skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When you say "approved before going online" do you mean you will get permission from the professors? I believe some legal issues may arise when you publish the notes from a college class you paid for.

Though most, if not all, of my professors don't mind if we put our notes out there, there may be eventualities you'll want to consider before doing this ostentatiously good deed.

Edit: I was referring to this: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/prof-sues-note.html
v funny that Time magazine is reporting on the latest buzz on fb. the viral nature of this "25 things" meme is pretty insane. maybe Time is hungry for a little of that pg view action so they thought they would jump in. trouble is, who reads Time anymore(?).
Well certainly they can attach conditions, and the government has. A bank should not, however, attach conditions which almost certainly detract from the client's ability to pay back the loan. It's bad business, something the government seems to be quite good at.

By limiting CEO pay to companies that are heavily invested in by the government, you assure that some bright, competent CEO will never take over your company except for the sheer, masochistic joy of bringing a dead company back to life. Instead, you will be stuck with the incompetents who got you into the situation in the first place and are just happy to keep their jobs, multi-million/billion dollar pay cut or not.
Interesting stuff. Though I'm not sure that what they're describing is a business model. Sounds more like a "Terms of Employment" agreement.
Thanks! It's open source, so, you know, you can put hard work into them too! :-P
Ask HN: Please review my site... and find a great place to hike
Dear HN,

Please review my site http://www.trailbehind.com. TrailBehind is a site that helps you find great places to hike. TrailBehind also lets you collaborate to build social maps of the outdoors.

A couple months back, I posted the site to Hacker News for a review, and I received great feedback, and this new release reflects that feedback in full.

So, if you have any comments or critiques (particularly if you are a hiker, backpacker, or love the outdoors), we'd really appreciate your feedback. By this summer, we hope to have created a great resource for everyone who loves the woods.

ALSO - if you are really into the site, email me at andrewljohnson AT trailbehind dot com, and tell me a bit about yourself. And I'll send you a TrailBehind t-shirt, which we just had delivered, while supplies last!
Akamai either owns the lines on the "superfast superclean superhighway" (Joel's words) between the Akamai nodes, or they have purchased preferential traffic treatment from someone who owns those lines.
Ye Gods! It's a discussion about meta discussions!

It's our first meta meta discussion!

I feel so proud.

I'm vehemently opposed to meta meta discussions. This is like staring at somebody else while they look at their belly button. Or looking at your own belly button while somebody else stares at you. Or staring at somebody else's belly button while they look at yours. Or something like that (I am assured that all of this has to do with naval gazing by other commenters)

If you must reply, please make it rhyme (I never could figure out how to do that haiku format)
Play the Point, Not the Score
1. Nobody expressed interest in content, social media or social network sites.

It think this is a real shame. All the Facebook, but for my dog / Facebook, but for my garden / Myspace, but for my Facebooks have really given a bad name to this genre of site. It became the type of site for people who were looking to cash in quickly or had no business getting involved in the internet.

The problem is that the web is a social animal. People want to interact and share. I hope we see the move toward social/crowd-source sites with loftier goals. I think there is still a lot of value to be had in these types of sites.
...emphasis on the date part.
It's important to note that Microsoft is a member of the W3C. Being a member of an organization doesn't mean you are going to use or enhance any of the organization's technologies.

It will be good if people can start logging on to "real" sites with an OpenID. But I have a feeling Facebook only wants OpenID so that people can use their facebook password to log on "everywhere". This is how Google "supports" OpenID also.
Also, here's an abbreviated roadmap of features we are working on that are in various stages of done-ness:

* data downloads for your GPS device

* a web crawler that aggregates trip reports and park rules/regulations to our map

* a Flickr integration

* better ways to look at our international data

* faster searches and autocompletes

* improvements to reporting and trip-planning

* RSS feeds of changes to places on the map that you can subscribe to
Not necessarily. The RON papers show how you can increase performance without buying preferential anything.
Wow, those numbers really, really suck.

I didn't go to an Ivy, I went to state tech school. My loans were at 4.5% (!) when I started, and the last one was ~7.5%. My initial tuition was $2500/sem, ended at $4500.

Note, that's over an 11 year period, covering bachelor's-PhD. Folks covered undergrad, and I did a lot of research work to cover many semesters of graduate school. My loans are somewhere around $50k total. Each semester's loan usually left me with tuition covered and $5k of spending money.

