skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
anyone using it?
Casual sex is an example of the crudeness and nastiness of the current era

Have sex with friendlier girls.

Seriously though how is that an example of it?
I have to say the Hacker News in general is a much positive place, where you got real good and honest feedback, from semi-anon users (some are known, many are not). And usually the topics are intellectually stimulating.

But I have to say that a lot of nastiness can come from people that are frustrated with the current coverage in the tech media, where a lot of good technologies/projects/inovative startups are being ignored, and few people are taking the limelight.
I even know about Julia Allison , but really what has she done? Except for being a great self promoter? What about Loc Le Meur startup, which is really nothing inovating.
Why so few people are taking the limelight, while really good things are getting ignored? The ratio of noise to signal in the blogosphere/tech startup media is really high.

I guess a lot of people express this kind of frustration against these self-promoters, and not media itself.

It is like being annoyed at Britney Spears when the front page of CNN has a story about Britney Spears, while medicare reform is somewhere in the bottom.

Really, people should be frustrated at CNN, by ignoring it.

That's why I like HN, as it is a breath of fresh air, comparing to other sites.

(ps. we still have some shameless self promoters here, with github being one of them. We get it, git is awesome, but here are a lot of other technologies that get ignored, (HG one of them. Disproportionate coverage of something, in expense to something else just as useful, is just noise and doesn't help the community).
I see plenty of pointless, off-topic comments that deserved to be downvoted without explanation. But I agree that if you want to downvote just because you disagree, you should probably state your case why. Or upvote someone who already has.
I'm not sure the word "monopoly" means what this person thinks it means. Craigslist doesn't have a monopoly; in fact, the market for the service Craigslist provides is dominated by other providers. Craiglist is simply the best, most powerful provider.

As a result, if Craigslist was really doing everyone a disservice by not implementing this guy's feature wish list, they'd lose market share to a competitor that actually implemented them. The post tacitly concedes that point by cheering on YC's alleged effort to fund a Craigslist competitor, thus contradicting its own thesis.

The problem with these feature wishlists for Craigslist is that the site works. This particular wishlist is particularly funny, because it consists largely of things that eBay provides --- reputation, semantic search --- without acknowledging that Craigslist currently works better than eBay.
This is pretty good:

http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm
You have a few anecdotes about people frustrated with Craigslist. But there's an avalanche of people frustrated with eBay, for similar reasons. We tend to assume that all the frustrations involved in person-to-person commerce can be addressed by intermediaries like Craiglist. But who knows if that's actually true?
If you want to explore a full range of meditation techniques, check out Osho's "The Book of Secrets". It explains the 112 methods from one of the ancient texts describing the various methods of meditation (or dhyana in sanskrit).

Read through it, try a few, see what works for you. Different techniques work for different people.

The best is to learn in a live environment from a trained teacher. I recommend Isha Yoga (www.ishafoundation.org) They have a program called "inner engineering" which imparts a yogic practice which is quite effective at lowering stress and bringing clarity to the mind. There have even been some scientific studies looking at changes in the brain through doing the practice.
The lumping of casual sex in with the other things is a bit much. It doesn't make sense and comes across as a moral judgement that you're making on other people that aren't out to hurt someone.
Not an urban legend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy
I use Georgia on my resume with a minimalist layout and receive compliments on it often.
Arrington thinks he owns the internet. I don't hold it against him, I don't hate him in the slightest. You have to have balls to put up with the stuff he cops.
I have to hit reply to see the flag option.

That works, but so does clicking link.
Sure, of course. My point was that any inherently dangerous activity whether it's sawing, driving or even something as mundane as cooking will dull the perception of danger with time. Woodworkers are not the exception.
We could, of course, start accounting for the fact that communication skills are as important as engineering skills when it comes to making a successful business... thereby taking responsibility for our own perceived problems and eliminating the frustration.
The real estate NAR MLS listing services has(/had) a monopoly. There was only a single provider, you had to be a realtor to manage it, and realtors colluded to penalize offerings (like FSBO's) that weren't managed through realtors.

What Craigslist category is equivalently anticompetitive? Real estate? That's NAR. Rentals? Craigslist may have 50% of that market. Jobs? Craigslist trails all the major jobs sites.
they all seem like top tier commercial niches, anything like craigslist emerging? is this an opportunity even if launched in a particular city
Creating a JIT from Scratch...
Am I the only one who saw this, and immediately thought "please don't be my CL job post, please don't be my CL job post"?
It's more to do with investment, I think. Sure, you'll always buy food and clothes and soap and gasoline. But will you buy a house that will be cheaper tomorrow? Will you buy a computer that will be cheaper tomorrow? Will you hire somebody for $70K per year, when you can hire them for $50K per year in six months?

