skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the key sentence in the article is:
While it would make sense to get a few IDs out there first and then follow up with the readers after six months, perhaps, that was not at all included in the budget and in fact the readers' manufacturers haven't been convinced it's 'worth their while' to make the things.

Deferring deployment of the readers until a reasonable size population cards is a reasonable step to take.

Leaving the readers out of the budget so that the project looks cheaper than it is, is a dirty trick that frequently gets done. I saw it done for some of the projects related to the public office I ran for, and this was part of why I ran.

But this is even worse than that - the folks who would be making the readers aren't even making them.
Talking about Hacker News... about the website, about social media etc.
You are doing it wrong. Commute in manhattan (one of the cities Retric mentioned) is $81/month.

http://www.mta.info/metrocard/mcgtreng.htm#30day
This amendment won't pass. Too much "big money" benefits from the H1B program to let it get attached to the latest TARP.
Well we do have engineering resources on iphone, and have been doing iphone app dev for quite some time. Here's what we've done and issues we're having: (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466840).

Check out our site for more info: www.BokanTech.com/iphone/
Same here. I switched away from them back in 2003 when the "car salesman" mentality (an excellent and concise term, btw) really started to kick in. Went to Domainsite -- http://domainsite.com -- whose site is as poorly designed as GoDaddy's except for the fact that they don't have ads at every corner. That alone makes it worth switching, but Domainsite is also considerably cheaper and more up-front with their pricing.

I dare anyone to figure out how much it costs to renew a domain name with GoDaddy. It took me a full 5 minutes, and that was with a logged-in account.
I have an Intuos2 that I've always used on OS X. I've always considered this thing the pinnacle of tablet technology (pressure/angle sensitive, high resolution, etc). Are there better ones out there (whether or not they work on OS X)?

Admittedly the last tablet I had before this was a KoalaPad.
Keep in mind these are the authors' impressions from talking to VCs, who traditionally (and perhaps by definition) are at least one beat behind what's really going on.
rather tempted by ThreeFeeds - is it just me though or are these sites really poorly explained?
we need a reputation economy. currently karma isn't good for anything but stroking people's ego.
Army Experience Center - high tech recruiting facility
'Meta' because instead of just hacker news, we have news about hacker news. (from metadata)
I can live with my mouse as long as I have Quicksilver.
The best, similar thing I've found is:

http://www.backtype.com/

I'd be excited to see your demo as well.
Two other links:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/14/am.army.experience/

http://www.thearmyexperience.com/
Hopefully, it'll be a short phase. It's really getting quite tedious.
I definitely want to see a demo of the startup from his profile.
Also, TDD/BDD are most useful as design practices - not as bug-finding practices. They help you think more carefully about your design and make it more modular and clear.
So should the Python Paradox be renamed?
I know many people who do unit testing (myself included), some of them consultants. Not a single one of them does it "to buff up the invoice". In fact, every single one of them will argue (sincerely) that good unit testing practices help reduce the time they need to deliver code and increase the quality of that code. They'd also argue that good unit testing practices make it easier to then hand over the code to someone else.
Unit tests don't take that long. If it takes you that much longer to write your unit tests, you must be doing something fundamentally wrong - like perhaps testing the wrong thing or focusing on the wrong kind of testing.
> It's just a phase.

HN is like a teenager going through an "emo" period. We all need a haircut and some new music to listen to. And a date.
Ask HN: Who's Going to New York Comic Con
Want to meet up on Sat?
Ask HN: Is it too much to expect a usable browser on OS X?
I'm sure any fellow HN readers who have used OS X to any extent have noticed a couple, fairly obvious things:

1. Safari has little room for extensibility.

2. Firefox integrates terribly.

It might be that I'm being unnecessarily picky or demanding, but I'd like to think otherwise. I continually find myself frustrated as I switch back and forth between WebKit Nightlies and Firefox for the two reasons above. I like the extensibility Firefox offers, but I absolutely abhor all the quirks that it has on OS X[1].