There are some things about not going to MIT/CMU I'll always feel like I've missed. But there is the other side of the coin :-)
The link to this comes from his blog post on resignation:

http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/02/time-to-move-on.html
There's no problem, I just thought your post was a bit ironic in that sense :)
Ask HN: How to get ip addresses effectively? (need to ban some people)
So I have a few people trolling on my site. I have this code in php:

$userip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

I try to use this to ban that particular ip. But the problem is that some of these users have some sort of an ip changer software on their machines so they just come back under a new ip. Is this something the collective hacker mind can help me with?
Is there a better way of determining users ip address in PHP?
Does RON == Resilient Overlay Networks? And do you think Akamai's selling points and pricing indicate they're improving end-to-end peformance without buying any special paths?
You're right there isn't much information. However, the homebrew computers/electronics scene unfortunately hasn't regained its earlier interest levels.

Why? Tools that CEs use largely aren't available to the general public, and the learning curve for electronics (and expense required for materials) is higher than most are willing to undertake.
Avoid virtualization overhead with Linux Containers
Hey mechanical_fish, drop the meta and come back to talking with me about Drupal:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467926

(Perhaps you've already seen this & chosen not to respond, but I think it's more likely you haven't seen it since my response came ~8 days after your comment. My apologies if the former.)

(And -- regarding the orange/not orange experiment -- for some reason my erstwhile orange status seems to have goaded me into making lots of little 1 point comments which I know will take me to not orange status if the feature ever comes back -- which is not the response I would have expected in myself. Any experiment that produces a surprising result without harming anyone is an experiment worth conducting.)
I use OmniWeb (WebKit-based) on the Mac, and while it cost a little money, this is one of those cases where I thought it was well worth it.

OmniWeb has extensions of sorts, though I've never needed any because I found the defaults to be really well thought out. YMMV, of course.
Most external hard drives that support network attached storage do not work with Mac's.
Excellent! Thanks for taking the time to write up a more technical look at the changes you guys made.

I'm still not clear on how Akamai helps speed things up. I understand how CDNs work: they move static files to edge servers that are physically closer to customers, which mean less hops that data has to move through. But this isn't static stuff.

Let me ask: is the general concept this -- prior to Akamai, users would have to hop through a dozen servers but now they only have to go through 2 or 3 because Akamai uses its own network? (Essentially bypassing the general Internet and using a type of private internet.)
Or google with site:news.ycombinator.com in the query.
Government also shouldn't give free money to failed businesses. We should either properly socialize the businesses by exchanging money for voting shares, or let capitalism work.
The phase, is it still called September?
Instead, you will be stuck with the incompetents who got you into the situation in the first place and are just happy to keep their jobs, multi-million/billion dollar pay cut or not.

Or clearly superior talent like John Thain, et al.

Do you seriously mean to imply that there are no individuals out there making less than 500k per annum who could not pull off a deleveraging and conservative restructuring of a business? No one?

Who are these individuals who will work for no less than several million per annum who have pulled off such miracles that no mere person earning less than half a million per year at the moment clearly outclass?

Certainly they have not been at the helm of any financial institution I am aware of. Hell, I nominate mynameishere for one of the positions, as he seems to have a clearer grasp than most of the idiots at the helm last go-round:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=308425

And he probably is available for 500k/yr.
Ceiling Height Can Affect How A Person Thinks, Feels And Acts
a community

experiences changes

of course we fear this

so we turn inward

and ask ourselves the question

what do we value?

there is a story

on overcoming bias

about compromise

when two cultures meet

what do you give up and what

do you get to keep?
Dear everyone:

Stop meta-referencing - go make something.
Wayback Machine & What You Can Learn From It For Your Site / Startup
I'm working on a solution for this, but ultimately it comes down to hosting costs. SearchYC is currently hosted on a cheap-ish virtual server whose costs come out of my pocket each month. I can't justify spending more money on this project, given my personal financial constraints.

Traffic has been steadily increasing, and quite simply, the system can't handle the load at peak usage. I am, however, working to resolve some of these issues, but it may still be awhile before you see any improvements.
Basically, yes. We're hopping off the Internet at the nearest Akamai hub, bypassing the normal backbone, and then hopping back on close to the endpoint. I'm in the office at the moment, so I can't test this for obvious reasons, but you should see the effect by doing a traceroute to webnlbcopilot.fogcreek.com and comparing it to web1copilot.fogcreek.com. The former should go through Akamai, the latter will route directly to us.
amazon mp3, lastfm; that's about it here.
Qualifying "Web Karma": It shouldn't be a game.
Ask HN: Going to College with NIL Family Support?
I see in quite a few HN threads an assumption, sometimes spoken and sometimes unspoken, that a young person pursuing an undergraduate degree will have financial support from parents. What about the young person who does not get any financial support (not even living at home rent-free) after age eighteen? What's the most reasonable plan for such a young person to launch a career as a hacker? Don't go to college at all? Go to a college with the lowest possible list price? Join the armed forces?

