skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What happens when x people downvote the same comment? You have a string of at least x replies that would likely be useless ("lame", "troll", etc.) Then someone would be inclined to downvote those comments, etc.

The majority of my karma has come from comments instead of submissions. One of my recent higher ranking comments ended up with 91 upvotes, but I know from watching the thread that probably 2 or 3 people downvoted the comment. In the end, why does it really matter? There are enough users here that comments and submissions will gravitate towards the correct ranking. Comments that are massively downvoted tend to have an obvious reason why, even if the reason is clear but not rational.

I don't think your solution solves any real problems, and inhibits peoples ability to moderate comments in a low-effort manner.

I have seen several cases where a comment is left like "I down voted your comment because..." In the other cases, forcing a comment would either add more noise to the conversation, or discourage people from downvoting and cause the comments to be falsely ranked.
You would be able to demand insurance and payment from them as a condition. You could demand they let you audit on zero notice. In the worst case you would be able to revoke their sponsorship and that of their transitive protégées (stopping your losses by cutting off responsibility for any future transactions).

The idea here is to make the risk manifest with the risk-taker, rather than letting it settle by default on their clients.
That's even better than justfuckinggoogleit.com, which has been around for years. I wish they'd take you to a standard results page, though.
If a pirate is using a program, they're deriving value from it. They are not 'doing without' even though that option is available.

If the pirated option was not available, they would have made a purchase (yours or a competitors) or made do with freeware. That they've not chosen the free option indicates that they prefer your product -- one which they would have paid for.
I'm surprised to see this getting voted up; seems like pure gossip.

If anyone on HN wants a detailed list of _my_ sexual activities my contact information is in my profile. Otherwise I'd be happier if you just looked at my code and writing.
You're talking about money management; I'm talking about fraud and liability.

http://www.consumer-action.org/english/articles/understandin...
Then why not use the free option rather than pirate?

If someone prefers the commercial version, they should be willing to pay for that added value.
I dunno, yeah, stereotypes tend to have a kernel of truth to them, and I wouldn't hire someone who played WoW 40 hours a week, but I probably wouldn't hire someone who did something innocuous (say, photography) for 40 hours a week. A casual interest/hobby is beneficial to a person.

Then again, I'd have to seriously question the judgment of a person who puts WoW on their resume.
Meet Aiko, one man’s perfect robo-woman.
Twitter Venn Diagram
> Inheritance taxes eliminate the persistance across generations of power and wealth.

No they don't. The persistence of the Kennedy s and Rockefellers demonstrate otherwise.

US inheritance taxes just hit family biz, and destroy them because the tax bill can only be satisfied by selling the biz.

The wealth of the truly rich (Gates et al) is not subject to inheritance tax. It is, however, passed on. (What - you thought that the Gates foundation was to do good?)
a) Probably start trying to write a site you want and learning from there-- with a background in other languages it's more about "I know the language can do X-- let me search for something like it". When using PHP you can often just google "PHP equivalent of " whatever function you know in C#/Java/JS and there will be some corresponding example to use.

b) I like NuSphere PhpEd even though it isn't free. Some people like Netbeans IDE for PHP.

c) I love CodeIgniter. Very fast, MVC, some of the best user guides for any framework, just very solid all around. Go with it initially-- I know many PHP developers who got started there and have grown to be some of the most productive web coders I've ever seen.
When it comes to metaprogramming, PHP's SPL is very handy: http://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/
Great idea - count us in (just emailed you).
> because default rates would so much lower than average that they could give awesome rates.

That assumption should be questioned.

First off, most if not all new ventures lose money.

Second, if you are giving away free money you will attract scam artists.

