skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The can't-mod/post-simultaneously rule is super annoying though, and I wish it were at least a bit more subtle. For instance, maybe something like "can't mod the same sub-thread you've posted in" or whatever (to stop people from modding down their opponent in an argument).
This stikes me as somewhat? Udacity put forward a bad class and they did the right thing and cancelled it. I'm over it and will continue to use their classes :) Now if the rest of the world would only start accepting Udacity education in place of accredited school I'd be a happy camper!
I make my own machines (assemble would be a better term). What exactly would count as a new computer? I go around changing keyboards, drives, displays, processors, RAM, video cards etc, but very rarely all at once.

The last time I paid for Windows (outside of being forced to pay for it when getting a laptop) I got the "family" pack of Windows 7 which was 3 licenses so I was able to upgrade a laptop, workstation and a virtual machine. (Of course it was also considerable effort to install because Windows 7 can't upgrade XP and Microsoft installers assume that you are a thief.) I also only started doing the upgrade because I needed to produce 64 bit Windows binaries for my open source software (I'm a Linux user). Microsoft are going to have to try a lot harder to convince me to spend money and the considerable amount of time to touch Windows 8.
Well said. That's a better way for sure. Will take it with me.

- mike
It's not always a bad thing; for something like API docs, a fixed header can make sense. But for blogs and brochure-ware, and even some web apps, it breaks the focus on the content and steals precious screen real estate.

If the most common use case involves many quick jumps across the page hierarchy, fixed header can be a good fit (though an affixed side-nav might be better for wide screens). But if the most common case is drilling down to a specific page and spending a little time there, then fixed headers just create noise and get in the way.
I don't know a lot, but:

XML looked like HTML at a time when the web was the "next big thing". Like, not a technology on the web, or social media, HTML itself was this big revelation. So a solution that looks like HTML has a leg up.

Then, once there were mature parsers in a lot of languages, server software configured by it, etc, XML had some inertia that takes time to displace.
What good is learning software if you don't have the hardware to run it on (and probably wont for a decade) to attain even mammalian levels of intelligence?
Learning Is Hard: Hire Employees With A Learning Scale Of 10
Looks like a cool contest, I may check it out. What bothers me about modeling contests (I've taken part in several, it's my field) is they often reward putting 90% of your effort into extracting relatively small performance gains. For one thing it's not a realistic operating environment, there are usually many other factors more important than pure performance like upkeep, cost, speed, etc. This is why the netflix contest winning models couldn't go into production. The other issue I have is that people with other commitments (like a job) don't really stand a chance, it's usually very time-consuming to go from fifth place to first.
Gaming PCs also have a general purpose OS on them. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. One is a general purpose computer, the other is a device designed for a single purpose.

But that's beside the point: the games industry drives the graphics card business, but that is only a one part of the consumer computer business. General purpose processors are a larger part, and processor performance improvement is not the exponential curve it was a decade ago.
Here is why "unlimited" storage offerings should be met with skepticism at best, and probably avoided outright:

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stora...

They put the provider in an adversarial relationship with the user and give them an incentive to keep you from storing data there. They will make it hard for you to use their service.
1. Google is not transparent with its ranking algo. We would need to be.

2. It actually is very cleaning divided, bots & humans. Bad humans have no real power due to point 3.

3. Google has a click traffic amount that is so high that it can only be taken advantage of by bots. Hackernews is tiny in comparison and any algo can be manipulated with just a few bad actors.
...some people comment (or use drugs, etc) because they can't help themselves...

And under the proposed system, those people will never achieve a high karma score and so never have disproportionate influence over the site. That's precisely why it's an improvement.
It's nice to see this kind of contest but the topic just sets me off on a much-needed rant.

The moderator situation on Stackoverflow is getting out of control. I see a Q&A site as having three main groups:

1. People who ask questions;

2. People who answer questions; and

3. People who edit/moderate questions.

Even 2+ years ago there was a lot of lip service paid to the value of (3). I disagreed then and it's only been reaffirmed by subsequent events. To be clear: it's not that I think these functions have no value, it's that they are, at best, secondary to content creation.

The problem is that these roles without diligent oversight attract the wrong kinds of people (eg [1] [2] and a scandal a few years about an admin black list that I can't seem to find right now).

Take this question from Stackoverflow: Database development mistakes made by application developers [3], a question I spent some time answering and that people seemed to appreciate the answer to (based on comments and 1000+ upvotes). It is closed as "not constructive". This is hardly a unique phenomenon. We've all seen many interesting questions posted here that are now closed or locked and who knows how many have been deleted.

The kind of person you end up is overly pedantic and a real stickler for an arbitrary set of rules.