I hope to avoid my own children facing this situation, but I ask on behalf of a very bright young man who may face this situation. He has already received a very enviable offer of admission from a top high-tech college. He may not be able to afford to go. What are all the options?
The article has a rather narrow perspective on unit testing, given his product is not mission critical.

I do have a habit of assuming every other hacker is doing some kind of a startup, so this is a fair point.
It's a tough one. On the one hand it's easy to get bitter about these bonuses. On the other hand the banks will lose people who (despite the mistakes they've made) are the most experienced in their fields when it comes to handling the banks and won't be able to attract staff of any quality without the bonuses as it's a systemic issue.

On the other hand as other smart people on this site have pointed out, where the government has lended or invested it should have a say in the decision.

Personally I'd be happy to let them have their bonuses providing their balls were strapped to a device that checks the stock price every 30 seconds and administers electric shocks when the share price drops below a certain level. If they manage to make it through the year without singed balls or resigning from the pain, I think they might deserve the bonus.
Posting on iPhone

hard enough; meta-replies

exempt in that case ;)
Do as I say not

As I do as I say not

As I do say not
free verse, or did I

just skim this too fast to see

subtle hidden form?

oh wait! i can't count

can't judge my own rules while I

sit in my rails class

Man, typing haiku

is a pain here; time for more

meta-design? Nooooo!!!
Bummer. I was looking forward to that feature.

I just went through and (roughly) calculated my average. I am just over the threshold. Which creates an interesting scenario:
A couple of stupid comments from me and I will fall below the threshold.

That creates a really great motivation.

So, if you add this feature back, it might be worth it to run some reports to see if there is a "sweet spot". Not to mention it would be really neat to see the distribution of average comment scores.
Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Going broke on a million a year), p.137

"One breath of scandal, and not only would the Giscard scheme collapse but his very career would be finished! And what would he do then? I’m already going broke on a million a year!

The appalling figures came popping up into his brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay out $21,000 a month for the $1.8 million loan he had to take out to buy the apartment…

Of the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the apartment’s monthly maintenance fee… $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes.
Entertaining at home and in restaurants had come to $37,000. This was a modest sum compared to what other people spent."

Another perspective:

UrbanBaby is an anonymous message board frequented by some typical New York UES/UWS mothers. Here they talk about not being afford private school on $400k/yr

DC = dear child, DH = dear husband

http://www.urbanbaby.com/talk/posts/50368448
Can you please give me an example?
The government isn't deciding. If you take bailout money, exec pay will be capped. Seems to me like it's the companies that have the choice.
It is elevating the belly button to the position of subject. The philosophical equivalent of a corporate entity.
Well, there is this one guy, but he's a bit sick at the moment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
i never post here but have been reading isnce its inception and would gladly pay $20+ a year
The income of his parents makes a big difference. If they are professional class, their incomes will make it so he doesn't qualify for financial aid. If they won't cosign loans, it puts said young person in a very tough situation. In this case, the young person needs to talk to the financial aid office and establish that he is entirely supporting himself. This can be very difficult. Right now, he should make sure that his parents aren't declaring him as a dependent on their taxes.

If his parents have lower incomes, then he should apply to a lot of colleges with hope of getting a good financial aid package. Generally, when you're paying for it yourself, it's not worth going to an expensive college, but computer science is special -- the education from CMU or MIT is worth the extra money. Owing 100k in student loans is a lot more manageable for a high end professional degree. If he was majoring in sociology, he would want to go to the school with the lowest sticker price.

He should definitely go to college and almost no one should join the armed forces, certainly not as a launching pad for a career as a hacker.

Also, this bill goes into effect this July and would allow for emancipated minors to file independently for financial aid. Assuming he is already 18, it is probably too late to take advantage of this. http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/110_HR_5.html
Very possibly - my time frame is junior year high school to freshman year college. :-)

Though Newsweek didn't use to have a "humiliated people of the week" column, and "conventional wisdom watch" used to seem interesting rather than just sniping. And I did like the quotes of the week page.
I use the Zap Colors bookmarklet from http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/the-zap-colors-bookmarkle...
Isn't a "Statup" something specific to Boston?
Fortunately there's a setting for this:

(= nourl-factor* .1)

Better now?
If they are professional class, their incomes will make it so he doesn't qualify for financial aid. If they won't cosign loans, it puts said young person in a very tough situation.