Third, do normal banks consider engineers to be a better credit risk than say lawyers?
She's done some interesting work... wish the NYT article had focused more on that and less on Rubik's cube.
Wow, I have the exact same feedback. I should have read this first, but consider his two recommendations as seconded (even with the cost of nusphere).
Is it that odd? Think of it like this: your 20s are like that new program in Rails. Nothing holding you back. No legacy structures to support. Just wonderful. But as life goes on, it starts looking more like that Java program with jars everywhere, weird structures no one knows why they were made, requirements that no longer make any sense. Eventually, you build up enough cruft that you have Cobol programmers picking over lines just to keep you running.

I'm in my 20s, but kinda lame so I'm already thinking about a house, what city I'll end up in, planning for my retirement. Every one of these decisions locks me into something. As I put money into retirement accounts, I become less agreeable to changes in the tax code. For example, I'm not as for wonderful new national pension since I've already locked money away for retirement. As I lock myself into a city/area, I become less amenable to things like market competition. For example, if I moved to Seattle for the long haul, I would want the government to defend Boeing since its downfall would really hurt the place I've invested myself in.

We achieve more ownership in the world as we age. It ties us into the decisions of our past. Most importantly, at that point, a lot of change becomes negative. One of my professors from college is teaching a course to state Cobol programmers to teach them Java. They hate it. They just want to hang on and not loose something rather than compete with young Java programmers in a language they just learned.

We make changes as a society. Change is often very beneficial. It's often opposed by those who have ownership before the change. Maybe we should take into consideration how change adversely affects people and help them through it - like the course teaching Cobol programmers Java so that they're still skilled for modern systems. Yes, they're not so happy with the training, but it keeps them relevant rather than simply letting them become skill-less as Cobol programs get retired.
Would be great if the application was available via .pdf
Very cool. One interesting detail is that the phenomenon spikes right around the time it's named. I hadn't heard the name before (and don't actually like it). But it makes sense that the successful introduction of a name would coincide with exponential growth in the thing being named.

I looked through the author's list to see whether it includes the immortal zombo.com (it does), and scanned through it for other really old instances. There are a few from the 90s, the best of which is the oldest (1996) - perdu.com, which made me laugh. It's in French, though. (I started typing out a translation but it felt like spoiling the joke.)
I'll have to say I disagree as well-- PHP with a good framework is a better language, hands-down. I don't enjoy coding raw PHP. Almost all of the frameworks are open source, and none of them forbid you from using raw PHP when you need to do so.

So the net recommendation is, get a framework that makes a lot of secure/clean decisions for you and diverge when you think they're reinventing the wheel too much.
Ask HN: If you were starting from scratch again, what language would you learn first?
5-6 years ago, if you were just getting started, you only had a couple of choices, now there are dozens of choices. If you were starting from scratch again which language would you pick up first?
> Can we assume that pg is in favor of restoring the estate tax?

Can we see some evidence that the estate tax in the US ever had the characteristics cited by its proponents?

Consider, for example, the possibility that Caroline Kennedy will be appointed to the Senate by the NY Governor who just happens to come from a line of NY politicians. This isn't an isolated case - a huge fraction of current US senators are related to past senators and governors. (Biden's successor, one of his advisors, is seat-warming until his son is ready to run.) The House of Representatives isn't much different. The same thing happens at the state level - IL is mainstream in this.

The estate tax also doesn't hit the rich. The wealth of Gates et al will not be subject to the estate tax. It will, however, work to the benefit of their kids. (The Fords, Rockefellers, and GM heirs worked the same game.)

The only folks who pay estate tax are medium size family-owned biz. Many of them have to sell to pay the tax bill.

Interestingly enough, Buffet makes a lot of money buying such biz. He also makes a lot of money selling insurance to their founders to pay estate taxes.
Well put. If price were the only determinant of software success, free/open-source software would have long ago crushed its competitors. It's free without needing to be pirated, so it gets all that free "advertising", right? :)

No, you are correct that software largely gets pirated because it's popular rather than the other way around. Pirates who think they are doing software authors a favor through "advertising" are fooling themselves -- and ignoring the systemic damage done by piracy. (Where are all the big Chinese consumer software companies?)
So we give you our brilliant ideas, you cherry pick them and go execute them and reap the profits, then pay one person $2,500 for what you get, while everyone else watches you laugh all the way to the bank?