You say that if somebody doesn't need something, they shouldn't buy it. Well, they don't buy it, in a deflationary environment. But, we really don't NEED all that much. As more and more people decide they don't need new cars, new houses, new clothes, clean water, electricity, etc., the society spirals back in time to the caveman days. That's an exaggeration, obviously, but you get my point.
Please make this thing stop; this is the Hacker News equivalent of those joke faxes that offices used to circulate in the '90s.
PC is also counter to our roots. Originally, we were all about bucking conformism.
Uh Oh. Now You Can Suggest Stories To Techmeme Via Twitter
Secrets of a Lunatic Farmer
Ask HN: Getting Eyeballs
Seems like Arrington's post has sparked some conversation about the community and founders' desperation for exposure. What's the problem? Are people not clever enough to come up with unique marketing plans? Or do most of them fail?

Coming from someone who hasn't been involved in a startup (yet!), I've never really understood this inability among founders to develop clever marketing campaigns. Everyone seems to think they need to score a blog post. And even if that's what it takes, there's huge frustration and difficulty with doing so.

During Startup School '08, Arrington said the best way to get on TC was to create a story. That seems pretty straightforward to me. So create one. That doesn't mean email him asking him to demo your product. It means to stir up some drama. Leak a screenshot, 'accidentally' post something on twitter, etc. I'm pretty sure that's the type of story he's talking about. In being creative with creating features, you also need to be master storytellers.

Instead of blog posts, there are myriad of things you could do for promotion and eyeballs. Make a bogus/cute little app that might not relate to your site like that 'Is Hillary Swank Hot?' app that was here a week ago. Make it a gag site and promote there. Here's an idea: Make weekly videos of a puppet version of your logo gruesomely killing the logos of your competitors or just popular sites in general. Be a sensationalist.

It really shouldn't be all that hard, guys, honestly. People these days will watch anything, and there are celebrities and fads in every corner of the internet waiting to find an audience. Making them stick to your service is another problem, but getting exposure shouldn't be difficult.
Yes, you summed it up nicely. A "simplifying model".

In other words, chi may be magic fairy mysticism, but if you believe it, at least temporarily, it works anyway.
Your only goal should be to notice what you're feeling and thinking and to return to the object of meditation.

If you set a goal such as "stop thinking in words" you will never actually stop thinking in words because this is what you're thinking about.
> What makes [Obama] unusual, if not earth-shaking, as far as successful politicians go, is that he seems to be a truly great human being.

Obama's being a great human being can't possibly have the effects that you're predicting. That's not to say that he's bad. (Although the evidence for "great" is lacking.) Jesus H. Christ on a pogostick couldn't do those things.

That leaves us with a choice between "fanboy", "confused", and "troll".[1]

Which of them is a reason to upvoting your comments?

Me - I'm going with fanboy because I like to think the best of others.

[1] Your extended comments about casual sex confirm that those are the likely possibilities. In other news, nothing that you cited as "80s and later" actually started or even changed then. Digital watches are cool, but people haven't changed.
Not so much that programming has given me, but constantly having to come up with analogies to explain highly technical concepts to my non-technical co-workers has invaded my life.

"See, your username and password are like a combination lock, where the Kerberos ticket is a key. When you authenticate to the portal, you hand the key to the website, which validates it, and lets you in... but the key is actually in your browser, so it does that all transparently."
Advanced Starcraft Theory: HW #2
this proofs why ui is important
Corn Industry's Response to Merucry in High Fructose Corn Syrup Report
Coming from someone who hasn't been involved in a startup (yet!), I've never really understood this inability among founders to develop clever marketing campaigns.

Why don't you try it and see whether it's that easy?
We should auction H-1B visas.
Wait, that's what some countries do--ground floor != first floor.
If you cannot learn C++, you are either plain old stupid or you don't belong in programming. C++ is very easy, the syntax is picked up in a week, and you can work without any libraries, you mostly just need to learn the API of the host system. If you can program in Ruby, you are capable enough to program in C++, and the only thing stopping you is just this 'myth' that C++ is hard.
Hm. It seems not, but it has the ability to hide or delete all posts from an IP. All my previous comments were wiped out at once. I can create a new account, and I continued the sequence, but I'm sure they'll suffer the same fate.
HN: you are guilty of premature optimization
Most of us here want to become financially free. This is what draws us to talk about startups, finances, and the like. You would think, being hackers, we would focus on the most efficient ways to become financially free. But, we do not. Instead we focus on one, very difficult, exhausting, and undependable method - selling an online startup. Why is this?

Some might say it is because you want to be your own boss. Fine, but don't you want to be your own boss because then you are free? Isn't the original problem, then, that you are enslaved by the pursuit of money?

