skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. I would imagine this is an idea that is nearly impossible to turn a dime with.

What are your options really? Either charge a monthly fee for a service that your users can find for free elsewhere (either right now, or eventually) or you can slide in ads between the feeds you serve that no one is going to bother to click on anyway.

The big appeal of FeedBurner for most people is their subscriber count monitoring and, unfortunately for them, it's something they don't do a very good job of tracking to begin with.

The other big unspoken aspect of FeedBurner is that those very counts are so easy to manipulate that trusting anyone's numbers is too big of a leap of faith anyway. The whole system is about bunk now.
This might begin a useful discussion of the identity-authentication distinction and how it should inform web development projects.
I'm voting it up in the hopes that people more in the know will update this Microsoft perspective (the article is dated February 2006).
I'm a noob on such issues. Maybe some YHackers would like to link to some 2009-ish offerings about it?
Going back to the roots, the I-combinator is especially easy to define in lambda calculus: \x -> x.
The article is pretty light. I don't think it necessarily does any harm, but I think the article kind of misses the mark if you are someone that is really faced with this issue.

I would argue that picking the language also depends very much on the domain/platform/target you are writing software for. Is it a web application? Is it a desktop GUI app? Is it an RIA -- for web or desktop? Is it a scientific application that needs great math libraries? What are the performance characteristics? Does it need cross-platform support? Is it a distributed business enterprise system? Is it an embedded system? Is it a library? Do you want the library to be able to be used by many different platforms and languages? Does it have to integrate with other systems and what languages are those written in? What about 5 years down the road -- how do you think it will evolve?

Most likely -- answering the question on what the domain/platform/target will be will trim you to a very short-list of options. For example, if you are programming for an embedded system, you may have to use C because that's the only language you'll find compiler support for. Maybe there will be a C++ compiler -- but whether or not you choose it can depend on a lot of factors such as whether your team is comfortable with C++/OO...whether you even want to utilize OO...whether you can afford the additional memory/complexity associated with the features of C++...etc.
I would like to be able to provide my customers and prospects a link to the threads where I have made a comment about their specific problem. They could see what I have had to say as well as the ensuing discussion of other competent people.

This could provide incredible value for all of us.

Very little I tell them would have as much impact as our discussions of their problems. I would love to use our "investment" here as an easy sales tool.
I think Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 have been great examples of why console multiplayer is still substandard. Both games came out, sold massive numbers of copies, and naturally some balance problems were discovered.

Valve patched the PC versions almost immediately, and in fact have even added content to the game in subsequent updates. All of these updates just hit the 360 version days ago. MS is allergic to fast-turnaround updates, and also allergic to free content updates (it sets a bad precedent for devs who want to charge for more content).
No, non-deterministic bugs are in fact the worst kind of bugs. Absolutely maddening. Except maybe these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug

Anyway, if this or the equivalent were hidden somewhere in your code, and it wasn't supposed to be, would you not consider it a bug just because it only happened 1 in 10,000 runs or so?

if (rand() % 10000 == 0)
exit(0);
Each domain name next to each article headline should be a link that allows you to view all of the articles from that domain.
I don't think it's morally acceptable to freeload, but for big businesses the point is likely moot: The IP agreement they will have had you sign at the start of your job will take away all rights to your on-your-own-time product in any case.
An increase in the value of the dollar is not an increase in total wealth (and similarly, a fall is not a loss of total wealth). A change in the value of assets is always a transfer of potential wealth from one person to another. This change may stimulate wealth-creating opportunities in the economy (e.g. increasing bond values will encourage the creation of more bonds, which means more investment in productive business) or it may thwart them (e.g. the loss of value of sub-prime securities has frightened people away from lending) but the price change itself doesn't create or destroy real wealth (goods and services).

If dollars were to rise in value, it would constitute a transfer of wealth away from people with debts and towards people with cash savings. The first effect is that people will no longer be able to service the increasing real value of the interest on their debts, leading to default.

But the more serious secondary effect is that a rising dollar encourages people to hoard money rather than spending it, as dollars tomorrow will be worth more than dollars today. The result is a liquidity crisis, where everyone refuses to consume or invest. The liquidity squeeze makes dollars even more valuable, and so the effect is self-perpetuating, until eventually the economy grinds to a halt.

