skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for making the connection!

A while ago, when thinking about the boundary between long and short, decided that the problem was that we use discrete labels for continuous phenomena.

I suppose this may be related to the Anchor Bias (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/anchoring-and-a.html). Something that is not a heap, after a grain of sand is added, is still a heap. Something that is a heap, after a grain of sand is removed, is still a heap.

An interesting instance of this arose when determining how numbers are described in the Piraha language, a language with only three words for quantities. Seeing one battery, the Piraha called it "ho'i". When they added one more (a large increase percentage-wise), they immediately switched to another word, so therefore "ho'i" means "one." But when they started with ten batteries and started removing them, one of them started calling it "ho'i" at six batteries, so therefore "ho'i" really means "few." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Numerals_a...) I'd explain that as: when deciding whether to call something "few" or "many," they anchored off the initial judgement, and looked at the percentage change. So one politician could convince voters a 10% tax increase will have no effect by starting off "Well, what would a 0% increase do? How about 1%?", while another could convince them it would be devestating by starting off at 20%.
Another great book by the same: The Emperor's New Mind. Covers everything from Turing machines to the Mandelbrot set to Quantum Mechanics. An amazing read.
Get as nit-picky on the domain as you like; sometimes, it's still not enough to determine which "site" you're going to. Think of /~user/ directories, for example, or hosted subsites. Not everything that's distinct from its owner has its own domain.

The ideal split would actually require something like:

<link rel="Site Root" href="http://example.com.nyud.net:4561/~bob/thebigsite/oldv1/">

as metadata on the resulting page. (As an aside, does HN currently retrieve the resulting pages for any metadata when submitting? Doing an AJAX autofill of the default submission title from the <title> tag might be a good idea.)

For most sites, "Site Root" would just be the same as the domain name. Perhaps, then, it could have that as the default assumption of any parsers, the actual tag just overriding it for the sites that need it.

Also, you know what already (mostly) provides the same information? The <base> tag! Oddly, something we've long dropped from our HTML vocabulary.
with that name I expected a web app that links an execution chamber to a sms system.

Every time someone texts to the account with [1] the voltage is increased by 1. And when a person texts with [0] the voltage is dropped by 1. All users would be able to watch the result on a webcam.

The app would be monetized by charging $.99 per message. And by letting users buy volts in bulk at a discount.

Instant millions!
This one, I might add, is available on Google Books.
Finally! The Crawl always annoyed me and distracted me the main programming. Interestingly, I think the Crawl is really a US trend (there is pretty tough cable news competition) as CNN International and BBC World, when I've seen them, employed a Flipper.

Hopefully ESPN will do something similar so I'm not distracted by off-season MLB moves while I'm trying to watch basketball.
I don't know about you, but i code(and generally exist) for the purpose of improving my self as a human being. Now you could argue that the only reason i want to be BETTER is the subconscious need to procreate. I believe(oh, how i hate this word, but cant think of a better one, maybe suspect, but thats not much better) that curiosity, obsessiveness and general interest in technology are all tools in my arsenal of self improvement. It is my desire as a human and as a male to realize my self. That means to procreate in some way, be it through children, or through something that i invent or anything else that is going to stay after my death.

ps, i actually tried to impress a girl with my |\/|4D SK1llZzZ, don't do that, even if the girl knows how to program(especially if she knows, it will be easier to see that you are an asshole).
Return-type errors force people using your code to also add error checking into their own applications at every call. It's an intrusive error handling method, and this is one of the reasons I don't use it.

The clear advantages of exceptions over return-type error handling is:

- Exceptions cannot be ignored, error codes are ignored by default.

- Exceptions can (and do) contain significantly more information about the error. Stack traces are typical but since exceptions are objects they can contain any amount of extra information. Error codes are typically integers. Sometimes they're just negative integers.

- Exceptions free-up the return of functions for useful results. You can call functions as parameters: readAll(OpenFile(GetFileName())).

Pretty much any negative practice regarding exceptions apply equally to error codes.
Bah, found it - http://jackpot.netbeans.org/

How disappointing :(
JavaScript Archive Network - CPAN for JavaScript
I feel compelled to add that my work didn't result in anyone losing their job. Rather, the company was already experiencing strong pressure both financially and, perhaps more so, philosophically from the senior management team that was parachuted in from elsewhere. Headcount in my department was reduced via attrition and a slightly accelerated retirement.

I kept the department afloat. I should have bailed, but personally it wasn't a good time for a transition.

I'd hate for my work to result in others being laid off. In a prior position, I spent a lot of time mentoring and defending a replacement, giving her time to get up to speed.

I also spent a lot of time volunteering my "kung fu" to acquaintances in other departments. Saving an accountant two days' work sorting manually through borked phone records, via a couple of minute Excel hack, provided a certain satisfaction.