Yes. That is the problem. The college financial aid principles in the United States

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/fa/Econo...

make an assumption that parents are the funding source of first resort for any young person pursuing an undergraduate degree at the usual age, and young people not supported by their own parents don't have enough creditworthiness to borrow their way through an elite undergraduate college.
Where are these talented people going to go? If there are still banks around that are able to pay them what they want (without taking bailout money), why is there a need for the bailouts at all?
I don't know. Steve has excellent empathic design acumen and taste, but do you think thats whats required to stop making dumb loans and restructure and write off bad debt?

Not saying he couldn't do it, but the skill sets seem orthogonal.

The crux of my argument is the refutation that you need someone of that caliber to do what appears to be pragmatic banking and risk management.
So if it was 5 months ago, why haven't you launched yet? Did getting rejected spoil your motivation? If so, you likely wouldn't have pulled it off anyway. Everyone is rejected at some point, and every idea has been thought, of and many are being developed. As everyone keeps echoing - it's in the execution. Come up with something new and do it - or if you think the folks who just launched aren't doing it right, or well enough, go after them.

Best of luck.
You can download Altera Quartus II Web Edition for free. Which is VHDL and Block Diagrhams and chip programming(if you have the chips) and a ton more then I even know about.

http://www.altera.com/products/software/quartus-ii/web-editi...
Perhaps one tweak -- links back to news.ycombinator.com are weighted the same?
Yes and yes. My understanding of Akamai's philosophy is cheap redundant hardware plus cheap (often free) redundant dumb bandwidth plus genius software.
* Adding the total length of a trail and the difficulty level will be useful.

* More options in the Park Index will be useful. Eg: refine the list to state parks or national parks or refine it by state, then list the trails in a park.

* The map is very slow and unresponsive, I don't think you can do much to improve the map loading speed, but I know that google recently updated their google maps to load faster.
Try clicking on the search icon at the bottom of the page next to the CO2Stats badge.
Ask HN: Does Gmail have an "email later" feature?
I want it
What about six months down the road when you want to add a new section to the bottom of every single page, or when next year rolls around and you want to change the 'copyright 2009' to 'copyright 2010'?

Realistically, you're going to need some kind of basic dynamic capability, and once your site grows beyond 20+ pages you'll save more time than the time it takes to learn it.

Sounds like you don't need much, and PHP (or really any dynamic language I've seen) has an 'include' directive for adding headers and footers and would take you all of two seconds to learn (beware, there's a ton of bad code out there. The good resources have been discussed in many other HN posts.)

For the super-basic stuff any dynamic language will do fine, so just mark it up in whatever stack you're comfortable with the tools for (I'd recommend PHP, Python, or Ruby in increasing orders of complexity for a basic site.)

You might also consider a real CMS in case you want to bring more non-technical people on, or add authentication later. Wordpress is fairly full featured on the editor, has user privileges, and I believe it has plugins to support LaTeX and other Math markup easily. Again, any leaders in the space should be fine for what you want to do.

On the actual code side, mark it up in strict html or xhtml, test it in at least FF/IE6/IE7/Safari, and try to seperate your CSS into classes in external file(s) as much as possible so you can change your design later with less headaches. If things are set up right, adding a css stylsheet for mobile would be trivial, which might be nice for times when you need a formula at the library.

I hear good things about the book 'Head First HTML' from beginners, and if you're at any high level with computing you should breeze through it. Alternately, just get a CMS and file a style you like and be done with it.

In your case, I'd argue that there's an explicit tradeoff between simplicity of the code and simplicity of the final implementation. If you want a basic site with slim, clean code, you're going to have to do some learning. If you want a quick deployment that 'just works', you could do it in a few hours, but have less control over the elegance of the solution.

P.S.: Cool idea. I'd bet you could even charge for some of it, if you were so inclined.
It's been tried: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamerail
Actually by limiting pay you will get people who are only interested in bringing a dead company back to life as opposed to people with other motives such as grabbing as much wealth for themselves before the bubble bursts.
Who is this talent? Name them. What have they done/are doing that their leaving any of these companies will cause a greater apocalypse? What crucial functions do they serve that make them irreplaceable?
Please tell me that you seriously didn't just make it so that news articles without a link have 10% of the weight of news articles w/links.
$5 thats roughly how much I pay for lunch
They're looking for someone that has figured out a better a way...or rather, that they (they being the VCs) believe has figured out better/different ways of monetizing web traffic.

It's all a crapshoot until it's actually been done and works.
TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense