skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks Paul.

I know many of us have probably wondered what you've been thinking about your experiment. I know I have. As usual, you've managed to write the essay before people are even asking the question.

The addictive/interesting balance is a fascinating subject. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you about that in the future.
So... I am an avid Test Driven Development/Unit Test/Behavior Driven Development guy. I've been gravitating towards Behavior Driven Development lately and honestly I don't Dependency Inject everything. Really if I'm just Behavior Driven Develop-ing a layer I just need to inject the fringe dependencies, the things that would cause me to be dependent on other whole systems or sub-systems (think File Input/Output, Active Directory, Web Services, etcetera). My object still contains a lot of state.

I think saying that unit tests cause us to reinvent functional programming is a bit of a stretch. I do think that saying that unit testing causes us to write better code and we borrow heavily from many programming paradigms (Design By Contract, Functional Programming, Object Oriented Programming, Domain Specific Languages, etcetera) in order to write that better code.

:)
You could argue that many Asian countries are harder-working, but I'd argue that they are not as innovative. Hard work + innovation = America (at its best).

Not entirely true, but a fair opinion. "In Innovation, U.S. Said to Be Losing Competitive Edge" - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/technology/25innovate.html
MIT alumni companies generate billions for regional economies
Subtitle: Study reinforces the importance of universities in driving entrepreneurial growth
Hear, hear: if you have a solution for detecting stupid comments, let Paul know.

I liked the two ideas Paul mentioned: length of comment is related to stupidity, and not using the same words again. Just make those fall toward the bottom of the page and we'll all be happy.

While any algorithm can be gamed, length is still pretty good. If I have to go through the extra effort of adding two paragraphs each time I write something, well... it takes time to type. So I have an incentive to think and improve my comment.

Really, I like this. It's really the same problem as Google search: out of all the junk out there, how can you tell interesting content? Because we all want to read only amazing stuff and engage in discussions with brilliant people. In practice, it doesn't work that way yet, but what if technology made it possible?
Ours was that initially we couldn't give it away. The first couple merchants would only agree to use the service if we gave it to them for free and did all the work of building their stores ourselves.

There was also the fact that many of our most successful merchants were selling something dubious. But I wouldn't call it a secret because we didn't know it ourselves. We had no idea why the stores selling Japanese comics or "dietary supplements" did so well.
FaceBook Follies: Why Facebook's Recent Change Was Bad, and Likely Unenforceable
That makes sense - B2C businesses have every reason to post here, and other places, to get customers. B2B don't, they might even suffer from it.

Thanks for clearing it up :-)
== SPECIAL THANKS:

* First, of course, to Capistrano. For coming up with the idea and
providing a lot of meat for the recipes.

http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master
What a disaster that would be, to attract thousands of smart people to a site that caused them to waste lots of time. I wish I could be 100% sure that's not a description of HN.

The reason HN is so addictive is because it is filled with things we think might be useful someday. We're like pack rats at a flea market.

The question is, what utility do we get out of what we find here?

Idea: maybe there could be a second class of upvote, which could only be given, say, a week, or a month after a story or comment was submitted. The meaning of this upvote would be, "This proved to be useful to me professionally." And so, in addition to HN/best and HN/bestcomments, there could be HN/useful and HN/usefulcomments.

Anway, thanks again for the site, Paul, and please keep experimenting. Watching you experiment is at least as interesting as any particular post.
Years ago, I figured that I could get lots of karma by creating an auto-submit script to submit stories from techcrunch and paulgraham.com. Best of all, if another auto-submit script submitted the same story a bit later, they would actually be voting up your story, so the more auto-submitters existed, the better. Sure, more competition from other scripts and users sounds like it's bad. However, I calculated that the scripter still wins because when they're the first to submit, there are even more votes than before (due to other scripters submitting a story a few seconds later and therefore voting up the original). It's better to get beaten by other scripts most of the time and make it to the front page with a bunch of upvotes in just a few minutes, than to always be the first and only submitter/upvote, most users never seeing the story.

And when an article has 10 upvotes in the first few minutes, it's almost guaranteed to make the top spot on the front page, and therefore gain even more votes from real users due to the publicity and feel that others have found the article interesting.

I was top 15 and wanted to get invited to Startup School again, so I didn't make the script. But since then, users have come out of nowhere to reach the top ten, accumulating karma at a dizzying pace.

One of the top users has said he submits the best stories from his rss reader every day. I believe a more likely explanation is that all stories from sites that are commonly referenced on the front page are auto-submitted by a script that checks for new articles every few minutes.

This was also my explanation on why so many techcrunch stories have been upvoted on news.yc--they make an easy candidate for auto-submitting: not because of story content, unfortunately, but because auto-submitting stories from sites that already appear often and that other auto-submitters might submit gives one a free set of 4-10 votes each time.