Others might say they like the glamor. For that it seems obvious that you need large amounts of publicity and money. But why make this assumption? What is more glamorous, someone who is dependent on a massive infrastructure, or someone who struck out and made their own destiny? Plus, the new, social media is much better publicity than that of the old, institutional media. With all the time on your hands when you are financially free, you have plenty of time to make a name for yourself.

Finally, some may just want loads of money to spend on whatever cool gadgets and experiences they may want. This is more difficult to achieve with financial freedom alone. But, it is not impossible. Again, financial freedom gives you all the time you could need, plenty of time to figure out clever ways to get what you want.

As capitalism proves, human ingenuity is the real wealth, and that is only limited by time.
Good point - go ahead. But personally, I've unfollowed plenty of people who tweet seemingly nothing but complaints.
I haven't been involved in a web startup, but I have started a t-shirt company, and have been involved in many campus/non-campus related clubs and efforts that required clever marketing. In my opinion, the web is no different, if anything, it makes virality happen much more quickly than by word of mouth, etc.
OK, stopping for now, enjoy the peace and quiet guys.
Drobo: Its Part In My Downfall
Ah, good point; it took me a few tries to find the site myself. Apparently Pin isn't an acronym; it's just Pin.

http://www.pintool.org/
Karma effects EVERYTHING I do.
The only thing more annoying than bandwagon hatred is bandwagon altruism. What happened to Arrington sucks, but this sort of shit happens to all sorts of domain-specific personalities and famous people every day. I just don't see what this "call to action" is trying to accomplish.

People aren't going to change, most especially within mediums that provide complete anonymity. The thing, I think, that really surprises people about this is the fact that online trolling has spilled over into real life and has resulted in spitting and death threats. As I see it, the more our online and offline lives merge thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, the more you're going to see people acting as crazy offline as on.
I joined a new company. about 40 people, semi-startup mode.
I was working on larger company (about 220+ ) people, and after going through 6 managers in two years, with the latest being the corporate/pointy hair type, I had enough. I stopped working hard, and I realized I needed to move on doing something more meaningful.
So I joined a small company that is in the beginning of executing a new strategy (yes a gamble, but all startups are).
I am working extra hard, full cylinders firing. I believe "performance = ability + motivation". I have both right now, and my work is really showing it. Here are the main motivators for me:

1. Green card and freedom -- The process takes long time, so I need to make sure the company is doing good and it will be around when the process is done, otherwise I will be in trouble. Meaning going the extra mile about everything I do. Meaning that everything I do, is to secure the company is doing well and will be around. For other people might be their mortgage they have to pay, or expecting kids, or other responsibilities.

2. Pay is good. Really good. --HR types love to say that pay is not a motivator, but I can say for sure that low pay is sure DE-Motivator.
And pay is relative. When everybody else is getting a pay-cut,and I got a huge raise, it makes me motivated to work extra hard to make the money they are paying worth it. And honestly, a large pay, makes me feel more appreciated.

3. Visibility and work relevance -- I make a huge difference in this company. I am about 10% of the technical output of the company. I work in very important project, and my direct performance has a lot of say on the future of the company. When you are one of one hundred engineers, your direct performance matters less. You can slack off (work half the time), and it only affects .5% of the engineering output. When you are one of the 12 engines, there is a huge responsibility on your shoulders.

4. Management hears what I say. -- If you are good, you can truly excel and shine in small companies/startups. My manager and director are impressed by what I am doing, and they hear my feedback, and act on it accordingly. I am not just a cog, replaceable widget, but a important part of the company. Replaceable, (yes, everybody is), but at a great expense. They realize that I am totally vested on the company's success, so my comments/suggestions are selfless, not self-promoting, but how to get things done faster and better.

5. Stock options -- Yes, I have a bunch of them. But they are more of a bet. I am not planing to be rich on them (maybe the founders will), but it is nice to know that if the company will do really well, then I get a piece of the pie too.
Is it garbage collected?

Apparently mine isn't, I've got to take it out every Monday...
RepSheet.com - "A stupid-simple site loaded with geographically specific political info"
oh absolutely agree that not everyone is on facebook.. (for example - all my younger cousins are only on myspace :P)
(Also - I'm coming from Aus - where fb is #2 after google ahead of youtube, myspace, ebay, etc -- so my sample size may be biased..)

My point wasn't that there aren't millions of internet users who aren't on facebook - it's that there aren't millions of internet users who WOULD BE INTERESTED IN SHARING PHOTOS who aren't on a social network of some sort..
Then there's another article on the front page (From $80,000 a year to eviction) full of stories of people leaving their jobs and then getting screwed when they need a new one.

Not everything is as simple as "leave your crappy, back-breaking job and you'll be happy." At the very least, you need enough money to live with some level of comfort.
Lose your mind and come to your senses.
Official Google Blog: Introducing Measurement Lab
I don't get the point of this at all.