So, is it too much to ask for a browser that both integrates well on OS X, and offers the extensibility many developers and users enjoy?

1: For example, Firefox has trouble opening zip/tar files with the Archive Utility on OS X. After a long while googling, I found a solution that gets most of the way there (On 10.4, there was a service running in the background that could handle this; in 10.5, you need to tell Firefox to open these with /System/Library/CoreServices/Archive Utility.app). The main complaint here is that while Archive Utility does unzip/untar the file in the right directory, Firefox prevents the Finder window in the background from taking focus, so I have to manually Cmd-Tab to the Finder to get at the item I just downloaded.
Yes. This morning around 9 or 10 (eastern) it was slow -- took many tens of second for indivual links or the main page to come up.

But it seems to be recent -- I can't recall it happening before this week.
I'd say that it's also important once the team gets beyond a certain size; codebase and team size tend to scale together, of course, but not always. The value of tests in catching regressions in code you didn't write, didn't realize was there, and don't understand is immense. It's one kind of difficult to not introduce regressions in 100k lines of code that you were deeply involved with; it's a whole different deal to walk into 100k lines of someone else's code and try to change it without breaking anything.

Unit testing is like vaccination: it's good for me that I'm vaccinated against smallpox, but it's also really good for you that I won't be getting sick and giving it to you, and your ability to avoid vaccination (or testing) and still function is often directly correlated to how well everyone else is vaccinated (or how well they've tested their code so you know when you're breaking it).

Those don't always have to be unit tests in the strictest sense, so you could perhaps argue that a test that breaks as a result of unrelated changes isn't really a "unit" test because it wasn't properly isolated, but I really hate those sorts of language arguments. I'll call something a "unit" test if it's not an "end-to-end" test, even if I didn't mock or stub out every possible dependency. And it certainly sounds like the author of this post is arguing against unit tests in that sense rather than in the stricter sense.
book readers on computers are simply not the same or anywhere near as good as ebooks - the epaper is what defines a real ebook ... everything else is the same as reading on a computer screen.
Prameya - does a volume license include a right to resell? I'd be careful and check.
Netflix, iTunes, amazon mp3, flickr
What I'm saying is that once a site becomes more complicated (e.g. if the data comes after page load, in an ajaxed popup, for example), that simple solution becomes harder to maintain (or to implement without wasting bandwidth). To be fair, if you don't work on complex web apps, you'll probably never run into this.

>> I've never seen any issues with encoding in js, so I'm not sure what you mean about french text, regexps...

Good for you. I hope you never see these types of bugs, they are nasty to troubleshoot.
This HN improvement shit is getting out of hand.
define extensibility -- what features are you missing?

on Archive Utility - I really really recommend "The Unarchiver" opens more formats, quicker and nicer usability quirks.
ARC doesn't scale!
Exactly. As you add more features, you simplify certain things, but you also limit the sorts of things people will come up with.
Say hello to the LAP stack. Linux, Apache, Perl/Python/PHP/PostgreSQL.
I think it's more that people who program in $OBSCURE_LANGUAGE are much more likely to have picked up that language out of interest, rather than from wanting to have a cushy, decent-paying desk job.
Like Joel, I only knew about Akamai's CDN services. Are there any other companies (CDN or otherwise) that provide a similar service?
I agree that our society is too conservative, but it is going in the right direction. It's just that there is a long way to go, and we are going in the right direction very very slowly. (You'll notice that people keep trying to make porn illegal, but the courts are becoming more and more permissive. That is a good thing.)

Finally, the Internet is a global place, and it doesn't really matter what the US thinks about a porn site based in the EU or in Japan.
Have you got a demo of the discussion system you mention in your profile? I'd love to see it.

He might be one of the founders of socialbrowse? They're a YC-backed startup.

Explained here: http://mashable.com/2008/07/25/socialbrowse-release/

Install from here: http://socialbrowse.com/
And this is news about news about hacker news.

