skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems like a massive mis-attribution error and I worry people will learn the wrong lesson here.

The OP's story is:

1. learned to program iOS (hard, completely under OP's control)

2. wrote and published iOS app (hard, under OP's control)

3. the app failed so wrote a blog post about his experience (easy although often neglected by programmers, under OP's control)

4. HN picked up the story which led to interview (total crapshot, not under OP's control)

5. a round of of interviews which led to job offer and "completely changed life" (hard, under OP's control)

I understand why claiming step 4 ("HN picking up the story") was responsible for "changed life" plays well on HN, but it's irrational.

The hard things that OP did and were under his control were: learning iOS programming, publishing iOS app, writing a blog post about it and doing well during an interview. Steps 1-3, 5 were necessary and responsible for his getting a better job.

Step 4 is the only one that wasn't under OP's control, involved pure luck and is not even necessary.

As an example, I get several interview inquiries every month but not because I post on HN (I do) or because occasionally what I wrote ended up on HN (it did) but because I have a website, github account and a portfolio of non-trivial projects.

Step 4 is not necessary because in this market a competent iOS programmer can pick and choose. The OP would be better off if he pro-actively applied for several iOS positions in Silicon Valley (of which there are plenty) and picked the best offer, instead of passively waiting and accepting the first offer.

I'm not saying that good things don't happen because of HN but in this particular case the lesson shouldn't be "write a blog post, hope it ends up on HN and then further hope someone will contact you with a job offer" but "learn a marketable skill (like iOS programming), produce a proof of your skill (write iOS application), market it a little bit (write a blog post about it) and then go on a job shopping spree (by applying for iOS jobs)".
I think cycle counts for expensive low mass batteries are going to be a lot more of an issue than you think; it would be cheaper to put thermal, flywheel, or gravitational batteries as retrofits into substations and transformers instead, I think, or at least to put them at fixed locations like businesses which draw a lot of power. Even better, it's a free backup power supply for when the grid is down, too.

We agree on some form of distributed storage and maybe generation, though, combined with a smarter grid. It's all current or 5 years out technology.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself. The goal was to spur more/better discussions (than what private chat or crappy forums currently do).

We could certainly open up the code sooner, it just won't be polished enough to use from the get-go.

Most of all, it's an experiment for us. Do other people want this service as much as we do? Is this a valid way to try to bootstrap something? Can a service 100% (K, so 95%) open-source itself & still make ends meet?
My general rule for relative dates is:

Timestamp (00:00am/pm) within 1 day
Day of the week (Monday-Sunday) within 1 week
Full date (00/00/0000) everywhere else

I also make sure I provide a way to view the full date (eg Saturday 1st December 2012 at 1:27am) somewhere in a 'more details' modal or pane.
I think A1161's a good idea, but...I don't know how to put this kindly, but your writers are terrible. There are obviously good ideas there, but not the chops to make them work.

As for promotion, what I'm planning to do with my novel and short stories (http://frederickjross.com/) is to frequent scifi and comic cons, handing out samples from the works with information to find the rest, and spend some time on science fiction forums. Unfortunately for commercial success, I'd rather be writing my second novel.
You are a genius, sir/madam.
Another benefit of working from home is not having to worry about preparation rituals such as shaving or making sure you have clothes to wear. These are fairly important for me. On rare occasions I get to work from home, I find that being able to jump straight to work after I finish my breakfast is very refreshing. Said breakfast also tastes better since I had more time to prepare it.
I shouldn't have said you can't improve without criticism. What I meant to say is you can't improve without _feedback_. That feedback might be positive and/or negative.

People are quick to criticise and slow to compliment on HN. But ask yourself why.

Is it really so surprising?

Here are some of my observations. These could be wrong.

1. Computers have always been difficult and at times frustrating to use. I recall a story of someone throwing a PDP-10 out of a window at Berkeley, immediately after successfully porting some code to it (a wonderful achievement but incredibly frustrating- this was before C and portability). If you are spending your time working with computers, you are going to build up some frustration. It just goes with the territory. That will eventually have to be vented. (Exhibit A: Slashdot.org)

2. The web as a medium of business is full of scammers and criminals. It's also full of garbage "news" and other faux "content" trying to draw traffic, internet VC looking to take advantage of young programmers and naive investors, and "companies" formed of morally-challenged people who aim to make money by selling people's personal information or access to people's own content as a "business". There is a lot to make people jaded if you follow business on the web.