Editors/moderators are the bureaucrats of the Internet.

As Oscar Wilde said, “The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” [4]. These sorts of people just invent work for themselves in the absence of anything to do.

Joel needs to make some changes to Stackoverflow. It's rapidly going the way of the old Usenet days when anything interesting gets shot down and anything else gets closed and the OP lambasted for not having found the 17 previous duplicates. Not good.

The biggest problem I see is an extreme interpretation of what is "subjective". "What language should I learn?" is an obviously subjective question. In the absence of any concrete criteria, it's hard to give a useful answer.

But consider a question like "What are the pros and cons of Sinatra vs Rails?" This sort of question (IMHO) absolutely has value as someone experienced with both could enumerate the relative merits of each in a pretty objective fashion without making an absolute determination. This is something that absolutely could have value to anyone evaluating Ruby Web frameworks.

So, back to this post, what are the odds of any particular question being closed? it seems to be positively correlated with how much time has passed (since SO's inception) and how interesting the question is.

[1]: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/wikipedia-admins...

[2]: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/most-notorious-wikipe...

[3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/621884/database-developme...

[4]: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/130452-the-bureaucracy-is-ex...
It's very simple, I think:

If you need these courses for credentialing, you have to lock them down more. Get a credit card, require a payment, and issue a token. Validate the name and address (and maybe store a hash of the SSN), and don't allow duplicates. Treat "cheating" as fraud, and act accordingly.

If you need these courses for lifelong learning, the problem doesn't exist. Let someone take it a million times if that's what they need to do to learn.
None of the table examples in the documentation work (striped, hover, etc) at http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/base-css.html#tables on Chrome 21
Print Out a Google Map Envelope
And in civil lawsuits, you can spend several thousand dollars in legal fees more or less effectively making your point.

Also, it's increasingly apparent that other jurisdictions will increasingly attempt -- or be used -- to ensnare people in more... "permissive" jurisdictions. Don't like the venue? Sue -- or prosecute -- them in another venue.

On the one hand, I feel sad that my response to this is to "close up" connectivity. On the other hand, I for one don't have the resources with which to liberally take such situations on.
JSON conceptually has been around forever.

Lisp s-exps date to the original McCarthy paper in 1958, and could represent pretty much everything you can do with JSON, key-value pairs, lists, nested structure, etc.
I agree with you. The only curious thing here is I feel the project might be a bit interesting for HN as well. HN and /r/programming should not be that different...

When it's first shown on Reddit there were tens of visitors in the first few minutes, far more than the case for HN.
Even if it were true (and I really don't think the majority is the problem), the whole point of the proposed system is that while everyone can sign up, only quality posters and commenters will progress to have any influence over the site.
Interesting. I personally like this, but seems like Microsoft really wants to annoy the OEMs. One of the major downsides of building your own PC was the high cost of the full retail Windows OS.
Make $200  a Day - The Easy Blackhat Way
I can absolutely attest to this. Rob came to a hackathon I participated in a few months ago at the University of Miami. He did a great job and really made Twilio seem totally awesome. He was great to work with and really pushed my team to reach above our potential.
Yeah, something like that. I was arguing for that when iSCSI was pretty new so I went with a remote DMA model that was somewhat simpler.

I had a whole startup sketched out, it's pretty obvious when you think about it.

Desktops get a software only version that will do reasonably well and is cheap.

Power users/small servers get a slightly more expensive (maybe 2x the cost of a PCI card) that does the remote DMA in hardware; this card is one ethernet port and only handles one DMA at a time.

Big servers get a multi port card that will run multiple streams at once.

I tried to get the disk drive people interested because there already is a processor down on the drives that is a general purpose CPU (there are two, one that controls the disk arm, that's special, and one that manages the cache, read ahead/write behind, that could run a stripped down Linux or whatever and do the other side of the protocol).

The drive people never got excited because the cost savings of el cheapo ethernet wasn't enough to offset the cost of the extra memory they felt they would need.
Flying drones deliver 3D printed personal portraits to Burning Man attendees
I think you're forgetting about John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory.
Kickstarter’s Funded Projects See Some Stumbles
The security comes from the stateful firewall, not from the NAT. In all likelihood, IPv6-supporting home routers will ship with a stateful firewall enabled by default.
Topsy’s New Pro Analytics Tool as the All-Seeing Eye
I think it made sense in the 90s-00s rapid innovation space. Microsoft needed a computer on every desk/laptop/car/whatever in order to push Windows and Office licenses. Dramatic advances in hardware drove high turnover and more OEM licensing rev/profit.