I guess my point is that Hacker News is being gamed the way reddit and digg are.
If it's a similar problem to Google, then you wonder whether the reputation of the commenters and the comment's responders could factor in.

I'd like a system that gave credit to people who start high-ranked threads (in the aggregate).
How about requiring submitters to tag stories that are submitted?

If you have a set of blessed tags, then the submitter must carefully think which tags apply to their submission. This also forces the submitter to consider if the story fits with the content guidelines of the site.
Google Analytics Motion Charts Overview with a PPC Example
What makes that scary? Did he say he was going to jail you if you drop out of high school? All he did was tell people to finish high school and that they should view that part of their responsibility as Americans is to get an education and support themselves.

Do you think he should tell people to drop out of high school?

Speeches don't target individuals, they target groups. Just because you may or may not be an exceptional case doesn't mean the line is scary.
hmmmmmmm

Thanks to Paul...
I am trying to build something since 2005... and his words just push me!
Yes, they're one of 3 YC alumni companies that are.
Supreme Court sides with AT&T in broadband case
Windows 7 will ship in Oct. Unless Europe intervenes and pushes it to January.
Since people skim cover letters, I would work in that you are joking right in the beginning.
"I guess my point is that Hacker News is being gamed the way reddit and digg are."

Only if you think the "game" is to accumulate karma. For me, the submissions are merely seeds around which insightful discussions grow.
Ok, so who's from Vancouver here ? Presumably the one in BC, not in WA.
I know most of the highest karma users and I'm pretty sure they're not using scripts. I also have lots of code watching voting patterns (e.g. for voting rings) and though it's common for a user to submit many stories from one site, the evidence suggests nearly all of them are doing it to drive traffic, not game karma.
My favorite techcrunch typo is when the first (or last) few _letters_ of a word are not included in the link-text for an href. Is it really that hard to select the whole word?
Completely minor factual amendment:

It was Ed Koch (and his police commissioner) who initiated the broken windows based policing. Giuliani took it to the next level and as you correctly phrased it, is the one with whom it became most associated.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=vHKBXA8nXvQC&pg=PA63...
"comes from the time when school was in a monastery and the monks thought fidgeting was devil's work"

Did you just make that up or is there evidence that this is actually the case?

Personally, I would have a hard time paying attention in meetings and lectures if most of the people in the room were constantly getting up, sitting down, playing with stuff, answering their phones, etc. Do you think maybe we ask kids to sit quietly because it's distracting for everyone else when they don't?
What a disaster that would be, to attract thousands of smart people to a site that caused them to waste lots of time.

Wow, it's like university. :-)

Ok, now that I've made that moronic joke, being HN I know I'll need to add some more substance to counter balance the negative effect. This, in essence is one of the reasons I love coming here - For users that care it's self policing, in other words, what Paul says regarding the broken windows theory is absolution correct.

The whole broken windows theory (and it critiques) are fascinating reads. I'd urge anyone who only knows of the summary version to dig deeper into the ideas. Certainly up most hacker's alleys.
Ultimately, you have to work with people you can trust. If they trust that you won't suddenly spring some bad surprise on them, and if you trust that they won't artificially pad their estimates and slack off (which is very unlikely unless you're working with some really bad apples), there shouldn't be a problem of padded estimates.
I would be interested in seeing the total aggregate comment points for a thread. I think some of the most interesting threads take off with unexpected tangents. For example, the recent one on marriage/dating.
I figured out (because PG mentioned it in his essay about HN) that I just have to set "show dead" in my profile options, and I can see the crap too.

This is better than actually completely deleting, because it enables people to check on the moderation system and build trust in it.
There is a tangible reward for people who have the most karma though.
HN users can do this by flipping a switch called showdead in their profile

I have never had the urge to flip that switch. The sheer quantity of the quality links are enough to keep me engaged.
Boiling water to make tea (East); brewing and fermentation of wheat to make beer (West); the realization that human health begins with clean water. In more recent times: the LifeStraw.
Quick, what are the minor adjustments you've made to the dials in your business that made a huge difference?
Big props, Jamis, and thanks for all the work.
I guess my point is that Hacker News is being gamed the way reddit and digg are.

What a sad thought. "Gaming" hacker news to get invited to Startup School.

Here's an idea:

Why not just be yourself. Contribute what you can. Take what you need. Make a few friends along the way. And learn a thing or two that may change your life. I can't think of a better place to do it.

Karma is a very minor byproduct. What you and this community become is the real payoff. But like a planted seed, you may just have to wait a while before you see that result.
In the bastardized US version of the show, he seems to mostly be turning them all into the same restaurant. Also, his makeovers don't have a great track record (check Wikipedia, and also Yelp). I also think the advice you'd distill out of the show is pretty superficial:

* Reduce your menu to simple, accessible dishes with a restaurant "specialty".