3. Computers do have a positive aspect. When they work well, it's amazing. Like magic. Computers are addictive. People enjoy them. When you write programs it can you give you a feeling of great satisfaction. ... However... the way we use computers, e.g., our personal preferences, often differ widely. So If you start singing the praises of something computer-related to other users reading the web, they may not all agree. In fact, the idea of the "fanboy", e.g. one who loves some absolutely terrible and stupid piece of software or hardware, can be even more disturbing than people who are constantly making negative comments about things which might actually not be all that bad.

4. HN if the estimates are accurate is _primarily_ an audience of 18-24 males who are are likely to be social outcasts. Would you really expect them to be overflowing with positive energy? In my experience, negative comments get upvoted. The most upvotes I ever received have been from negative comments. Who would upvote negativity? (I should really not even post negative things. I know better) So who the heck would upvote negativity? 18-24 males who can't get laid. Just a guess.
Appreciate the feedback. I had an open submission period, and these were the ones that were the best out of the slush pile. I'd be open to starting over (given the audience so far I don't think the current writers would mind), but suggestions on how I get better folks involved?
That is a problem with Facebook, not with relative dates.
Sounds interesting, though I wouldn't trust MongoDB with my (or anyone else's) data.

The problem is that, while building the core of this is easy-ish, the end result should be something very complete & easy to stand up. Our prototype functions (barely, mostly just due to a lack of time), but it's not polished or complete. It's not smooth, easy to use/administer & it doesn't include all the little details that go into successful software projects.
We are definitely considering experimenting with a donation "tip" feature. Based on our research, the average tip on peer-to-peer giving and lending platforms is about 5% of the total donation amount for a first time donation, and virtually nothing for recurring donations (people usually only tip once). It's not enough to run an organization on, but it's a great potential source of revenue to help cover some overhead costs.
Leverage the power of financial networking
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I couldn't disagree with you more. It would be relatively trivial to adjust a date for a users local timezone - as if often done.
This sounds like it could be me, a year from now. I'm literally in the middle of an interview* with a SF startup that came about because they read my blog post (via Hacker News) about failing at my own startup.

HN is undeniably awesome.

(*One interviewer was pushed forward an hour, the others are in 15 minutes...)
Seeing that I would be a web developer designing real products for the real world, yes, I would appreciate being exposed to the grander political and social context of my work, because nothing is created in a vacuum, and anything involving a group of people in public becomes political sooner than later anyway.
This will help Newegg a lot, I think -- I often buy from Amazon instead of Newegg specifically due to sales tax, although I still have a slight preference for Amazon due to ease of purchasing, and Newegg has better selection and organization (of tech goods).

B&H might be the biggest winner.
I'm fairly western, and my friends and I got the subtext pretty immediately. All you really needed to know was that it's his 6th album, everything else falls out from that given the absurdity and callbacks in the video. The song/video is fairly similar in concept to Spela Mig På Radio in that it directly confronts westernization issues using absurdity and cleverness.
Are you looking for folks who have applied (I just did), folks who currently live in KC and might be willing to be part of this, or... ?
Was? :)
>I don't know how else to say it.

Consider not.
"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." is the guideline. You could argue it's intellectually interesting to see the artefacts generated out of a cultural shift in a nation.

Personally I think a deep dive into the meaning of some piece of ostensibly trivial pop-culture and what that means for the country it was produced in is pretty interesting. Then again, I'm not exactly a 'hacker', so ymmv.
Assuming you are serious and not just venting, where are the offers like this outside the US?
The problem isn't a technical one related to timezones. The problem is that full date/timestamps are less useful for a reader to see than relative dates in many cases.
Less so than bush and presumably less so than Romney would be*

*if anyone wants to contest this, please read "no apologies" authored by Willard mitt Romney or just look at his tax returns
Like this if you are in Jamie Wong's SE 2014 class.
HTML5 video and audio tags in all major browsers
I wish they would/could also include Snow Leopard in this comparison. I lost about 20-30% of my battery life after upgrading to Lion, so the further reduction seems pretty horrible. Guess I'll be waiting a little longer still before upgrading to Mountain Lion.
I think the largest point the OP makes is that he wasn't intended to find a new job, but the HN community (mentality & philosophy) brought that opportunity to him. That's the key piece in #4, and the linchpin for the whole experience.
I run the monthly Seattle Meetups. If you want to chat about what I've learned in the past year running them, shoot me an email (in my profile).
I was thinking the %100 made sense. And that they rely only on donations specifically to them. So like I'd pay the 10 bucks to the child with cancer. And separately I'd add a dollar for them. I'd like that. Then we can decide how rich we want to make you.
Stealing time from customers
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I see it more as crowd-funding (I feel dirty using that term) a useful service with the added benefit of being able to run it yourself.