The worst historical example of deflation is the Great Depression, where local communities were having to invent their own currencies to make up for the extreme dollar shortage. The Great Depression is the reason central banks have positive inflation targets. Although inflation is bad, a small amount of inflation is a fair price if it reduces the risk of self-perpetuating deflation.
Voting Machine Audit Logs Raise More Questions about Lost Votes in CA Election
I totally agree. The easiest way I found to get into this was to first do an incredible job as an employee at every company I worked for. This builds up your reputation. I tended to jump around to different jobs a bit. Usually, when I got bored, I'd move on...but I always made it a point to leave a job with nothing but a positive effect (i.e. they were sad to see me go). After some number of years, other people from those companies may have moved on as well. Keep in touch with all of them (e.g. linkedin). This is how I got my first consulting contract. All my business has been via word of mouth, but I built that network while I was working full-time for various companies. Keep that network growing -- and always do an incredible job, and you should have a good time of it.
There will not be a default, in that every dollar will be returned.

However, if the value of each dollar is less, that would be bad for the lender.

The scenario talked about in the article cannot happen again, because Federal Reserve Notes are not backed by anything.
I take it you've never had a baby around the house? Or broken up with a girlfriend? Those things have affected me way more than any coding ever did.
The House approved rules for 6 billion in gov't funds to spur high-speed internet networks
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson, 1816.
Ask HN:  What are your criteria for hiring?
Our research group just went through a hiring process to get a quality C-programmer to strip down our Labview processes.

The whole experience got me thinking about what criteria I would be looking for in a programmer to hire. Here are some musts for me:

- Smart. But I judge this on the relevance and complexity of personal projects and a deep portfolio.

- Good references. If 10 people can recommend you, then your probability of success in our group/company is high.

- Connect the dots. Do you constantly look for problems that can be solved with new toolsets? Are you introspective about your own abilities? If yes, then we want you.

What do you all think?
We don't need the NSA. Signal intelligence is great for fighting countries, but it will will fail because terrorists are a tiny minority hiding in a huge sea of humanity. I am all for the CIA and FBI but we just don't need a the huge budget of the NSA for anything right now and because of this they can't really help.

Correction: I have no problem with the NSA building secure systems but that's a tiny fraction of their budget.
Wall Street Journal: Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust
I started working on my own stuff to keep on with technology and bring some fun into my life. I never stopped working on a side project; I do not mix my time at work (at my employer) and my side business. Today as a full time consultant I found it even easier to equally use my time at both my startup and my clients.
How to make money
Easiest cheap way to dramatically increase sales
'is', being the present tense third person form of the verb 'to be' generally implies 'currently'.

Obviously someday that'll be considered quite slow.
How to Import Google Notebook into Evernote
After Zoho Google Notebook Importer now Evernote also hava a option to Import Google Notebook into Evernote. So, all of you Google Notebook users can now easily bring your notes, labels, and sections right into Evernote. The process takes a few steps. If you have a lot of notes in multiple notebooks, it will take awhile to import them all. I had about 400 notes in six notebooks and it took 15 or so minutes to import.
How we roll in Amsterdam - A method of transportation you should use too
Not only that but if I do remember/find the threads I'm interested in, I'll definitely not remember which comments I've read already, so...

Wouldn't it be nice to also have the ability to highlight comments that are new since your last visit? That, or the ability to sort comments in chronological order (like in a forum).
Ext4 to be the Default File System for Fedora 11; Btrfs to be choosable
The six worst Apple products of all time
VixML: new platform for iPhone dev (video)
Finger print should not be password for a simple reason, it's going to be easier with technology to steal finger print; unlike password you can't change it : (. I saw and read document on technology available to transfer finger print into glove like molds. Finger print will eventually become Identity theft next biggest challenge.
What if you're doing open source software? That's a similar situation. I think the idea of an employer trying to tell you what you can and can't do in your own time is pretty offensive. You have to keep things separate, of course, but beyond that, your own time is your own time, period. Obviously, if it's visibly affecting an employee, in terms of less hours worked, or lower quality, ok, sure, have a talk about it, but the difference is that you're looking at work time in that case.
I get this. It's to do with logging in:

1. Make sure you're logged out.
2. Open two HN pages.
3. Log in on one of them.
4. Click an up arrow on the other page (the one where you're not logged in).
5. The vote will get counted, but you'll be sent to a blank page.

I always figured it was a failure of the AJAX to check login status.
We're thinking along the same lines.

Would I want to surf home from work and play with my train set? Both as a switchboard operator and as a virtual engineer/passenger? Would I want my friends to share in this experience with me? Running other trains, or coming along for the ride? Making movies of the experiences?