There's so much emphasis on "competition" as well as "the way". (All the more ironic for all the "corporate speak" espoused regarding "cooperation".) I'd rather grow people while appreciating their differences, and hoping for some of the same in return.

To try to tie this back to "11th grade", it would be nice if "the Perl hacker" didn't so often have to feel themself quite so the outsider. Or maybe that trait is orthogonal fro the "Perl/hacker" trait? Seems to be a fairly strong correlation.
Comments like these add nothing to said threads.
I haven't seen this happening directly. I haven't seen founders thinking "We can't go public, so we'd better build something small."

It could be happening via investors, though. It could be that e.g. Google decided to go for the big time partly because there was so much funding available in 1998, which in turn was true because investors were hoping for IPOs.
Perhaps they give users the motivation to submit other interesting links like this one.
I like your syntax coloring, what editor/color scheme?
Exceptions cannot be ignored

Yet they routinely are, or they are "handled" using a top-level catch that allows for no meaningful action and is little better than throwing the exception to the user.

Error codes are typically integers.

There's no reason why an error can't be an object.

Exceptions free-up the return of functions for useful results.

The practice I currently favor is to represent errors as objects of the same type the function returns, objects that represent something meaningful about the error. Of course this isn't always possible and in any case requires good design. There are a lot of advantages to it, though.

Pretty much any negative practice regarding exceptions apply equally to error codes.

Except the one big problem with exceptions, which is the transfer of control out of context.
Of course not. After-tax returns influence them indirectly. Fellow grad student goes to work for a startup, ends up with a house vs merely a nice car.
Oh I guess I was thinking of the founders, not the employees.
This feels a bit symbiotic, given that a big chunk of git is written in Perl.

Should we now watch to see whether Python chooses Mercurial or Bazaar? Seems they're already leaning towards the latter: http://www.python.org/dev/bazaar/

Sorry Ruby fans, I don't know of any Ruby DVCS for you to pair up with. Even as popular as git is with ruby-devs, I can't see git ever using ruby itself...
70 years sounds pretty good, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Toyota was supported by the Japanese government (through subsidies, capital controls and trade restrictions) for quite a few years after it switched over from textile manufacturing to automobiles in 1933. It was even bailed out in 1949 when it had major liquidity problems.

So while the 70 years of no operating losses is technically true, there was a period of time where Toyota was practically propped up by the Japanese government.

References:

(1) http://www.shmula.com/291/toyota-motor-corporation-company-h...

(2) The economist Ha-Joon Chang also has some good discussion on the Japanese government's involvement with Toyota (eg. http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=96...)
I totally accept it's not a perfect indication of authorship (or ownership). That's a much harder problem.

It's more than a little big of extra granularity would help. This has been recognized as the case with blogspot.com and it seems like it wouldn't be a bad thing to do to all domains.
This book is a rarity: a comprehensive survey, with rigor, yet gentle and welcoming to the amateur. The writing is wonderful.

One oddity: I keep looking for a mention of Paul Erdos in the book, and haven't found one.
I should probably read one of his books, seeing as he was at my graduation ceremony and got his honorary professorship. (from what I remember about his speech there wasn't much more than the usual "inspirational" stuff, though)
The next 10 days i will be locked in my room, learning lisp. I will bring coffee, snacks and some weights for exercising when learning gets tedious and i need to get rid of some of the stress.
You Know Chrysler is Toast Because
From the Department of Badly Chosen Defaults
I've always wrestled with the whole Science vs. Religion issue, and my conclusion is that we shouldn't necessarily question either group, but the debate itself.

Why can't Science and Religion complement each other? I don't believe in the 7-day creation, but that doesn't mean there's no higher power that played a role in the big bang, creation of life, and subsequent evolution.

The biggest problem Religion has is its resistance to change. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, across many centuries. It was written for its own time. As our knowledge and understanding of the world around us and the universe at large changes, so must our interpretation of the Bible.

It may sound lame, but the movie Dogma had a profound impact on my religious beliefs. Dick and fart jokes aside, the message that it is better to have a good idea rather than strict beliefs has stuck with me since I first watched it many years ago. The humor may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is worth watching once.
"but there is a lot of laws setup to protect small investors"

Or to prevent them from investing in private companies without giving a piece to NY bankers? (Not implying you necessarily disagree)

Cray started illegally with small investors who all ended up making a lot of money. In the Midwest too! Good thing Washington isn't allowing that to happen again.
You don't have to eval JSON.

http://www.json.org/js.html
Are people who are social media, marketing, or productivity experts really considered "geeks" by the geek community? For example, Tim Ferriss is at #4, but is he considered a "geek"?
Looks good. Small thing, you want to put JavaScript on the bottom of your page so that the page gets displayed faster.

YSlow is a great tool for this, http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

I also see that you are hosting prototype yourself. Why not use Google's copy to speed things up?

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/
Why wouldn’t a bank pay out 100 percent of feds money as executive bonuses?
> I haven't seen this happening directly. I haven't seen founders thinking "We can't go public, so we'd better build something small."

You haven't seen them say it directly, but how many applications do you get that are for fairly ambitious and big projects? What percentage are front-end heavy web-apps/aggregators? What percentage are fairly ambitious and require a serious research, development and have a huge potential for growth? That's a question you may be able to answer better than anyone else (although I'd imagine most YC applicants are a self-selected crowd and those hoping for an exit other than M&A and to hire a great deal of talent may not even apply to YC).

I also didn't think about the investment angle at all. I wonder how much investors are pushing for companies to sell quickly vs. grow.
Ask YC: Let's start a Hacker News book club
This is in response to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406995

How about each week or month (I know we're all busy, so perhaps monthly is better), we all agree on a book to read and discuss? I am very busy for many parts of the year, and often don't have time to read leisurely even though I would very much like to. I imagine the idea of an HN book club would help in this regard, as I would be much more motivated to make time (like a co-founder motivates you to keep going!).

What do you guys say? If this post has enough upvotes (say 10), start discussing options for the first book, and whether weekly or monthly would work better.

EDIT: lallysingh below has made the following suggestion of topics. This seems like a very good fit judging by the posts on HN, as well as the comments already present.

1. High-level programming, probably functional-related.

2. Business/startup

3. Some quality-of-life stuff.

Perhaps newer releases (or exotic material) might be a good choice due to the presence of ideas not yet assimilated, discussed, or pondered by many of us.

EDIT2: Judging by the time concerns below, maybe it is wise to start with something short (say under 250 pages).

EDIT3: If we're going to go with fiction, this looks like a good list to pick from:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century

Personally, I've read almost none of these!
I did. And on that note I'm off to support my local Boston brewers.
What kind of book? Coding related? Business related? Harry Potter?
what's wrong with showing a different viewpoint on yc news as opposed to a homogenous one? besides I can say the same for the keynesian view point
Taoist sexual tradition is fragmented and diverse. This particular site's bias/philosophy/view is one of many.

For a more moderate and well-written exploration/manual on Taoist sexual practices, I suggest Mantak Chia's "The Multi-Orgasmic Man", which teaches the practitioner to separate ejaculation from orgasm (among other things.) It also affirms that regular ejaculation is necessary and beneficial to men.

Notably, there are a variety of things that associate themselves with the label "Taoism", and it is important to understand that there is not a single authoritative canon or lineage that represents "real" Taoism. Rather, there is a complex history of various cross-pollinating traditions throughout chinese history, some of which are closely associated with people who associated themselves with the idea of the Tao.
blog (to market yourself) and be able to show people what you've already done (to show your credentials / expertise / authority on some technology)
Most likely Textmate with the railscasts theme (http://railscasts.com/about).
That was my initial question as well, and this thread exists to find out! :)

I say we mix it up. Something that is readable by and interesting to nearly all of us, but unread by most of us. The former requirement means technical books (even something like SICP) are unfortunately unwise choices, partially due to their nature and partially due to the longer reading times. I will wait for some more upvotes (interest) and comments before expressing my own suggestions.
Redeye VC: Top 10 Blackberry Applications
" ... coming soon for Linux..."

:(
"""
Textecution on their child’s Android phone, they are asked for an ‘admin phone number’, which will be contacted if the child ever needs to temporarily deactivate the app (like if they’re on a train or in the passenger seat).
"""

This could be really annoying if the train is underground which is probably the case for most subway systems.
pull this - this is a duplicate
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-*
Jeez, this sounds good, but if people here are like me then they already have about 5 books on their list that they want to read.
I don't know how many would commit.
Ruby speaks .git : http://github.com/github/grit/tree/master

Go ruby glue, go!
Well, it's not even quantitative metric, it's ordering metric. Making quantitative statements about IQ is quite meaningless. It is not like height or weight.

It seems to be easy to get it wrong. Even the author of the article, who studies giftedness professionally, made such mistake (she tells that IQ 190 to IQ 130 is like IQ 130 to IQ 70).

What's that supposed to mean? The meaning of IQ 190 is that it is 6 standard deviations from the mean (rarity around 1 in billion), while both IQ 130 and 70 are 2 standard deviations from the mean (rarity around 1 in 50).
lol, the cartoon at the end is the best part. Pretty harsh analysis - but spot on given how clueless Detroit is.

"For those in Detroit who have never operated a lemonade stand, or any other business, the way profits are generated is by making products at a price people want to buy them for, and then producing them, with all costs allocated, for less than you are selling them for. It’s not apparent that this is a principle that Detroit understands."
When I said I hadn't seen founders thinking that, I was also implying that I have deep enough conversations with them that if they were thinking that, it would have shown.

I'd say many if not most of the startups YC funds have the potential to go public, if the founders were sufficiently driven. (In saying that I'm relying on the fact that practically no companies that go public look like they will at the start. Apple started out as a company that was going to sell plans for computers.)
Don't forget the changes in 1.9 http://railspikes.com/2008/9/8/lambda-in-ruby-1-9

And the much cooler Fibers, which you can think of as a reentrant block, kind of.
I wonder how many people actually use the "free" side of the freemium model in practice. I know I signed up for a ton of apps but never actually used them.
USB Flash Drive Comparison - 21 Tested and Compared
Well, that's the other side of the coin. Sometimes the troll will spur a change in the tools/app itself to support the scenario.
1) carton of camels
2) a few dozen energy drinks
3) iPod with my elton john and barabara streisand
Shockingly popular indie games aren't really anything new--its just that people seem to be noticing them more, especially in this day and age of extremely high budget games. People are always surprised to see one or two-man projects earning money on the same level as games like Crysis, but it seems to have been going on for quite a while.

See my post at http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=398305 for another example of a very successful indie game developer.
I have on briefly heard of him, but love reading well-done explanations. This is going on the wish list.
A nice change of pace given patio11's comments from earlier today:

"I work in the Nagoya, the Town Toyota Built, though not for Toyota. (Well, to the extent that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.)

The great thing about Japanese corporate discipline: when GM has a tough year, GM blames the year. No way we could have predicted spiraling gas prices, a down economy, and increased foreign competition. When Toyota has a tough year, Toyota blames Toyota. You can bet that somewhere in the bowels of that megacorp is a team of economists reevaluating their currency hedging strategy, while another team is working 16 hour days coming up with a car that captures the imagination of the American consumer but is priced to move as compared to the Prius.

Keep doing this whole "Learn from failure and overcome it" thing for a few decades and you end up the biggest car company in the world and make the competition look like sniveling amateurs."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545
Do programmers read books? Or is the book industry dead?
Plenty of people predicted something. Hell I knew the housing market was due for a crash way in advance and I'm not inordinately well informed.

The problem isn't predicting what will happen it's predicting when. Nobody got that right as far as I can see.
I honestly don't think it matters.
Why isn't there a startup that just facilitates book clubs?
15+ years of WIRED
Review my site: StatTweets.com
Oh, yeah? I just saw one of those with 0 points! (How did that happen???).
I have a suggestion for what to read: the posts that make up Joel Spolsky's Introduction to Best Software Writing I. [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.h...]

Most of the entries included in the book are solid articles, but most tend to merely skim the surface of the topic at hand, and I would love to go deeper and discuss the posts with the HN community.

They are brief enough to have something like one per week, and not distract too much from our day jobs (no more than HN itself, anyway). Also, I believe all the entries are still freely available at their original sites, so we don't have to worry about people not participating because they could not find the book.

As for downsides, I think a couple of the posts were submitted to HN before, but I think most, if not all, of them are worth revisiting. Also, it could be the case that many members have already read the book, but again, I think these posts are good enough to read again and discuss.
People could toss out suggestions and whatever gets the most upvotes gets chosen as the HN Book of the Month?

The only thing i would ask is that when people pick it, remember that book clubs are generally meant to inspire discussion. It's kinda hard to discuss some technical books that take awhile to digest.
I've been trying to hire a perl programmer for about a year now. It's just not where the smart people want to go with their careers, but we have a huge codebase built up in it, so we're stuck.
Sometimes all I can do is say "Excuse me," and walk away.

Then I call my therapist/support vendor for the next three hours, sobbing about deep emotional scarring I had from DOS when I was a small child.
Redmine.org
Update: now it's #1!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/229575/ref=p...
> In saying that I'm relying on the fact that practically no companies that go public look like they will at the start. Apple started out as a company that was going to sell plans for computers

Wow that's something I haven't entirely considered, despite knowing it to be true. Somewhat adds to my argument, however, without the chilling effects of regulation we may have seen a more interesting and diverse market -- but now I am in purely speculative realm.
IRC is your friend. I have gotten almost all my best jobs from corporations/people on an IRC channel looking for a contract for assistance doing X.

Replace X with your specialty, and find the associated Freenode channel.

Depending on your field, mailing lists may be useful as well.
I'm going to launch BookClubiouslyr before anyone else can!
Whoa, how does that make sense though? The idea is to keep the methane hydrates nice and frozen at the bottom of the ocean. Not to release them into the atmosphere. Sure, 10 tons of pure methane is worse than 10 tons of CO2. But we don't want 10 tons of either extra gas in the atmosphere. Its kind of like being stranded on an island with 3 sandwiches. If you ration, you'll have food for longer. But to take your argument, you should eat them all right away because you'll be hungry eventually anyway.
Youtube Greeting Cards