That's a better way for me to interpret it actually. I latched on to the "open source" aspect as being of utmost significance, but really it seems you are taking the well trod route of getting funding for your product - much like anyone who applies to YC or seeks investors - and the open source part is a nice big cherry on the top when you're done. Given that, your approach makes a lot more sense vs my initial "we wanna do an open source project, give us $ to start!" interpretation ;-)

Well, good luck! You have certainly picked an area of software that is crying out for better solutions.
Two things:

(a) relative dates are much less useful further they get from present date; Facebook should probably have a cut off after which exact date is shown

(b) relative dates do not replace exact dates; you should still make it relatively easy to see the exact timestamps even if it requires an extra click
I am really left feeling like i have gone to deep into the forest when stacks just keep piling up.
Even if i press "Home" in the menu, it just ends up being another page added to the stack.

It really feels like i've made a mess using this app. I can't take mess. And it takes some time to clean it up.
Why do you do this? It must be some memory concerns to this as well?
video, or other content doesn't help prevent scamming. It just pulls a few more heart strings, in the eyes of the viewers (thus "more sincere").
Additionally, what about people who don't have access to video, or do a poor production job?

If you want transparency, it has to be done by the organization (lots of foot work and following up with where the money was spent by the implementing orgs).
This resonates with me. HN has definitely altered how I see the startup culture.

I started out in Michigan writing 3D games (by hand, no hardware acceleration!), and after my wife and I took a vacation out to northern California I just had to live there. This was during the dotcom days of 1999, and it took less than a week to get multiple job offers. So we packed up our stuff and did a cross country move. It was awesome, and exciting, and the future was wide open.

However, like the author of this piece, I wasn't really prepared with how lonely it felt. Sure, there was a lot of innovative tech happening, but sometimes at the end of the day I just wanted to have a few beers with some good friends. So, I moved away from the SF Bay area up to Portland, Oregon, where I knew several friends from college, and have been here ever since.

Lately I've got the itch to return to California. Partly for the opportunities, partly for the sunshine (it's freakin' dark and depressing during Portland winters), and partly due to HN rekindling my love of startups. Now that I'm a bit older I think I'd have a better go of it. Anyone have a cool project that needs a iOS/Python/C++ tech director?
I have not much idea about companies or startups offering backup service for contacts. But you will need to do few things before jumping into the project.
1. If you are targeting consumers(users) then I believe most of us has around or less than 500 contacts. So you wont be able to get a good number of paying customers.
2. If you are targeting companies and business then it is a whole lot different ball game. And I think there must be few players in the market. What is the unique that your product will provide to them. You have to be very clear about that.
I didn't use the Level 2 server for #5 either (although I did for #8) - so I suspect that many people solved it the same way.
You should come by the Hacker News Seattle meetup sometime. :) (http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/)
Glad you changed your life and are happy with it... What was special about post that captured your attention?
First off, I specifically said that the first lot of calculations was based on unreasonable assumptions, to gauge the size of the problem.

Attacking them because they're "pie in the sky" frankly sounds like you're deliberately misinterpreting me, or at least you didn't bother reading the post.

Secondly, the scheme I'm proposing does not require any government subsidies. The money comes from selling the power back to the grid.

With my proposed figures - 5% EV ownership (63,752 cars), 40% battery usage sold back to the grid, you could reduce peak power usage by 15%. South Australia spent ~$990 million on electric power last year (not exact figures; based on 619k households from the census with an average spend of $1600).

Assuming 15% reduction in peak power is a 10% reduction in cost (which is reasonable, because capital costs and fixed running costs dominate electric spending expenses), that yields $99 million a year in savings.

The cost of 63,752 Model S cars is $3.1 billion. However, you have to look at the marginal cost of purchasing a Model S, vs whatever car the high end of the market is buying anyway, AND subtract the spending on fuel.

We're saving $1571 per car per year. Tesla's prepaid replacement program is $12,000 (over ten years), which eats a big chunk of it, however we're also charging with cheap peak solar (the abundance of which is causing this issue to begin with), plus maintenance is cheaper.

BMW 5 series MSRPs are from $38k-68k. Taking the lower end of that, we're paying a $12k premium for a car with significantly lower maintenance costs and little to no fuel costs.

Could you get 5% of cars on the road taking that deal? I don't know. Today? Maybe, maybe not. But I do know that as the price of peak solar and battery technology falls, it will go from being a 'maybe' to a 'no brainer' over the next ten or fifteen years.