* Reduce price.

* Source fresh ingredients.

* Redecorate.

What annoys me most about the show (even the BBC version) is that personnel changes never seem to be on the docket --- you have people that clearly shouldn't running a kitchen, and at the end of the episode there they are, plating Ramsay's sauteed skate wing.
There is? What is it?
Entrepreneurial alumni, students tackle unique business challenges
Chicago's venture incubator
A lot of really dumb, risible comments inspire thoughtful, valuable takedowns.
I got one yesterday and can say I'm already reading better (i.e., more thoroughly, more attentively) than I would at desktop or laptop. No zillions of tabs, virtual desktops, tiled windows -- just you and your book or news article. And no temptation really to tab around because refresh/redraw and the nav is just pokey enough to provide an incentive to stay on the page. Yes, books and newspapers have been "full-screen" for hundreds of years, but even then you can flip around, be distracted by adjacent stuff. That may be a bug for some. For me and my ADD brain it's a feature.
What effect has it had on you as far as going from just posting an essay to posting an essay and having it deconstructed? Has instant criticism made you more reticent in what you say, or even annoyed?
It's pretty sad that the top rated comment on a Y Combinator forum about a Y Combinator site launching is about typos. Get off your high horse. Leave a comment in the post if you see a typo and we'll usually fix it within a few minutes.
For those that like to join the downmod mob, I read the article and to expand a bit on my one line statement, anybody that will try to shoehorn language constructs from one language into another without first properly learning that language is going to be making these exact mistakes.

It's patently obvious.

Languages are different for a reason, and if you wish to do meaningful work in a language you would do well to familiarize yourself with the core constructs of a language before embarking on a major project, especially if you have a lot of expertise in some other language, because you may have to unlearn a few things.
Dilution is a hard problem. But probably soluble;

Best. Pun. Evar.
I think the whole point of the article is that it doesn't matter. You've got your own unique radio with your own unique dials. Start twisting.
Thanks for this experiment project Paul. I think Hacker News naturally attracts the right people which creates a very good vibe. Most if not all of the comments I read here are constructive and helpful at times. This is unlike any other sites out there.
Me too, but I'm glad it happened. It was a neat experiment.
Did anyone read the article? You didn't. Microsoft is suing TomTom. (Sorry pg, I couldn't resist the put-down.)

Here are the patents:
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,175,789
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=7,054,745
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,704,032
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=7,117,286
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,202,008
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=5,579,517
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=5,758,352
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=6,256,642

Only the '517, '352, and '642 patents appear to cover the Linux kernel.
Ok that comment didn't make me want to hear the stories any less --- which is I assume why Spolsky wrote his anecdote about monthly subscriptions.
That whole situation with ACID 3 is very unclear to me. That 'smooth animation' requirement makes thing so complected. For example I can run Safari 4 beta on a very slow machine and technically it won;t pass the test. Or I could find a very fast computer and run Opera 10 alpha to pass it. So...

I would just list a chain of events. But I will say explicitly about browsers & rendering engines and scoring 100/100 & 'fully pass'

Last spring:

1. Opera announced that they have scored 100/100 on some internal build.

2. They released a build on labs.opera.com

3. WebKit team found an error in one of the tests and it was changed. Opera's build score went down to 99/100

4. WebKit released a public build

During the summer:

5. WebKit released the first build to 'fully pass' the test (100/100 + smooth animation).

Last December:

6. Opera released 10 alpha - technically it is the first publicly available preview release of the Browser to score 100/100 (as opposed to a rendering engine)

This February:

7. Apple released Safari 4 beta - technically it is the first publicly available preview release of the Browser to fully pass ACID 3 (100/100 + smooth animation)

As I see both companies can advertise their achievement:

Opera 10 alpha - the first browser to score 100/100 on ACID 3

Safari 4 beta - the first browser to fully pass ACID 3

The thing is that both claims are True! :)

But that doesn't mean that other Apple or Opera claims are legitimate. As for browser popularity it depends from country to country especially in Opera case. There are even countries where Opera is the most popular browser.
It's stunning that someone in Florida can live off of the profits of mines in Madagascar, fast-food restaurants in California, steel mills in South Korea, and insurance companies in Connecticut, all without spending more than half an hour a week reading brokerage statements.

Really, now, is that all it takes? Well, then, we all know what to do from here on out.
Twitter = YouTube
When the head of state says that something is "not an option", that's not just a friendly suggestion. And when he frames the issue in terms of you "letting down your country", it makes me feel like he thinks my life belongs to the country, as opposed to myself.