Error: Stack level too deep.
In the glorious ZFS future we will want drivers for Fusion io and non-RAID SAS HBAs with expander support.
This discussion doesn't really help, you know?
Sadly, I gave in and did mine last night. Can somebody make a facebook app already that quizzes you about which random facts belong to which of your friends?
Colors work for me. Don't change.
Very funny. In case you're sarcasm impared, the page is meant to be a joke.
IBM, Google Health Aim to Blow Medical Records Wide Open
If you buy me a mac I'll work on the chromium project for you.
Vote threshold would work once your site is popular but I would pick them out by hand until that happens.
The ones I'm thinking of are a guy talking into the camera about erectile dysfunction, and how it's impacting his life. With no sound, you'd have no idea what was being advertised. Compared to, say, a beer commercial, it's not as racy, but the frankness of the man talking into the camera can make it more awkward than scantily clad people if you're with parents/children.
Yes and no. This is the community's immune response. A couple of weeks after an influx of new users, the community stages a massive navel-gazing festival designed to test the new folks' mettle.

Once we shake off the people who don't really want to be here, we'll return to our usual diet of startup announcements, website reviews, complaints about techcrunch, artfully disguised attempts to reignite holy wars so that we can all spectate, and questions that have been asked every six months since the beginning of the site. Not to mention: news and information.

---
NOTICE: This has been an attempt at humor. Do not refer to it as a "theory", lest ye be mocked. Please phrase replies in haiku form.
I do find it very useful, though. I hope the guys behind it will get around to making it faster some time.
In Firefox, I was using a lovely extension which provided me the ability to do regular expression searches with the browser's built-in searching utility.

Additionally, I had as of late been using Stylish, Socialite, and Ubiquity fairly regularly.

In essence, I would love some sort of plug-in architecture aside from the very hack-ish input manager stuff we're currently limited to.
Carly Fiorina: Government shouldn't decide executive pay
Meta is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And you're not helping.

Neither am I.
Extensions for Google Chrome Coming In May?
The general rule for "meta" is: "meta-X" → "X about X." Examples: "meta-data" → "data about data", "meta-language" → "language about language", "meta-vanity" → "vanity about vanity" (a concept explored by the late DFW though he termed it "second-order vanity"), etc.
Really? This counts as journalism these days?

No, but it counts as selling eyeballs to advertisers, which is the business Time is in. It's the same business all magazines are in.
I would certainly be willing if it were financially feasible.
It's the orange names :)

Yes, I've noticed a lot of slowdown as well, primarily when viewing comments.
Remember when many here (including myself) were at best skeptical of what Arrington called "Clown Co.?" Mea culpa:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972

That certainly would have made an interesting contrast to the "Hulu is the one that's figuring it all out" theme.
One thing about getting something like a Haskell job that's rarely mentioned is it seems like it's very much an all-or-nothing proposition. Casual or intermediate dabblers who like learning new things like Haskell but aren't total wizards get no points.

A lot of the investment bank openings for functional programmers want someone who's doing a PhD in programming languages, from what I've seen, for example.
OP suggested using a fee to reduce trolling and somehow qualify users. It addresses the problem in a round-about way using economic incentives to filter "non-HN" users, or trolls. Inefficient.

In order to qualify site membership, why not require a non-monetary merit test? For example, one can only sign-up or comment/submit for a month if they can solve a simple computer problem appropriate to the site content, in this case maybe deciphering a simply double-encoded string (say, HTML entities + rot13 or base64 or something). If you only want only "hackers" on HN, make them "hack" their way in, like some kind of text CAPTCHA for computer geeks. I guess a math forum could make people solve an equation to comment, or a zoological forum could ask some taxonomy question or something.

If the real problem is that HN needs money for infrastructure in a depressed ad market, then call it what it is and do a voluntary fundraiser, ala Wikimedia or public radio. Those of us who value this site will pony up accordingly.
Wouldn't that be LAPP, meaning Linux, Apache, Perl/Pythong/PHP, PostgreSQL?
It's always relative. People seem to define "rich" as "someone with more money than me."
Strangely enough, I got tagged (thrice in the last two weeks). I was just making up the list, and realized, its actually a great exercise. I really enjoyed writing that list (still working on it though).