Now that folks aren't upgrading very often, the cost of the Windows license is starting to be a much bigger proportion of the total cost, basically creating a price floor of PCs. This sucks if you're an OEM - you have a baked-in cost you don't control (aka MS Tax). Microsoft must naturally drop the licensing price to OEMS in order for OEMs to eek out some profit.

Long run Windows OEM license fees tend to zero. It's already happening with Windows 8 upgrade pricing (Mac OS X has already started this trend) and I expect it to continue.

MSFT knows this which is the primary reason to making their Surface Tablet (and Office online, to get SaaS recurring rev). I don't believe for a minute that they are only doing this as a "reference" implementation.
How In-Memory Databases May Remake Your Database
If you're a coder, build something and figure out how to take it to market. Then, and only then, you'll understand marketing.

If you're a marketer, try and build something. Then, and only then, you'll understand development.

There's no better way to learn than to fail miserably.
That doesn't fit my experience of how designers work with templates. The problem with this style of template system is that it's very tightly coupled to the HTML of the template. If a designer wants to e.g. change the class on an element (because they want to use a CSS class from bootstrap) they can't without worrying about what's in the clojure code. It becomes almost impossible for them to make anything more than a trivial change without a full understanding of the code that will be manipulating their templates.
>> If they were science then the exact cause of the disease would be known, instead only correlations can be found

> Again, your definition of science is too strict.

Unless that level of strictness exists, then astrology becomes science. Here's my proof -- I have a cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the patient until he gets better. My cure always works, so it's science. I deserve a Nobel Prize for my breakthrough.

A real scientist would identify the flaw in my thinking (confusion of a simple correlation with a cause-effect relationship), but isn't he being, in your words, "too strict"?.

> Do you really think the known faulty model of the atom was 'not science'?

You're clouding the issue. A faulty model is science if it can be tested and potentially falsified. A faulty model that cannot be tested and falsified isn't.

> The idea that a theory has to be an absolutely perfect fit for it to be 'science' is garbage.

Be that as it may, no one has said this. In fact, science never produces truth, only tentative survivors of falsification.

> Also, cataloguing is definitely science.

No, observation -- description -- is not science. The science threshold is crossed when someone offers a testable explanation for the description.
I don't foresee JSON ever replacing XML as a "full-blown successor" in the contexts where XML actually is useful: for marking up documents.

As a general data storage format, XML is certainly going away.
Console manufacturers would love to have a new one to sell

Why? Don't they pretty much lose money by subsidizing them for a few years and only start breaking even after a long haul? I thought they made their money on game licensing.
Honestly, JSON isn't really much of an improvement over a technology that's been around since 1958, i.e. s-expressions. JSON is just the flavor of the month - I know people who dislike it because it loses some of the power of XML (XSLT, attributes, etc.)

In the end, I think it's just subjective. All of the above formats are equally capable of representing the same data.
Romantizing the Trivial
Show HN: I mixed selling t-shirts with a little bit of game theory
I had this idea rolling around in my head for the last couple of years, and I finally decided to build the damned thing just to get idea relief.

The backend is a typical LAMP stack with the Symfony2 framework backing the P. Varnish sits in front of all the Chef managed Linode boxes. The site will work without Javascript (up until the checkout), and the style degrades really nicely depending on your viewport (try it out by resizing your browser).

I'm open to all comments and critiques, so let me hear them. And if you are into graphic t-shirts, here is a code for a Hacker News 20% discount: 4803-7940-0816-5604!
At 10Gbps I can retrieve 3TB within an hour.
I like the part about objects. Never thought about it like that before.
Hi ig1, thanks for your remarks!

Yes, I'm rather going for the higher level (like CIO, sales, marketing, etc.). I know Gartner, Forrester, IDC will be a competition. But my idea is to target the tool at companies which don't want to hire rather pricey industry analyst firms but still need to have some insights into what's going on in the industry.

What do you mean specifically by saying: "tailor the product much more for that market"?

Thanks!
Could be the last startup ever, but I am not betting my money on it. Would be cool though if they re-named the company to Last Startup :)

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." - I. J. Good
I think it would make so much more sense if they just said "From now on, FreshBooks does cloud accounting."

Yeesh.

Good on them though - it is quite a feat to break the stranglehold on that industry. They struggled a lot, and it paid off.
Keep in mind there are other metrics for comparing how "big" a company is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers#2012_...
This is pretty cool, it definitely fits into my flow. One thing I noticed while browsing the code in page.js, I would probably change:

var getCommentUrl = function(anchor) {
return $(anchor).closest('tr').next().find('a:nth-child(3)').prop('href');
};

to

var getCommentUrl = function(anchor) {
return $(anchor).closest('tr').next().find('a[href^="item"]').prop('href');
};

Not that HN will ever change their html...
Neither of Apple's non-modular systems you mention are artificial. Upgradeable storage would require substantial additional room in a device that has no room. The Retina MBP's screen is glued together because it makes for a substantial thickness and weight savings.