"Too clever by half" is a phrase that was invented for situations like this.
For those of us with specific skills that may not be needed but want to help anyway...

Suggestion: Change 'How would you like to contribute?' to checkboxes or add a radio button for 'Either'.
From here:
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/overview/at_a_glance.html

"CodeIgniter is written to be compatible with PHP 4. Although we would have loved to take advantage of the better object handling in PHP 5 since it would have simplified some things we had to find creative solutions for (looking your way, multiple inheritance), at the time of this writing PHP 5 is not in widespread use, which means we would be alienating most of our potential audience. Major OS vendors like RedHat are moving slowly to support PHP 5, and they are unlikely to do so in the short term, so we felt that it did not serve the best interests of the PHP community to write CodeIgniter in PHP 5.

Note: CodeIgniter will run on PHP 5. It simply does not take advantage of any native features that are only available in that version."
Apple wanted out of tyranny of MacWorld - reports
What other product can you purchase, and have the price change after you purchase the product?

Housing, stocks, commodities, pokemon cards, electronics.

It's not a matter of education, IMHO.

You're right, it's a matter of discipline. We can tell people to not play the lottery as your expectancy will never be positive, but they'll still be there, scratching the foil off with car keys.

Note that the deceptive business practices don't help with enforcing discipline.
When will Twitter start charging its API users?
I have to agree that my metaphor was heavy handed (heavy footed?), but I distinctly remember how this was not a debate, but a dogma. People who suggested brain cells could regenerate were ridiculed. Everyone "knew" they couldn't (everyone "scientific" that is). The reason I remember it so clearly is that it was an early example in my experience of seeing dogma in what other people called science. The idea that brain cells would have some special non-regenerating status struck me instinctively as preposterous. It was a great example of how people turn "We have not observed X" into "X never happens", and from there it's a tiny step to "People who believe in X are nutcases".

On a parenthetical note, I haven't yet got around to reading Kuhn but the basic idea there strikes me as profoundly correct. When the majority consciousness isn't ready to acknowledge a phenomenon, it simply doesn't "exist". Evidence can change received opinion, but only if a shift in majority consciousness occurs first. (That's how I understand Kuhn's paradigms anyway.)
The title's accounting is a bit off:

"They found that openness increased modestly up to age 30 and then declined slowly in both men and women. The survey results suggest that men begin adulthood slightly more open to new experiences than women but decline in openness during their 30s at a faster rate than women."

This puts 30 at the peak of openness and suggests that people may be as open to change in their 30s as in their 20s.
"How about submitting a couple of your favorites that actually might be relevant here? " That's what I'm trying to do - and I'm pretty sure that's most of the publishers/writers/bloggers who post here are trying to do. If were submitting everything we posted, there would be many, many more submissions. In any case, sometimes the HN folks like the stuff I submit, and sometimes they don't. I think that works pretty well, no?
http://amiawesome.com/
Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web - Screw Net Neutrality
I'd still choose Java as my bread and butter language.
First Round Capital literally makes all their startups dance
10 Best Ruby/RoR Web Hosts Compared — 2009
Check out this handy list of 10 Web hosts that provide a friendly environment for RoR applications. This Ruby on Rails Web host list is compiled by price, from most to least expensive.
The C# version would actually be:

new Thread(() => Console.WriteLine("I'm in a Thread")).Start();
Another One Bites The Dust: Yahoo Kickstart Shutters
Wha...? Most thiefs would not pay for the things they steal...

While the current IP laws may not be so good, it'd sound less like rationalization of people would make good arguments.
OK, let's check...

1. Stock tips.

2. Immature and (sometimes) unreliable delivery platform that they do not control. Said platform is difficult to migrate away from (because it's a huge percentage of the USP), not even a commercial service, powered by VC and no revenues, with no SLA or recourse.