Heck yes. I'd even want a link into FaceBook where people could tell what's going on in my model world in case they wanted to join in.

Model trains are virtual worlds. The more you can make it like a complete MMORPG with social hooks the more viral it becomes (in my opinion)
Php Symfony - Who wants a new free web app
Excellent point, I’m probably the only hacker I know who do not play video games; for some reason I stopped when I got in college. But I remember as a teen I drained me as much as studying, I think playing video games can be harder (or equal) on your hacking resources as actual hacking.
You're right. Coz people's browsing habits vary.

Me for example don't like those target=_blank. For useless sites I often just use the back and forward buttons of my browser. Infact for going back I use backspace(FF). So it's pretty faster than closing tabs one by one and returning to your original tab.
Apparently you haven't been paying attention to government behavior over the last 100 years :-)
It's not happened to me (Opera 9.63 x86_64 Linux) but I have a suspicion for the possible cause: The up/down arrows are anchor tags to the vote URL, so if you had JavaScript disabled, the behaviour you describe would be expected. (it probably should redirect back to the page you were looking at, from a usability POV...) The async version uses the onclick event attribute to call the vote() JS function, which returns false to cancel the anchor click navigation after dynamically generating a new image with the vote URL as src attribute. If anything in vote() throws an exception, vote won't return false to cancel the navigation, so you get taken to the (blank) non-JS vote page.

I can't see anything at first glance that would throw an exception, however.
I concur, as a Windows Mobile user (Blackjack II) I downloaded Opera to 'try' and use it occasionally on websites which I know render correctly/better than mobile IE. However much of the web is not Opera Mini compat, and it tends to freeze/screw up quite frequently which forces me back into the mobile IE ghetto.

However it's worth noting that I just installed Skyfire is it's working beautifully.

http://www.skyfire.com/product

Shows web pages like a desktop browser (no one-column BS), has Opera/Safari-esque zooming features and plays web video (YouTube/ESPN) with no fuss. Lovin' it.
Have the "comments" link text color, or something else, change to show that I've followed that "comments" link. I sometimes only look at the comments, and would like a reminder that I've done so.

Be able to "save" an item without upvoting it. Upon occasion, I want to do the former for personal interest but am not sure that upvoting serves the interests of the community. On the other hand, I can see where the current design may lessen fragmentation of interests and community focus.
I'd love to have a page only listing the Ask HN submissions...
Yes I do know how it works - my company produces the software that does this for your bank, your credit card and a bunch of 3letter agencies (hence the one-shot username).
What we hand over is a big list of names that are 'linked' (for whatever degree of linked they asked for) to the terrorist/criminal/transaction in question.

The tenuous definition of'match' required by some of these customers is scary, two arabic surnames beginning with Al are assumed to have a 50% match for one agency, all chinese with the surname 'Ng' are the same person according to another!

I'm sure that somewhere in military intelligence somebody understands sifting for real patterns in this. But compared to the number of people who get refused loans, get extra security at airports or listed as 'persons of interest' the next time a child is abducted - all on the basis of a 6th degree of separation.
Redefining cloud computing to mean "the internet" will destroy it. Cloud computing is not about accessing services over the web. It's about hardware infrastructure that can scale automatically, or at least programmatically, without having to add physical devices to the network.

If you are going to use a /new/ term to describe something, use it to describe something that actually /is/ new, not something that has been around for 15 years! That's why people get sick of marketing "gurus" and journalists who keep redefining stuff to mean the same old thing that they thought they understood, but really they have no clue...

Cloud computing actually is something new and it's powerful and it is going to change the world. Just like the Internet did. But please remember that Cloud computing is a subset of the Internet, not the /entire/ internet!

If you marketing/journalist/(know nothing but want to capitalize on it) types want to redefine cloud computing to mean anything accessed over the Internet, then that too is changing the world. We said it would change the world and it DID change the world.

Look around. According to another link on HN right now, only 25% of America /isn't/ on the web. That's amazing considering almost no one was on the web just 15 years ago.

The problem here is that people think, "OMG, The Internet is going to change everything!" like people are going to be driving to work over the Internet!

Oh wait, people don't even /need/ to drive to work anymore because of the Internet. people don't need cars because of the internet. They work from home because of the internet. They order pizza and groceries and pay their phone bills over the internet.

Okay fine, you want to redefine cloud computing to mean "anything accessed over the internet" and then you want to argue that it's hype and it won't change the world?

Well it already has.