I'm not saying you can't complain about junk. I'm saying that it's really odd to complain about how it's some conspiracy of manufacturers when it's actually just people preferring the non-modular systems for many reasons, and then giving an example where you yourself went for junk instead of something that's supposedly like what you want.
How Ireland is rebuilding its economy via start-ups
Cool, that gives them 10 years to prepare.

Big advances take time. I'm thrilled that Dustin and Founders Fund are willing to take on investments that have a long time horizon. That's where big breakthroughs will come from.
And there's a reason they got rid of them. Spending two hours of your life waiting for people to log, relog, get add-ons, read and repeat boss fight documentation just to spend another 6 wiping with ninja loggers wasn't very fun.
Ask HN: Pitch Here Your Most Recent Ideas
The title speaks for itself, but here are some guidelines:

-Don't worry! HN is here to help. Even if we point out some questionable parts, there is a good chance for an enjoyable brainstorming or conversation.

-If you already have those questions? Ask them! We like questions!

-This is not just for startup ideas, but still most of the time you can define the audience, the problem/need and the product/service.

-Keep it short.

And here's a community guideline on commenting on the ideas: Ask first, assume later.
Alta Ventures Closes $70 Million Fund To Invest In Mexican Tech Startups
For me the single greatest selling point of JSON is that it's just so danged easy to go from json string to a usable map/list/dictionary in every language. Most of the time you can get from A to B in one or two lines of code.

XML always seemed like such a struggle by comparison. Figuring out which parser(s) you've got installed, figuring out their respective APIs -- it felt like total overkill. The only way I could be productive with XML was using Python's ElementTree API because it was so simple.

Some day I'll need my data to be checked against a complicated schema. But until that day arrives, I'm sticking with JSON.
He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto.

I think marketers would be well served to do some self-marketing and figure out a way to spread the word that "idea guy" != "marketer". As you say, a truly talented marketer is something special. Most random "idea guy" types know bugger-all about marketing.
IMO This seems speaks well for them. How many regular universities would actually cancel a similar math course for low quality?

I've taken classes on Udacity and quite like the platform.
Can confirm this works on my Epson printer (SX535WD).
"So here's the news: from this day forward, FreshBooks is Cloud Accounting. We're not changing our name, we're just changing the way we describe our services."

The news is a new marketing strategy? Um, ok.
Sounds like a good use for MySQL partitioning, which does the table for each month thing automatically and transparently for you. IIRC, you will also avoid the slowdown as the table grows beaches each partition is pretty independent
The Googler Who Looks At The Worst Of The Internet
I think every bootstrapping founder should print this out and stick it on their wall:

When we launched no one cared and 24 months after
starting we had only 10 paying customers and revenues
of $99 per month.
There is no way for the community to effectively exert influence on the behavior of new members. That is the problem.
A complicated algorithm or formula will not fix this.

Sure it can. If you hide low-scoring comments from low-ranking users, but show them to high-ranking users, the high-ranking users can exert influence on the low raking-users by upvoting quality comments and downvoting poor ones. It becomes a self-organizing system with a bias towards quality, rather than the open loop 'majority rules' system currently in place.
"Many a prognosticator who has tried to envision the future has been tripped up by a failure to correctly anticipate the direction of technological change."

I straight away thought of Kubrik's 2001. The complete failure to imagine mobile phones. Floyd uses a fixed video phone to phone home from the space ship. Personal mobile technology is the thing.

Back nearer the topic: When I can hook my phone up to a monitor and keyboard I'm done.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
How does that system deal with the old members > new members hierarchy that would develop? I think the problem with giving a member a longer stick the longer they stay/comment is that older members are given greater leniency when they do decide to be jerks, and new members who may very well develop into excellent members are kicked aside for possibly minor errors, thus creating an unfair advantage.

This may also stifle new members' contributions, if they're afraid of either being themselves (which would present a problem later) or speaking up against a more senior member for fear of being reprimanded. As a new member on HN, I'm certainly cognizant of the fact that I've been keeping my comments shorter than they normally would be on more familiar territory.
I went through the LPTHW program a few months back and it was definitely the best system or book I found on the subject. To be honest, I need to go back through now and do it again, using your advice to do each lesson twice.

My first go through, I kind of rushed through parts because I had an idea I wanted to try out and just wanted to learn enough to get it done (which I did :D)but I think I cheated myself out on some essential Python knowledge.
Just because you have a degree doesn't mean you're good at something ...
From Outsourced, to Offshore… and Back Again.
Keeping Your Investors in the Loop