at how each language wants you to express "length of an array/list:"

Python:
numbers = [4,8,15,16,23,42]
print len(numbers) # yields 6

Perl:
@numbers = (4,8,15,16,23,42);
print $#numbers + 1; # yields 6
# or...
$numlen = @numbers;
print $numlen;

Not really a "function" at all in Perl.
We're not yet using it in production, its only a few weeks old, but we will be in some of the things we're working on.

One of the main benefits is letting us run objective-j and cappuccino on the server, letting us share application data models in the client and the server.
Plus, sometimes it's just good to vent!

I think I saw you on an elevator pitch? Was it MakeFive? How much traffic do you get from that?
I like this idea... that's what I was getting at, only worded poorly.
I'm sure most people here will consider me crazy for saying this, but I really hope the music industry manages to make some inroads with these initiatives.

Here's my problem with the free culture / "information wants to be free" crowd -- when you decide you no longer place monetary value on intellectual property, you are merely impoverishing intellectuals and keeping those who run enterprises such as oil and mining companies in control of the world's wealth. Rather than making the world a better place by making intellectual property free, you're putting it into the hands of the very people many in this crowd hate.

I'm not saying that intellectual monopolies/oligarchies such as those seen in the 20th century are sensible; I'm merely saying that the free culture is, quite literally, economically retarded. Allowing creatives and intellectuals to pursue their art as a profession is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern society, I think; even better is the fact that you can pursue these things and make a significant amount of money which can be used to do lots of interesting things. We really need to figure out a way to preserve this -- the balance of power created by wealthy creatives pushing initiatives that run counter to the aims of wealthy industrialists is extremely important (Bono not withstanding, of course -- kidding).
I'd agree that they should. However, if someone's on the fence, pushing them in a productive direction might be something that serves our (well, pg's) goals, in which case it's not really about responsibility, but about pg's effect on others, something he will likely want to take responsibility for, at least to some extent.

Or, to lift a more succinct phrase, "lead us not into temptation". ;)
Ha! That's great! So glad to hear you found the right car for the job. Go Hacker News!
No, columns are awesome, and CSS3 in general looks like it does a lot more to make CSS useful for layouts. HTML 5 + CSS3 is going to be a designer's dream.
Juno looks pretty nice.
Encouraging and enforcing are very different: one increases usefulness, and the other decreases it.
i can't come up with much in the way of existing not for profit infrastructure institutions. do these exist in some form i can't think of? the closest i can come up with is a rural electrical co-op but i'm not sure that's quite the same thing.
Nope. If it's cold enough for ice, I keep my ass inside.
As George Washington said, "to secure peace, we must always be prepared for war."

We all want peace, but to achieve it, we must be prepared for war- a well regulated militia and armed private citizens can go a long way toward this (and is essential), but a professional military is an important element,too.
There's a difference between "an operating system as a platform for developing applications" and "an operating system as a system-level REPL".

As a platform for developing apps: not sure about plan9.

As a hypothetically richer system-level REPL: having a larger subset of "everything" accessible through a filesystem-like interface allowed Plan9 to offer at least the possibility of more possibilities here.

Fuse and the contributed filesystems are pretty close in spirit I think: eg, the grabfs filesystem for macfuse (which gives you access to the per-window images via a file system interface).
Django on AppEngine. Really fast turnaround and scaling is all taken care of(or will be).
This is intriguing, but not necessarily surprising. People have been rediscovering calculus for ages.

It does bring to mind the question of what /else/ has been lost to the ages, and how far ahead we would be right now without it. Like Ramujan, brilliance is not limited to the wealthy; just that the application of it often is (the wealthy can afford the time/energy to become educated, etc).
Django, because it doesn't have so much of that special magic. That's why I like it, it works and you know why and how it works. I have no idea if that makes sense. shrug
Getting There from Here - How should Obama reform health care? by Atul Gawande
or better yet, clip to evernote
If you are displaying a table of data, use <table>. <div> grids don't paste well into Excel. Tables really aren't evil, they are a better fit for many tasks where you effectively need a table and can generate the data in row order. Nested tables can be pretty evil. Go with a div grid if you feel the even the hint of wanting to nest.

See the triumph of KML (which mixes content and presentation) over straight GML (separate content and presentation) in the GIS world for comparison.
It crashed my FF the first time around...

It's worth taking a look, though.
The other disadvantage is that the other OS (Linux, at least), can steal the good ideas of it's competitors. Take /proc for example. Now, plan9 may have a nicer interface, but it cannot compete on a features-level.
"Most browsers will render CSS almost the same way".
Either you have an odd definition of most browsers or you are just completely wrong. CSS is implemented differently by most of the major browsers.
There's a hate-hate relationship, but in the Netherlands we do a good job of keeping motorized traffic and bike separated.
I don't follow. Even the best spam bots don't solve every CAPTCHA. If it's a miss (either because they got it wrong or because it's actually unsolvable), they'll just try again, no?

I would think actual humans have time that is more valuable than zombified Windows boxes.