In any case, I may be wrong in my analysis. I'm merely presenting an argument for the way I see it. If you disagree on a specific point, I'd be happy to talk more about it, but nothing I wrote deserved your response.
Level 7 is actually harder technically than Level 8, although Level 8 had problems at their end when there were too many people trying for it, overloading the Level 2 and Level 8 servers and making it hard to get a successful exploit. Once they fixed that, it was easy.
iPhone socks!
I'll contest that he's more so than Bush. http://www.salon.com/2011/05/16/whistleblowers_6/
Actually, it's about the petition software being released on GitHub. Others have made this thread about the unrelated matter of how they dislike the government's use of this software.
Computing Your Skill - a simple explanation of various match-ranking systems
Is stem cell therapy trial for autism scientifically and ethically justified?
How are macobserver not banned for spamming yet?

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=tanousjm

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jmartellaro

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=digiwizard

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davethenerd

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Semteksam
Without HN, the cofounder of a mobile startup doesn't know of any hobbyist iOS developers in Minnesota who might be a good addition to his team, because the hobbyist developer never sees stories about failed iOS apps as something worth writing about and even if he thought it was worth writing about without HN his story would never get in front of the right audience.

To put it another way, a startup in San Francisco doesn't need to go to the Midwest to find iOS developers. Just to find the right one.
Actually, my post just gets at the heart of his comment. I am not fooled by his surface level criticism. I am seeing through to the underlying motivation that presents this kind of highly deceptive bullshit.

There are many problems in the world. People who make it their business to attack governments for supporting wheelchair access and fire-codes are engaging in a special kind of evil.
Considered going through some of the online scifi and fantasy magazines, finding folks who haven't published much but write well, and sending them an email? Sorry I can't offer any better advice than that.
No, several of the things he listed are literally lies or misconceptions or are factually wrong.

I don't know why he prefers the things he does, but I don't dispute that he may well feel that way, nor do I care that he does.
Another South Australian. Power is just the next thing to be disrupted by technology changes.

I think we need smart meters and a more market driven approach to retail pricing. Peak electricity costs can go through the roof and people will respond by shifting their usage to alternatives or different times when there is less demand and prices are lower. Unfortunately there is no market transparency and we are paying for retail electricity without any real understanding of the underlying costs. We are paying ridiculously increasing amounts for electricity so we can build infrastructure to handle peaks that many would avoid if there were market pressures on consumers. Changes like rooftop PV and wind farms are only a part of the picture.
My very very unscientific personal test from earlier today (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4423422) ended up showing pretty similar results. Ultimately it died about an hour or two before it "should", but it's a noticeable improvement.
Equal justice under the law is one component of positive liberty.

The gilded age saw the rise of Marxism and labour unions precisely because the super-rich domination of the world was so depraved, complete, and horrible.

A recognition of positive liberty is very very basic to understanding the human condition. Without access to food, water, shelter for every child, no concept of liberty is possible. The positive/negative liberty concept is important precisely because it exposes the stupidity of the 100% classical liberal approach, which HAS been tried and HAS failed.

The job of the state is to improve human lives, not to conform to some stupid dead ideology that is making a modern resurgence because propaganda has become so very ubiquitous and powerful.
Here they are before I forget:

A Devil's Chaplain

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation

Arguing About Gods

Atheism - The Case Against God

Atheist Manifest - In Defense of Atheism

Atheist Universe

Biblical Cosmology

Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark

Dossier Of Reason

Evil God Challenge

Forged

God - The Failed Hypothesis

God Is Not Great

Godless

History of God

Jesus Interrupted

Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ

Letter To A Christian Nation

Logic and Theism

Love Thy Neighbour - Evolution of In-group Morality

Lying

Misquoting Jesus

Superstition In All Ages

The Ascension of Yahweh_ The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism

The Christian Delusion

The Dialogues of Plato

The Early History of Heaven

The End of Faith

The Evolution of God

The God Delusion

The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives And Culture

The Moral Landscape

Who Wrote the Bible

Why I am not a Christian

These are just some of the books I have read on the subject, but there are others highly rated and recommended that I still want to go through. However, these are really good.

If this list seems daunting I would recommend a shorter list:

"Breaking the spell" by Daniel Dennett
"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkings
"God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens
"End of Faith" by Sam Harris

But books by Steven Hawking "The Grand Design", "Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss and "Your Inner Fish - A Journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body" by Neil Shubin, are also great although somewhat more technical. All other books are softer read.
Well, the benefit is that it combines the capital costs of owning a vehicle and storing energy. Many people will be purchasing a 160+ mile range car, but day to day use only 20-30 miles of that - an unused capacity large enough to power an average house for over 24 hours.

This is in contrast to dedicated lithium ion batteries, which just don't work out economically. Otherwise you're right - the utilities would do it themselves at scale.
Good eye.

I did spam mitigation for years elsewhere. This stuff still makes me twitch.