3. TWITS. Twits, people! Stock TWITS.

4. $800k?!?!?!

WTF, really?
Scheme, because of this book:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Why argue with the MIT folks?

Followed immediately by: C, Javascript, and a scripting language (Ruby or Python are good choices).

You've also got to work Java in there somewhere, just so you know where people are coming from. It could come first, or last, depending on your tastes.

If you love Windows technologies you can probably substitute C# for one of those things. Maybe even for several of them. I have never seen .NET but I hear good things about it from those who have.

If you can't stand SICP, or can't follow it (perhaps because you are seven years old?) then the initial choice is harder. Javascript is sitting on your desk right now, so it's an obvious possibility. Try Ruby or Python. Or just give in and learn PHP like everybody else seems to do. You'll run into problems, but you can fix them later.
I hope it's a prototype that was released by mistake :)
I completely agree with you, and yet I can't help but admire that he noticed that random detail and followed up on it. So I'm voting you up and leaving him be.
Ramit! do you really think that unavailability of $2,500 could be holding someone back from implementing his super-innovative entrepreneurial idea? I suggest that you mix a few more things with you bounty? something that an entrepreneur might actually need and want. $2,500 is way too down the list.
Hands-on: Steelcase Walkstation treadmill desk
Good post. Increasing investment in the status quo is a nice way to look at this.

A long time ago someone made the point, which stuck in my mind, that all of this is an argument in favor of death. If people didn't die, stuff wouldn't change.

I think the habit-forming nature of human consciousness goes far deeper than we've yet admitted. That might also explain why people change less as they age - they've been around longer so habits have had longer to form. Gene Clark had a great line, "The longer you're in one place, the harder it gets to leave."
Razr CLOUD Fun Skin (White) Case by Speck
Razr Fun Skin Cloud (white) - Encapsulate your RAZR in a fluffy cloud of protection! RAZR Cloud FunSkin is a unique, hip and totally cool case for your phone! An extraordinary case for unique individuals.
If you're not a hacker and you'd like to contribute your skills, you might want to checkout http://taprootfoundation.org/

Also, I found it a bit lame that feedaneed.org requires you to sign up for a reddit account. Just me, though.
Let's not forget that George W Bush is 2004 Person of the Year.
I agree, but I suspect it won't happen any time soon, unfortunately. Microsoft's strength has always been its backwards-compatibility with earlier software. They'll need at least a couple versions to get over Vista's stigma, caused in no small part by the lack of drivers. I doubt they're in a hurry to require another set of driver rewrites.
What entrepreneurs should consider when starting a new venture
Perhaps one of the reasons that SF seems to have so many homeless is that SF provides a lot of benefits to the homeless. (Another reason is that SF's weather doesn't kill them.)

Google "homeless benefits sf" and you'll find that things aren't as simple as one might think.

FWIW, the "lots more, with children" story runs every few years.

Let the "downmodding the mean" begin.
I generally recommend PHP newbies start with a framework and I generally recommend they start with CakePHP over CodeIgniter, because CI is much more flexible and therefore forgiving of bad practices which can turn into bad habits. CakePHP is more strict, which probably teaches better design patterns early on.

In your case, though, you sound like an experienced programmer in other languages, so you should be fine starting with a simple CRUD app and then progressing to frameworks; any of the popular ones will do fine.
RUI is not accessible? Check out Yahoo’s new Currency Converter
I like this idea in principle, but as with most such programs---e.g., high-priced corporate attorneys working a day at the public defender's office---it ignores comparative advantage. It makes you feel good, and it's a public way to look good, but if you want to do good it's better to work the same amount of time for the highest-paying client you can find and then donate the proceeds to a charity of your choice.
Ask HN: Who hates WOW players more -- employers or girls?
"- You can do just about anything just by using the standard function library. Frameworks are not necessary, contrary to popular belief."