Perhaps pageviews were levelling off and they hope to break news rather than just aggregate it better than anyone else?
If it was just on most efficient, this would be a very different forum. I think the primary thread of discussion is to talk about what we love and what drives us, treating financial gain as a side-effect.
Lua seems like a cross between javascript and python in terms of style. Has anyone built a server side javascript app? Or have access to Rhino on Rails?
It doesn't affect my writing but it does affect what I think of people here. The more downvotes to negative values I see, the more I think this community is becoming less able or willing to communicate.

Intelligent people should be able to use words to disagree. I see how it can be useful to use upvotes for content filtering, but downvoting to negative scores actually highlights those posts and therefore defeats the content filtering purpose.

Greying them out even forces me to take action (highlight the text with the mouse) in order to be able to read them. It's completely counter-productive.

So what purpose do downvotes have? In my view they are either insults or they are a very primitve way of expressing opinion. Upvotes are also a very primitive way of expressing opinion, but they help me filter out interesting content as well.

Since negative scores serve no purpose at all, why would I want to have those posts thrust in my face? To learn that there are a bunch of speechless people who feel good about making a score go from -8 to -9? I already knew that, thank you very much.

I wish there was an account setting that makes all comment scores go away.
Most C++ haters (e.g. me) can program in C++ and probably even do program in it sometimes, but just don't like to. I can certainly do anything in C++ I could do in any other language, just with a hell of a lot more cursing and kicking things.
You can turn panning off, and Google maps still might have been better for your purposes.

It has many nice features such as an Event library, customizable overlays, and the ability to draw polylines and polygons. And you could have easily sliced up your artist's images into tiles.

I think it would have saved you time, and probably left your client with more maintainable and extendable code. A lot of people know the Google Maps API.
"The only way to do that is to anchor it by sustaining an incredibly focused attention on a single object for prolonged periods of time." -- This is one way. You can learn to attend to your attention without the focus on a mudra or sutra, but for most people this is not the easiest entry point.
R.I.P. Cross Platform for Java
I sat down for a long time in a deep, calm, state of meditation and achieved the realization that yogic meditation = bullshit.
Banknorth used to mention on their web site that they were rated the #1 bank web site.
Most of us here want to become financially free. This is what draws us to talk about start ups, finances, and the like.

You're oversimplifying. Most of us here want to build cool stuff. Becoming financially free is certainly something which makes building cool stuff a lot easier, so to that extent it's worthwhile; but startups would be attractive due to the drive to build cool stuff even if there was no chance of them ever being profitable.
You're being USA-centric when dealing with the global phenomenon that is the Internet. Neither Bush (nor Obama) will ever be be a symptom of anything of that magnitude.

I'll down-mod you not because I disagree, but because your reasoning is incomplete and one-sided.
I actually quite like your puppet idea.
Mistake number one: looking for a vice president on craigslist.
John Updike, author of the "Rabbit" books, died yesterday
Oh come on! Very few of his posts are negative and mostly those are when the company closes up shop. Paid to do so, you have any poof of that?
If you're studying for an N.D., you're not in medical school.
Hookup-style casual sex is the ruination of unwilling participants' future romantic partners... unless you like dropping pens in coffee mugs.

Ok, that comment was crass and bitter... but seriously: I don't think anyone should have sex with a partner who doesn't put the other person's emotional well-being at the same level of concern as his or her own.
Meditation, lazy style: http://www.centerpointe.com/

I've experimented with positive results. The program has also been recommended by 2 trusted friends. I'm not sure just how effective it is compared to typical meditation practices, but worth checking out.
I see zero posts about becoming financially free. I see many posts about startups, the stock market, and getting burnt out by programming jobs that control what people think and do. Try posting something about being depressed here, and see how many upvotes it gets. Or, look at my submission history.

This does not look like the posting pattern of people who are satisfied with their freedom.

Here's a recent example:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=454316

Do people here sound satisfied with their work, and merely talking about their diverse interests? Or does the allure of the startup draw them?
But I have to say that a lot of nastiness can come from people that are frustrated with the current coverage in the tech media, where a lot of good technologies/projects/inovative startups are being ignored.

Sounds like an opportunity for another media startup to promote ignored projects.

we still have some shameless self promoters here

So promote HG: post articles about it, etc. The good stuff will rise to the top.
What does a startup have to do with building cool stuff? The startup aspect seem mainly a diversion to me: networking, raising support, handling customers, etc. I see many posts talking about how well a particular startup is doing, but does anyone talk about how fun it is to do startupish stuff?
Obama's being a great human being can't possibly have the effects that you're predicting.

I think an inspirational leader like Kennedy or Obama can inspire people greatly to better themselves, and this inspiration has all sorts of ripple effects. A mustard seed, if you will. Finally we have a president whom, if I had kids, I would consider to be a decent role model for them to aspire to be like.