And by the way, I did drop out of high school, at 15, and was threatened with things that were fairly similar in character to jail. So I don't think it's not credible that the penalties could very well be jail time. We live in an era which many people seem to see as post-historical -- that is, we've found all the answers and we know the right way for people to live their lives, so we no longer need to protect the rights of individuals to live weird lifestyles, since doing so just constitutes a denial of the manifestly correct path.
I wouldn't bet on that, since the usernames are gray you never really recognize them. i.e. based on your username, I never heard of you...but looking at your profile, I remember reading that before.
Poll: What kind of founder morale do you have?
Inspired by Spolsky's latest article [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494796] and a recent discussion about founder morale [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=424111].
unlimited self-generated morale
middle group
The trouble is a lot of good stuff slips through the new page unnoticed unless you post at the right time or get a friend to bump it. I find just as many tasty links from new as I do the homepage. Perhaps the homepage could shuffle in a few random new unvoted posts too?
What subterfuges did your startup have to resort to in the early days?
What was your secret sauce to get those early users to sign up? Fake accounts talking to each other? Deep discounts for those early adopters? Giveaways?
Nicely said. It's about search.
The Prolog Lightbulb Joke
I pasted in a few pages of my writing from one of my sites into your http://polishmywriting.com and clicked "Polish."

It didn't appear to do anything.

Apparently it didn't find anything wrong with any page except one that contained the word "infuriating", which it felt was spelled incorrectly. I think that's irony. Also, Oxford disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/infuriate?view=uk

So back to the first point, if you don't find anything wrong with my text after processing it, I'd recommend putting up a note like "Looks good to me" or some sort of indicator that something happened rather than the button just being broken.
It's unfortunate that our schools are so authoritarian that this school is considered "among the more unorthodox".
Etsy is an International Word of Mouth Phenomenon
Thanks for the work on Capistrano. You have increased the quality of my life.
The Sudden Appearance of Technology
Great article. Suddenly Twitter has become so powerful, be it at the Oscars, ABC Nightline or President's speech, everyone asks you to twitter them your opinion.
In my opinion, that's huge...
Google should buy it and provide seamless integration with Android. I hear they are planned to come out with Android for 5-6 other cariers (other than T-Mobile), this will help them for sure...
If anything, it shows an opinion shared by at least a handful of readers, with a fast impression and comparatively high relevance. It is honest opinion, not some high horse. And if anything, said sadness reflects upon TC, and not YC, NH, nor the site in question. This is customer feedback.
That's not true. Some of the great earlier episodes had HUGE blowups between Ramsay and the not fit for kitchen people. Watch the Babylon, NY episode, or the one about the Indian restaurant in NYC.

I think you fail to consider that the places he goes into are usually owned by a family or a clueless person. He can't go in and say "well, honestly since you asked to be on my show, it's clear that YOU are the problem. You'd be better off if you just closed."
News & Information About Business Trip Secrets
For all of the business owners out there, a business trip can prove to be an extremely valuable tool as well as a tax deduction. However typically, the business owner will make it to tax time only to learn that there is a rather large tax liability due.
Some excerpts

> The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure...

> JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields

I think in this case it is relevant to consider the source.
This is something I am definitely going to look into for my new learning / tutorial site. Saves building our own player or shelling out £26,000 for Brightcove (The quote they gave me!)
Indeed - the true test is not whether you try something new, but whether you have the balls to admit it was a mistake and pull it back.
I have no problem with comments as short as just one word, for instance: sometimes just the mention of a counter-example is far more effective than a longwinded riposte.

What I do have a serious problem with on HN is 1000+ word diatribes. They just don't fit the weighted threaded format, and tend to be rants anyway. If you can't fit it into a few normal paragraphs, it should really be broken up into several comments. If it can't be broken up, it's not suitable for HN.
Online Ads: Even the Evangelists Turning Bearish
Chickenfoot Firefox extension: Customize webpages without viewing HTML source, and more
Tags would also be great if you want to find information on a particular subject later.

Maybe that would be a job for the guys that run searchyc (www.searchyc.com)
Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning
Seems like an issue of business ethics. It is internally inconsistent to endorse a company because they claim to have green products and green policies, but at the same time are known to throw hyperboles left and right. "But it's standard marketing..." is applying conveniently different strictness to different statements from the same company.

The hypocrisy runs deep, everywhere, but many customers are either unaware of it, or pretend it doesn't exist. Marketing is marketing, but it is very dangerous when many people have broken BS filters, and worse, willfully so. I for one appreciate this kind of obsessive nitpicking when available.

The entire problem here, and the one you point out about OSS, rests on education :-) More educators please!
I think I read that sentence as being the opposite as you did, i.e. He didn't game HN because he wanted to get invited again, even though he almost did.
Will Mobile PDAs & Phones Replace Laptops? And if they do…