Up vote for that bullet, specifically for PHP.
Yea, that may be true. But I think most large companies in the U.S end up hiring average developers. Seems to me they have a hard time distinguishing who is talented and who is not. They also have a bureaucratic structure that does not allow the talented people to make the decisions and it becomes harder to retain the talented developers.
Someone changing their gender is not a sexual activity. There was nothing salacious about david927's comment. If anything it is an interesting sociological data point, given the small number of prominent women in math and science.
I've used both, and while I'm no fan of PHP I think it's absurd to even compare the two. Quite simply, JSP is an exercise in masochism. These days JSPs are only used for the view layer and most of the work is done in a servlet or a controller in whatever framework you're using so they really serve as little more than a templating tool.

Even when used that way they are a royal PITA because of the bean conventions and the fact that many of the classes in the Java API (Collections cough) don't adhere to them. Unless you use a scriptlet you can't directly call a method on an object. You reference properties like myObject.prop1 and in the background it would call the method getProp1(). This convention only works with get, set and is* methods. If you want to get the size of a list (List.size()) you're SOL since lists don't adhere to the bean naming conventions. You either have to write a wrapper class or use a scriptlet. It's some kind of cruel joke.

PHP isn't pretty, but it's got a huge library of functions, it's easy to get it running and it doesn't enforce a bunch of questionable rules in order to protect you from yourself.
I definitely wouldn't hire someone who played for 40 hours a week, but if it's more reasonable, like 10-15, it essentially becomes a replacement for stuff like watching tv or movies.

The problem is that games like WOW are designed to be addictive, especially at the endgame levels. My college room mate ended up playing for more than 2000 hours before he quit, and it's not been great for him - he's been jobless for two years since graduation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jessica_Fridrich
When he showed up to take the video, I thought oh great, I'm going to look stupid on the internet, again...but it turned out good!
Very cool. I am not a hacker, but offered up my online marketing skills.
Even Avatars Are Racist?
Odesk? Well, yeah, as long as you are willing to hire yourself out at $15/hour.
Turning vague scientific studies into overpromising articles is a habit many writers find hard to change.
Nice stuff.

Might you consider dropping the bang in "Recess!"? I can't imagine a more annoying naming gimmick. It's not so bad when the name is used alone but it really messes up the reading when it's in a paragraph.
If people knew they would live for millions of years, I'm confident some of them would get around to changing their policies a bit to allow for some gradual changes.
Is not playing sports a sport?
Your probably better off not working at a company that "doesn't hire Xs".
Python! Instead they tried to teach me pascal! A language that simultaneously sucks and isn't used that much! Good thing I forgot it all after I stopped learning it. Well, okay, maybe it didn't suck, I can't remember, but I tend to forget bad memories, so it probably did.

Then again, technically I didn't learn that much pascal anyway, so I don't really count it as my first language(and there was logo before it, but I learned even less of it).
There's 11 million people playing WoW, with different levels of playtime/dedication. It's a bit excessive to try to put all these people in the same can.

I would trust psychological tests rather than just assume all WoW players are irresponsible people just cause you met one silly guy who happened to play WoW.

At my company, around 12 people are WoW players. I play WoW myself and even my boss did until a year ago. Problems with any of us? None.
They do provide direct support to the team who does build it for Linux, but can you really blame them for not doing it themselves?

It's a client side library. nix is predominately used in the server space. The market share isn't large enough. Besides, a significant number of nix desktop users hate Microsoft already and would refuse to install it on principle. Maintaining support for an additional platform is expensive. And even if they did officially support it, what's the point? Mono is actually quite capable if you exclude the Windows specific libraries (which Silverlight already does, even on Windows).
You are making the mistake of paying attention to your votes. Life is too short. Who cares?
very cool indeed, loved the fact that they fund startups from all over the US and world. many vc's may suck but its good to know some cool ones are out there funding cool startups.