Look around.
Just another big fan of your blog! Given the content you write about and the quality of the HN community, I'm usually surprised if I'm the first one to submit a post from your site. It's a perfect fit!

No blog on my end currently - took it down a while ago and haven't found the time to get it started up again. Hopefully soon! My email is [this username] at gmail dot com. I am always up for a good chat! Keep up the great work!
Ah, thanks for clarifying things. Now I have the code licensed under an MIT license. Out of curiosity, what are the implications of changing the license on software you've already released?
Processing (and Wiring) have a pretty specific purpose which extends beyond the focus of the article. Plus it's essentially Javascript.
Please don't turn hacker news into another reddit... let's stick to _hacking_ related articles.
Governments could be the source of all the evil in all the world, but this article would still suck.
If there's no community, who wrote the books or improved the documentation? Who publishes a ton of books for a language no one uses?
How the fuck is trim in Python?
I hope there's no problem submitting my own blog post. I've been thinking about making a website like the one I described on the post for a long time but never got up and did it.

Anyway, I also hope the "fuck" up there isn't too offensive. I don't live in the USA (and english isn't my primary language), and while it seems people use this word every minute of their lives, on written material (and social contexts) of the web is rarely seen, so I don't quite grasp the ethic relationship of daily english and the internet.

If you could read my mind (in portuguese) and see what I really think when I am trying to remember how trim is named in Python, worse profanities would appear anyway :)

Oh, and I don't know if this is "HN material". I've complained about some articles that appeared here, blog posts without much content at least. But I've also seen worse stuff live longer on the main page, so I thought, what better way to see if what I wrote would survive than just submitting it?
That's not the point I'd get from the article. The point I'd get is that the US government might not default on the debt, but what will those dollars be worth at the end of this?

The 1933 resolution can be seen as a default or the government saying that they'll only deal in dollars from now on - which might not be as good for investors and therefore rob them of some of their value. Since the government today doesn't have debts in non dollar form, why would they default? They can just print money. The idea that any government would default on a debt denominated in their own currency that they can readily print is ridiculous.

The only problem is that the money you get from them might not be worth much if we see a decent rate of inflation. That's where the article strikes at our current situation. The gold debt was protected against inflation (assuming that the supply of gold didn't increase much). Those investors were then subjected to inflation as the US renounced gold denominated bonds.

Since the US doesn't have bonds in anything other than dollars, this situation wouldn't happen today.
You are absolutely right. Quite a few of my 30-something friends "Internet browsing" seems to consist solely of using Facebook. (It's the new AOL)
Ask him what would he do if he was in your position.
Ah, interesting observation. The difference is actually that the up arrows don't have an onclick attribute if you're not logged in, so you end up with the vote behaviour you normally get if you have JavaScript disabled.
This roundabout argument is ignoring the most basic facts. Nowadays, bonds repay in dollars, so we can always just print more money. In 1933 that was not the case, so it doesn't make much sense to say that since we had to default in 1933, we may have to default again today.
The reason for the the lack of really good stories is the recent arrival of large crowds.

And pleading with them won't help, things are just averaging out. That's the key word average.

This has happened to every single great social news site I've enjoyed.

Anyone know what the next slashdot/reddit/HN is yet?
You're right, targeting the x86 architecture added a lot of complexity without any tangible benefit. Poring over the subpar Intel documentation consumed an inordinate amount of time.

That said, it only took a little over a month to build the OS itself, while the other two months I spent working on the train control program. All the equipment is notoriously flaky so coping with real-world brokenness was probably the biggest time sink.
I think a FeedBurner replacement could be a nice byproduct of another service. I'm thinking something like Bloglines+Technorati(was)+FeedBurner. Those are all just churning feeds in some way. Add analytics to it all, track trends (offer a service for business to pay), mine data and then you might have something.
For Pirates: Torrented Copies of iWork '09 Come Laced With a Nasty OS X Trojan
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mmm... nope.

Our most productive employees are the ones without kids, families or bustling social lives. And those same employees are the ones who are working on "side" projects while they are also working for us.

Any company that would tell an employee that they can't work on a side project, either as a business or a hobby that is not in direct competition with that company is setting itself up for failure because it's a sign of a larger cultural issue within the company itself, stemming from severe mismanagement.
That can be one of the most frustrating things about using a new language. Great idea, hope you can implement it yourself.
PowerShell ABC's - V is for Voidable Statements
My kid might even put an obstacle on the real model railroad and you'd have to brake the train via the web to avoid a crash.
When can the long tail be leveraged?