Though if this is mainstream journalism, and this is from Time.com, I am sufficiently confident that I am not the only one wasting my time (assuming I even agree with the author)
Widenuis was livid about the way that the MySQL 5.1 release happened which he thought was incomplete and loaded with bugs. Sun countered that Widenuis was entitled to his opinion, but in their view MySQL 5.1 was a solid release.

I've been working with SpringSource code lately, and this seems to be a common issue. If your business model depends on selling "Enterprise level support", making the user experience easy and bug-free just isn't in your interests...
Well, a truly elite hacker would simply hack their way past the block. You can check that one off as solved then.
Which schools are that?
The sad thing is I found the list far more interesting than the article. Hint: If your going to rant about something as a waste of time don't let it upstage you're job.
Yeah, the only thing that matters to me is whether the pro-unit testing position has become more religious or whether the anti-unit testing position has become more religious. I'll take whatever seems serious. I liked what Joel Spolsky had to say yesterday but I disagree with the linked blog post today.
I got yer non-meta right here:

I'm working on a project that's similar/complementary to yours (cf. my profile) and think we ought to chat. Email me.
my favorite list i've seen so far:

1.) I don't usually fill out chain lists.
9.) I've made People Magazine's most beautiful people list 6 years running.
13.) I really like 30 Rock.
16.) I've never tasted my own urine.
17.) David Blaine is actually just a character in my imagination.
19.) I was half of the men at the million man march.
22.) Four of the things on this list are true.
23.) #22 isn't one of them.
25.) I really, really hope someone sends me $25.
Any idea why Ajaxian removed their coverage of this? Originally located at http://ajaxian.com/archives/how-many-engineers-does-it-take-...
There are some listed on the 'Haskell in education' page on the Haskell wiki.

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_in_education
And I guess if I'm just going to post the negative argument without saying much else, I should also link to Walter Isaacson's more substantive argument (longer than the one in Time):

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.4959311/k...
Ad Rates Are Not Going To Get Better - Sorry
TechCrunch has it a bit backwards asking if the ad crunch is over. It's not.
How is this different from the various chain emails sent?
Guerrilla Marketing: How Twitter Changed The Way We Will Approach Tradeshows
I've been a long-time HN lurker, but we recently returned from a trade show experiment I thought I'd share with the rest of the small startups here: what happens when you drop the $20k booth, and pick up Twitter as the main marketing tool instead?

As startups, we're often forced to be ultra-conservative about where we spend our money. Last October my co-founder, Rian Gauvreau, and I launched Clio, a web-based practice management tool designed specifically for solos and small firm lawyers. We've been building buzz about it using word-of-mouth marketing, but wanted to step things up at a tradeshow and try to get the word out in the mainstream legal press and blogs.

The legal industry's biggest tradeshow, LegalTech New York, was the obvious place to do this - it just wrapped up yesterday. We wanted to attend the show and raise the visibility of Clio, which traditionally would be done by buying a booth, flying out 2-3 people to staff it up, buying some giveaways, etc. Renting the space for the booth alone would be $10k (just for a 10x10 booth), while buying a booth can easily be another $5-10k.

Looking at a $20k+ tab to have a booth at this show, we decided we should look at an alternative: just showing up at the conference with a laptop for demos, setting up meetings beforehand with e-mail, and leveraging Twitter to connect with existing and potential clients at the meeting (lawyers have a surprisingly vibrant presence on twitter - http://www.lextweet.com/).

The response? We spent 2 solid days answering DM's to set up meetings, even connected with giants in the field like Bob Ambrogi (@bobambrogi) via Twitter. It was easily the most positive and exciting tradeshow experience I've had, and we didn't spend a penny on the traditional booth, shwag and rental expenses. For any other HN startups out there: think twice before shelling out for an expensive booth to get the message out: you might be surprised at how effective Twitter can be as a marketing tool.

We blogged about this recently at http://www.goclio.com/blog/2009/02/05/ltny-wrap-up-how-twitter-changed-how-we-will-approach-tradeshows/. We're at http://twitter.com/goclio.

Would be interesting in hearing other experiences/opinions around tradeshows.
Have you checked out pimpmysafari.com ?
MySQL historically had a very good reputation for fixing bugs and taking care of the users when they first started out, but as their focus shifted taking care of the users became less of a priority.

The weird thing is the bugs that Monty claims were 'riddling 5.1' were there for a lot longer than they should have been anyway, plenty of them predated the buyout by SUN.
In every case, the behavior that is encouraged is one that benefits the reader rather than the writer. I think this is a good thing.

1-3: Comments that few people ever read are inherently less valuable to the vitality of the site than comments that many people read.

4: If people are encouraged to pick their battles rather than voicing their opinion any time they have a comment box in front of them, so much the better. It means less time wasted with the same stale arguments, and perhaps fewer one-sided submissions.

I concede that this relies on the fragile notion that people will be willing to acknowledge (by voting) when a comment they disagree with has merit, but I suspect this would be easier if people had more experience with higher-quality disagreement--say a 4, 5, or 6 on pg's hierarchy.

5: If a submission and thread was worth commenting in at all, it is presumably interesting enough to deserve the up voting. Not a problem.

If people are discouraged from commenting on threads that they themselves do not find worth voting up, that's a good thing.

If a significant number of people start commenting on and voting up stories that they themselves don't find interesting--well, at that point I'd start fearing for the survival of the human race.

6-7: Well, duh.

8: See 1-3. Long 1-on-1 discussions can be valuable to the individuals involved, but they don't provide much benefit to the site as a whole.

Think about it this way: all you need to do to maintain a 3 point average is to write comments that at least two people find interesting. Just two people. All that the orange name signifies is that on average your comments are interesting to more than one other person on the site. I think that's worth rewarding.
Yep, also with 2 workers, that 5$ cup of coffee is 200$/month.
Nick--assuming that the users of Rebel.FM are liable for direct infringement (which seems likely), the way in which the software is marketed may affect Rebel.FM's liability. (see MGM v. Grokster: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-480.ZS.html). [This is not legal advice--just pondering.]
I would have like to see some technical notes in there. It almost comes across like a glorified sales pitch for two products!

First Joel says that they don't deliver static files and that edge caching won't help. And then they swap out some IPs, cuddle up to Akamai and bam -- suddenly the Internet delivers.
The part I find so irritating is the it's just the tiniest things that screw up Firefox on the Mac. My pet peeve is that text fields don't recognize up and down arrow to go to the beginning and end of the field like every single other Mac application does. In general Safari just has a nicer UI (tabs, activity window, bookmarks, responsiveness, etc).
What media are you trying to deliver? Traditional CDN are very expensive -- like cell phone minutes, you pay up-front for X number of GB. If you buy 1000GB and burn 20GB, you still pay your $10k/month bill.

Amazon is making a big play in this space, and doing a 'pay for what you eat'. Hopefully this will encourage CDNs to take a look at their pricing schedules.
The purpose of a hiring filter is to reduce the false positives. Your discovery of false negatives doesn't say much about the filter quality in this respect.

If you could take random samples from the group of people who would apply to Haskell jobs and from people who would apply to Java jobs and come up with a measure of motivation/willingness-to-learn, I believe there would be some statistically significant things to say. Samples from two mainstream (and in my opinion, trashy) languages like C++ and VB might be harder to differentiate.

As a side note, I've noticed that companies that can afford a large amount of false negatives tend to have horrible interviewing practices. Google is in the top two of the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had. When everybody salivates over your company, you can afford use a quick and dirty filter that hones in on any one arbitrary characteristic. As a matter of fact, one could possibly argue that these lazy filters do better than more accurate filters in the same way that Google argues that more data is better than superior AI. It's stupid for people to look to companies like these for exemplary models of interviewing.